The retail industry is one that’s ripe for disruption by technology. Under intense pressure from giants like Amazon and Walmart, retailers are often stuck using legacy systems and are ill equipped to compete using the latest tools. Rubikloud announced a $37 million investment today to help retailers attack the modernization problem with cloud tools built with artificial intelligence… Read More
from TechCrunch
Spotify has filed confidentially to go public, sources told Dan Primack at Axios. He learned that the music streaming company filed with the SEC at the end of December. The timing is consistent with what we are hearing. Sources told us that they’ve been targeting a debut for the first quarter of this year. We’ve gotten hints that it could happen within the next month or so.… Read More
from TechCrunch
In a world shifting to the cloud, Microsoft has carved out a place trying to help companies caught between two worlds — on-prem legacy solutions and the public and private cloud. To help further that hybrid mission, the company announced it was acquiring Avere Systems today for an undisclosed amount. Microsoft describes Avere as “a leading provider of high-performance NFS and… Read More
from TechCrunch
The proposed acquisition of global payment service MoneyGram by Alibaba’s Ant Financial is off after the U.S. government blocked the $1.2 billion deal.
Ant Financial, the Alibaba affiliate which controls Alipay — China’s top mobile wallet — and other financial services, announced a deal to buy Nasdaq-listed MoneyGram in April 2017 after it beat off a rival bid from… Read More
from TechCrunch
SuperMeat, an Israeli biotech and food-tech startup that is developing lab-made chicken meat, has raised $3 million in seed funding, as it becomes the latest of a crop of so-called ‘clean meat’ companies to get off the ground. Others in the space include Bill Gates, Atomico and DFJ-backed Memphis Meats, and Hampton Creek, which is also exploring lab-grown meat. Read More
from TechCrunch
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week the crew — Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, Alex Wilhelm — were joined by Barrett Daniels, the CEO of Nextstep Advisory, an IPO shop that helps companies go public. Guess what we talked about? Yes, we went back through the biggest debuts… Read More
from TechCrunch
Theranos has secured $100 million in debt financing. Yes, someone gave the blood testing company known for handing out questionable test results money.
First reported by Business Insider, the company reportedly told investors it had secured the money from Fortress Investment Group, a New York-based private equity firm that was acquired by Softbank earlier this year.
Of course, this is debt… Read More
from TechCrunch
Scaleworks, a private equity firm based in San Antonio, Texas, apparently couldn’t wait until after the holidays to share the news of its latest purchase. The firm announced it was acquiring Keen IO in a Medium blog post yesterday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and neither company was available for comment beyond the blog post, but Keen has raised close to $30 million since it… Read More
from TechCrunch
Unbound, a sexual wellness startup for women, recently raised $2.7 million from Founders Fund, Slow Ventures, Arena Ventures, SoGal Ventures and others. Founded by Polly Rodriguez of Women of SexTech, Unbound aims to empower women to own their sexuality. “Raising money is always hard but it took an exceptional amount of resilience,” Rodriguez said. Unbound’s bread and butter… Read More
from TechCrunch
“I have FOMO for the future”, says Sam Lessin. That’s why his startup Fin is working backwards from a far-off tech utopia. One day, computers with some human help will answer our every beck and call. Today, Lessin is teaming them up. Every day, Fin gets smarter. For $1 a minute, 24/7, Fin gets your digital chores done. Message, email, or speak a request and a real person… Read More
from TechCrunch