Early-stage investors YL Ventures have raised a $75 million fund, their third, to back Israeli software startups seeking to enter the U.S. market. The firm maintains offices in Tel Aviv and Mill Valley, Calif. It is best-known for its use of predictive analytics to find promising entrepreneurial teams before they have officially launched a business. YLV founder and Managing Partner Yoav… Read More
from TechCrunch
Next Insurance, a startup that wants to make it simpler for small businesses to find coverage, has raised a $29 million Series A. The round was led by Munich Re/HSB Ventures, the venture capital arm of German insurance company Munich Re. Existing investors including Markel and Nationwide, also participated. Read More
from TechCrunch
Go-Jek, the motorbike on-demand startup that is battling Uber and Grab in Indonesia, has closed a new round of $1.2 billion led by Chinese internet giant Tencent, two sources close the company told TechCrunch. The deal, which we understand was signed last week, values the company at $3 billion post money. It is expected to be officially announced “soon.” Neither Go-Jek… Read More
from TechCrunch
As huge tech companies continue to dump money into VR and AR technology looking to convince us digital objects in front of us are actually real, they’re still having a tough time figuring out how to make them feel real. Ultrahaptics is working on a technology that uses ultrasound waves to construct 3D objects in the air that users can feel. Read More
from TechCrunch
Tesla today re-affirmed that the production of its next car, the Model 3, would begin in July — and that the company had $4 billion in cash-on-hand heading into the second quarter this year. Both of those are going to be critical as Tesla heads into the back half of the year, which reported its first-quarter earnings today. The company has gone to market multiple times to raise… Read More
from TechCrunch
A tiny bit more VC money sloshing around Europe. This time it’s the turn of Greece-based VC fund VentureFriends, which is announcing the final closing of a €20 million fund to invest in Greek software and “high tech” startups at the seed stage. The two Partners of the fund are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos, with Stefanos Katsimpas also acting as a senior… Read More
from TechCrunch
GV (formerly Google Ventures) is leading a $10 million investment in Abundant Robotics, a company building apple-picking robots that could eventually be adapted to harvest other fruits. Joining GV in the round were BayWa AG and Tellus Partners, along with the company’s earlier backers Yamaha Motor Company, KPCB Edge and Comet Labs. Read More
from TechCrunch
As the web becomes an ever more crowded landscape of things battling for your attention, we’re seeing an increase in marketing spend from companies to help capture it, and that in turn is leading to a rising tide for marketing technology startups building solutions to do just that. Today, Yieldify, a London-based company that builds tools tools to increase conversions on sites and… Read More
from TechCrunch
Cheetah Mobile, the Chinese firm that specializes in utility apps for smartphones, has enlisted the help of outside investors for its live-streaming service.
Cheetah announced this week that its one-year-old Live.me service has pulled in $60 million from a range of China-based investors that include Matrix Partners China, Evolution Media China, Gobi Partners, IDG Capital and Welight Capital. Read More
from TechCrunch
Food and beverage startups backed by tech investors are having a rough go of it this season, with Juicero all but melting down and companies like Memphis Meats, Urban Remedy and Soylent recalling products, according to required disclosures on the federal site Foodsafety.gov. Now, Hampton Creek Foods, a packaged goods company backed by the likes of Horizons, Khosla, and AME Cloud… Read More
from TechCrunch