It’s pretty odd that even while people are chatting about producing the VR video’s crazy theoretical future with 8K resolution per eye, stereoscopic rendering and light field-ready footage, I’m still here struggling to keep Louis C.K. clips from buffering on my mobile phone. For VR to be successful, companies are going to need to start correcting some of the growing pains… Read More
from TechCrunch
Garena, Southeast Asia’s most valuable technology startup, has closed additional funding three new investors: SeaTown Holdings International, an affiliate of Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek, Indonesia’s GDP Venture, and Mistletoe, a Japan-based fund from Taizo Son, the younger brother of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. Read More
from TechCrunch
Northzone, a 20 year veteran of the European VC industry, has closed its 8th fund, capped at €300 million, which it will deploy to “early-stage” startups in the region. Specifically, these will be A, B and C rounds, and although investments will span the whole of Europe, there will be particular focus on key tech hubs, including the Nordics, London, and Berlin. The VC also says… Read More
from TechCrunch
Northzone, a 20 year veteran of the European VC industry, has closed its 8th fund, capped at €300 million, which it will deploy to “early-stage” startups in the region. Specifically, these will be A, B and C rounds, and although investments will span the whole of Europe, there will be particular focus on key tech hubs, including the Nordics, London, and Berlin. The VC also says… Read More
from TechCrunch
One of the biggest tech deals this year — and the biggest ever in the UK — has now closed. Today, Softbank announced that it has completed its acquisition of ARM Holdings, the semiconductor firm that it announced that it would acquire for £24 billion (around $32 billion in today’s currency, $31 billion at the time of the deal) in July, in order to make a big jump into IoT. As… Read More
from TechCrunch
After raising $4.5 billion at a $60 billion valuation earlier this year, Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial — which operates the Alipay payments service — is hungry to put some of that money to use to build out its business. The company, alongside key Alibaba investor Primavera Capital, is investing $460 million into Yum China, a new spinout from Yum Brands — the parent company… Read More
from TechCrunch
China has opened an investigation to deter whether Didi’s Chuxing’s impending acquisition of Uber China violates national anti-trust laws. Read More
from TechCrunch
When it comes to funding for startups, marketing tech is seeing a boom at the moment, and one company that is reaping the fruits of that is Zeta Interactive. The marketing technology company — co-founded by the ex-CEO of Apple and Pepsi John Sculley and David Steinberg (who is the CEO) and valued at over $1 billion — today announced that it raised $45 million. In an interview… Read More
from TechCrunch
Global mobile payments company Boku announced a $13.75 million funding round today led by a consortium of UK investors. The company had previously raised approximately $77.25 million from Khosla Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Index Ventures, Benchmark, and Andreessen Horowitz among others. The relatively small round, within the greater context of the company’s past… Read More
from TechCrunch
Salesforce may have missed out on buying LinkedIn, but it has had a whopper of an acquisitions spree so far this year anyway. The enterprise cloud and CRM services company put down over $4 billion to buy seven startups in areas like workplace productivity, machine learning and e-commerce solutions, according to to the company’s 10-Q filed with the SEC today. The majority of that $4… Read More
from TechCrunch