A company called Confido raised a small ICO by selling special CFD designed to allow “safe and trustless cryptocurrency payments. According to ICODrops they raised their goal of about $400,000 and quickly disappeared, taking the cash with it. The site is currently a parked web server that points to nothing. The apparent founder and former eBay employee, Joost van Doorn, posted a message to… Read More
from TechCrunch
Monzo, one of a number of “challenger” banks in the U.K. aiming to re-invent the current account, is assembling quite an array of backers, many with a U.S. bent. It’s most recent round, which gave the startup a £280 million post-money valuation, saw the likes of Goodwater Capital, Stripe, and Michael Moritz invest, and before that Thrive Capital became a backer. Now… Read More
from TechCrunch
Chinese internet giant Baidu is continuing its push into the automotive space after it led a RMB 1.3 billion ($195 million) Series B investment in Shouqi Limousine & Chauffeur, an offshoot of the state-owned Shouqi Group which was Beijing’s first licensed ride-hailing app. NIO Capital, the investment arm of billion-dollar electric car startup NIO, and Silk Road Huachuang joined… Read More
from TechCrunch
DMM, one of Japan’s largest Internet and e-commerce conglomerates, announced today that it will pay 7 billion yen (about $62.2 million) for pawn shop app Cash. Launched this summer, Cash’s software automatically appraises an item’s value based on user photos and offers a cash advance using it as collateral. Read More
from TechCrunch
In a time where every startup seems to be using machine learning to sift through massive amounts of data, Scalyr is a cloud-based service that is taking a different approach. It has built a tool the founder claims can sort through massive amounts of log data at lightning speed when compared to conventional logging tools — and it doesn’t require machine learning to make it… Read More
from TechCrunch
Earlier this month, U.K.-based challenger bank Monzo announced that it had raised a further £71 million in a round led by Goodwater Capital, giving the startup a post-money valuation of £280 million. However, what wasn’t reported at the time was that the round included £11 million in secondary investment, meaning that only £60 million entered the company’s balance sheet and… Read More
from TechCrunch
Over the weekend, several VCs tweeted that my headline recapping Stitch Fix’s first day of trading was too harsh. The headline read, “Stitch Fix up just 1% on first day of trading, after reducing size of IPO.” I didn’t say it “fumbled” or label it as “weak” and “disappointing” like many other media publications, but that would… Read More
from TechCrunch
Tech In Asia, the Singapore-based media and events startup, has closed $6.6 million in fresh funding. The lead investor is a name that may not be too familiar to regular readers (yet) and that’s Hanwha, a Korean conglomerate which started out in explosives in 1952 but has since expanded into a range of verticals including (now) a focus on tech in emerging markets. With $55.5 billion… Read More
from TechCrunch
Southeast Asia-based aCommerce, a startup that helps brands get into e-commerce and digital media in the fast-growing region, has pulled in $65 million in new funding led by Emerald Media, an Asian firm backed by global investor KKR.
The Series B deal takes Bangkok-based aCommerce to $94 million raised to date. Existing backers Blue Sky, MDI Ventures and Switzerland-based DKSH also took… Read More
from TechCrunch
Alibaba is continuing its expansion into offline retail after the Chinese e-commerce giant bought up more than one-third of one of Chinese most prolific operators of hypermarket stores. The firm announced today it has spent HK$22.4 billion (around US$2.88 billion) to acquire of 36.16 percent in Sun Art Retail Group, a Hong Kong-listed business that operates 446 hypermarkets across 224… Read More
from TechCrunch