The sharing economy continues to bear fruit. CarHopper, a platform for luxury car rental, has raised a $1.5 million seed round to expand to new markets. CarHopper started as a peer-to-peer platform for luxury car owners to rent their rides to others. But in its infancy, the company realized there was a much bigger opportunity with small, local rental agencies that don’t have a strong… Read More
from TechCrunch
Used-car marketplace CarGurus spiked more than 72 percent during its first day of trading. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company had raised more than $150 million after pricing its IPO at $16. By the end of trading Thursday, shares had gone up more than 72 percent, closing at $27.58. Read More
from TechCrunch
More people than ever before are listening to podcasts, but as they soon find out, discovering new ones is a cumbersome process that lacks the serendipity users take for granted in other apps. CastBox wants to fix that by becoming “the YouTube of audio.” The podcast player for iOS and Android, which has raised $16 million in funding so far, is launching a new audio search… Read More
from TechCrunch
When he was still at Google Ventures, Bill Maris led a round of funding into music royalty collecting startup Kobalt, to make one of the VC arms bigger bets in the world of digital music. Now that he’s moved on to start another firm, he’s taking a step to re-up his interests in the company. Today, Kobalt announced that Maris’ Section 32 has invested $14 million into Kobalt,… Read More
from TechCrunch
BuffaloGrid, a London and New Delhi startup that recently picked up backing from LocalGlobe and Kima Ventures, offers something akin to mobile phone charging as a service in remote parts of the world that are either without electricity or where power supply is sporadic. Read More
from TechCrunch
Funds have been ballooning in size as more money continues to flood into Silicon Valley, looking for higher returns than can be found elsewhere. VCs also like raising progressively bigger funds because doing so gives them bragging rights. Now Icon Ventures has closed its sixth fund with $265 million in commitments — its largest fund to date. Read More
from TechCrunch
Armed with an understanding of machine learning, Ross Intelligence is going after LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters for ownership of legal research. The startup, founded in 2015 by Andrew Arruda, Jimoh Ovbiagele and Pargles Dall’Oglio at the University of Toronto, is announcing an $8.7 million Series A today led by iNovia Capital with participation from Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund,… Read More
from TechCrunch
MioTech, a financial tech startup with offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai, has raised $7 million in Series A funding to develop artificial intelligence based software for investment managers. The round was led by Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm of Hong Kong business tycoon Li Ka-shing, with participation from returning investor Zhenfund. Read More
from TechCrunch
eShares wants to be the platform for all things equity.
From cap table management to secondary transactions, eShares’ software helps businesses like Slack, Flexport and Funding Circle keep tabs on their shares.
The startup is raising a $42 million Series C, led by Menlo Ventures and Social Capital. Matt Murphy from Menlo Ventures and Arjun Sethi from Social Capital will be joining the… Read More
from TechCrunch
Every day companies are uploading fresh code to the cloud. The pace is startling and that tends to lead to errors. We have seen security software in the past that will check that code for problems and security holes and recommend fixes before launching, but what happens when your programming team doesn’t have time or money to make those fixes (or simply ignores them)? ShiftLeft, a… Read More
from TechCrunch