Confluent, the commercial company built on top of the open source Apache Kafka streaming database project, announced today that it has closed a $50 million investment.
The round was led by Sequoia with Benchmark and Index Ventures also participating. Sequoia’s Matt Miller will be joining the Confluent board as part of the deal. Today’s round brings the total investment into the… Read More
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GeoPost, the international subsidiary of the French Groupe La Poste, has acquired “last-mile” delivery startup Stuart. Read More
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Told for the first time, the story of how the M14 Industries Dragons’ Den deal collapsed. Read More
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Like bizzaro Facebooks, Tagged and Hi5 launched in 2004 to help you meet new people instead of connecting you with friends you already know. Through social games and paid dating features, they earned a surprising amount of revenue despite being relatively unknown. Tagged bought Hi5 in 2011 before branching out into standalone social app development and renamed the parent company If(we). But… Read More
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It looks like Amazon’s AWS has made another acquisition to add more productivity tools for its customers beyond basic cloud-computing services. It has picked up Thinkbox Software, which develops and sells solutions for media design and content creation aimed at people in the video and wider visual media industries. Examples of services that Thinkbox already offers include systems… Read More
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Chicago-based Hazel Technologies is on a mission to reduce food waste. The company has developed packaging inserts that, through the magic of basic chemistry, can ward off fungus, mold and slow the spoilage of fruits and vegetables. How big a problem is food waste? The most recent available reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture have found that each year we waste more than 25… Read More
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Jay Z’s new venture capital firm Arrive, has arrived – the rap and business mogul has been planning the launch for awhile, according to reports that surfaced in February, but a press release from parent company Roc Nation made it official on Monday. The investment platform will work with early-stage startups, and offer investment of capital as well as assistance with business… Read More
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Okta, the $1.2 billion identity management startup for enterprises that some tip for an IPO this year, has made an acquisition of sorts to expand one of its newer lines of business: managing IDs across APIs and apps. Today the San Francisco-based company announced that it has picked up the team from Stormpath, an early mover in providing a way for developers to implement authentication… Read More
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Atom Bank, a startup out of the U.K. that has built a mobile-only bank targeting consumers between the ages of 18 and 34, has raised another £83 million ($102 million) in funding led by BBVA, the Spanish bank and owner of Simple in the U.S. The funding gives Atom a post-money valuation of £261 million ($320 million), TechCrunch has confirmed with the company. BBVA also led… Read More
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Snap Inc., the parent of Snapchat, has been off to the races with its debut on the stock market.
Yesterday, the stock closed at $24.48, a 44% gain from the IPO price of $17. And today it’s gone up a bit further, surpassing $29 at one point, an almost 20% increase from the close of yesterday. Shares later fell to $27, but it’s still on track for a 10% gain for day two.
This is… Read More
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