Real estate is one of those industries that has been rather slow on the uptake of technology, which makes a lot of sense. Buying and selling a home is one of the biggest, most personal decisions in a person’s life, and the shift to online browsing, transactions, etc. was bound to take longer than other sectors. Brokers, too, have grown accustomed to their ways and are usually hesitant to… Read More
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AimBrain, a London startup that offers “biometric identity” as a service to help fintech companies and other financial institutions fight fraud, has raised £4 million in Series A funding. Read More
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Hugsy, a Dutch startup that’s developing a ‘smart’ blanket designed to help the care of newborns and premature babies, has raised €200k (~$220k) in seed funding via the Leapfunder European angel investor network. Read More
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Meltwater, the self-described ‘media intelligence’ company, continues on an acquisition spree. Following the purchase of Oxford Uni spin-out Wrapidity in February, it has acquired Hong Kong-Based startup Klarity to enhance its social media monitoring and analytics capabilities in Asia. Read More
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In the U.S., childcare presents a nerve-wracking quagmire for parents. It’s expensive—almost a fifth of American families spend more than a quarter of their income on childcare—but that doesn’t mean it’s a lucrative business. In fact, many caregivers make so little that they can’t afford childcare for their own kids and drop out of the workforce.… Read More
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Vice Media has raised $450M in new funding from private-equity firm TPG, with a deal valuing the media company around $5.7 billion post-money. Shane Smith, co-founder and CEO of Vice was just on CNBC answering questions about the funding and Vice’s plans to eventually become a public company. While remaining cryptic, Smith did note that this raise is “what we would do if we were… Read More
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Blue Apron, the meal ingredient delivery service that filed to go public earlier this month, has just priced its IPO. The company will price its shares between $15-$17, hoping to raise a maximum of $586,500,000. Using a $16 midpoint, this pricing gives the company a proposed valuation of just under $3 billion. The company will be listed on the NYSE under the symbol “APRN”, and… Read More
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Amazon is taking a huge bite out of the fresh food business with its bid for Whole Foods Market for $13.7 billion. But even though this is a deal between two companies, it’s not just the two of them being touched by it. The intersection between the food and tech industries has been playing out for years now, sprouting dozens of food startups; efforts from large tech companies to move… Read More
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ClassPass, the subscription service that for fitness classes and gyms, has today announced the close of a $70 million Series C funding round led by Temasek. Existing investors such as Acequia Capital, CRV, General Catalyst, GV, M13 and Thrive also participated in the round.
According to the press release, ClassPass has doubled its member base in the past year and has now grown to 35 million… Read More
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Amazon today said it would make a bid to acquire Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, making it the largest acquisition for the company by far. The next-closest acquisition in price is $1.2 billion for Zappos, which happened all the way back in 2009. Since then it’s made a few big-ticket purchases like Twitch (around $1 billion) and Kiva Systems (a bunch of robots for around $775 million),… Read More
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