Rocket Internet has shuffled the online takeout pack of cards once again. This time the publicly-listed German ‘startup factory’ and investor is selling foodpanda to its much larger rival Delivery Hero, of which it also holds a significant stake. A move that should help fatten up Delivery Hero a little more for a long-rumoured planned IPO of its own. Terms of the acquisition… Read More
from TechCrunch
The promises of the cloud era have been many, but when it comes to hardware, most people have preferred to keep their personal PCs on-hand or on-location. SIXA is aiming to free the PC and move computing to the cloud with its low-latency virtual machines geared toward developers. The recent Y Combinator grad just closed a $3.5 million round of seed funding led by Tandem Capital. More than… Read More
from TechCrunch
Kakao, the Korean mobile and web giant, is beefing up its social media and content businesses after its Podotree affiliate raised 125 billion won (around $107 million). The deal values it at 500 billion won, Kakao confirmed — that’s approximately $428 million. Read More
from TechCrunch
As digital assistants like Siri and Alexa become more intelligent, there’s a growing need for them to always be accessible. Current microphone tech has been too power-hungry to keep permanently enabled. As a result, a new class of products, home assistants, like Amazon’s Alexa-enabled products and Google Home, have arisen as power-connected alternatives. Vesper is aiming to… Read More
from TechCrunch
Today, Tinder is launching a new M&A branch of the company called Swipe Ventures, which will be led by Sean Rad.
As part of the launch, Rad will step down as Tinder CEO and become Chairman of both Tinder and Swipe Ventures, with Match CEO and Chairman Greg Blatt swapping out as Tinder Chairman to become Tinder CEO. He will remain Chairman and CEO of Tinder parent company Match.
Put more… Read More
from TechCrunch
Vida Health, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based subscription-based app that pairs patients with health coaches, has raised $18 million in Series B funding led by Canvas Ventures, with participation from Nokia Growth and earlier backers Aspect Ventures and Khosla Ventures.
What’s everyone investing in, exactly? Well, a big market for starters. The Centers for Disease Control and… Read More
from TechCrunch
European startup studio eFounders is raising an additional $5.3 million (€5 million) from entrepreneurs and family offices. eFounders has been behind some very promising software-as-a-service startups, providing human and financial resources for the first year or so before the startups can go and do great things on their own. In exchange, the startup studio takes a significant portion of… Read More
from TechCrunch
Nationally, bars today lose billions of dollars from improperly managed alcohol inventory. These losses add up quickly a result of oversized pours, spills and even theft. Nectar, a stealth connected device startup operating out of a Palo Alto dentists office (of all places), just locked down a $4.55 million seed funding round from the likes of Joe Lonsdale (8VC + Palantir), Lior Susan… Read More
from TechCrunch
Peergrade, a startup out of Denmark that enables students to grade each other’s work, has raised a modest $300k in seed funding. However, more newsworthy are its new backers. They comprise UK edtech accelerator Emerge Education, and Nordic Makers — which might be best described as a supergroup of Nordic angels. Read More
from TechCrunch
Hot in the heels of its acquisition of POP, design and prototyping platform Marvel is disclosing that it has raised £4 million in Series A funding. Leading the round is BGF Ventures, with participation from previous backers including Index Ventures, Connect Ventures, Inreach Ventures, Andy McLoughlin and Richard Fearn. Starting out life as a simple app for prototyping (or, really,… Read More
from TechCrunch