Some startups raise a lot of money with much fanfare before they’ve ever shipped a product, but some grow under the radar, building something that clicks, and then slowly amassing users and revenues before most even realise they’ve arrived. Now, one of the latter — an education startup called Age of Learning — has moved into the billion dollar valuation club on… Read More
from TechCrunch
The increase of smartphone ownership in India is fueling the rise of mobile wallets in India. One company leading the charge, MobiKwik, has topped up its own funds with a $50 million Series C round announced today. Read More
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The online textbook service Chegg today announced that it has acquired Imagine Easy Solutions for $42 million. Imagine Easy is the company behind online bibliography and research tools like EasyBib (which was also its first product) and similar tools like Citation Machine, BibMe and Cite This For Me, most of which it acquired in the last couple of years. Imagine Easy also offers teaching… Read More
from TechCrunch
Vimeo, which has been moving over the past several months to further invest in its orginal content and creator community, announced this morning it has acquired VHX, a company providing a platform for premium over-the-top subscription (OTT) video channels. Deal terms were not revealed, but Vimeo will bring on the entire 22-person VHX team, including co-founders and a large number of biz dev… Read More
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You might not know Rovi, but the company is apparently quite big as it is acquiring TiVo for $1.1 billion in a cash-and-stock deal. Rovi holds a bunch of patents related to the entertainment industry and does a lot of software licensing to set-top box makers. It also manages metadata for TV content and sell them to cable companies, etc. TiVo has been a pioneer in the DVR space. Many people gave… Read More
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Amazon posted its first-quarter earnings today, and boy did they not disappoint: it beat what analysts were expecting on nearly all fronts, and the stock is up more than 12% after its huge beat. What’s going on here with the stock? Basically, Amazon shares tend to swing wildly whenever it reports earnings. Last quarter shares tanked 13% after missing fourth-quarter expectations. The year… Read More
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Carl Icahn, one of Apple’s biggest activist investors, told CNBC he has exited his position in the company. He was known for basically trying to pressure Apple into bumping up its efforts to return value to investors. At the he declared his position, Apple was in the process of a $100 billion several-year capital return program that included buybacks and dividends, but that… Read More
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Bnbsitter is another startup operating in the Airbnb and short term rentals ecosystem. However, unlike property-management style concierge services, such as London-based Hostmaker, which charge an on-going management fee, the Paris-based company offers something more akin to an on-demand platform for concierge. Read More
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Oracle today announced that it is making an acquisition to (literally and figuratively) build out its Primavera project management and billing business: it is buying Textura, a provider of cloud-based contract and payment management solutions specifically for the construction industry. The all-cash deal, Oracle said, is worth $663 million, net of Textura’s existing cash. Oracle said… Read More
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Drug research giant AbbVie announced a deal to buy cancer drug startup Stemcentrx in a $5.8 billion cash and stock deal this morning. The terms of the deal include $2 billion in cash and $3.8 billion in stock upfront, plus another $4 billion in milestone-based payouts to StemCentrx, and $3.8 in stock. The deal values the company at up to $10.2 billion, according to a memo from early… Read More
from TechCrunch