Just about two months ago, the maker of the popular-with-nerds game Ingress, Niantic Labs, was spun out of Google. Last month, the newly formed Niantic, Inc. announced that it had begun working on a project called Pokémon GO. Today? The company is announcing a $20M Series A round of funding with investments from Pokémon Company Group, Google and Nintendo. It could see $10M more if it… Read More
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Gaana, one of a posse of music streaming services aiming to make it big in India, has enlisted the help of Micromax, the country’s largest smartphone maker, to get ahead of the competition and reach its goal of 100 million users. Read More
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OpenGov announced the close of a refreshingly sized $25 million in Series C financing today. The startup initiative to provide government financial data closed its Series B round of $15 million, led by Andreessen Horowitz a year and a half ago. A16z, along with former investors Formation8, Thrive Capital and AITV, has now padded OpenGov with another shot of financing to help scale the sales… Read More
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French music streaming service Deezer has announced that it plans to raise at least €300 million ($335 million) in a public listing that will take place in its native France this month. Read More
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Shopping for beauty products should be relaxing, but anyone who has visited a makeup counter knows that you often weather a deluge of upselling before finally escaping with a purchase. Hermo, a Malaysia-based e-commerce site, wants to make cosmetics shopping fun for customers in Southeast Asia. The site, which also operates in Singapore and is planning to expand into Indonesia soon, just… Read More
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First Data priced its IPO tonight at $16 per share, beneath the expected range of $18 to $20, according to Bloomberg. Selling 160 million shares, the payments processing company will raise $2.56 billion in its flotation, making it the largest IPO of the year. The pricing news comes directly on the heels of Square, a competing payments company, which revealed its IPO filing after the bell.… Read More
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With Lululemon brushing a $7.4 billion valuation in public markets, there’s no denying that so-called “athleisure” wear is a huge business.
As with any multi-billion dollar industry startup investors are looking for a piece of that action, which is why investors are pouring $7 million into the new athletic and leisure wear company Outdoor Voices. Read More
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Not all the “box of the month” clubs have found success, but one that took a slightly differentiated route – full-sized products, shipped quarterly – has bootstrapped its way to $15 million in annual revenue, investors tell us, and has recently taken in its first outside capital. FabFitFun, a women’s lifestyle subscription box company, is announcing that… Read More
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Norwegian startup Zwipe, which is taking aim at payment card PIN codes and passwords with an embedded fingerprint reader technology to authenticate card payments, has closed a $5 million Series B funding round. Read More
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Playing in the identity space, London-based Veridu is attempting to solve a problem as old as the Internet itself but also one that is increasing with the advent of the so-called sharing economy and peer-to-peer marketplaces. That is, how to ensure that an individual online is who they say they are. Read More
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