Citiesocial, a Taipei-based startup that helps emerging brands break into Asia’s e-commerce market, has raised $2.75 million led by Alibaba Taiwan Entrepreneurs Fund, a non-profit backed by Alibaba Group to support local startups. CDIB Capital and returning investor Cherubic Ventures also participated. The capital will be used to expand citiesocial into China, South Korea and Japan this… Read More
from TechCrunch
Encrypted messaging startup Telegram plans to launch its own blockchain platform and native cryptocurrency, powering payments on its chat app and beyond. According to multiple sources which have spoken to TechCrunch, the “Telegram Open Network” (TON) will be a new, ‘third generation’ blockchain with superior capabilities, after Bitcoin and, later, Ethereum paved the… Read More
from TechCrunch
Tech companies working with augmented reality and virtual reality technologies raised more than $3 billion in venture funding in 2017. This data comes from analytics firm Digi-Capital and suggests that while the buzz surrounding the AR/VR space has tapered off, the sheer amount of cash getting pumped into the industry is continuing to surge. Read More
from TechCrunch
Uber finally got its secondary transaction done with SoftBank buying billions of shares last month. Now reports are starting to come out about who sold what.
It was already known that major shareholder Menlo Ventures was looking to sell shares, but we’re hearing confirmation that it wagered the majority of its holdings and successfully sold close to half of its stake, which the… Read More
from TechCrunch
Verizon (which owns this publication) announced today that it has acquired Niddel, a startup that bills itself as an autonomous threat detection service. The acquisition price was not disclosed. Niddel’s primary product, Niddel Magnet is a subscription service that uses machine learning to locate infected or compromised machines inside an organization. It works completely autonomously… Read More
from TechCrunch
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This episode, the first of 2018, saw our own Katie Roof and your humble servant (Alex) joined by Atish Davda, CEO and founder of EquityZen. Matthew Lynley is off this week.
(Davda’s firm put together a landing page for Equity, which we thought was… Read More
from TechCrunch
Insurtech was one of the big VC bets of 2017, and that looks set to continue into the new year as startups spot gaps in the insurance market.
Continuing this trend is Dinghy, a new startup that offers “flexible” insurance for freelance professionals, all delivered and managed through a mobile app. Read More
from TechCrunch
Google has added Chinese mobile game livestreaming platform Chushou to its list of investments in Asia. The Beijing-based startup announced today that it has closed a Series D round, which Google joined as a new investor, that brings its total funding so far to over $120 million. Chushou’s previous investors Qiming Venture, Shunwei Capital and Alpha X Capital, also returned for this round. Read More
from TechCrunch
Mapbox, the SoftBank-backed developer of mapping applications that competes with Google Maps, TomTom and Here, has acquired the intellectual property and developers behind Mapzen’s Valhalla project in a bid to strengthen its navigation toolkits. Read More
from TechCrunch
Buying event tickets online isn’t a great experience. Sites like Ticketmaster are the default, but are difficult to use and expensive. A startup called Lea wants to offer a more modern experience by combining event search, discovery, seat selection and payment all in a single application that works right in Facebook Messenger. Yes, that’s right – Lea is a chatbot. And while… Read More
from TechCrunch