Startups

Running an airline is a grueling business, with many companies either folding shop or merging with rivals to survive. Being an airline passenger isn’t a walk in the park either, for a litany of reasons that anyone who has ever been in an airport can easily enumerate. Landline, a four-year-old

On a recent investor call, the CEO calmly said, “We only have two months of runway left.” The fact that we were on Zoom couldn't hide the investors’ reactions — a few faces turned decidedly pale. As an angel investor, I've faced variations of this scenario, some more consequenti

The first quarter of 2022 brought a historically huge sum of investment for global startups, with the three-month period outclassing any quarter in 2018, 2019, and 2020, according to CB Insights data. But despite the fact that Q1 2022 posted historically elevated results, venture capital investment

Proton, the Geneva, Switzerland-based startup behind the eponymous E2E encrypted webmail service ProtonMail, has acquired French startup SimpleLogin, which offers a freemium, open-source service for creating email aliases to let people shield their actual email address when they sign up for digital

Companies producing software are becoming ever more reliant on open source databases to build their programs, but it’s complex working with all these different products. Instaclustr, a California startup, wanted to change that by offering popular open source databases delivered as a service.

In 2018, Shahin Farshchi of Lux Capital and I discussed the rise of alternative proteins over coffee and other then-hot topics. At one point, Shahin asked me what I thought was a rhetorical question: Our portfolio companies are amazing as pilots, but they face a challenge moving from pilot to full-

The U.S. residential real estate market has been booming because of the pandemic. Although the rise in home prices has shut many people out of the market, it’s been highly lucrative for those who own property. The attractive returns in this sector have lured more investors into the market, bu

Self-driving trucking company Kodiak Robotics and U.S. Xpress, an American truckload carrier with a large footprint, have completed a pilot that tested autonomous freight service between Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia, using one of Kodiak’s autonomous trucks. During the pilot,

CertiK, a web3 and blockchain security company, has raised $88 million in its latest round, bringing its valuation to $2 billion. The oversubscribed Series B3 financing round has doubled the company's valuation in three months. The company has raised a total of $230 million to date.

If you’re still wrapping your head around the idea of self-driving cars, get ready for something that might seem even wilder: self-driving construction equipment exists, and it’s already out there digging away on job sites. We first wrote about Built Robotics back in 2019, when the comp

Take a shipping container, add a helping of AI and a boat-load of black soldier flies, fold in a small mountain of food waste, sprinkle in $16 million of investment led by Balderton Capital, and call in the Michelin reviewers, because om nom, you’ve got yourself a delicious dish called Better

The Parentinc, a Singapore-based startup that runs a parenting community and direct-to-consumer product line, announced today it has raised $22 million. The round was led by East Ventures with undisclosed investors and included participation from Central Retail Corporation, a new backer, and return

In the latest spark from its fast evolving tech ecosystem, Spain’s scale-ups are banding together to lobby lawmakers and press the economic case for their high-tech, high-growth business model more broadly. The new lobby group, called EsTech (aka ‘Es’ for España), had its officia

Fanatics, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based sports merchandising giant, revealed today that the NFL was the “single biggest investor” in the latest round announced by the company, a $1.5 billion round at a whopping $27 billion valuation that reportedly closed last month. The deal marked a 50% increas