Startups

Religion-based apps, tools and communities aren’t brand new, including to investors. Pray.com, for example, an LA-based app for daily prayer and bedtime Bible stories that was founded in 2016, has raised at least $34 million from investors, including Kleiner Perkins. Ministry Brands, a nine-y

SoftBank-based digital creation platform Picsart, which recently hit uniciorn status, announced today it’s acquiring the research and development company DeepCraft. The deal is a combination of both cash and stock and is in the seven-figure range, but the exact terms aren’t being disclo

Launching today in beta, Playground is a social platform that seeks to help people discover and develop community while empowering creators to monetize their audience. For now, the beta is open to select creators in the cultural space (art, music, wellness, gaming and more), and for community membe

With the pandemic heading into its second year, people all over the world are traveling more for work again. If you've flown anytime in the past few months, the packed planes are in part evidence of that. Further evidence that travel is rebounding lies in the number of people staying in hotels,

Kueski, a Mexico City-based “buy now, pay later” and online consumer lender, announced today it has secured $202 million in equity and debt funding. StepStone Group (which recently acquired Greenspring Capital) led the $102 million equity round and Victory Park Capital led the $100 million debt

Karamba Security, an Israel-based security startup that focuses on the IoT and automotive industry, today announced a $10 million extension to its $12 million Series B round from 2017. This extension was led by automotive startup VinFast, a member of Vietnam’s Vingroup conglomerate, which its

The life of a tech journalist can be soul-sapping. I talk to so many founders — capable, smart, well-connected, experienced founders — who are working on problems that genuinely just don’t matter. They might have successfully raised money. Perhaps they even rounded up a team of smart peop

Gozem, a super app that provides a host of services — including transport, e-commerce and financial services in Francophone Africa — has raised $5 million in Series A financing, the company confirmed to technewss. The Togo- and Singapore-based company received investment from AAIC, Thu

One day after announcing an amendment to its SPAC agreement, digital mortgage lender Better.com confirmed today that it is laying off roughly 9% of its nearly 10,000 person staff. Doing the math, that amounts to about 900 people. The company declined to comment beyond the following

The world of additive manufacturing is not immune from the SPAC craze. Desktop Metal, Shapeways, Markforged and Velo3D have all either completed or announced plans to go public through the process. Austin-based Essentium this week highlighted plans to add its name to the growing list, courtesy of a

Vijay Menon, a statistician by trade, began his career at Microsoft.  It was there that he realized there was an astounding number of subscriptions that failed to renew or even go through to begin with due to payment-related issues. He became intrigued by the problem, and solving it. Ultimately in

China has attracted yet another e-commerce roll-up to enter its gargantuan e-commerce market. Markai, founded by two Stanford business school grads, has joined the fray to buy out Chinese brands seeking global consumers. So-called brand roll-ups, or e-commerce aggregators, have cropped up in Europe

Frontegg, a Tel Aviv-based startup that provides SaaS companies with the core user management tools they need to build their own services, today announced that it has raised a $25 million Series A funding round led by Insight Partners. Existing investors Pitango, which led the company’s $5 mi

1inch, a popular aggregator of decentralized protocols, has raised $175 million in what it calls a Series B funding round. It isn't a traditional venture round as the company isn't selling a stake in exchange for money. Instead, 1inch has sold $175 million worth of 1INCH tokens in a private