Startups

It was way back in 2017 that the company that became Ultraleap (Ultrahaptics) demonstrated at technewss Disrupt a technology that pioneered ultrasound to replicate the sense of touch. The impressive “Star Wars” demonstration took the crowd by storm. It was quite the demo (see the video

Noissue, a New Zealand-based global packaging platform, wants to make sustainable packaging accessible to businesses of all sizes. Everything the company offers, from custom tissue paper and cards to totes, stickers and tape, is 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable, and with low order minimums,

Nexar, a company best-known for its line of smart dash cams, has raised $53 million in a Series D financing round led by Qumra Capital. The funds will be used, in part, to scale its “digital twin” service built off crowdsourced dash cam footage for automotive OEMs and cities. The round also saw

Walkie-talkie, a social audio platform developed by Picslo Corp, has raised a $3.25 million seed round led by Heroic Ventures. The round included participation from TI Platform Ventures, LDVP, Partech, Diaspora Ventures, Breega and Kima Ventures. The Clubhouse-like app launched two years ago and cu

LiveOak Venture Partners raised its largest fund to date, $210 million for Fund III, which will enable the Austin-based, early-stage venture capital firm to double down on Texas founders. The fund was oversubscribed — the firm originally targeted between $150 million and $200 million — and was

UNest, a fintech startup that provides financial planning tools for parents saving on behalf of their children, announced today that it raised $26 million in Series B funding led by The Artemis Fund. Existing investor Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures participated alongside new investors includin

QuEra Computing, a Boston-based quantum computer developer, is coming out of stealth mode today with $17 million in funding from Rakuten, Day One Ventures and Frontiers Capital. Angel investors Serguei Beloussov and Paul Maritz also joined in the round.  The startup, which has built a comme

We may hear a lot about how big businesses are undergoing digital transformation, but the trend isn’t exclusively limited to them, and today a startup that’s building better productivity tools for a very offline part of the working world — home services professionals — is an

This morning Plug Pagamentos (Plug) announced a $2.7 million seed round, led by Costanoa Ventures‘ latest partner, Amy Cheetham. Other investors in the round included Verve Capital and Norte Ventures, among others. [Update: Also QED and Latitud!] Plug, based in the Brazilian city of Rio de Ja

According to a 2019 report by Deloitte, about 80% of South Africans have a bank account but only 24% of them make more than three transactions monthly. Unlike other African countries, South Africa also has a functioning credit system with the prevalent use of credit cards. However, expensive value-

Partly as a result of modern employment trends, and partly as a result of the pandemic's effect on the world of work, there's an increasing gap between traditional full-time employment and freelancing. So-called “job pairing” splits a full-time position between two people to red

Over the years we’ve seen wearables measuring every aspect of your body, but lung capacity is more esoteric than most. Sylvee is a brand new wearable from Respira Labs which continuously measures lung function — perfect for COPD and asthma patients, and other people who may have tempora

The number of companies launching that claim to be able to help organizations measure and reduce their carbon output continues apace. There is already Normative, Plan A and any number of others, to varying degrees of depth, detail or approach. The latest is Sustain.Life, a SaaS platform that comes

Cymbio, a Tel Aviv-based startup has raised $20 million in a Series B round, which saw the participation of two new backers, Chris North, an ex-Amazon executive, and Jeff Weiser, formerly of Shopify. The funding was led by Corner Ventures, with participation from Udi Angel, Vertex Ventures and Yuva