A leaked bill for Nigerian startups reveals a theme of licenses, fees, fines and sentences

For a while, there have been talks about revamping the outdated 2007 Act of Nigeria’s information and technology body, the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA). The bill, which established NITDA as the agency to oversee Nigeria’s technological transformation, is qu

Trading platform Bitpanda raises $263M at a $4.1BN valuation

It’s not even half a year since crypto exchange Bitpanda announced a $170 million Series B — when, back in March, Austria’s first unicorn was being valued at $1.2 billion. Today it’s topping that: Announcing a $263 million Series C, led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures,

Ultrahuman raises $17.5M, touting a wearable blood glucose tracker

Fitness platform Ultrahuman has officially announced a $17.5 million Series B fundraise, with investment coming from early stage fund Alpha Wave Incubation, Steadview Capital, Nexus Venture Partners, Blume Ventures and Utsav Somani's iSeed fund. A number of founders and angel investors also par

Revenue-based financing startup Jenfi raises $6.3M to focus on high-growth Southeast Asian companies

Many Southeast Asian digital businesses run into obstacles when seeking early-stage growth financing. They might not want to sell equity in their company, but often struggle to secure working capital loans from traditional financial institutions. That's where Singapore-based Jenfi comes in, pro

Roblox acquires Discord competitor Guilded

Roblox is using M&A to bulk up its social infrastructure, announcing Monday morning that they had acquired the team at Guilded that has been building a chat platform for competitive gamers. The service competes with gaming chat giant Discord, with the team’s founders telling technewss in

Early-stage benchmarks for young cybersecurity companies

We're quick to celebrate the extraordinary victories of Israel's multiplying cybersecurity unicorns, but every success story must start somewhere. The early days of any young startup decide how successful it can be, which is why we've developed a focused, value-add program to support cy

Swiftarc Ventures launches beauty fund aimed at women-led startups

Swiftarc Ventures announced its $10 million Swiftarc Beauty Fund to support female founders leading the next wave of beauty and wellness brands. Swiftarc started in 2019 and this is its fourth fund, Sid Jawahar, founder and managing partner told technewss. “We are being socially

Extra Crunch roundup: 3 lies VCs tell, betting big on Kubernetes, NYC’s enterprise boom

Although older adults are one of the fastest-growing demographics, they’re quite underserved when it comes to consumer tech. The global population of people older than 65 will reach 1.5 billion by 2050, and members of this cohort — who are leading longer, active lives — have plenty of mon

More companies should shift to a work-from-home model

Nearly three in 10 employees (29%) would quit their job if they were told they were no longer allowed to work remotely, according to a recent survey. In addition, a recent Harvard Business Study found that “companies that let their workers decide where and when to do their jobs — whether in ano

Kiddom grabs early revenue amid $35M Series C funding

Kiddom, a platform that offers a digital curriculum that fits the core standards required by states, announced today that it has raised a $35 million Series C round led by Altos Ventures, with participation from Owl Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Outcomes Collective. The financing came nearly three

Employee talent predictor retrain.ai raised another $7M, adds Splunk as strategic investor

Automation will displace 85 million jobs while simultaneously creating 97 million new jobs by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum. Although that sounds like good news, the hard reality is that millions of people will have to retrain in the jobs of the future. A number of startups are addres

ThirdAI raises $6M to democratize AI to any hardware

Houston-based ThirdAI, a company building tools to speed up deep learning technology without the need for specialized hardware like graphics processing units, brought in $6 million in seed funding. Neotribe Ventures, Cervin Ventures and Firebolt Ventures co-led the investment, which will be used to

YC-backed Tablevibe's customer surveys help restaurants reduce their reliance on delivery apps

Food delivery apps offer convenience for customers, but a host of headaches for restaurants, like commissions as high as 40% and very few tools to build customer loyalty. Based in Singapore, Tablevibe wants to help restaurants reduce their reliance on third-party delivery apps and help them get mor

Disaster recovery can be an effective way to ease into the cloud

Operating in the cloud is soon going to be a reality for many businesses whether they like it or not. Points of contention with this shift often arise from unfamiliarity and discomfort with cloud operations. However, cloud migrations don’t have to be a full lift and shift. Instead, leaders un