Klima publicly launches its consumer-focused carbon offset app

Andreas Pursian, Markus Gilles and Jonas Brandau, the three co-founders of Klima, an app focused on helping consumers understand and offset their carbon emissions, first found entrepreneurial success at Hyper. The mobile magazine publishing toolkit they developed was sold to Mic in 2017, but it was

Sequoia picks its horse in the consumer carbon offset market, leading a $2.5 million round for Joro

Sanchali Pal first woke up to the world’s climate crisis after watching the 2008 documentary Food Inc. The Princeton undergraduate saw the film in 2011, and it started her on the journey that would lead her to launch Joro, the Sequoia-backed startup that monitors consumer spending to offer ti

Singapore is poised to become Asia’s Silicon Valley

Long established as a global financial center, Singapore also looks set to become the “Silicon Valley of Asia.” Tencent, ByteDance and Alibaba are reportedly planning regional hubs in the city-state, with ByteDance in particular expected to add hundreds of jobs over the next three years

Mombox is a curated kit of postnatal products that puts new moms first

Just last week, General Catalyst’s Peter Boyce explained how one of the most important things he looks for in a founder is a personal connection to the problem they’re solving. Kate Westervelt is one such founder. Westervelt founded Mombox, a curated kit of postnatal care products focus

Vista acquires IT education platform Pluralsight for $3.5B

The hectic M&A cycle we have seen throughout 2020 continued this weekend when Vista Equity Partners announced it was acquiring Pluralsight for $3.5 billion. That comes out to $20.26 per share. The company stock closed on Friday at $18.50 per share on a market cap of over $2.7 billion.

Edtech boom continues as IntellectoKids raises $3M from Allrise Capital and others

The rush to capitalize on the shift to online learning, post-pandemic, continues. IntellectoKids, a developer of educational apps for children aged 3 to 7 years, has raised $3 million in a Series A financing led by U.S.-based Allrise Capital and other investors, including Genesis Investments. The p

Reddit acquires Dubsmash

Reddit announced that it has acquired short video platform Dubsmash. The deal's terms were undisclosed. Dubsmash will retain its own platform and brand, and Reddit will integrate its video creation tools. Its leadership team, Suchit Dash, Jonas Drüppel and Tim Specht, will join Reddit. [Edited

Investors double down on tech stocks in massive DoorDash, Airbnb, C3.ai IPOs

Editor's note: Get this free weekly recap of technewss news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7 a.m. PT). Subscribe here. Maybe it is a stock market bubble, or a tech-stock bubble at least. And maybe DoorDash, Airbnb and C3.ai and their bankers should have priced high

General Catalyst’s Katherine Boyle and Peter Boyce are looking for ‘obsessive’ founders

General Catalyst has made early bets on some of the biggest companies in tech today, including Airbnb, Lemonade and Warby Parker. We sat down with Katherine Boyle and Peter Boyce, who co-lead the firm’s seed-stage investments, to discuss what they look for in founders, which sectors they̵

Twitter acquires screen-sharing social app Squad

Today, Twitter announced that it is acquiring Squad and that the team from the screen-sharing social app will be joining Twitter’s ranks. Squad’s co-founders, CEO Esther Crawford and CTO Ethan Sutin, and the rest of the team will be coming aboard inside Twitter’s design, engineeri

Europe urged to block Google-Fitbit ahead of major digital policy overhaul

The European Commission must block the Google-Fitbit merger as a matter of democratic imperative, prominent academic and author Shoshana Zuboff has warned. The Harvard professor who wrote the defining book on surveillance capitalism has become the latest voice raised against the $2.1 billion data+d

In&motion raises $12 million for its wearable airbag systems

French startup In&motion has raised a $12 million (€10 million) funding round led by Upfront Ventures, with 360 Capital also participating. The company has been working on wearable airbag systems for motorbikes. Integrated in a vest, the airbag is completely autonomous and can detect crashes

Hyundai buys controlling interest in Boston Dynamics

It's official. Boston Dynamics is becoming part of the Hyundai family (pending regulatory approval, naturally). The Waltham, Massachusetts-based robot maker confirmed in a press release today that the South Korean technology company is acquiring controlling interest. The deal, which values the

Sweden’s Tink raises $103M as its open banking platform grows to 3,400 banks and 250M customers

Open banking platforms, where services that might not have previously lived next to each other are now joined up by way of APIs, has been one of the emerging trends of the last couple of years, and today one of the leaders in the space out of Europe has closed a round of funding to expand its busin