Aerodome is sending drones to the scene of the crime

If you've spent any time in Los Angeles, you're no doubt aware that police helicopters are a permanent fixture in the skies above. The LAPD has been monitoring the City of Angels since the mid-1990s. But in recent years, LA and other metropolitan areas have been increasingly turning to dron

AI language translation startup DeepL nabs $300M on a $2B valuation to focus on B2B growth

More funding is being poured into startups focused on AI. DeepL, which builds automated text translation and writing tools that compete against the likes of Google Translate and Grammarly, said on Wednesday that it has raised an additional $300 million. It is now valued at $2 billion, post-money. 

Kickstarter now lets you pledge after a campaign closes

Kickstarter on Tuesday announced a new set of creator tools designed to breathe new life into the crowdfunding platform. Perhaps the most interesting of the bunch is “Late Pledge,” which represents a fundamental change to the service's status quo. The new feature allows campaign creators to

Spoor uses AI to save birds from wind turbines

Wind is the largest source of renewable energy in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but wind farms come with an environmental cost as wind turbines can wreak havoc on bird populations. Meet Spoor, the startup using AI to help wind farms mitigate that risk. Spoor is

Cannabis industry and gaming payments startup Aeropay is now offering an alternative to Mastercard and Visa

The key to taking on legacy players in the financial technology industry may be to go where they have not gone before. That's what Chicago-based Aeropay is doing. The provider of pay-by-bank solutions for businesses started out helping cannabis retailers and gaming companies with their payment

Meet PayHOA, a profitable and once-bootstrapped SaaS startup that just landed a $27.5M Series A

PayHOA, a previously bootstrapped Kentucky-based startup that offers software for self-managed homeowner associations (HOAs), is an example of how real-world problems can translate into opportunity. It just raised a $27.5 million Series A round in an environment where nearly $30 million Series A r

RevenueCat raises $12M Series C as it expands its subscription management to the web

RevenueCat, a top subscription management platform for apps that monetize via in-app purchases, is now flush with new capital as it expands to the web. The company has closed on a $12 million Series C led by Adjacent, following the launch of a new product, RevenueCat Billing, that allows web app de

Ramp raises another $150M co-led by Khosla and Founders Fund at a $7.65B valuation

Spend management startup Ramp has raised another $150 million at a post-money valuation of $7.65 billion, the company confirmed to technewss today. New investor Khosla Ventures and existing backer Founders Fund co-led the raise, which also included participation from new backers Sequoia Capital, G

Pitch Deck Teardown: Xpanceo’s $40M seed deck

Xpanceo is betting big on turning us all into cyborgs with smart contact lenses, securing a cool $40 million to make our sci-fi dreams a reality. Co-founders Roman Axelrod and Valentyn S. Volkov are on a mission to ditch traditional gadgets and make everyone’s eyes the new screens. Who needs

Sprinto raises $20M to bring automation to security compliance management

Sprinto, a security compliance and risk platform, has raised a $20 million Series B round to build more automation into its compliance management platform and widen its customer base to include the wide gamut of companies that operate digitally but aren’t tech-first. Compliance with framework

Pitch Deck Teardown: Queerie’s $300K pre-seed deck

Queerie is a dating app aimed specifically at LGBTQIA+ folks. It’s a very early-stage company that’s raising just $300,000 — a round size that typically falls into the “friends and family” category. Dating is a fiercely competitive space, and there’s been a fair amo

Pitch Deck Teardown: Protecto’s $4M seed deck

In an era where data is king and its volume and complexity are exploding, Protecto aims to eliminate the long-standing dilemma businesses face between leveraging AI’s power while ensuring data privacy. As the adoption of generative AI tools like ChatGPT skyrockets, wayward data becomes easier

VCs will get liquidity in 2024 from the secondary market, not IPOs

If you asked a bunch of VCs at the end of 2023 if the IPO market would finally open again in 2024, most of them would have said yes. We know because technewss surveyed more than 40 of them in December and that's what they said. Yet, there are two weeks left in Q1, still no completed major IPOs

Deal Dive: Can AI fix lost and found?

Losing stuff sucks. It’s even more frustrating when something isn’t really lost, but rather left behind in a location, like an airport or sports stadium, which makes it hard to get back. My friend Caitlin knows this all too well; she's yet to be reunited with the phone she lost at O