NoRedInk raises $50 million Series B to help students become better writers
“In order to become a better writer, read your written words out loud.”
That's one of the first, and best, writing tips I ever received. I always found the advice ironic because it required me to change the medium of my writing to become a better writer. Still, all these years later, itR
A California judge just struck down Prop 22: Now what?
Every time you turn around, someone new is winning the war in California around organizing workers in the sharing economy.
Labor struck first when California legislators passed Assembly Bill 5, requiring all independent contractors working for gig economy companies to be reclassified as employees.
HyPoint and Piasecki reach $6.5M deal to develop hydrogen fuel cells systems for eVTOLs
A quick survey of many of the most highly valued electric vertical take-off and landing companies shows one thing in common: All of them are developing aircraft powered by batteries. But a growing suite of aviation companies, turned off by what they see as the energy density limitations of lithium-
Airbnb to provide free temporary housing for 20,000 Afghan refugees
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said on Tuesday the company plans to offer free temporary housing to 20,000 Afghan refugees around the world amid the Taliban's rise to power in Afghanistan.
Chesky said the company will cover the costs for the housing, using funds from contributions to its nonprofit Air
Israel’s DiA gets $14M to expand AI-driven ultrasound analysis
Israel-based AI healthtech company, DiA Imaging Analysis, which is using deep learning and machine learning to automate analysis of ultrasound scans, has closed a $14 million Series B round of funding.
Backers in the growth round, which comes three years after DiA last raised, include new investors
Waymo launches robotaxi service in San Francisco
"speakable-summary" dir="ltr">Waymo, the self-driving vehicle company under Alphabet, has launched a robotaxi service that will be open to certain vetted riders in San Francisco.
On Tuesday, the company officially kicked off its Waymo One Trusted Tester program in the city with a fleet of all-electr
NBA All-Star Chris Paul joins digital media startup Greenfly's growth round
Greenfly's latest funding round has a new face: Phoenix Suns point guard Chris Paul joined as a strategic investor and partner in the company, which developed digital media flow management software.
Paul's investment is part of an $8.4 million strategic growth round that also includes Veran
Stewart Butterfield and Bret Taylor are coming to Disrupt
When Salesforce acquired Slack at the end of last year for almost $28 billion, the deal seemed on its face to make sense, given that the coronavirus pandemic accelerated already growing demand for tools that enable people to work remotely and that roughly 90% of Slack's enterprise customer
Walmart announces GoLocal, a last-mile delivery service for other retailers
Walmart today announced a new delivery service business called Walmart GoLocal, which allows other merchants, both large and small, to tap into Walmart’s own delivery platform to get orders to their customers. Merchants can choose to use the service for a variety of delivery types, including
It’s time for the VC community to stop overlooking the childcare industry
Square. Uber. Zillow. Airbnb. Besides being some of the biggest technology companies, what else do these titans have in common? They all operate in entrenched, highly fragmented, geographically localized and regulated industries. That means they required a lot of upfront venture capital investment
Substack acqui-hires team behind subscription social app Cocoon
Subscription newsletter platform kingpin Substack shared today that they’ve acqui-hired the team behind Cocoon, a subscription social media app built for close friends.
We covered the Y Combinator-backed startup’s initial $3 million seed raise led by Lerer Hippeau back in November 2019,
After testing, Instagram launches ads in the Instagram Shop tab globally
Last year, Instagram unveiled Shops as part of Facebook’s larger pivot toward e-commerce. Shops is front-and-almost-center on the app’s bottom navigation bar, even more readily accessible than the button to upload a new photo. Now, after testing in the U.S. earlier this month, Instagram
testRigor scores $4M seed to turn a list of actions into a QA testing script
Imagine typing out a series of steps in plain English that would reflect a list of actions a human QA tester would undertake to test an app, then turning that list into an automated testing script. That’s exactly what testRigor, a member of the Y Combinator Summer 2021 cohort, has done. Today
Sora’s HR automation software raises $14M Series A
HR automation software startup Sora announced this morning that it closed a $14 million Series A round of funding. Two Sigma Ventures led the financing event, putting in $10 million, with prior investors completing the round.
The round comes after Sora raised a $5.3 million seed round in July 2020.