Instagram’s TikTok rival, Reels, rolls out ads worldwide

Instagram Reels are getting ads. The company announced today it’s launching ads in its short-form video platform and TikTok rival, Reels, to businesses and advertisers worldwide. The ads will be up to 30 seconds in length, like Reels themselves, and vertical in format, similar to ads found in

A security bug in Google’s Android app put users’ data at risk

Until recently, Google’s namesake Android app, which has more than five billion installs to date, had a vulnerability that could have allowed an attacker to quietly steal personal data from a victim’s device. Sergey Toshin, founder of mobile app security startup Oversecured, said in a b

Deep reinforcement learning will transform manufacturing as we know it

If you walk down the street shouting out the names of every object you see — garbage truck! bicyclist! sycamore tree! — most people would not conclude you are smart. But if you go through an obstacle course, and you show them how to navigate a series of challenges to get to the end unsc

eqtble, a platform that uses data analytics to create healthier workplaces, raises $2.7M seed

"attachment_2167324" aria-describedby="" style="width: 1280px">The eqtble founders (from l to r): Ethan Veres, Gabe Horwitz and Joseph Ifiegbu. (Image: eqtble) “People are the backbone of any organization. People are more important than the product. Without people, you don't have a product,”

Former Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush returns to entrepreneurship with new startup

Jonathan Bush, the CEO and co-founder of Athenahealth, is a controversial figure in the controversial field of healthcare. More than two decades after he started the now-public healthcare company, Bush lost Athenahealth to Elliott Management, an activist investor that bought the

Twine raises $3.3M to add networking features to virtual events

Twine, a video chat startup that launched amid the pandemic as a sort of “Zoom for meeting new people,” shifted its focus to online events and, as a result, has now closed on $3.3 million in seed funding. To date, twine’s events customers have included names like Microsoft, Amazon

Industrial cybersecurity startup Claroty raises $140M in pre-IPO funding round

Claroty, an industrial cybersecurity company that helps customers protect and manage their Internet of Things (IoT) and operational technology (OT) assets, has raised $140 million in its latest, and potentially last, round of funding.  With the new round of Series D funding, co-led by Bessemer an

Nylas, maker of APIs to integrate email and other productivity tools, raises $120M, passes 80K developers

Companies like Stripe and Twilio have put APIs front and center as an effective way to integrate complex functionality that may not be core to your own technology stack but is a necessary part of your wider business. Today, a company that has taken that model to create an effective way to integrate

Internxt gets $1M to be ‘the Coinbase of decentralized storage’

Valencia-based startup Internxt has been quietly working on an ambitious plan to make decentralized cloud storage massively accessible to anyone with an internet connection. It’s just bagged $1 million in seed funding led by Angels Capital, a European VC fund owned by Juan Roig (aka SpainR

Hydrosat raises $5M seed round to deliver ground temperature data to customers

A lot of information can be gleaned about a surface area just by taking the ground temperature data. If a crop field is under stress, for example, the ground temperature will be elevated long before there's any actual indication of the stress on the plant itself, Hydrosat CEO and co-founder Pie

Unit raises $51M in Accel-led Series B to grow its banking-as-a-service platform

We've all heard the phrase, “Every company is a fintech.”  But these days, that's becoming more and more true as an increasing number of companies that are not even in the financial services space seek to add a fintech component to their offering. A group of startups po

Beamery raises $138M at an $800M valuation for its ‘operating system for recruitment’

Online job listings were one of the first things to catch on in the first generation of the internet. But that has, ironically, also meant that some of the most-used digital recruitment services around today are also some of the least evolved in terms of tapping into all of the developments that te

A Senate proposal for a new US agency to protect Americans’ data is back

Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has revived a bill that would establish a new U.S. federal agency to shield Americans from the invasive practices of tech companies operating in their own backyard. Last year, Gillibrand (D-NY) introduced the Data Protection Act, a legislative proposal that wou

Airspeeder wants to make electric flying racing cars a reality in 2021

While much of the eVTOL industry has its sights set on urban air taxis or cargo transportation, entrepreneur Matthew Pearson had another idea: electric flying race cars. So in 2019, he founded two companies, Alauda Aeronautics to manufacture the aircraft and Airspeeder, an international series to r