Nintendo buys Canadian game studio in rare acquisition

While gaming giants Sony and Microsoft have made M&A a critical part of their strategic growth plans, Nintendo has always seemed to be more reluctant to bring outside talent into the fold of its video game empire. Today, the company announced that it will be acquiring the developer behind Luigi

Affirm targets up to $38 per share in IPO, pushing its valuation above $9B

Today Affirm, a fintech startup that offers payment options to e-commerce customers, released a new S-1/A filing. The new document follows a late-December filing of a similar nature, though that update focused on changing the language of Affirm’s reported results, tweaking its language to rem

Indian electronics and lifestyle startup Boat raises $100 million from Warburg Pincus

Boat, an electronics and lifestyle startup in India, has raised $100 million in a new financing round that many independent investors termed as the most successful hardware startup story to date in the world's second-largest internet market. An affiliate of Warburg Pincus, a New York-headquarte

How Segment redesigned its core systems to solve an existential scaling crisis

Segment, the startup Twilio bought last fall for $3.2 billion, was just beginning to take off in 2015 when it ran into a scaling problem: It was growing so quickly, the tools it had built to process marketing data on its platform were starting to outgrow the original system design. Inaction would c

GitHub alumni are building Rewatch, a solution for your Zoom fatigue

The rise of distributed teams in response to the coronavirus has led to more video-conferencing meetings for all of us. As offices remain closed, distributed work is forcing companies to figure out a better way than Zoom or Google Hangouts to meet with employees across time zones

Kyte raises $9 million to deliver rental cars to your doorstep

More than two years ago, Ludwig Schoenack, Nikolaus Volk and Francesco Wiedemann looked at the bevy of scooter services, ride-hailing apps, public transit and car-sharing options available in most urban centers in the United States and saw a gap in the mobility market. Consumers who didn’t wa

Divvy raises $165M as the spend management space stays red-hot

Today Divvy, a Utah-based startup that focuses on corporate spend management, announced that it has closed a $165 million round at a $1.6 billion valuation. The company said that the new capital was raised from Hanaco, Schonfeld, PayPal Ventures and Whale Rock, along with a cadre of prior investors

Chronosphere nabs $43M Series B to expand cloud native monitoring tool

Chronosphere, the scalable cloud native monitoring tool launched in 2019 by two former Uber engineers, announced a $43.4 million Series B today. The company also announced that their service was generally available starting today. Greylock, Lux Capital and venture capitalist Lee Fixel, all of whom

Tile to launch a new tracker powered by ultra-wideband technology, add AR finding to app

Tile is preparing to introduce a new product this year that will serve as a rival to Apple’s long-awaited AirTags and other lost-item trackers coming to the market, including those from Samsung, technewss has learned. While previous Tile trackers have leveraged Bluetooth to help users locate

8 investors discuss social gaming’s biggest opportunities

The gaming industry has had plenty of watershed moments in 2020 as consumer entertainment habits have shifted in response to the pandemic. One trend has been the crystallization of MMOs as social entertainment hubs that serve more needs for users than ever before. Following my survey of gaming-focu

Niantic buys competitive gaming platform Mayhem

Pokémon GO creator Niantic has acquired a small SF gaming startup building a league and tournament organization platform to help gamers create their own communities around popular titles. Mayhem was in Y Combinator’s winter 2018 batch and went on to raise $5.7 million in funding, according

C by GE gets rebranded under new ownership, expands beyond lighting

There's a decent chance you missed the news back in May — there was, after all, a lot going on at the time. General Electric sold off its more than 100-year-old GE Lighting division to smart home company Savant. Today, the division's new owner is announcing a key rebranding effort, si

NYSE reverses plans to delist China’s three big telcos

In an unexpected turn, the New York Stock Exchange said Monday that it no longer intends to delist China’s three major telecoms operators, a decision that was originally announced on December 31. The initial action targeted China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom as part of the Trump adm

Alibaba shuts down 12-year-old music streaming app Xiami

Using Xiami was once synonymous with having good music taste in China. The music app, which debuted around 2008 and was acquired by Alibaba in 2013, is discontinuing its streaming service today, Xiami said in a notice to users. Xiami, which means “small shrimp” in Chinese, was once know