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French startup Mirakl has closed a new Series E funding round of $555 million. Following this round, the company is now valued at $3.5 billion. Mirakl helps you launch a...

Raspberry Pi gets $45M to meet demand for low-cost PCs and IoT

Turns out COVID-19 lockdowns have been good for the indoor hobby of hardware hacking: The U.K.-based foundation behind the low-price microprocessor Raspberry Pi announced close of a $45 million funding...

Just raises $8M in its effort to beat Root at the car insurance game

Just Insure, a pay-per-mile insurance technology company, has raised $8 million in a funding round. CrossCut Ventures, ManchesterStory and Western Technology Investments co-led the investment, which brings its total raised...

Really, this market isn’t good enough?

It’s the first day of Disrupt, so things are a bit busy here at TechCrunch. In honor of that fact, entries from The Exchange concerning NFT volume viz recent marketplace...

Business Canvas, a Korea-based document management SaaS company, closes $2.5M seed round

Business Canvas, a South Korean document management SaaS company behind Typed, announced today it has raised a $2.5 million seed round led by Mirae Asset Venture Investment, with participation from...

EarthOptics helps farmers look deep into the soil for big data insights

Farming sustainably and efficiently has gone from a big tractor problem to a big data problem over the last few decades, and startup EarthOptics believes the next frontier of precision...

Sorare raises $680 million for its fantasy sports NFT game

French startup Sorare has announced that it has raised a significant funding round. SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 has led a $680 million Series B round, which values the company at...

Fivetran hauls in $565M on $5.6B valuation, acquires competitor HVR for $700M

Fivetran, the data connectivity startup, had a big day today. For starters it announced a $565 million investment on $5.6 billion valuation, but it didn’t stop there. It also announced...

Freshworks’ valuation could crest $10B in upcoming IPO

Earlier today, TechCrunch examined the new IPO price range for Toast. The U.S. software-and-fintech company moved its valuation materially higher in anticipation of pricing tomorrow after the bell and trading...

Toast raises IPO price range, providing a Monday bump to fintech valuations

U.S. technology unicorn Toast filed a new S-1 document this morning detailing a higher IPO price range for its shares. The more expensive range indicates that Toast may be worth...

Which VCs are set to make a killing in GitLab’s IPO

Picking up where we left off Friday, let’s spend some more time in the GitLab IPO filing. It’s going to be an IPO week, mind; Toast and Freshworks are set...

Equity Monday: A global selloff to kick off Disrupt week

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market...

Xata is a database service for serverless apps

Meet Xata, a startup with a new take on managed databases. The company runs your database for you and turns it into an API so that you can query and...

Inside GitLab’s IPO filing

Sep 17, 2021

While the technology and business world worked towards the weekend, developer operations (DevOps) firm GitLab filed to go public. Before we get into our time off, we need to pause,...

A knock against bootstrapping

Sep 17, 2021

Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, which meant we had the full team. And speaking of teams, Mary Ann is joining the Friday show on...

The value of software revenue may have finally stopped rising

Sep 17, 2021

Startups are raising record sums around the world, thanks to several contributing factors. As The Exchange explored yesterday, historically low interest rates have helped venture capitalists raise more capital than...

What could stop the startup boom?

We’ve spent so long staring at record venture capital results around the world from Q2 that it’s nearly Q3. We’ve seen record results from cities, countries, and regions. There’s so...

Avalanche raises $230 million from private sale of AVAX tokens

Avalanche, a relatively new blockchain with a focus on speed and low transactions costs, has completed a $230 million private sale of AVAX tokens to some well known crypto funds....

Elodie Games obtains $32.5M round to make social co-op gaming better

During the darkest hours of the pandemic, millions upon millions of people turned to online gaming as a way to pass time in lockdown and connect with friends they couldn’t...

Mynd raises $57.3M at an $807M valuation to give people a way to invest in rental properties remotely

Mynd, a company that aims to make it easier for people to buy and manage single-family rental properties, announced today it has raised $57.3 million in funding from QED Investors....

Self Financial raises $50M to help the subprime consumer build credit and savings at the same time

Self Financial, a fintech company that aims to help consumers build credit and savings at the same time, announced today it has raised $50 million in Series E funding. Altos...

Concreit closes on $6M to allow more people to invest in the global private real estate market

Concreit, a company that wants to open real estate investing to a broader group of people, announced today that it has closed $6 million in a seed funding round led...

Byju’s acquires coding platform Tynker for $200 million in US expansion push

Byju’s said on Thursday it has acquired California-headquartered Tynker, a leading coding platform for K-12 students, the latest in a series of major purchases as the Indian edtech giant attempts...

Gogoro will go public on Nasdaq after $2.35B SPAC deal

Gogoro is going public. The company, which is best known for its electric Smartscooters and swappable battery infrastructure, announced today it will list on Nasdaq through a merger with Poema...

Tanso nabs $1.9M pre-seed to help industrial manufacturers do sustainability reporting

The climate crisis is creating massive demand for data capture as industries grapple with how to decarbonize. Put simply, you can’t cut your carbon emissions if don’t know what they...

Liveblocks is an API that lets you add real-time collaboration to your product

Meet Liveblocks, a startup that has been working on a set of APIs so that it’s easier to build a collaborative product. Essentially, it lets you create multiplayer experiences on...

Skello raises $47.3 million for its employee scheduling tool

French startup Skello has raised a $47.3 million funding round (€40 million). The company has been working on a software-as-a-service tool that lets you manage the work schedule of your...

Online events platform Delegate Connect gets $10M AUD led by AirTree

Delegate Connect founders Jordan Walsh and Jacob Thomas Delegate Connect is the latest virtual/hybrid events platform to land funding. The Melbourne-based startup announced today it has raised $10 million AUD...

Forge’s SPAC deal is a bet on unicorn illiquidity

As Warby Parker, Freshworks, Amplitude and Toast look to list in the coming weeks, we shouldn’t forget the SPAC boom. This week, for example, Forge Global (Forge), a technology startup that...

Kapor Capital, Square co-founder Sam Wen back TomoCredit in its $10M Series A funding round

Building credit history can be difficult if you are a consumer that is having trouble getting access to credit in the first place. Enter TomoCredit, which has developed a credit...

Folk helps you share contacts with your team

Folk is a new productivity tool started by European startup studio eFounders. And the startup just raised a $3.3 million seed funding round led by Accel with a big group...

Swedish caller-identification service Truecaller seeks to raise over $100 million in IPO

Truecaller, which operates an eponymous caller-identification service, said on Wednesday it is looking to raise $116 million in an initial public offering on Nasdaq Stockholm. The 12-year-old Stockholm-headquartered firm, which...

Chaldal, Bangladesh’s largest grocery delivery platform, raises $10M Series C

Founded in 2013, Bangladesh’s Chaldal was one of the first grocery delivery startups in the world to use the “dark” store model, picking up orders from its own warehouses instead...

Index leads $12.2M seed in Sourceful, a data play to make supply chains greener

Supply chains can be a complex logistical challenge. But they pose an even greater environmental challenge. And it’s that latter problem — global supply-chain sustainability — where UK startup Sourceful...

Logistics startup Stord raises $90M in Kleiner Perkins-led round, becomes a unicorn and acquires a company

When Kleiner Perkins led Stord’s $12.4 million Series A in 2019, its founders were in their early 20s and so passionate about their startup that they each dropped out of...

Intuit’s $12B Mailchimp acquisition is about expanding its small business focus

At first blush, the $12 billion Intuit-Mailchimp deal might not make a heck of a lot of sense. But people tend to pigeonhole companies, and in this case they might...

Atlanta’s sundry startups join in global VC funding boom

Mailchimp is selling itself to Intuit in a transaction valued at $12 billion. The deal is a coup not only for companies that eschew venture capital backing — Mailchimp is...

1047 Games raises $100M on the runaway success of its debut title, Splitgate

When you’re hot, you’re hot. And 1047 Games is making the most of the heat generated by Splitgate, its first game and a now a breakout success. After working on...

Going after social commerce for sportspeople, Millions gets $10M

Millions.co, a social commerce platform geared towards professional and semi-professional athletes wanting help to monetize their fanbase by selling merch and/or on-demand video, has grabbed $10 million in funding led...

Here’s what your BNPL startup could be worth

It’s a two-Exchange Tuesday, everyone. First up, we’re talking fintech valuations. Next up, we’re digging into Atlanta. Last week’s news that PayPal intends to buy Japanese startup Paidy marked the...

Indonesian fintech Xendit is now a unicorn, with $150M in fresh funding led by Tiger Global

There’s a new entrant in Southeast Asia’s growing list of unicorns. Jakarta-based Xendit, best known for its digital payment infrastructure but also focused on other financial products, announced today it...

QED Investors closes on $1.05B across two funds to invest in fintech companies globally

QED Investors announced the closing of two new funds totaling $1.05 billion, capital that it will be using to back early-stage startups, as well as growth rounds for later-stage companies....

SoftBank’s latest proptech bet is leading Pacaso’s $125M Series C

Less than six months after raising $75 million, Pacaso — a real estate platform which aims to help people buy and co-own a second home — announced today that it...

Truepic, which just raised $26M in a Microsoft-led round, aims to verify the authenticity of photos and videos

Truepic, a digital image verification software provider, has raised $26 million in a Series B funding round led by M12, Microsoft’s venture fund. Adobe, Sony Innovation Fund by IGV, Hearst...

SoftBank commits $3B more to investing in Latin American tech companies

SoftBank Group Corp. is doubling down on its commitment to Latin America. Today, the Japanese investment conglomerate is announcing the launch of the SoftBank Latin America Fund II, its second...

PassFort, a RegTech SaaS for KYC and AML, nets $16.2M

London-based PassFort, a SaaS provider that helps business meet compliance requirements such as KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) reporting, has closed a $16.2 million Series A led...

The Equity crew riffs on the Intuit-Mailchimp news

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We are back! From this morning, I suppose. But the news cycle doesn’t wait...

What to make of Freshworks’ first IPO price range

Two major private tech companies announced IPO price ranges this morning, with Toast targeting a market value of nearly $18 billion at the top end of its range and Freshworks...

SpotOn raises $300M at a $3.15B valuation and acquires Appetize

Last year at this time, SpotOn was on the brink of announcing a $60 million Series C funding round at a $625 million valuation. Fast forward to almost exactly one...

Toast looks toward $18B valuation in upcoming IPO

As if the Boston startup market needed additional momentum, it appears restaurant software startup Toast will dramatically bolster its valuation in its upcoming IPO. For a city perhaps best known...

Equity Monday: Market pessimism, new iPhones, and IPOs

Freshworks aims for nearly $9 billion valuation in US IPO

Freshworks disclosed on Monday that it is aiming for a valuation of up to $9 billion in its US initial public offering in which it is hoping to raise over...

Indonesia-based Rey Assurance launches its holistic approach to insurance with $1M in funding

Rey Assurance co-founders Bobby Siagian and Evan Tanotogono Health insurance is the kind of thing people usually only think about only when they need it. Otherwise, their policies are just...

Southeast Asia-focused Jungle Ventures announces $225M first close for its fourth fund

(From left to right) Jungle Ventures’ founding partner Amit Anand, managing partner David Gowdey and founding partner Anurag Srivastava Southeast Asia’s funding boom is set to continue, with Jungle Ventures...

Startup insurance provider Vouch raises $90M, now valued at $550M

Sep 10, 2021

Vouch, a provider of business insurance to startups and high-growth companies, announced today it has raised $90 million in new funding. The $90 million figure was raised across two rounds:...

With $55M third fund, Scout Ventures is funding veterans ready to tackle the hardest technical challenges

When it comes to people pushing the frontiers of science, few institutions can match the talent of the Department of Defense, the intelligence agencies, and the U.S. national laboratory system....

Wisetack closes on $45M to bring ‘buy now, pay later’ to in-person services

Buy now, pay later is growing globally — with various companies expanding to, and in, different parts of the world, such as Africa, Latin America and Asia. Here in the...

Quicken, one of the ‘first fintechs,’ is being sold again

Five and a half years after being acquired by a private equity firm, personal finance software company Quicken is announcing that it is being acquired by another private equity firm....

Varo Bank raises massive $510M Series E at a $2.5B valuation as it eyes the public markets

Varo Bank, which last year became the first U.S. neobank to be granted a national bank charter, announced this morning it has raised a staggering $510 million in a Series...

Fertility tracking app Flo closes $50M Series B

Flo, a fertility focused period-tracking app, has closed a $50 million Series B funding round which it says values the company at $800M — underlining how much value investors are...

With an Apple Store designer on board, Juno raises $20M to build apartments more sustainably

Juno, a proptech startup which aims to build more sustainable and affordable apartment buildings, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round. Comcast Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Real...

Digital therapeutics startup Neuroglee raises $10M to help people with neurodegenerative conditions

Neuroglee Therapeutics, a startup developing digital therapeutics for people with neurodegenerative diseases, has raised a $10 million Series A led by Openspace Ventures and EDBI. The funding will be used...

Printify bags $45M, led by Index, to ride the custom printing boom

The creator economy loves merch which is great news for on-demand custom printing startups such as Latvia-based Printify — today it’s announcing a $45 million Series A round, led by...

Headout raises $12M, plans to hire 150+ people as domestic travel rebounds

The travel industry was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, and startup Headout was no exception. A marketplace that let tourists make same-day bookings for tours, events and activities,...

Notion acquires India’s Automate.io in push to accelerate product expansion

Notion said on Wednesday it has acquired Automate.io, an Indian startup that builds connectivity and integrations with over 200 services, as the workplace productivity startup looks to accelerate its product...

Addi raises $75M to advance ‘buy now, pay later’ in LatAm, nearly triples valuation

Buy now, pay later is officially everywhere, and Latin America is no exception. Today, one startup in the region, Addi, is announcing a $75 million extension to its Series B,...

Indonesia-focused Intudo Ventures closes $115M third fund

Intudo Ventures, the “Indonesia-only” investment firm, announced today it has closed its third fund, totaling $115 million. Called Intudo Ventures Fund III, it was raised in less than three months...

E-commerce aggregator Rainforest raises $20M just months after its last funding

Four months after its last funding announcement, Singapore-based e-commerce aggregator Rainforest has closed a $20 million pre-Series A round led by Monk’s Hill Ventures. Other participants included January Capital, Crossbeam...

HoneyBee raises millions to make financial wellness a workplace benefit

HoneyBee, a startup that aims to help companies provide access to financial support for their employees, announced today it has raised $5.7 million in equity in a round led by...

DigitalOcean enhances serverless capabilities with Nimbella acquisition

As developers look for ways to simplify how they create software, serverless solutions, which enable them to write code without worrying about the underlying infrastructure required to run their applications,...

Women’s health tech brand, Elvie, tops up Series C to $97M

Elvie, the women’s health tech pioneer behind a connected breast pump and smart pelvic floor exerciser, has topped up a Series C which it announced earlier this summer (July) —...

Financial comparison “super app” Jeff raises $1.5M seed extension

Financial services, especially those for people who don’t have access to traditional bank accounts or lines of credit, are proliferating in Southeast Asia. Jeff App wants to give consumers a...

Ledgy is an equity management tool for European startups

Every startup founder faces the same issue — how do you manage your cap table and equity plans in a transparent and lightweight manner? If you’re based in the U.S.,...

Portcast gets $3.2M to create more transparent and sustainable supply chains

Portcast founders Dr. Lingxiao Xia and Nidhi Gupta For many manufacturers and freight forwarders, managing logistics is still a very manual process: tracking shipments with a call or online lookup,...

Mobius Labs nabs $6M to help more sectors tap into computer vision

Sep 6, 2021

Berlin-based Mobius Labs has closed a €5.2 million (~$6.1M) funding round off the back of increased demand for its computer vision training platform. The Series A investment is led by...

Singapore-based caregiving startup Homage raises $30M Series C

Sep 6, 2021

Homage, the caregiving-focused startup, has raised a $30 million Series C led by Sheares Healthcare Group, which is wholly-owned by investment firm Temasek. Other participants included new investors DG Daiwa...

Gamestry gets $5M to give games video creators a sweeter deal

Sep 5, 2021

Barcelona-based gaming video platform Gamestry has snatched up $5 million in seed funding, led by Goodwater Capital, Target Global and Kibo Ventures — turning investors’ heads with a 175x growth...

Bangkok-based insurtech Sunday banks $45M Series B from investors like Tencent

Sep 3, 2021

Sunday, an insurtech startup based in Bangkok, announced it has raised a $45 million Series B. Investors include Tencent, SCB 10X, Vertex Growth, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, Quona...

Shepherd raises $6.2M seed round to tackle the construction insurance market

Shepherd, an insurtech startup focused on the construction market, has closed a $6.15 million seed round led by Spark Capital. The funding event comes after the startup raised a pre-seed...

Botify raises $55 million to optimize search engine indexing

Botify has raised a $55 million Series C funding round led by InfraVia Growth with Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund also participating. The company has created a search engine optimization (SEO)...

Fintech startup Jeeves raises $57M, goes from YC to $500M valuation in one year

Last summer, Jeeves was participating in Y Combinator’s summer batch as a fledgling fintech. This June, the startup emerged from stealth with $31 million in equity and $100 million in...

Panorama raises $60M in General Atlantic-led Series C to help schools better understand students

Panorama Education, which has built out a K-12 education software platform, has raised $60 million in a Series C round of funding led by General Atlantic. Existing backers Owl Ventures,...

Tracking startup focus in the latest Y Combinator cohort

First, some housekeeping: Thanks to our new corporate parents, TechCrunch has the day off tomorrow, so consider this the last chapter of The Exchange for this week. (The newsletter will...

Point raises $46.5 million for its premium debit card

Challenger bank Point has raised a $46.5 million Series B funding round. The company offers an account associated with a debit card. And the startup positions itself as a premium...

HomeLight closes on $100M Series D at a $1.6B valuation as revenue surges

HomeLight, which operates a real estate technology platform, announced today that it has secured $100 million in a Series D round of funding and $263 million in debt financing. Return...

Cajoo raises $40 million for its instant grocery delivery service

French startup Cajoo is raising some money in order to compete more aggressively in the new and highly competitive category of food delivery companies. Interestingly, the lead investor in today’s...

Forum Brands secures $100M in debt financing to acquire more e-commerce brands

Forum Brands, an e-commerce acquisition platform, announced today that it has secured $100 million in debt funding from TriplePoint Capital. The financing comes just just over two months after the...

Blueprint raises $16M Series B to grow its title-focused insurtech business

Blueprint Title, an insurtech startup working in the title insurance space, announced this morning that it closed a $16 million Series B. The new round was led by Forté Ventures....

What Amplitude’s choice to direct list says about its products, growth and value

Amplitude is going public in a direct listing that will see its shares trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “AMPL.” The company first announced its intention to direct...

Insurify, a ‘virtual insurance agent,’ raises $100M Series B

How many of us have not switched insurance carriers because we don’t want to deal with the hassle of comparison shopping? A lot, I’d bet. Today, Insurify, a startup that...

Flat.mx raises $20M from VCs, proptech unicorn founders to fix Mexico’s ‘broken’ real estate market

Flat.mx, which wants to build a real estate “super app” for Latin America, has closed on a $20 million Series A round of funding. Anthemis and 500 Startups co-led the...

Vista Equity to acquire majority stake in SaaS startup Drift, taking it to unicorn status

Private equity firm Vista Equity Partners announced today that it is taking a majority stake in Drift, a company which aims to be the Amazon of businesses, with a “growth...

“Knowledge-as-a-service” platform Lynk lands funding from UBS’ Investment Bank

Lynk, the “knowledge-as-a-service” platform with more than 840,000 experts, announced today it has added $5 million raised from UBS’ Investment Bank division to its previously announced Series B. This brings...

Trustshare runs escrow infrastructure as a service to facilitate online sales

Meet Trustshare, a London-based startup that is working on escrow infrastructure for online classified, B2B marketplaces, trade directories and more. It’s a white-label platform that can be integrated with online...

Oviva grabs $80M for app-delivered healthy eating programs

UK startup Oviva, which sells a digital support offering, including for Type 2 diabetes treatment, dispensing personalized diet and lifestyle advice via apps to allow more people to be able...

VanMoof raises $128 million to become the world’s leading e-bike brand