Fundraising | TechCrunch

Oyo founder seeks new investment at $3.8B valuation

Manish Singh — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 04:44:22 +0000

An investment vehicle backed by Oyo’s founder, Ritesh Agarwal, has proposed to inject another $65.1 million into the Indian hospitality startup, according to notices to shareholders that were reviewed by TechCrunch. The investment, through Redsprig Innovation Partners, would value the SoftBank-backed company at $3.8 billion, according to terms shared in a notice to shareholders. While […]

OpenAI at one point considered acquiring AI chip startup Cerebras

Kyle Wiggers — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 20:27:35 +0000

OpenAI was at one point considering acquiring Cerebras, an AI chipmaking company that’s in the process of going public, according to new legal filings. Elon Musk’s ongoing lawsuit against OpenAI has new exhibits that describe how OpenAI was contemplating snatching up Cerebras in or around 2017 — a year after Cerebras’ founding, and just a […]

The US IPO window hasn’t reopened yet, but startups take what they can

Anna Heim — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 20:05:00 +0000

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here! Despite the short workweek in many locations, the last few days have been crammed with deal announcements and funding news, although it is too early to tell how much was just on hold before […]

Drone manufacturer Skydio raises $170 million extension round

Margaux MacColl, Sean O'Kane — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 18:05:31 +0000

American drone manufacturer Skydio has raised an extension round of $170 million, adding onto the $230 million Series E it closed early last year.

Ecolectro stuffs hydrogen production into shipping containers to cut costs

Tim De Chant — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 17:00:00 +0000

The startup figures the best way to rein in costs is to bring production closer to where it’s being used.

SwiftConnect lets workers access the office with a smartphone swipe

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 15:00:10 +0000

With the advent of flexible workspaces, companies are increasingly adopting smartphone-based authentication to let employees enter and leave. In a recent poll, nearly two in five firms said they’re letting staff use their phones to access office buildings. The boon has benefited vendors like SwiftConnect, which sells a platform for managing access to physical offices. Chip […]

German travel startup Tourlane raises $26M led by Sequoia

Ingrid Lunden — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 14:14:01 +0000

Global travel continues to gain ground, with the World Travel and Tourism Council predicting the industry will cross $11 trillion in revenues this year. Consumers are evolving from the so-called “revenge travel” of the post-COVID-19 years, dedicating a growing share of their budget to a wider array of experiences away from home. Add AI to […]

Influur wants to stand out from other influencer marketplaces by promising timely payout

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

As the influencer economy grows, startups like Passionfroot, Agentio, and One Impression, along with social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are trying to build marketplaces to connect brands with creators. Miami-based startup Influur is banking on two unique aspects of its platform: quick response from creators and financial tools to ensure they are paid […]

Tessl raises $125M at $500M+ valuation to build AI that writes and maintains code

Ingrid Lunden — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 08:02:30 +0000

Many startups and larger tech companies have taken a crack at building artificial intelligence to code software. Now another new player is coming out of the shadows to throw its hat into the ring, with a mission to fix the many problems that will arise when humans and all those AIs are writing code together. […]

This generative AI startup is strapping cameras to people’s backs

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:33:34 +0000

A startup is training an AI system that it claims will enable creators to generate cinematic worlds, with complete control over the scenery, characters, lighting, and motion. How? By having humans strap cameras to their backs and hike around the world. Odyssey, founded by self-driving pioneers Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke (Cameron was previously the […]

Leland lands $12 million to grow its coaching platform

Ivan Mehta — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Coaching platform Leland has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Forerunner Ventures with participation from GSV ventures to grow its platform geared toward matching coaches and aspirants to fulfill goals ranging from getting into a university to passing an entrance exam and excelling at product management. The company aims to build better […]

After spending three years working on SMS verification at Zenly, Prelude founders want to fix SMS onboarding

Romain Dillet — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Prelude is a relatively new French startup that focuses on SMS verification; it’s announcing new funding from Singular and Seedcamp on Wednesday. The two founders met when they were working for Zenly, a popular location-sharing app with tens of millions of users that was acquired by Snap (and later shut down). While you might not […]

LocalStack raises $25M to help developers emulate and test cloud apps locally

Paul Sawers — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Knowing how your cloud application will behave in production usually requires significant development and testing in the environment in which it will be deployed, be that AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or wherever. But this can be a resource-intensive endeavor, particularly with issues relating to latency (the time it takes to constantly send data) and the […]

NitroVolt is helping farmers make their own fertilizer using renewable power

Tim De Chant — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:15:14 +0000

The majority of the world’s ammonia is produced using the 115-year-old Haber-Bosch process, which is heavily reliant on natural gas. NitroVolt could change that.

Generative AI startup Writer raises $200M at a $1.9B valuation

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:09:44 +0000

Writer has raised $200 million at a $1.9 billion valuation to expand its enterprise-focused generative AI platform. The Series C round was co-led by Premji Invest, Radical Ventures, and ICONIQ Growth, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Adobe Ventures, B Capital, Citi Ventures, IBM Ventures, and Workday Ventures. Writer CEO May Habib says the new cash, […]

ScaleOps aims to take the frustration out of cloud management

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:00:07 +0000

ScaleOps, an automated cloud management platform, has closed a $58 million Series B, bringing its total raised to $80 million.

How two brothers went from growing up on a sailboat to making underwater military vehicles

Margaux MacColl — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Vatn Systems founders Nelson and Freddie Mills spent their childhood cruising over turquoise waters, doing their homework on a sailboat off the coast of Caribbean islands. While their surroundings were idyllic, their vessel of choice was decidedly not. “The first boat I remember, I think our parents bought it for like five, 10 grand,” Freddie […]

General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures back data mapping startup Lume

Rebecca Szkutak — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Data integration is a necessary part of many workflows from onboarding customer data to exercising payroll, but for many data sets the process is long and manual. Data is siloed into databases and SaaS applications that each keep the information in different formats, which makes it difficult to move information from one database to another. […]

PointFive snaps up $20M for breakthrough tech to track usage across multiple clouds

Ingrid Lunden — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 13:01:32 +0000

Enterprise spending on cloud services continues to go up, up, up — to the tune of $675 billion this year — thanks to organizations’ firm embrace of software-as-a-service, the popularity of distributed working, and the arrival of compute-intensive tech like AI. A startup called PointFive believes it has found a better way to get a […]

Germany’s Klim raises $22M to take its regenerative farming platform international

Mike Butcher — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Global food production generates at least a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, more than 80% of which comes from agriculture. But addressing that impact is easier said than done since there are simply so many moving parts to address. “Regenerative” farming is often touted as one way to make progress toward several sustainability goals, as it offers […]