capital

Kul Bhushan / Tech in Asia: Singapore-based LingoAce, which helps students learn Mandarin from native speakers, raises a $105M Series C led by Sequoia Capital India — Hugh Yao, a former executive at IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce, moved to Singapore from Beijing in 2012. His son, who was then...

Sourcing and importing goods from overseas can go very wrong, leaving companies in a position of not receiving what they paid for or even getting nothing.Manuel Rodriguez Dao, co-founder and CEO of Mexico City-based Meru.com, and co-founder Federico Moscato, learned this the hard way when they...

Falcon Edge Capital, the New York-headquartered investor that has emerged as one of the most aggressive in recent years, is pushing to make its most ambitious bet yet.The firm is in early stages of talks to raise a fund of over $10 billion, sources familiar with the matter told me. The talks...

Christine Hall / TechCrunch: Shiftsmart, a labor marketplace that matches workers with shifts, raises a $95M Series B led by D1 Capital, bringing its total funding to $117M — The holiday shopping season kicked off last week with some lackluster results, but employers are still in dire need of...

China has attracted yet another e-commerce roll-up to enter its gargantuan e-commerce market. Markai, founded by two Stanford business school grads, has joined the fray to buy out Chinese brands seeking global consumers.So-called brand roll-ups, or e-commerce aggregators, have cropped up in...

Yogita Khatri / The Block: Blockchain audit service CertiK raises an $80M Series B2, following $61M across B and B+ rounds, at a nearly $1B valuation led by Sequoia Capital — Quick Take — CertiK, a blockchain and smart contract auditing firm, has raised another $80 million. — The firm is now...

Kate Park / TechCrunch: PeopleFund, a South Korea-based P2P lending service, raises a $63.4M Series C led by Bain Capital, as it looks to beef up its ML-powered credit scoring system — South Korea-based peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform PeopleFund announced today it has closed a $63.4...

South Korea-based peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform PeopleFund announced today it has closed a $63.4 million (75.9 billion won) Series C round led by Bain Capital with participation from Goldman Sachs. Returning investors in the round include CLSA Lending Ark Asia and 500 Global.The latest...

Lee Li Contributor Lee Li is a project manager and B2B copywriter with a decade of experience in the Chinese fintech startup space as a PM for TaoBao, MeitTuan and DouYin (now TikTok). More posts by this contributorWith open banking on the horizon, the fintech-SME love story is just...

Todd Bishop / GeekWire: SEC filing: Satya Nadella last week sold half his Microsoft stock, worth over $285M, before Washington state implements its new capital gains tax on January 1 — Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sold half of his stake in the company in a series of transactions last week...

Sapphire Ventures will inject $2 billion of newly raised capital into growth-stage enterprise companies from two new funds, Sapphire Ventures Fund VI and Sapphire Ventures Opportunity Fund III.The new funding represents the venture capital firm’s largest raise to date, Nino Marakovic, CEO of...

Brandy Betz / CoinDesk: Former Citi exec Matt Zhang announces Hivemind Capital Partners, a $1.5B VC fund to invest in blockchain startups, selects Algorand as a strategic partner — The fund includes a play-to-earn gaming arm that will be headed by former Goldman Sachs analyst Sam Peurifoy...

Ron Miller / TechCrunch: Upbound, which created the open-source multi-cloud management project Crossplane, raises a $60M Series B led by Altimeter Capital — Companies today want to avoid the lock-in they faced in the past with a single vendor. As a result, they are hedging their bets with a...

Francisco Partners bought Quest Software in 2016 when Dell was selling off some assets to help pay for the massive $67 billion EMC deal. Dell itself had purchased Quest in 2012 for $2.4 billion. Today, the company was on the move again, with Clearlake Capital picking it up this time.According...

Miriam Gottfried / Wall Street Journal: Sources: Clearlake Capital will buy Quest Software, which makes tools for IT departments, from Francisco Partners for $5.4B including debt — Deal values former Dell unit at $5.4 billion, including debt, sources say — Clearlake Capital Group LP has...

Dennis Schaal / skift.com: Booking.com plans to acquire its Sweden-based flight-booking partner Etraveli Group from CVC Capital Partners for ~$1.83B — Skift Take — Booking Holdings is on a pre-Christmas buying spree after announcing two pending acquisitions, ETraveli Group and Getaroom...

Liya Su / DealStreetAsia: Chinese GPU maker Moore Threads raises a $313M Series A co-led by Source Code Capital, Shanghai Guosheng Group, and Bohai Sheng Industrial Fund Management — Moore Threads, a Chinese semiconductor player which provides graphics processing units (GPUs), announced on...

Sales of plant-based alternatives, like dairy and meat, are surging in the global market, and Perfeggt wants to do the same for the egg.The Berlin-based foodtech company is poised to debut its chicken-less egg product in the first quarter of 2022 in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Today, the...

Patricia Allen / EU-Startups: Everstox, which offers product management and monitoring software for logistics operators, raises a €20M Series A led by Acton Capital — Logistics-as-a-service tech company everstox has just secured a €20 million boost to expand across Europe. The Munich-based...

The company’s tea business has struggled for growth in recent years amid changing consumer tastes.