platform

Continual, a startup that aims to bring operational AI to the modern data warehouse-centric data stack, today announced that it has raised a $4 million seed round led by Amplify Partners, with Illuminate Ventures, Essence, Wayfinder and Data Community Fund also participating in the round. With...

Tanya Basu / MIT Technology Review: Meta says a woman was groped on its Horizon Worlds platform on November 26; an internal review says she should have used its “Safe Zone” tool — Last week, Meta (the umbrella company formerly known as Facebook) opened up access to its virtual-reality social...

The rise and impact of influencers has been one of the biggest forces in how the modern online social landscape has evolved in recent times. Now, a company that’s tapping into that influencer juggernaut, and specifically how it is playing out in the world of marketing, is announcing a huge round...

Activity around African venture capital firms raising funds continues to increase as we head towards the end of the year. In the latest development, Abuja- and Lagos-based Ventures Platform is today announcing the first close of its $40 million pan-African fund. The fund, founded by one of...

Re:cap, a non-dilutive funding platform in a similar vein to Pipe.com and Capchase but based in Europe, has closed a Seed financing round of $111.5 million, in a mix of growth capital and liquidity for the revenue-based financing platform. re:cap’s first product is now officially going live...

Yasemin Craggs Mersinoglu / Financial Times: Redditors grieve as Reddit sunsets its beloved annual Secret Santa exchange platform Reddit Gifts, which facilitated anonymous giving between users globally — I first heard about Reddit Secret Santa four years ago, when my friend told me she had...

Nilay Patel / The Verge: Q&A with CEO John Hanke on Niantic's Lightship platform for building AR apps, why VR is an easier tech problem to solve than AR, the metaverse, and more — John Hanke is the CEO of Niantic, a company that makes the wildly popular Pokémon Go mobile game in partnership...

South Korean startup Kakao Entertainment announced today it has acquired Wuxiaworld, an Asia fantasy fiction platform, via its serialized fiction app subsidiary Radish to bolster the mobile storytelling business. The transaction size is $37.5 million. Wuxiaworld, which has grown through...

SQream, a well-funded Israel-based data analytics platform, today announced that it has acquired no-code data platform Panoply in an effort to expand its cloud services. At the core of SQream’s service is its GPU-centric “data acceleration platform,” which promises to speed up SQL queries and...

MFB Fertility, the creator of a suite of at-home pregnancy-related hormone tests, announced a $9.7 million Series A round this week. The round follows several milestones for the company including an FDA premarket approval for a progesterone urine test and the rollout of a mobile app. It also...

Another travel startup that found itself scrambling to pivot as the COVID-19 pandemic took off is now announcing a huge round of funding after finding its feet and proving that it can grow, even under adverse circumstances. AvantStay — which has built a platform where it decorates and then lists...

Signal AI, an artificial intelligence startup that trawls the vast sea of internet and other publicly available data to provide organizations with sentiment insights and other information to make better business decisions, has raised $50 million. It plans to use the funds to continue building...

For years, offline test preparation centers in Nigeria have provided after-school guidance and tutoring to students who seek to pass entrance examinations. Edtech platforms such as Edukoya have sprung up with the intent to take these models online and maintain affordability for students. Today...

TechCrunch Battlefield (NYC 2014) finalists Mimi Hearing Technologies just closed its $25 million Series B funding to continue whispering its mission of hearing well-being from the rooftops. The company recently announced a series of high-profile partnerships with Skullcandy, Cleer and...

There are millions of tenders and public sector contracts published every year by governments globally. The value of all this is estimated to be about $5 trillion, and is expected to reach $9 billion by 2025. And of course, the pandemic has super-charged the need for digitized government...

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: Medal.tv raises $60M to expand its platform for short gaming clips, bringing its total funding to $70M, and says it has nearly 1M DAUs — Medal.tv has raised $60 million in funding for its platform for short-form videos for games. And the company is also launching...

The beauty and wellness industry, annually worth some $4 trillion, is underpinned by tens of thousands of businesses and millions of professionals carrying out haircuts, treatments and workouts. Today, a company called Fresha, which provides a software stack to help them run those operations, is...

Unique, a video calls platform that uses AI to teach sales teams how to improve their pitches, has closed a $6 million Seed round from a bunch of Angel investors. These include Phillip Stauffer, U.S based founder and general partner of Fyrfly Venture Partners, and Daniel Gutenberg. Unique uses...

StudyFree — which connects students with international educational opportunities via a community-driven B2B SaaS model — has raised a $3 million seed investment round led by I2BF Global Ventures, TMT Investments, and TechStars. Also participating was PandaDoc CEO Mikita Mikado and Google’s...

A not-for-profit set up by a former Uber driver who successfully challenged the ride-hailing giant’s misclassification of drivers’ employment status in the UK, has published a timely report pressing the case for proper oversight of the algorithms and data used to remotely surveil and control the...