ventures

So-called ‘Deep Tech’ venture capital has been experiencing a wave of interest in the couple last years with several new funds launching. Many are focused on the European market, which has a deep bench (no pun intended) of talent and innovation, thanks in part to its many excellent universities...

Eudora Wang / DealStreetAsia: Beijing-based autonomous driving startup Haomo.AI raises a $157M Series A at a $1B+ valuation from GL Ventures, Meituan, Qualcomm Ventures, and others — Beijing-based autonomous driving startup Haomo.AI has raised nearly 1 billion yuan ($156.9 million) in a Series...

Pranav Balakrishnan / The Economic Times: Bengaluru-based B2B online seafood marketplace Captain Fresh raises a $40M Series B co-led by Tiger Global and Prosus Ventures at a $200M post-money valuation — Post this funding, Bengaluru-based Captain Fresh has seen its valuation jump four times to...

Shruti Gandhi wants to clear up a misconception in first-check fundraising: Every founder doesn’t need their early-stage investors to be a shoulder for them, they just need their investor to understand their business in a way that others don’t. Most of the entrepreneurs in her portfolio for...

Calibrate Ventures, a four-year-old early-stage venture capital firm backing startups leveraging artificial intelligence and automation, debuted its second fund, a $97 million vehicle that is about 25% higher than its previous fund. With Calibrate Fund II, the firm has $175 million in assets...

Kyle Alspach / VentureBeat: PlainID, which offers enterprise identity and access management tools, raises a $75M Series C led by Insight Ventures, bringing its total funding to $100M — PlainID, which today announced a $75 million series C funding round, said it has expanded the customer base...

Some 55 billion parcels are shipped in bubble wrap every year. Plastic bubble wrap is reliant on fossil fuels and 98% of plastic packaging is single-use. You can imagine the adverse environmental impact of all this plastic. The founders of Woola were running an online e-commerce store and saw...

Alex Wilhelm / TechCrunch: Denver-based Gtmhub, which helps companies track objectives and results, raises a $120M Series C led by Index Ventures, bringing its total raised to ~$160M — Denver-based software startup Gtmhub announced this morning that it has closed a $120 million Series C. Index...

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...

Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE: API security startup Cequence raises a $60M Series C led by Menlo Ventures, bringing its total funding to $89.5M — Application programming interface security startup Cequence Security Inc. announced today that it has raised $60 million in new funding to support...

Pan-African venture capital firm 4DX Ventures has completed the final close of its second fund at $60 million. The second fund, launched in the first quarter of this year, was expected to close at $50 million, but investor and limited partner (LP) interest saw the fund oversubscribed. The LPs...

Kenyan startup Wowzi has secured new funding to expand the reach of its platform, which turns social media users into brand influencers, to West and Southern Africa — as it taps the increasing usage of social sites across the continent driven by the proliferation of smartphones and a deepening...

Hannah Miller / The Information: A look at Solana's early backers including 500 Startups, Slow Ventures, Multicoin Capital, and angels David Quiec and Chris McCann, who have $1B+ stakes — When Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko tried to raise money in 2018 to develop his idea for a faster...

A startup that has built a decentralized exchange as well as a cross-chain infrastructure to facilitate communication across layer 1 and layer 2 blockchain solutions is the latest to receive backing from Coinbase Ventures. Singapore-headquartered Router Protocol said on Friday it has raised...

Breakout Ventures, a San Francisco-based seed-stage venture firm that funds what it calls creative biosciences startups, has closed the second fund in its five-year history with $112.5 million in capital commitments. Both of its funds, including a $60 million debut effort that we wrote about in...

Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat: Boston-based conversational AI startup Posh Technologies raises a $27.5M Series A led by Canapi Ventures to fuel call center automation — As call volumes skyrocketed during the pandemic, contact centers turned to AI to help distribute the workload. But even before...

Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Tim Berners-Lee's Inrupt, which aims to “reshape the internet” by letting users control their data, raises Series A led by Forte Ventures, source says for ~$30M — Tim Berners-Lee's startup, Inrupt, has raised about $30 million in its Series A financing round, a...

As many edtech companies benefited from the disruption of the pandemic, attracting wads of cash from investors globally, it did feel like African startups were left out. Well, not anymore: Two-year-old startup uLesson announced today that it closed a $15 million Series B round. The investment...

The venture capital market is on a tear, pumping capital into a host of startups around the world. It’s generally considered a great time to raise capital and build a technology-centered, disruptive business. For some, that is. While the venture capital boom of the last few years has helped a...

Christine Hall / TechCrunch: NewtonX, which connects companies with subject matter experts, raises a $32M Series B led by Marbruck Ventures, bringing its total funding to $47M — Everyday business decisions require data and are often questions someone has already asked and had answered.