The European Commission says Amazon agreed to drop "dark patterns" from the process required to unsubscribe from its Prime membership across its sites in the EU
Techmeme · 2 days ago
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Techmeme · 2 days ago
São Paulo-based Mottu, which rents motorcycles to delivery drivers and operates a delivery service, raised a $30M Series B and $10M in debt
Meta says Instagram is testing a change that turns video posts into Reels with select users, as part of efforts to "simplify and improve the video experience"
Techmeme · 2 days ago
April, which personalizes and autofills tax filings by using AI to analyze tax code, raised a $30M Series A led by Treasury, bringing its total funding to $40M
Modular, which aims to simplify building AI systems by using "composable" common components, raised a $30M seed led by GV
YouTube says channels can't hide subscriber counts starting on June 29 to fight fake accounts, and rolls out an "increase strictness" comment moderation setting
Meta says it is rolling out NFT support on Facebook, allowing select US creators to display NFTs on their profiles, after adding the feature to Instagram in May
OpenSea tells customers that an employee at email vendor Customer.io downloaded and sent email details to an external party, impacting almost all users
London-based Shop Circle, which offers merchants a one-stop shop for e-commerce software, emerges from stealth with $65M in funding led by NFX and QED Investors
Techmeme · 3 days ago
India-based GetVantage, which uses AI to offer revenue-based capital of between $10K to $500K to startups, has raised $36M, bringing its total funding to $40M
New York-based Nautical Commerce, which offers multivendor marketplace tools, raised a $30M Series A led by Drive Capital, bringing its total funding to ~$33.2M
London-based Entrepreneur First, which invests in nascent startups, connects co-founders, and offers other support, has raised a $158M Series C
London-based Birdie, which offers digital tools to in-home care providers to optimize their workflow, raised a $30M Series B, bringing its total funding to $52M
New York-based Gloat, an AI-powered internal jobs board, raised a $90M Series D led by Generation Investment Management, bringing its total funding to $192M
Opaque Systems, which is building AI to handle data in hardware-based trusted execution environments, raised a $22M Series A led by Walden Catalyst Partners
A look at Plural, a €250M early-stage fund led by Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus, Teleport co-founder Sten Tamkivi, Songkick co-founder Ian Hogarth, and others
UK startup Speechmatics, which uses AI to translate speech to text, regardless of accent, raised a $62M Series B led by Susquehanna and says it has 170 clients
New Delhi-based Progcap, a digital bank that provides working capital to SMBs, raised a $40M Series C extension at a $600M valuation, up 3x since September 2021
Sam Bankman-Fried says there are no active talks for FTX to acquire Robinhood; Robinhood says no acquisition can go through without the founders' approval
Analysis of Stardust period tracking app, the top free app on the US App Store on June 25, shows it shares users' phone numbers with analytics company Mixpanel
Strapi, known for its open-source headless CMS, raises a $31M Series B led by CRV and says it plans to launch its Strapi Cloud service in 2023
India's central bank ban on loading non-bank prepaid payment instruments using credit lines has created panic among Indian fintech startups
Zomato acquires instant delivery service Blinkit, formerly Grofers, for $568.1M in stock; Blinkit raised ~$700M in total and had a $1B+ valuation in June 2021
Italy's data watchdog finds a local web publisher's use of Google Analytics violated EU data protection rules due to privacy risks over data transfers to the US
Vibrant Planet, a public-benefit startup that is developing software for forest management, has raised a $17M seed
Amazon launches CodeWhisperer, a GitHub Copilot-like AI pair programming tool, in preview as part of AWS IDE Toolkit, supporting Java, JavaScript, and Python
Techmeme · 1 week ago
London-based BNPL service Playter raised $55M in equity and debt led by Adit Ventures and Fasanara Capital, following a $1.7M seed in March 2022
Boston-based JobGet, a job marketplace for recruiters and hourly workers, raised a $52M Series B, comprising $40M in equity and $12M in debt
Google details the commercial Hermit spyware, used in Kazakhstan and Italy, targeting Android and iOS; the iOS version contained two new zero-days
Cryptoys, which is building blockchain-based kids toys in partnership with Dapper Labs, raised a $23M Series A led by a16z, after a $7.5M seed in October 2021
India-based Cashify, a marketplace for selling and buying used smartphones and other gadgets, has raised a $90M Series E, bringing its total funding to $130M+
Mountain View-based Sanas, which develops a call center voice AI that changes users' accents in real time, raised a $32M Series A led by Insight Partners
Ghana-based Fido, which offers financial tools and loans to customers via its mobile app, raised a $30M Series A led by Fortissimo Capital
Deno, a runtime for JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly built using the Rust programming language and the V8 JavaScript engine, raised a $21M Series A
MasterClass, which offers celebrity-taught online classes, laid off around 120 employees, or 20% of its team; sources: MasterClass was valued at $2.75B in 2021
Courier, which provides tools to send and build notifications across multiple channels including email, web, text, and mobile, raised a $35M Series B led by GV
Cambridge, UK-based Gearset, which offers DevOps tools for Salesforce, raised $55M led by Silversmith Capital Partners
Appsmith, which offers low-code tools to build enterprise apps, raised a $41M Series B led by Insight Partners and says 7K+ companies use its tools every month
Spotify tests Community, a feature that lets mobile users see their friends' streaming activity in real time and which playlists their friends recently updated
NASA taps three companies to design nuclear power plants for the moon
Accel announces a $4B global, late-stage fund, after announcing $3B across funds for early- and growth-stage startups in June 2021
Twitter is testing Twitter Notes to let users create articles with rich text formatting and uploaded media, which can then be tweeted and shared upon publishing
Munich-based Personio, maker of cloud-based HR and recruiting software for SMBs, has raised a $200M Series E extension at a $8.5B valuation
Twitter plans to bring back its Chirp Developer Conference on November 16, 2022, in San Francisco; the previous Chirp conference was held in 2010
Sources: three senior executives of Better.com resign, following other executive departures, mass layoffs, and a lawsuit alleging the company misled investors
New Delhi-based neobank Stashfin raised a $270M Series C, $70M in equity and $200M in debt, at a $700M-$800M valuation to expand in Southeast Asia
Meta adds new Instagram and Facebook monetization tools, and extends keeping events, fan subscriptions, badges, and news products free for creators until 2024
Techmeme · 2 weeks ago