Trending Stories from techcrunch.com
Google contract workers in Pittsburgh have ratified a three-year deal with their employer HCL, for higher wages and more, nearly two years after unionizing
Airtel Mobile Commerce, which offers mobile money services in 14 African countries, raises $200M from the Qatar Investment Authority
Merqueo, which operates an online supermarket in more than 25 cities in Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil, raises $50M Series C, bringing its total raised to $85M
Belgium-based Odoo, which offers a huge variety of open-source enterprise apps, raises $215M at a $2.3B valuation from Summit Partners
Culture Amp, an employee survey platform that lets users post anonymously, raises $100M Series F at a $1.5B valuation and says 4K organizations use its tools
La Haus, an online real estate marketplace operating in Mexico and Colombia, raises a $100M extension to its $35M Series B, bringing its total raised to $158M
Coralogix, which offers developers real-time insights for logs, metrics, and security data, raises $55M Series C led by Greenfield Partners
Cairo and Dubai-based Swvl, a bus-hailing and ridesharing provider in emerging markets, plans to go public in the US in a SPAC merger at a valuation of ~$1.5B
Twitter closes its NY and SF offices, two weeks after reopening, and pauses further office reopenings, after carefully considering the CDC's updated guidelines
Japan-based sneaker reselling platform SODA raises $56.4M Series C led by SoftBank Ventures Asia; also acquires its rival Monokabu to gain 80% of marketshare
QuotaPath, which offers tools to track commissions for sales and revenue teams, raises $21.3M Series A led by Insight Partners
Class, a virtual classroom that integrates exclusively with Zoom, raises $105M led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 at a $804M post-money valuation
Contentful, which offers APIs to let companies manage content, raises $175M Series F led by Tiger Global at a ~$3B valuation, after a $80M Series E in June 2020
Droom, an online marketplace for used cars and motorbikes in India, raises $200M in a pre-IPO growth round, at a $1.2B valuation, up from $500M in 2018
Indian business messaging service Gupshup raises an additional $240M as part of its Series F, led by Fidelity Management, Tiger Global, and others
Instagram now supports 60-second videos on Reels, up from 30 seconds, to better rival TikTok, which recently let creators upload videos up to three minutes long
Techmeme · 5 days ago
Twitter hires the team that built Brief, a subscription-based news summary app founded by former Google employees; the app will wind down July 31
Discord debuts threaded conversations, which auto-archive after 24 hours of inactivity and will roll out by Aug. 17, and a premium feature for private threads
Blameless, a site reliability engineering service, raises $30M Series B led by Third Point Ventures, bringing its total funding to over $50M
TikTok expands LIVE platform with new features, including events, co-hosts, Q&As, moderation tools, and more, to make it more competitive with Instagram Live
Indonesia-based grocery delivery app HappyFresh raises $65M Series D led by Naver Financial Corporation and Gafina B.V.
London-based Sedna, a service that analyzes emails and chats to perform actions mentioned within them, raises $34M Series B led by Insight Partners
Covariant, which builds AI-powered industrial robots, raises $80M Series C led by Index Ventures, following a $40M Series B in May 2020
Wiliot, which is developing IoT chips powered by ambient radio frequencies, raises $200M Series C led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 as it plans an SaaS pivot
Germany-based Aleph Alpha, which aims to build AI models for text and vision like GPT-3, raises $27M Series A co-led by Earlybird VC, Lakestar, and UVC Partners
South Africa-based Yoco, which offers offline and online payment solutions for SMEs, raises $83M Series C led by Dragoneer, bringing total raised to $107M
Nium, a Singapore-based B2B payments company, raises $200M Series D at a $1B+ valuation led by Riverwood Capital, with Temasek, Visa, and others participating
ActiveFence, whose tech platform finds disinformation and other malicious content as they are being formed, raises a combined $100M from its Series A and B
I Created a $350M Software Company Knowing Nothing About Software
Solarisbank raises $224M at a $1.65B valuation to acquire rival banking-as-a-service company Contis and expand its API-based embedded banking tech in Europe
Lev, which wants to automate commercial real estate financing, raises $30M Series A at a $130M valuation, after raising a $10M seed round four months ago
Paystone, which provides service-based businesses with payments and customer engagement tech, raises $23.8M, bringing its total funds raised in 2021 to $78.8M
Sweetch, which has developed an AI-powered app that aims to increase patient compliance and boost health outcomes, raises $20M Series A led by Entreé Capital
Sendlane, which helps e-commerce companies automate email and SMS marketing, raises $20M Series A; CEO says Sendlane, which is seeing $7M+ in ARR, is profitable
Taboola says it is buying retail- and e-commerce-focused ad network Connexity for $800M in cash and stock
Paystand, which is building an Ethereum blockchain-based service to enable B2B payments with zero fees, raises $50M Series C, bringing its total raised to $85M
Loop Returns, whose software enables stores on Shopify to handle online returns, raises $65M Series B led by CRV at a post-money valuation of $340M
Numerade, which sells subscriptions to short-form STEM videos, raises $26M Series A at a $100M valuation, as it develops an algorithm to offer custom content
This tool tells you if NSO’s Pegasus spyware targeted your phone
Instagram is testing Limits, which lets users facing a flood of harassment temporarily limit comments and messages from specific groups of followers
Techmeme · 1 week ago