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Former Facebook employee and current enfant terrible of high finance Chamath Palihapitiya is making news again with a $1.3 billion twofer SPAC and PIPE deal into the solar energy financing company, Sunlight Financial. Sunlight Financial is essentially a lending company that gives solar installers a way to provide loans to homeowners to finance solar power …
Volta, the developer of a network of electric vehicle charging stations that monetize using advertising, has raised $125 million in new funding in a process managed by Goldman Sachs. Volta builds and operates a network of electric vehicle charging stations that are sited in parking lots around grocery stores, pharmacy chains, banks and hospitals. The …
Continue reading “Ad-supported EV charging network developer Volta raises $125 million”
Israel’s startup ecosystem raised record amounts of funding and produced 19 IPOs in 2020, despite the pandemic. Now tech companies across industries are poised for an even better year, according to more than a dozen investors we talked to in the country. Mainstay sectors like cybersecurity continue to matter, they said, but are maturing (more …
Continue reading “After a record year for Israeli startups, 16 investors tell us what’s next”
A failed acquisition usually triggers the same series of questions: What does this mean for early-stage startups in the sector? Will a chilling effect occur and hurt valuations? Will VCs stop funding this category? How will the exit environment look going forward? This week gave that narrative a bullish twist. Visa and Plaid announced that …
Continue reading “Stay gold, ‘Plaid for X’ startups”
After a year of video calls and Slack messages, the definition of workplace is set to shift again. In a post-pandemic world, some will return to the office, many will remain remote and regardless of where an employee sits, Florent Crivello, the founder of Teamflow, has raised millions for what he views as a trillion-dollar …
Continue reading “Teamflow lands $3.9 million for a productive virtual HQ platform”
Coral reefs all over the world are struggling to survive, with millions of people and billions of dollars in business that rely on them at risk — on top of the fundamental tragedy of losing such a crucial ecosystem. Coral Vita aims to modernize both coral restoration techniques and the economy surrounding them, and has …
Continue reading “Coral Vita cultivates $2M seed to take its reef restoration mission global”
It’s been a strange year for sleep. For me, levels have fluctuated between too little and too much, but have – more often than not – tended toward the former. 2020 gave most of us no shortage of excuses for sleep deprivation, from personal stresses to larger societal concerns. And, thankfully, the past few years …
Continue reading “Bose’s latest sleep-centric earbuds mostly do the trick”
Being “underbanked” doesn’t mean that someone lacks access to financial services. Instead, it often means they don’t have traditional bank accounts or credit cards. But in markets like Indonesia, many still use digital wallets or e-commerce platforms, creating alternative sources of user data that can help them secure working capital and other financial tools. Finantier, …
Continue reading “Singapore-based open finance startup Finantier gets backing from Y Combinator”
The latest branch of the US Military was founded just a year ago and will celebrate its first birthday on December 20. General John W. “Jay” Raymond spoke at TechCrunch Sessions: Space and explained how the youngest military branch operates like a startup. “In some ways, we’re a startup as well,” Gen. Raymond said. “The …
Vijay Sundaram Contributor Vijay Sundaram is the Chief Strategy Officer of Zoho Corporation, the parent company of ManageEngine. He leads or is involved in multiple functional areas from corporate strategy and execution to channel management, business development and enterprise sales. As consumers, most of us don’t mind providing companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter with …
Continue reading “We must end the era of adjunct surveillance”