Life sciences startups in Asia are getting another boost with the $10 million investment in Engine Biosciences — a biotech company that’s applying machine learning to genomics for drug discovery. With its headquarters in both Singapore and San Francisco, the company has managed to attract some impressive investors from both the U.S. and Asia. The round was co-led by Danhua… Read More
from TechCrunch
The real estate industry was relatively slow to adapt technology, but it’s now quickly catching up. That means that virtually every part of the industry is seeing a lot of startup activity. Juniper Square, which today announced it has raised a $6M Series A round, is tackling the real estate investment side by helping investment managers raise and manage outside capital for their projects. Read More
from TechCrunch
Not every self-driving car has to be able to move passengers from point A to point B. Take, for example, Nuro: The startup just revealed their unique autonomous vehicle platform, which is more of a mobile small logistics platform than a self-driving car.
The company, which has been working away in stealth mode in Mountain View until now, has raised a $92 million Series A round led by Banyan… Read More
from TechCrunch
Asana, the productivity and collaboration service, is getting a major infusion of cash after Generation Investment Management, a London-based firm backed by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, led a $75 million investment. Investment Management was joined in this Series D round by existing backers 8VC, Founders Fund, Y Combinator President Sam Altman who also participated in the round.… Read More
from TechCrunch
Bench, the TechStars-backed bookkeeping service for SMBs, has today announced the close of an $18 million B-1 funding round led by iNovia Capital. Existing investors, including Bain Capital Ventures, Altos Ventures, and Silicon Valley Bank, also participated in the round.
Bench first launched out of TechStars NYC in 2012. Back then, the company was called 10Sheet, and it aimed to providing… Read More
from TechCrunch
SoftBank is partnering up with messaging app Line to help develop its Line Mobile telecom service. Line announced that it has agreed to allow SoftBank to take a 51 percent in the business via an issuance of new shares. The deal is expected to close by March. From the documents, its mobile business is valued at around $15 million (1.7 billion JPY) but a company spokesperson told TechCrunch… Read More
from TechCrunch
A new vertical fund from pan-European VC firm Speedinvest is officially outing today. Dubbed “Speedinvest x” and targeting a final closing of €25 million, of which €20.5 million has already been committed, the micro VC fund will target early-stage marketplace startups exclusively. Read More
from TechCrunch
What should we do about token sales?
Two days ago a Lithuanian “company” called Prodeum looked like a promising if silly blockchain startup. Their stated goal? To track every piece of food on the Internet. While I doubt many of us will care about the exact provenance of the orange we just ate, we could see, in some distant future, a need for this sort of tracking.
After all, the… Read More
from TechCrunch
Red Hat, a company best known for its enterprise Linux products, has been making a big play for Kubernetes and containerization in recent years with its OpenShift Kubernetes product. Today the company decided to expand on that by acquiring CoreOS, a container management startup, for $250 million. The company’s core products includes CoreOS, a Linux distribution and Tectonic, a… Read More
from TechCrunch
The SoftBank Vision Fund has struck again. This time, it’s investing $300 million in on-demand walking and dog care startup Wag. Wag has also brought on Hilary Schneider, formerly of identity theft protection company LifeLock, to serve as the company’s new chief executive officer. Wag, which launched back in 2015, offers on-demand walking and boarding for pups. The startup… Read More
from TechCrunch