Broadband business Casa Systems up 11% following downsized IPO

 Casa Systems had a tough time pulling off its IPO this week. The broadband solutions company wanted to debut Thursday, but pushed its launch back to Friday, likely because of weak initial demand. Casa had planned to sell 8.4 million shares, but reduced it to 6 million following the investor roadshow. The IPO priced at $13 per share, but bounced up almost 11 percent, closing the day at $14.40. Read More

Australia’s Airwallex raises $6M to grow its cross-border payment business

 Airwallex, an Australia-based fintech startup that helps banks and businesses handle cross-border transactions at scale, has closed a $6 million investment ahead of a planned Series B next year.
The new funding comes from Square Peg — a VC firm located in Melbourne, the same city as Airwallex HQ — which joins Tencent, MasterCard, Gobi Ventures and Sequoia China as backers of… Read More

Ginkgo Bioworks secures $275 million in Series D, valuing the company at over $1 billion

 Boston biotech startup Ginkgo Bioworks has announced the raise of $275 million in Series D funding to build out its Bioworks3 production facility. The funding comes from previous investors Viking Global, Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund, Cascade Investment, Bill Gates, as well as new investor, General Atlantic. The company previously raised over $154 million, bringing the total up to… Read More

ispace just raised $90 million to launch two private moon missions by 2020

 Japanese company ispace has raised $90.2 million in a Series A funding round, an amount it’s calling the “largest ever” Series A in commercial space financing. The funding comes from Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, Development Bank of Japan, Tokyo Broadcasting System, Konika Minolta and others, and will help the company continue its progress towards a very… Read More

SEC shuts down Munchee ICO

 In what should be an interesting beginning to the coming avalanche of ICO failures, the SEC has come down hard on Munchee, a company that built a $15 million token sale. The SEC chairman recently noted that coin offerings are, in fact, securities and that pre-sale participants must be registered with the SEC. The Munchee ICO aimed to fund the MUN coin, a payment system for restaurant reviews.… Read More

Menlo Security secures $40 million Series C to keep malware at bay

 Menlo Security, a startup with a unique approach to protecting your company from malware and phishing attacks, announced a $40 million Series C round today. Menlo protects customers by never lets letting employees access an actual website or email containing malware. Instead, they isolate the original in a container, then display a clean mirror image in the browser, which has been stripped of… Read More

Sources: Apple is acquiring music recognition app Shazam

 As Spotify continues to inch towards a public listing, Apple is making a move of its own to step up its game in music services. Sources tell us that the company is close to acquiring Shazam, the popular app that lets people identify any song, TV show, film or advert in seconds, by listening to an audio clip or (in the case of, say, an ad) a visual fragment, and then takes you to content… Read More

Why is bitcoin’s price so high?

 Bitcoin’s price has risen stratospherically, a fact that leaves many minor players in the market with massive gains and many bigger players millionaires. But is this a bubble? Are the gains real? And are the bitcoin whales in for a sad Christmas? First we must understand what drives bitcoin price and, in particular, this boom. The common understanding for current growth leads us back… Read More

Spark Capital leads $3.3m round into Boston-based, on-demand life sciences marketplace Clora

 On-demand labor marketplaces have been around for decades on the internet. Paying someone to identify a cat using Amazon Mechanical Turk or hiring someone to program a quick website on Upwork is easy — post a job, select someone, pay a few bucks and you’re done. While hiring individuals is reasonably straightforward, building teams to accomplish specialized projects is a far… Read More