Author Archives: Ammar Ibrahim

 Last November, GE acquired the AI-centric startup Wise.io to bolster its machine learning capabilities. While Wise.io’s core competency was in machine learning, its main product focused on helping enterprises manage customer service requests. GE has now spun out Wise.io in a new company, SmartAssist.io, which will continue to expand the service and work with existing customers. Read More

 No one picks up the phone and everyone gets too much email. If you want to contact people for fundraising, a political campaign, or marketing, texting is the way to go. But a generic mass text is more like spam than a convincing conversation. Hustle lets you personalize every message and turn it into persuasive one-on-one dialogue. Like CRM for SMS, organizers can assign lists of contacts to… Read More

 Helpling, the Rocket Internet-founded company that lets you book a range of home services online, has raised further funding. This time around, the undisclosed backing — which I understand to be “several million” Euros — comes from Unilever Ventures, the venture arm of Unilever, in what can undoubtedly be described as a strategic investment. Read More

 Ding, a London-based hardware startup, has raised more than £263,000 (~$345k) via the Seedrs equity crowdfunding platform as it works to get its first product — a wi-fi connected doorbell — to market this year. Read More

 Carwow, a platform that helps you buy a new car, has closed $39 million in Series C funding. The round was led by new investor Vitruvian Partners, with existing investors Accel Partners and Balderton Capital also participating. At today’s exchange rate it brings total funding to approximately $62.6 million. Read More

 Dear Floyd Mayweather: While perusing Facebook, I chanced across your post drumming up interest in the upcoming Stox initial coin offering (ICO). I understand your motivations in wanting to diversify your portfolio of investments, but I caution that your actions are reckless and potentially financially damaging to you and your fans. Read More

 Mesh WiFi router company Eero wants to provide an easy way for consumers to connect and connect with all the smart devices in their home. As it looks to build more intelligence around how those devices interact, the company has acquihired the team behind smart home management app Thington. Read More

 London-based Callsign has closed a $35 million Series A, led by Accel and early stage investor PTB Ventures, for an authentication platform which uses deep learning technology to power adaptive access control for enterprises — saying it can verify a person is who they say they are just from a swipe on a touchscreen. Read More

 With its Stripe Connect product, Stripe wants to make it easier on-demand and marketplace businesses to not only process payments from their customers, but also make payments to contractors and vendors. In an effort to bolster the tax reporting tools available to them, the company has acquired long-term partner Payable.  Read More

 The first step of any salesperson is to figure out who to pitch, but some of them are wasting time targeting the wrong prospective clients. That’s the premise behind Node, a startup that says its platform uses artificial intelligence to find sales leads. In “stealth mode” for the past 2.5 years, the company is now announcing a $10.8 million venture financing round led by… Read More