PacketZoom lands $5M Series A investment to speed up mobile apps

 PacketZoom, a startup that helps app developers speed up and optimize app delivery on mobile devices, announced a $5M Series A today. The round was led by Baseline Ventures with participation from First Round Capital, Tandem Capital and Arafura Ventures. Today’s investment brings the total raised to over $9M, according to Crunchbase. The company combines a content delivery network (CDN)… Read More

Company raises $347K ICO, vanishes

 A company called Confido raised a small ICO by selling special CFD designed to allow “safe and trustless cryptocurrency payments. According to ICODrops they raised their goal of about $400,000 and quickly disappeared, taking the cash with it. The site is currently a parked web server that points to nothing. The apparent founder and former eBay employee, Joost van Doorn, posted a message to… Read More

Scalyr scores $20M Series A for super-fast log reading tool

 In a time where every startup seems to be using machine learning to sift through massive amounts of data, Scalyr is a cloud-based service that is taking a different approach. It has built a tool the founder claims can sort through massive amounts of log data at lightning speed when compared to conventional logging tools — and it doesn’t require machine learning to make it… Read More

Zego picks up £6M Series A led by Balderton for its gig economy worker insurance

 Zego, the London-based startup that appears to have spotted a gaping insurance hole in the so-called gig economy, has raised £6 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Balderton Capital, with participation from existing backers, including LocalGlobe and unnamed angel investors in the insurance sector. The company plans to use the new capital to increase engineering and other… Read More

Code2040 raises $5.6 million from The Knight Foundation and others

 Code2040, founded by Laura Weidman Powers and Tristan Walker, recently raised $5.6 million to advance its diversity and inclusion efforts in technology. The latest funding comes from The Knight Foundation, The Sara and Ev Williams Foundation and others, and brings Code2040’s total funding raised to more than $7 million.
Code2040’s Fellows program, which first launched in 2012… Read More

Stitch Fix gets a pop in its public trading debut

 Stitch Fix revised where it would price its IPO lower last night ahead of trading, and it looks like it helped approach the right sweet spot as a result when it made its debut today. The company saw around a 15% pop in its stock when it began trading this morning — the benchmark companies tend to look to hit when they go public is around 20% — and fell around the lower bound of… Read More

Tencent reportedly invests $150M in cinema ticketing startup Maoyan

 Tencent announced another impressive quarter of financials yesterday, but the Chinese internet giant — which is creeping towards a $500 billion market cap — made other financial moves this week. Reuters reported that the firm invested $150 million Chinese cinema ticketing startup Maoyan, which was created from a merger between dominant players Maoyan and Tencent-backed Weiying… Read More

Roxy grabs $2.2 million seed investment to build Alexa-like voice devices customized for business

 Some of the biggest names in technology are all in on voice-controlled devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home, but Roxy, a Seattle-based startup believes that businesses need a voice system where they control the data and the voice commands are designed for their specific requirements. They announced $2.2 million in seed funding today. The company has built its own modular hardware… Read More

Bossa Nova raises $17.5 million for retail robots

 Why count inventory when the robots can do it? Retailers are using machines from a startup called Bossa Nova Robotics to analyze what’s selling on the shelves. The robots drive autonomously through store aisles figuring out what has sold and then sends back data. The company is now raising $17.5 million Series B led by Paxion to scale its business. Intel Capital, Cota Capital and others… Read More

Roomi raises $11 million to find you a roommate

 Looking for a roommate on Craigslist can be cumbersome. And it can be difficult to determine what the person will be like in real life. A startup called Roomi thinks it has a better solution for finding people to live with. Its app and website help you search for apartment listings with background-checked profiles from the tenants. It also pulls data from social media, like photos and… Read More