Cruise, the self-driving car startup GM acquired last year, has acquired a startup of its own – Strobe, a LiDAR sensor maker that reduces an entire LiDAR array down to just one chip, which Cruise says will be instrumental in helping it reduce the cost of LiDAR on a per vehicle basis by nearly 100 percent. The cost issue is a big one: LiDAR remains one of the single most expensive… Read More

 In the last two years, Unilever acquired Carver Korea for $2.7 billion. Estee Lauder purchased Too Faced Cosmetics for $1.45 billion. CVC Capital Brands bought PDC Brands for $1.43 billion. L’Oreal purchased a trio of skincare brands for $1.3 billion, and also  IT Cosmetics for $1.2 billion. E.l.f. Beauty did an IPO.
Venture capitalists didn’t invest in any of these beauty… Read More

 Las Vegas-based data center operator Switch went public on the New York Stock Exchange today, under the ticker “SWCH.”
After pricing its IPO above the proposed range at $17, the company closed at $20.73, up almost 22 percent. The company raised $531 million in its offering. Read More

 Moneyfarm, the U.K.-headquartered “digital wealth manager” has acquired the technology behind personal finance chatbot Ernest. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, though I understand that, along with the tech, this is an acqui-hire of sorts, seeing London-based Ernest’s CTO Lorenzo Sicilia join Moneyfarm to oversee technology integration. Read More

 You’ll find image recognition technology in almost every kind of consumer service you would use today — like Facebook, Google, or any number of other apps — but Yann Fleureau is hoping that he can build a whole business off of its increasing success in healthcare.
Fleureau hopes that his startup, Cardiologs, can use image recognition to analyze an EKG and detect potential… Read More

 Bluecore, the automated marketing platform for ecommerce brands, has today announced the close of a $35 million Series C round of funding. Norwest Venture Partners led the round, with participation from existing investors including Georgian Partners, FirstMark Capital, and Felicis Ventures. As part of the deal, NVP’s Scott Beechuk will join the board of directors at Bluecore. When… Read More

 Recursion, a drug discovery startup out of Salt Lake City, Utah has announced a $60 million Series B round, led by Data Collective (DCVC). Recursion started out in 2014 on a mission to identify 100 new treatments in 10 years. That’s a lofty goal, considering the discovery for just one drug can traditionally take decades and tens of millions of dollars, with a high rate of failure… Read More

 In an industry that tends to concentrate its startup energy in Silicon Valley, Kryon defies convention. The robotics process automation (RPA) startup has its US headquarters in New Jersey. The location didn’t matter when it came to getting investment capital as the company announced a  $12 million Series B today. The round was led by Aquiline Technology Growth (ATG) and Vertex Ventures.… Read More

 Digital streaming business Roku has soared in its public debut. After pricing its IPO Wednesday at $14 per share, Roku finished its first day of trading at $23.50, up nearly 68%. And by the end of Friday, Roku closed at $26.54, or up 90% in less than 48 hours. The company is now valued at about $2.6 billion. So this must be great news for the company, right? Well, sort of. Read More

 Alibaba has spent 2017 pushing its cloud computing business and now it is preparing to make its first major investment in a Western startup in the space.
The Chinese e-commerce giant has agreed to lead a €22.9 million ($27 million) investment in MariaDB, the European company behind one of the web’s most popular open source database servers, according to a source with knowledge of… Read More