Go-Jek, the motorbike on-demand startup that is battling Uber and Grab in Indonesia, has closed a new round of $1.2 billion led by Chinese internet giant Tencent, two sources close the company told TechCrunch. The deal, which we understand was signed last week, values the company at $3 billion post money. It is expected to be officially announced “soon.” Neither Go-Jek… Read More
Ultrahaptics raises $23 million for its invisible ‘touchless interfaces’
As huge tech companies continue to dump money into VR and AR technology looking to convince us digital objects in front of us are actually real, they’re still having a tough time figuring out how to make them feel real. Ultrahaptics is working on a technology that uses ultrasound waves to construct 3D objects in the air that users can feel. Read More
Tesla’s Q1 revenue more than doubles year-over-year as Model 3 plan remains on track
Tesla today re-affirmed that the production of its next car, the Model 3, would begin in July — and that the company had $4 billion in cash-on-hand heading into the second quarter this year. Both of those are going to be critical as Tesla heads into the back half of the year, which reported its first-quarter earnings today. The company has gone to market multiple times to raise… Read More
VentureFriends closes €20M fund to invest in Greek software startups
A tiny bit more VC money sloshing around Europe. This time it’s the turn of Greece-based VC fund VentureFriends, which is announcing the final closing of a €20 million fund to invest in Greek software and “high tech” startups at the seed stage. The two Partners of the fund are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos, with Stefanos Katsimpas also acting as a senior… Read More
Abundant Robotics rakes in $10 million for apple harvesting robots
GV (formerly Google Ventures) is leading a $10 million investment in Abundant Robotics, a company building apple-picking robots that could eventually be adapted to harvest other fruits. Joining GV in the round were BayWa AG and Tellus Partners, along with the company’s earlier backers Yamaha Motor Company, KPCB Edge and Comet Labs. Read More
Yieldify raises another $6M, appoints adtech vet John Giuliani as chairman
As the web becomes an ever more crowded landscape of things battling for your attention, we’re seeing an increase in marketing spend from companies to help capture it, and that in turn is leading to a rising tide for marketing technology startups building solutions to do just that. Today, Yieldify, a London-based company that builds tools tools to increase conversions on sites and… Read More
Cheetah Mobile’s Live.me streaming service raises $60M from Chinese investors
Cheetah Mobile, the Chinese firm that specializes in utility apps for smartphones, has enlisted the help of outside investors for its live-streaming service.
Cheetah announced this week that its one-year-old Live.me service has pulled in $60 million from a range of China-based investors that include Matrix Partners China, Evolution Media China, Gobi Partners, IDG Capital and Welight Capital. Read More
Mayo maker Hampton Creek is shedding execs
Food and beverage startups backed by tech investors are having a rough go of it this season, with Juicero all but melting down and companies like Memphis Meats, Urban Remedy and Soylent recalling products, according to required disclosures on the federal site Foodsafety.gov. Now, Hampton Creek Foods, a packaged goods company backed by the likes of Horizons, Khosla, and AME Cloud… Read More
Quantifying startup funding inequality for fun and profit
Income inequality and disparity in resource distribution have drawn a lot of attention recently in the United States. Today, we’ll investigate a variation on the theme, exploring the distribution of a specific resource, venture capital funding, across a particular population, in this case, all U.S.-based technology companies founded in or after 2003 with at least one recorded funding round. Read More
Airbnb acquired its React Native partner Deco Software, Deco IDE goes open source
Airbnb — the peer-to-peer platform where people rent accommodation and now do other travel-related business — has made an acquisition to expand its platform and how it works with developers to build services on it. It has acquired Deco Software, which had developed an integrated development environment (IDE) to build React Native apps, specifically with the aim of developers… Read More