Monthly Archives: January 2018

 Highsnobiety has come a long way. What began as a sneaker passion blog in 2005 now attracts upwards of 9 million visitors monthly to its site containing news and analysis of high fashion, streetwear and culture. The site has attracted a highly influential audience of young, educated and affluent, mainly millennial male, readers. These are the hard-to-reach people even social media isn’t… Read More

 JD.com, the Chinese e-commerce firm that rivals Alibaba, has continued its expansion in Southeast Asia with an investment in Vietnam-based Tiki, a seven-year-old online retail service. JD.com is leading a Series C investment round in Tiki alongside VNG, the Vietnam-based online media and gaming company that is already an investor. The round itself is undisclosed, but TechCrunch understands… Read More

 One of the most prominent seed investors in Utah, Kickstart Seed Fund, has closed on its fourth fund at $74 million — nearly doubling from the last funding of $39 million and toppling Peak Ventures as the fund with the mostest raised in the region.
The large increase was driven by several institutional investors as well as several notable Utah entrepreneurs including Aaron Skonnard… Read More

 Delivery logistics platform Bringg announced today it has raised another $12 million in Series B funding, bringing the total round to $22 million. The round, which follows the initial Series B from last spring includes new, strategic investment from automotive leader Dr. Shmuel Harlap, shipping and real estate magnate Eyal Ofer, and Salesforce Ventures. Previously, Bringg had raised $10… Read More

 Leaning on its in-house life sciences expertise GV has backed another biotech startup in the UK, co-leading a £20 million ($27.1M) Series A in Oxford University spinout Vaccitech, which is developing a universal flu vaccine. Read More

 Never has there been more talk of innovation and yet more disappointment in the future than in the health care industry. AngelList shows almost a thousand startups just in the digital health space alone, and VCs invested $3.5 billion in digital health startups in just the first half of 2017 according to Rock Health’s industry analysis. There are dozens of health innovation conferences… Read More

 New York-based Boxed, the startup for buying food and household items in bulk, is in talks to be acquired by Kroger for about $500 million. Other retailers are also expected to be making bids. The news was first reported by Forbes and confirmed to TechCrunch by a source with knowledge of the situation. We’re hearing that the company is aiming to make a decision this weekend. Founded… Read More

 Dropbox has filed confidentially for IPO, according to Bloomberg. TechCrunch has been hearing that the cloud company plans to go public in early 2018. The company did not respond to request for comment. Read More

 Alphabet, the umbrella corporation of Google, Inc. etc., has quietly acquired a UK-based startup called Redux, reports Bloomberg. Redux was founded in 2013 out of Cambridge, and built technology that uses vibrations to turn surfaces of phones or tablets into speakers or provide haptic feedback. The acquisition is reflected on Crunchbase, and in confirmed transfer of shares within U.K.… Read More

 Bugsnag, the cloud service that helps developers find bugs inside their software, announced a $9 million Series B today. They also released a new version of their dashboard that features a stability score than can give customers an unbiased grade of the current stability of their software. Let’s look at the funding first. Investors included first-timer GV (formerly Google Ventures)… Read More