- Say goodbye to peer-to-peer car rental service RelayRides, and hello to Turo! The company announced on Tuesday that is has rebranded itself with the new name, and a new vision, one that it believes will allow it to expand its presence internationally. San Francisco-based Turo was founded in 2008 and was launched nationwide in 2012. The company, which started in Boston and San Francisco, allows car owners to share their vehicle with friends and neighbors for a fee. In addition to the new name, Turo also revealed that it raised $47 million in Series C funding in a round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and its affiliates, along with participation from existing investors August Capital, Canaan Partners, Google Ventures, Shasta Ventures, and Trinity Ventures.
- London startup what3words has raised a $3.5 million Series A round led by Silicon Valley’s Intel Capital and joined by Hong Kong’s Horizons Ventures, plus a number of its previous angel investors. The company was founded back in 2013 with the mission of giving the whole world a postcode by assigning 3m x 3m squares with a three-word ‘address’. what3words bagged a $500,000 seed found late that same year from angels including Shutl’s Guy Westlake, plus another $1 million in early 2014.
- Hitbox, a European startup that can stream gameplay at 4K resolution, has raised $4 million from World of Tanks developer Wargaming and others to further develop livestreaming service in competition with Amazon’s Twitch division. European venture capital firm Speedinvest led the round, with additional investment from Wargaming, North Base Media, and other angel investors. In less than two years, Hitbox has grown to 6 million users. Hitbox will use the money to expand its presence in the U.S. market and other key places around the globe.
- Moovit, a local transit app, today announced that the company has received an investment from Sound Ventures, a venture capital firm founded by Ashton Kutcher, a successful startup investor and actor, and Guy Oseary, investor and talent manager for both U2 and Madonna. The company plans to use this investment to advance its growth in promising markets like India and China. Moovit is a transit app with service in over 700 cities globally used by 30 million users, surpassing Google Maps and other competitors. Sound Ventures launched at SXSW in Austin, TX in March of this year. The company has invested in numerous other successful technology companies, including Airbnb, Uber, Spotify, Houzz and Zenefits. The amount was undisclosed.
- Affinio announced today that the company has scored $4 million in Series A funding, led by venture fund ​Whitecap Venture Partners​. Build Ventures—​Affinio’s seed investor—also participated, along with SocialStarts, BRaVe Ventures, and several angel investors. The financing, which takes the total amount raised by Affinio to $5.55 million, will be used to fund its ongoing global expansion and continued development of its proprietary social and content affinity technology. Joe Catalfamo, partner at Whitecap, will join Affinio’s board of directors.
- SweetIQ, a platform for local marketing automation, announced today it has raised $4.2 million in Series A funding, led by Plaza Ventures, with participation from Rothenberg Ventures, Desjardins-Innovatech, Otimo Retail Group, and Real Ventures (investor in the company’s seed round). The company will use the funds to fuel growth in the U.S. market, double the size of its team to accelerate its product roadmap, and launch new partnerships with major directories and offline data providers. Matthew Leibowitz, Partner at Plaza Ventures, will join SweetIQ’s Board of Directors.
- Lumo Bodytech, a makers of the Lumo Lift posture coach and Lumo Run smart shorts, announced today that is has raised $10 million in Series B funding to launch the first wearables biomechanics platform. The Lumo Bodytech Biomechanics Wearables platform is a combination of hardware, software, and data that will enable companies to integrate human body movements into the next generation of wearables technology. WuXi Healthcare Ventures led the most recent round of financing with previous investors Madrona Venture Group, Innovation Endeavors, AME Cloud Ventures, and Innovalue Capital Ltd. MAS Holdings, and SanDisk founder Eli Harari also join as strategic partners and new investors.
- Ultrahaptics, a Bristol, UK-based developer and licensor of mid-air haptic technologies,secured £10.1 million in Series A funding round. The round was led by Woodford Investment Management with participation from existing shareholder IP Group plc (LSE:IPO), employees and other investors. The company, which has raised £11.3m to date, intends to use the funds for continued development of its technology.
- SnapApp, a SaaS platform used by B2B marketers to create, publish, manage, and measure interactive content, has received $12 million in Series A funding from Providence Equity Partners. With this round of funding, SnapApp will make creating these kinds of engaging experiences more accessible than ever to B2B marketers – without the time and expense of custom development or agency outsourcing.
- Invoice2go has provided small businesses with one tool—a simple way to create an invoice and send it to clients. Now, with $15 million in new funding, the company is preparing to expand more deeply into the small business product territory. Today, Invoice2go is partnering with Stripe to allow invoice recipients to pay their bills through its platform. This round of funding, led by Ribbit Capital, brings Invoice2go’s total funding to $50 million.
- Luhi, Utah-based Weave, a provider of a unified communication platform for small and medium businesses, announced it has landed $15.5 million in a Series B round of funding led by Crosslink Capital. Also participating in the round are Pelion Ventures, Peak Capital, A Capital, Y Combinator, Initialized Capital and individual investors Geoff Ralston and Joe Montana. The company has now raised $22 million in total funding. As part of the latest round,David Silverman, partner at Crosslink Capital, and Blake Modersitzki, managing director at Pelion Capital, have joined the board.
- Bidgely closed a $16.6 million Series B round on Tuesday to expand its HomeBeat energy management platform. Constellation Technology Ventures, which is part of Exelon Corporation, led the round. European utility investors E.ON and RWE also joined in the round with existing investor Khosla Ventures. Bidgely is known for its disaggregation software offering customers appliance-level energy consumption data, which it collects by analyzing the unique energy-use patterns of individual devices.
- Iboss, a ten-year-old cybersecurity company, raised $35 million from Goldman Sachs in its first-ever fundraising round. The financing with Goldman’s Private Capital Investing Group, is the company’s first round of venture capital financing. The company plans to use the new financing to continue to develop technology, and rollout its direct-to-cloud platform, called Secure Web Gateway Platform.
- CureVac, a Tubingen, Germany-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering the field of mRNA-based technology, raised about $110 million (€100 million) in funding. The round, which added to the approximately $220 million raised since founding in 2000, was led by new backer Baillie Gifford, with participation from new investors Chartwave Limited, Coppel Family, Northview and Sigma Group and existing investors dievini Hopp BioTech, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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Image source: venturebeat.com
