Browsing Category: Startups

  • Spindrift, maker of fizzy drinks, has raised $29.8 million

    Spindrift, maker of fizzy soda and sparkling water, has raised $29.8 million in a funding round, per an SEC filing. The Charlestown, Mass. company was founded by Bill Creelman and has raised $70 million in known venture capital funding to date, per Crunchbase data. The company did not immediately respond to request for comment.  Previous …

    March 6, 2020 | by Raheel
  • Mobile banking app Empower Finance just closed a $20 million Series A round

    Another afternoon, another round of funding for a mobile banking app. This time, it’s Empower Finance, a San Francisco-based company that’s headed up by former Sequoia Capital partner Warren Hogarth and which just closed on $20 million in Series A funding from Icon Ventures and Defy Ventures. David Velez, who is the founder and CEO …

    March 6, 2020 | by Raheel
  • Pex buys Dubset to build YouTube ContentID for TikTok & more

    Social networks are in for a rude copyright awakening. A new European Union law called Article 17 essentially eradicates safe harbor and requires that they’ve made their “best effort” to get licenses from rights holders for all content on their platform. If a user uploads a video with a popular song in the background, tech …

    March 5, 2020 | by Raheel
  • Nvidia acquires data storage and management platform SwiftStack

    Nvidia today announced that it has acquired SwiftStack, a software-centric data storage and management platform that supports public cloud, on-premises and edge deployments. The company’s recent launches focused on improving its support for AI, high-performance computing and accelerated computing workloads, which is surely what Nvidia is most interested in here. “Building AI supercomputers is exciting …

    March 5, 2020 | by Raheel
  • Arweave’s permaweb stops coronavirus censorship, raises $8M

    The Chinese government has been removing criticism of its coronavirus response from apps like Weibo, the local equivalent of Twitter. But before it can, that content is being saved, decentralized and highlighted thanks to Arweave’s permaweb. Today it’s announcing another $8.3 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and Coinbase Ventures. Arweave has …

    March 5, 2020 | by Raheel
  • Ada Health built an AI-driven startup by moving slowly and not breaking things

    When Ada Health was founded nine years ago, hardly anyone was talking about combining artificial intelligence and physician care — outside of a handful of futurists. But the chatbot boom gave way to a powerful combination of AI-augmented health care which others, like Babylon Health in 2013 and KRY in 2015, also capitalized on. The …

    March 5, 2020 | by Raheel
  • YC-backed Turing uses AI to help speed up the formulation of new consumer packaged goods

    One of the more interesting and useful applications of artificial intelligence technology has been in the world of biotechnology and medicine, where now more than 220 startups (not to mention universities and bigger pharma companies) are using AI to accelerate drug discovery by using it to play out the many permutations resulting from drug and …

    March 5, 2020 | by Raheel
  • Will ‘New Retail’ help D2C brands succeed offline?

    Ashwin Ramasamy Contributor Share on Twitter Ashwin Ramasamy is the co-founder of PipeCandy, an online merchant graph company that discovers and analyzes business and consumer perception metrics about D2C brands and e-commerce companies. More posts by this contributor D2C companies deliver customer delight and simplicity The different playbooks of D2C brands In my day job …

    March 5, 2020 | by Raheel
  • Cobalt.io pentesting service brings wizard-like setup to platform

    Cobalt.io wants to change the way companies purchase and pay for pentesting services, which test an application for vulnerabilities before it goes live. Today, the company announced a number of enhancements to the platform. Jacob Hansen, CEO and co-founder at Cobalt, says the pentesting business typically involves an expensive and time-consuming exercise, which culminates with …

    March 5, 2020 | by Raheel