VCs will get liquidity in 2024 from the secondary market, not IPOs

Abu Dhabi’s ADIA is eyeing investment in India’s Pocket FM. Apple acquires an AI startup for manufacturing oversight. Zscaler enhances security tools with Avalor's AI tech. Microbiome startups face scrutiny over practices. Venture capitalists turn to secondary markets for liquidity in 2024 as IPOs slow down. Stay updated with us!

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Zscaler buys Avalor to bring more AI into its security tools

Zscaler, a cloud security company with headquarters in San Jose, California, has acquired cybersecurity startup Avalor 26 months after its founding, reportedly for $310 million in cash and equity.

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Telegram raises $330M fresh capital through bond sales

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov said on his channel yesterday that the company secured $330 million in investment through bond sales last week.

Durov said that the offering was oversubscribed with favorable terms to the company.

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Playtron: the startup hoping to Steam Deck-ify the world

The former CEO of Cyanogen has a plan for a platform-agnostic gaming operating system.

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Pelikan Mobility is building a software-enabled commercial EV leasing solution

Chances are you may have noticed that many commercial vehicles are now electric vehicles — think about delivery vans, telecom minivans, utility maintenance trucks, etc. But there are still many diesel-powered commercial vehicles because it’s simply too expensive and too complicated to switch to an all electric vehicle fleet overnight.

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World Fund closes first €300M climate tech fund, seeking to follow on and back hardware

After a three-year fund-raise, World Fund has finally closed a €300 million first fund, €50 million short of it’s target in 2021, but still a considerable number given a background of war and economic uncertainty. The VC originally emerged from the founders of the Ecosia independent search engine, where search enquiries funded the planting of trees.

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Liquid Death is just one of many VC-backed beverage startups ready to disrupt Coke and Pepsi

Venture-backed beverage startups continue to pop

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Investors’ pledge to fight spyware undercut by past investments in US malware maker

Cyber investors announced commitments to fighting spyware, but at least one firm previously invested in an exploit maker

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GoStudent, the online learning platform, says it’s now profitable

GoStudent — the online tutoring marketplace last valued at $3.2 billion — has carved out a position for itself as one of the biggest and more popular startups to come out of Vienna, Austria, with 11 million families and 23,000 tutors on the platform. Now it’s adding another distinction to the list: it is profitable. The company’s CEO Felix Ohswald told TechCrunch that the company is now in the black across its global footprint.

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Fireworks.ai open source API puts generative AI in reach of any developer

Just about everyone is trying to get a piece of the generative AI action these days. While the majority of the focus remains on the model vendors like OpenAI, Anthropic and Cohere, or the bigger companies like Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon, there are in fact, a lot of startups trying to attack the generative AI problem in a variety of ways.

Fireworks.ai is one such startup. While lacking the brand name recognition of some of these other players, it boasts the largest open source model API with over 12,000 users, per the company. That kind of open source traction tends to attract investor attention, and the company has raised $25 million so far.

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Musical toy startup Playtime Engineering wants to simplify electronic music making for kids

Troy Sheets began making music at 15 years old in his home studio with a keyboard synthesizer, drum machine, and 4-track cassette recorder—an impressive setup for a high school sophomore. However, it’s rare for young, up-and-coming musicians to have access to advanced equipment (other than a free app on their phone). And most adolescents can’t afford it. Plus, for someone starting out, a synthesizer can be confusing to use.

That’s why Sheets decided to develop the $199 Blipbox, an affordable kid-friendly synthesizer designed for ages three and up.

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Furnished rental startup Blueground defies proptech woes with $560M in revenue, a new $45M raise

Alex Chatzieleftheriou founded Blueground in 2013 after being frustrated with the dearth of short-term furnished apartments in Europe. He had been traveling as a consultant for McKinsey, living almost exclusively in hotel rooms for months.

“One time the company had to pay up to €15,000 for a hotel room in Amsterdam. And there wasn’t enough space nor a kitchen to cook,” he said. “I tried renting apartments for a month or more. But it was difficult, and landlords weren’t open to buying furniture. So I had created a business that would solve my problem.” 

Some years later, at the height of the pandemic, business was booming for his startup’s category – short-term, furnished apartment rental companies – as people roamed the world while working from home.

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Buy now, pay later on a Porsche? Zaver now has $30M to make it a reality

Zaver, a Swedish B2C buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) provider in Europe, when it raised a $5 million funding round in 2021. The company has now closed a $10 million extension to its Series A funding round, bringing its total Series A to $20 million. Total investment to date stands at $30 million.

In Europe, Zaver competes on BNPL with Klarna, PayPal, and incumbents such as Santander and BNP Paribas.

However, Zaver’s schtick is it claims it can assess the risk on BNPL cart sizes of up to €200,000 in real time due to its risk assessment algorithms. Other BNPL providers rarely fund anything beyond €3,000, at least in Europe.

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ChowNow snaps up YC-backed POS platform Cuboh and is laying off staff

ChowNow, the online ordering platform and marketing service for local restaurants, acquired Cuboh, a Y Combinator-backed point-of-sale (POS) platform that consolidates all orders from delivery apps into one place.

This marks ChowNow’s first acquisition, which will help strengthen its POS integration solution and help restaurants tackle orders across multiple services.

However, as part of the acquisition, ChowNow laid off around 30 employees, bringing the total workforce to 300. Meanwhile, Cuboh’s entire 30-person team — including marketing, sales, product and engineering — is transitioning to ChowNow.

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Deal Dive: Iron Sheepdog is fixing short-haul trucking from the bottom up

Will Lawrence, the co-founder and CTO of Iron Sheepdog, likes to say that sometimes building something simple is actually really hard. Building simple-to-use technology for the short-haul trucking industry is Iron Sheepdog’s goal. That approach is also why the company thinks it has been able to see a level of adoption from the industry its competitors haven’t.

The Williamsburg, Virginia-based company’s software looks to make the short-haul trucking space, which largely involves outsourcing short-haul jobs to truckers booked through brokers, more seamless and efficient. Companies can track their contracted trucks through Iron Sheepdog, giving them more transparency into where trucks are, how long a job takes and how much to pay. The truckers themselves get an easy-to-use app that helps them accept jobs and get paid online.

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