Upgrade acquires travel-focused BNPL startup Uplift for a song
Upgrade, a provider of personal credit lines and other consumer financial products, today announced that it’s agreed to acquire Uplift, the buy now, pay later (BNPL) vendor, for $100 million in cash and stock. It’s likely not the exit Uplift was hoping for — and a sign of serious consolidation
Read morePatently messy: How a $6B deal may spur more IP lawsuits
A megabucks enterprise acquisition that closed six months ago could lead to thousands of patents landing on the open market. Last August, Canadian enterprise technology giant OpenText announced plans to acquire U.K.-based IT software vendor and consultancy Micro Focus for a chunky $6 billion, a deal that closed on January
Read moreReddit is testing its own verification mark and new accessibility features
After Twitter’s (now X) rollout of a new paid plan offering verification, other social media companies like Meta, LinkedIn, and Tumblr have tried to implement their own badges. Reddit is now joining the bandwagon by testing a new “official” badge. The company said it is testing these labels with a
Read moreTerragon’s $9M raise gives credence to the market maturity in Africa’s cloud and martech space
As one of the well-known data and cloud martech companies in Africa, Terragon, via several products, gives its clients (primarily telecommunications and financial services companies) data on the continent’s growing consumer markets. Adrenaline, its main product, is a telco-data monetization solution that lets telcos diversify their income and marketers access
Read moreBloom Money raises £1M to digitize finance for ethnic communities
Bloom Money, a U.K.-based fintech, has raised £1 million to digitize an informal financial management system employed by ethnic communities across the world. Often referred to as “rotating savings and credit association” (ROSCA), the model varies in the details around the world, but usually, it involves an informal gathering of
Read moreTwitter rebrands its Android app with the new X logo
Twitter updated its Android app today by replacing the iconic bird logo with its new X logo — the latest step in its ongoing rebranding efforts. The company also updated its app listing on the Google Play Store to reflect the new branding with screenshots of the app with black
Read moreKenya’s FarmWorks raises $4M pre-Series A funding
FarmWorks, a Kenyan agtech that provides farmers with access to farm inputs, and market for their produce, has raised $4.1 million in a pre-Series A round led by Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund, an existing investor. Livelihood Impact Fund, Vested World, a number of family offices, and angel investors also participated
Read moreEcosia adds a train travel search tool powered by Omio
Looking to ride the tracks of increasing demand for longer distance train travel that’s being fuelled by climate-concerned consumers seeking to shrink the environmental impact of their trips, tree-planting search engine Ecosia and multimodal travel booking platform Omio have partnered to launch what they’re billing as a “tree-planting rail travel
Read moreAutogenAI, a generative AI tool for writing bids and pitches, secures $22.3M
Business is regularly won and lost on the strength of a proposal. Now, a startup out of London called AutogenAI has built a tool based on generative AI that it claims can help businesses write stronger pitches to improve that strike rate, and it has won some money of its
Read moreFacebook surpasses 3 billion monthly active users
Facebook has more than 3 billion monthly active users, according to Meta’s latest quarterly report. That’s quite the staggering number. Even though Facebook has declined in popularity among younger people, the platform is far from dead. Across Meta’s entire family of apps — which includes WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and now
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