BoxGroup closes on $425M for two funds to back early-stage startups
Each fund is $212.5 million and will invest in pre-seed, seed and Series A companies across consumer enterprise, healthcare, financial, biotech and climate. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read MoreHashtag Trending Dec.14- White House wades in open source AI debate; Cloudflare’s 2023 web report; Google Cloud partners with Mistral AI
White House dives into open source AI debate, bots boom and Google comes back to the top spot in Cloudflare’s 2023 web report, Google Cloud partners with Mistral AI on generative language models and Google admits that its demonstration of Gemini was what it “could” be like. All that, and
Read MoreInstagram introduces gen-AI powered background editing tool
Instagram introduced its generative AI-powered background editing tool to U.S.-based users Wednesday. Meta’s lead for generative AI Ahmad Al-Dahle posted on Threads saying that the tool will let users change the background to their images through prompts for Stories. When users will tap on the background editor icon on an
Read MoreQogita — a wholesale marketplace for retailers — raises $86M Series B to compete with Ankorstore in Europe
Qogita, a two-sided e-commerce wholesale marketplace aimed at retailers largely in the health and beauty sectors, has raised €80 million ($86 million) in a Series B round led by London’s Dawn Capital. The company plans to use the cash to expand into more categories. Also participating were previous investors Accel,
Read MoreIndia’s Udaan scores $340 million in new funding
The investment arm of the UK retail bank M&G has led a funding of $340 million into Udaan, a business-to-business e-commerce startup, in one of the largest financing rounds secured by an Indian startup in 2023. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, which helps merchants in smaller Indian cities and towns secure inventories
Read MoreYoung Black Women Empowerment with Digital Skills
Momentum Metropolitan Foundation, with Deviare, empowers 10 young black women through a transformative digital skills initiative. Focused on critical technological domains, particularly cybersecurity, the program aims to prepare participants for success in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. Exclusively targeting young black females, the initiative promotes gender diversity and empowerment. The
Read MoreJumia discontinues food delivery across seven markets, shifts focus to expanding physical goods business
Pan-African e-commerce platform Jumia has disclosed its intention to discontinue its food delivery service, Jumia Food. The company said its food delivery business is not aligned with the current operational landscape and prevailing macroeconomic conditions in the seven markets, including Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Ivory Coast. As
Read MoreSocial commerce platform Maka raises $2.65M to simplify buying fashion and beauty products in Africa
Maka, an African fashion and beauty e-commerce platform, has raised a $2.65 million pre-seed round led by Pan-African venture capital firms 4DX Ventures and Janngo Capital. Other investors include Palm Drive Capital, angel investor Jonathan Shipman, founder of EVP and Twitch founding member, and executives from delivery platform Wolt. In
Read MorePrivacy complaint takes aim at Musk’s X over EU ads targeted on sensitive data
Elon Musk’s X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, is facing a new privacy complaint in Europe related to its ad targeting tools. The complaint, which is being lodged with the Dutch data protection authority by privacy rights not-for-profit noyb, accuses X of failing to enforce its own its
Read MoreLineNext secures $140M funding for its web3 platform
LineNext, a web3 unit of the Japanese messaging app Line, raised $140 million in its funding led by Crescendo Equity Partners, a Peter Thiel-backed private equity firm in South Korea, to expand its web3 platform. The new funding comes nearly a year after LineNext released its browser-only beta service —
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