Alibaba has always aspired to bring its e-commerce service to customers outside China. Its strategy is multi-thronged. The giant’s house-developed AliExpress has found success in Russia in recent years. In 2016, it bought Lazada, which came out of the Rocket Internet empire, and has helped the Southeast Asia-focused marketplace compete. Lazada grew 80% to hit…
Two years ago, a group of entrepreneurs in Pakistan began surveying the market to understand why financial services weren’t reaching the majority of merchants in the world’s fifth most populous nation. On Friday, Tiger Global said it is backing their startup, CreditBook, to help address those challenges. This is the New York-headquartered firm’s first investment…
Alphabet’s smart city project is winding down and Google will take over its products. Sidewalk Labs CEO Dan Doctoroff announced the news in a letter, in which he noted he is stepping down for health-related reasons. A spokesperson confirmed to Engadget that Sidewalk Labs products will be folded into Google, though Alphabet plans to spin…
Just two and a half months after emerging from stealth, weight care management startup Found announced today that it has raised $100 million in a Series B funding round that values the company at $600 million. WestCap — a growth equity firm founded by former Blackstone and Airbnb executive Laurence Tosi — led the investment,…
Two years into a worldwide pandemic, outfits around the globe are wrestling with how to resume their in-person operations safely. Consider that Apple just scrapped its office-return deadline, while Google, which plans to require its workforce to return to its offices three times a week at some point next year, made it clear to employees…
After months of NFT mania and Facebook’s recent name change to Meta, it’s fair to say that “metaverse” chatter has reached a fever pitch. And while crypto investors are buying up avatars and digital swaths of land in hopes that a digital universe will spring up around these projects, it’s unclear which projects — if…
Tim Sylvester Contributor The challenges facing the U.S. transportation system are plentiful and worsen each year. As demand on our nation’s roadways increases, so do safety, efficiency and sustainability issues. The historic $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, one of the largest and wide-reaching infrastructure packages in decades, is a massive down payment on…
Israeli SaaS security startup Atmosec today announced having raised a $6 million seed round led by Israeli VC firm Glilot Capital Partners and American fund Battery Ventures. Its team had previously participated in Intel Ignite’s fourth Tel Aviv startup acceleration cohort. Now out of stealth mode, Atmosec wants to make it more secure for companies…
Kenyan startup Wowzi has secured new funding to expand the reach of its platform, which turns social media users into brand influencers, to West and Southern Africa — as it taps the increasing usage of social sites across the continent driven by the proliferation of smartphones and a deepening internet penetration. Wowzi, which connects social…
Norwest Venture Partners, the now 60-year-old venture and growth equity firm backed entirely by the banking giant Wells Fargo, today rolled out its sixteenth fund, a $3 billion vehicle and its biggest to date. It’s easy to shrug off the development, but this new pool brings the assets Norwest has raised altogether from Wells across…
