Airplane on Thursday launched runbooks, a developer tool for automating internal workflows, in private beta and on Product Hunt. Runbooks enables engineers to compose tasks and built-in integrations, like SQL, REST APIs and Slack, into workflows that run JavaScript code, can feed that into a SQL database or combine data from Stripe and be accessible…
Petra emerged from stealth this week, announcing a $30 million Series A. The round, led by DCVC, brings the robotics company’s funding up to $33 million, with additional participation from ACME Capital Congruent Ventures, 8VC, Real Ventures, Elementum Ventures and Mac Venture Capital. “We’ve invented a completely new way to excavate rock and this will…
The Kenyan fintech Kwara was launched in 2019 to help credit unions (savings and credit cooperatives societies, SACCOs) in the East African country shift to digital platforms by providing them with its proprietary Back-end-as-a-service (BaaS) software. The startup’s trajectory has been steep, as its clientele shot up from two to 50 in just over two…
Niantic announced a Pokémon GO feature today that will incentivize users to conduct more AR scans of landmarks in their neighborhood. This user-generated data will help Niantic build its “real-world metaverse,” which will be powered largely by Lightship, its free AR Development Kit (ARDK). In Pokémon GO, users visit PokéStops, which represent real-world places —…
At Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June, the company teased its plans to incorporate support for home, office, and hotel keys into Apple Wallet, as well as state driver’s licenses. Today, Apple is announcing Hyatt will become the first hotel partner to support the new technology. The hotel chain will roll out support for room…
Minly, a MENA-based media and entertainment startup, announced today that it has acquired Oulo, a Dubai-based celebrity shoutout platform, for an undisclosed fee. The acquisition is coming six months after Minly raised a $3.6 million seed round and off the back of an impressive year of growth that saw the platform — which connects fans…
The world’s largest card company just doubled down on its bid to capture the crypto market. Visa announced today that it has launched a crypto advisory practice for its clients and partners under its Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA) arm. The news comes just a few months after Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, declared…
Amazon’s cloud arm, AWS, announced a new ‘top secret’ region this week, designed specifically for the U.S. government. It is Amazon’s second such region. The company now boasts ‘top secret’ regions on the east and west coasts of the U.S. “AWS Top Secret-West is accredited to operate workloads at the Top Secret U.S. security classification…
Sometimes I wonder if the analysts on Wall Street, who I’m sure are smart people, understand how the technology industry works. There is this persistent notion among investors that stocks that did well during the pandemic like Zoom, DocuSign and Okta will suddenly fade from our minds as soon as the pandemic subsides (if that…
Felix Capital, the London VC firm that has built a portfolio emphasizing investments in startups in the ecosystem that supports the creative class, is bringing on two more partners, Julien Codorniou and Susan Lin, as it continues to expand into a wider range of categories. Codorniou had been a longtime executive at Meta (formerly Facebook),…
