imToken, which claims to be the world’s largest Ethereum wallet, will focus on expanding in Asia and the United States after raising a $10 million Series A from IDG Capital, it announced today. The capital will also be used to add new features, including support for Bitcoin, EOS and other blockchains. imToken is the latest addition to IDG Capital’s cryptocurrency investments, which include Coinbase and Circle. In a press statement, IDG Capital partner Young Guo said “imToken has developed its product into one of the top crypto asset wallets in the world with such a sound reputation. We believe it…
Author: geekfenceblogger
Fresh from agreeing its largest acquisition to date with a deal to buy European payment firm iZettle for $2.2 billion, PayPal is on the investment hunt once again after it backed India’s Pine Labs with a $125 million round. The financing jointly comes from PayPal and Temasek, the sovereign investment fund from the Singaporean government with over $200 billion in assets. Both will take undisclosed “minority shares” in Pine Labs. Sequoia made a seed investment in 2009 and it remains the startup’s largest-single investor, the VC firm said. The new deal takes New Delhi-based Pine Labs to $208 million raised…
While coding bootcamps may be in the middle of a shakeout, technology companies around the world are still going to be struggling to fill slots with people equipped with the skills to tackle real-world problems right from the get-go — and Dan Sommer hopes the answer is through universities. That’s the premise behind Trilogy Education, which today said it is raising another $50 million round after raising $30 million last year. This round is led by Highland Capital Partners, with participation from new investorsDan Sommer and Macquarie Group. The company works with around 35 universities to identify skills gaps that they can fill with programs…
New York-based chore wizard Hello Alfred is about expand its mission to make life easier, one to-do list at a time. The company commands a small army of thoroughly trained home helpers who take care of domestic tasks like sorting mail, taking out the trash and picking up groceries. Those helpers pop by on a weekly basis, and subscribers pay a monthly subscription fee to free their lives of little things that tend to add up to more than the sum of their parts. Now, with a new $40 million Series B round, Hello Alfred is set to scale. The…
Nokia has closed the books on its unlucky foray into digital health devices and services, and with it, a business is marking its return to the world of startups. Today, the Finnish telecoms giant announced that it has closed the sale of its digital health division, along with 200 employees, to Eric Carreel, the former chairman and co-founder of Withings. Now Carreel plans to relaunch the business once again under the Withings brand by the end of this year, with products focused on preventive health. Withings had formed the core of Nokia’s digital health business after it acquired the company, famous…
General Motors today announced a large investment into its self-driving unit, Cruise. Softbank’s Vision Fund will invest $2.25 billion in GM Cruise Holdings LLC and when the deal closes, GM will invest an additional $1.1 billion. “Our Cruise and GM teams together have made tremendous progress over the last two years,” said GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra . “Teaming up with SoftBank adds an additional strong partner as we pursue our vision of zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion.” “GM has made significant progress toward realizing the dream of completely automated driving to dramatically reduce fatalities, emissions and congestion,”…
Virtru, the security startup that came out of research at the NSA, announced a $37 million Series B financing round today led by Iconiq Capital. The company also announced the formation of Virtru Labs, an entity to be led by company co-founder and CTO Will Ackerly. The Lab will act as an innovation engine for the company, while trying to make Virtru’s underlying technology, Trusted Data Format (TDF), an industry standard for exchanging data securely in a similar manner that PDF developed into a standard way of exchanging documents. CEO and co-founder John Ackerly (and brother of Will) says this…
The UK has announced new stop-gap laws for drone operators restricting how high they can fly their craft — 400ft — and prohibiting the devices from being flown within 1km of an airport boundary. The measures will come into effect on July 30. The government says the new rules are intended to enhance safety, including the safety of passengers of aircraft — given a year-on-year increase in reports of drone incidents involving aircraft. It says there were 93 such incidents reported in the country last year, up from 71 the year before. And while the UK’s existing Drone Code (which was issued in…
Xiaomi’s very-iPhone-X-looking Mi 8 smartphone was the highlight of its Shenzhen press event today, but the company did also unveil a number of other notable products, including an updated version of its popular fitness band. The Mi Band has always offered a solid performance at around $30 — to the point that I’ve bought two of them for myself — and the third incarnation pushes things further. Mi Band 3 includes a longer 20 days of battery life per charge, 50-meter water resistance and a new band design that Xiaomi touts as being both more comfortable and more secure on your…
The Europas Unconference & Awards is back on 3 July in London and we’re excited to announce more speakers and panel sessions as the event takes shape. Crypto and Blockchain will be a major theme this year, and we’re bringing together many of the key players. TechCrunch is once again the key media partner, and if you attend The Europas you’ll be first in the queue to get offers for TC events and Disrupt Europe later in the year. You can also potentially get your ticket for free just by sharing your own ticket link with friends and followers. See…