Author: TechBrunch
Coaching platform Leland raises $12M in Series A funding led by Forerunner Ventures with participation from GSV Ventures to achieve goals from college admissions to entrance exam success to product management excellence We have grown a platform aimed at matching coaches and aspirants. The company aims to build better tools for coaches to create content, manage schedules, and build enterprise services. The startup was founded in 2021 by John Koelliker, a former product manager for marketplaces like Uber and LinkedIn. The company has raised $17.1 million in funding to date from investors including Goodwater, FJ Labs, Next Play Ventures, and…
Karl Aignema, an early pioneer in the self-driving car industry who recently stepped down as president and CEO of Hyundai-backed Motional, is returning to the AV and robotics field. Vecna Robotics, a Massachusetts-based startup that uses robots to handle materials in warehouses, has hired Ignema as CEO. The robotics startup, which develops autonomous pallet movers such as forklifts and software to help businesses manage their operations, announced Wednesday that it has raised an additional $14.5 million in funding from existing investors. . The company said the funding will be used to accelerate automation technology and improve products for the automotive,…
Prosus aims to take fintech company PayU public in 2025 as Dutch investors look to shift more focus to India. The company on Wednesday said the market is a mainstay of its investment business, following the impressive listing of food delivery and quick-commerce company Swiggy for a $2 billion gain. PayU, which is wholly owned by Prosus, was originally scheduled to go public by this year at a valuation of $5 billion to $7 billion. “Although we are already in the second half of 2024, we are hopeful that this will be a 2025 event,” Prosus Chief Investment Officer Ervin…
DeepL has made a name for itself with its online text translations, which it claims are more nuanced and accurate than services like Google. The pitch catapulted the German startup to a $2 billion valuation and more than 100,000 paying customers. Now, as expectations for AI services continue to rise, DeepL is adding another mode to its platform: audio. DeepL Voice allows users to hear someone speaking in one language and have it automatically translated into another language in real time. Currently, the languages that DeepL can “listen” to are English, German, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Dutch, French, Turkish, Polish, Portuguese,…
Swedish buy now, pay later (BNPL) startup Klarna is on its way to becoming a public company. The fintech company announced Wednesday that it has confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The announcement comes after a long period of time, amid a dearth of initial public offerings (IPOs) in the technology sector. Klarna's position in Europe only adds further enthusiasm to today's news. Founded in 2005, Klarna is one of several companies in the BNPL space that allows customers to purchase goods with the promise of interest-free credit. Founded in the US…
Prelude is a relatively new French startup focused on SMS authentication. On Wednesday, it announced new funding from Singular and Seedcamp. The founders met while working at Zenly, a popular location-sharing app with tens of millions of users that was acquired by Snap (and later shut down). You might not think much about these verification codes, but the Zenly team has thought very hard about this topic. It turns out that implementing SMS verification codes that work reliably can be quite tedious. “Originally, when I started looking at this problem at Zenly, there was only one provider. To be honest,…
Netherlands-based Just Eat Takeaway announced today that it will sell Grubhub to Wonder in a deal worth $650 million. The company said it expects the transaction to close by the first quarter of 2025. “The sale of Grubhub to Wonder increases Just Eat Takeaway.com's cash generation capabilities and accelerates our growth. This deal provides a suitable home for Grubhub and its employees. Grubhub I'd like to thank everyone at Grubhub for their contributions to both the company and the broader Just Eat Takeaway.com business,'' Just Eat Takeaway founder Jitse Groen said in a statement. Just Eat Takeaway acquired Grubhub in…
YouTube last year enabled some creators in the US to create AI-generated songs using vocals from artists such as Charlie Puth, Charli XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Sia, T-Pain and Troye Sivan via prompts. Added the ability to create. The company is currently adding the ability for selected creators to remix tracks by describing how they would like to change the style of the song. The video streaming platform, through its label partners, makes select songs available to creators for new remix experiments. If the creator is a member of the test group, they can select the song, select the…
Swiggy shares rose 7% to Rs 440 on Wednesday as the food delivery and quick commerce startup completed India's second-largest IPO this year. It was a high-profile debut that drew direct comparisons to Indian internet stocks, which analysts had long considered a benchmark. : Zomato. The 10-year-old Bengaluru-headquartered company's listing is a milestone for India's startup ecosystem, with several companies eyeing similarly large initial public offerings in the next 24 months. It will also be a major liquidity event for Swiggy's backers, including Prosus, SoftBank and Accel, whose paper returns have already reached $2 billion. Approximately 5,000 employees could have…
Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, announced it will begin experimenting with ads on its platform starting this week. The ads will first appear in the U.S. in the form of “sponsored follow-up questions.” (Example: “How can I use LinkedIn to enhance my job search?”) Paid media is placed on the answer side and labeled as sponsored. Brand and agency partners participating in Perplexity's advertising program include Indeed, Whole Foods, Universal McCann, and PMG. One of Perplexity's experimental ad formats. Image credit: Perplexity “Advertising programs like these help us generate revenue that we share with our publisher partners,” Perplexity wrote in…