Americans and other global citizens are increasingly self-employed, thanks to great software, the need for flexibility and because skilled services especially can pay fairly well, among other reasons. In fact, exactly one year ago, the Freelancers Union and Upwork, a digital platform for freelancers, released a report estimating that 35% of the U.S. workforce had […]
As machine learning has grown, one of the major bottlenecks remains labeling things so the machine learning application understands the data it’s working with. Datasaur, a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2020 batch, announced a $3.9 million investment today to help solve that problem with a platform designed for machine learning labeling teams. The […]
It’s been a big year for online learning companies — and it sounds like Thinkific is no exception. The Vancouver-based startup is announcing that it has raised $22 million in new funding. Thinkific is different from businesses such as MasterClass (which raised $100 million this year) and Skillshare (which raised $66 million) because it doesn’t […]
Connectivity is vital to a future managed and shaped by smart hardware, and Chinese startup Showmac Tech is proposing eSIMs as the infrastructure solution for seamless and stable communication between devices and the service providers behind. Xiaomi accepted the proposition and doled out an investment for the startup’s angel round in 2017. Now Showmac has […]
Bangalore-based Rephrase.ai has an ambitious vision for reshaping how movies and videos are made. CEO Ashray Malhotra laid it out for me yesterday, saying that his co-founder Nisheeth Lahoti “came up with this concept — he wants to build an engine that can take any script as input and create a professional movie,” no filming […]
Climate change is on everyone’s minds these days, what with the outer Bay Area on fire, orange skies above San Francisco, and a hurricane season that is bearing down on the East Coast with alacrity (and that’s just the United States in the past two weeks). A major — and growing — source of those […]
Whitebox, a startup that manages e-commerce logistics and fulfillment for a variety of brands, has raised $18 million in Series B funding. While discussing the new funding, CEO Marcus Startzel repeated a point he made after Whitebox raised its $5 million Series A last year — that the startup is differentiated by combining tools for […]
Sometimes raising venture capital can be as simple as talking to your existing investor and having them wire over another check. When we last caught up with Petal in January 2019, the startup was hot off its $30 million Series B round and was accelerating its mission to take on the world of credit cards. […]
The pitch for Berlin-based Endel is pretty straightforward, according to its co-founder and CEO Oleg Stavitsky. “The way I usually describe Endel is: This is a technology that is built to help you focus, relax and sleep,” Stavitsky told me. “Of course, the way we do that is a little more complicated than that.” The […]
Servify, a Mumbai-headquartered startup that operates a device lifecycle management platform and works deeply with brands, including Apple and Samsung, in a number of geographies, has raised $23 million in a new financing round. The Series C financing round for the five-year-old startup was led by existing investor Iron Pillar; other existing investors, including Blume […]