Fundraising

Cloover wants to speed solar adoption by helping installers finance new sales

Fundraising /

Solar panels practically sold themselves in Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent electricity prices skyrocketing. Now, as prices have begun to fall, solar installers have found themselves spending more on marketing to attract customers. One proven way to win more business has been to offer financing. But small operations usually don’t have the resources […]

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Bolster, creator of the CheckPhish phishing tracker, raises $14M led by Microsoft’s M12

Fundraising /

A dodgy email containing a link that looks “legit” but is actually malicious remains one of the most dangerous, yet successful, tricks in a cybercriminal’s handbook. Now, an AI startup called Bolster that has built a novel approach to tackle that trick has raised $14 million in funding to expand its work, both across a

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Immigrant banking platform Majority secures $20M following 3x revenue growth

Fundraising /

It can be challenging to pick up and move to a new country, made even more challenging if you are not used to the style of banking in that particular country. The increase of immigrants to the United States — some 50 million total foreign-born people live in the US now, according to immigration think

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Praktika raises $35.5M to use AI avatars to make learning languages feel more natural

Fundraising /

Most apps that help you learn languages have features where you select options or swipe away wrong answer cards — you’re more or less interacting with a machine. Language-learning app Praktika is adopting a different approach: It lets you create personalized AI-powered avatars to replicate the experience of having a private tutor, leveraging inflections like

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VCs wanted FarmboxRx to become a meal kit, the company bootstrapped instead

Fundraising /

Some startups choose to bootstrap from the beginning while others find themselves forced into self funding by a lack of investor interest or a business model that doesn’t fit traditional VC. FarmboxRx decided to bootstrap because founder Ashley Tyrner didn’t like the advice she was getting from potential backers. Tyrner told TechCrunch’s Found podcast that

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Bill Gates-backed wind startup AirLoom is raising $12M, filings reveal

Fundraising /

It started with a drawing on a napkin. Now AirLoom Energy is raising $12.7 million in fresh funding, TechCrunch has learned. The funding came from 21 investors, according to a regulatory filing that does not list the names of the backers. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Wyoming-based startup

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Data-labeling startup Scale AI raises $1B as valuation doubles to $13.8B

Fundraising /

Scale AI, which provides data-labeling services to companies that want to train machine learning models, has raised a $1 billion Series F round from a slew of big-name institutional and corporate investors that include Amazon and Meta. The fundraise is a mix of primary and secondary funding, and is the latest in a slew of

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Vitesse, a payments and treasury management platform for insurers, raises $93M to fuel US expansion

Fundraising /

U.K. fintech Vitesse has closed a $93 million Series C round of funding led by investment giant KKR. KKR said it’s making the investment through its Next Generation Technology Growth Fund III, a $3 billion fund it closed last year. Founded out of London in 2013, Vitesse is the handiwork of Paul Townsend and Phil

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Sagetap looks to bring enterprise software sales into the 21st century

Fundraising /

When the founders of Sagetap, Sahil Khanna and Kevin Hughes, started working at early-stage enterprise software startups, they were surprised to find that the companies they worked at were trying to sell their innovative tech through old-school methods like repeated cold emails and calls. Khanna, a former product marketer, and Hughes, a former sales manager,

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