Startups

Handwave lends a hand to retailers with its European alternative to Amazon’s palm payments

Paying with a handwave once sounded like science fiction, but contactless palm recognition service Amazon One has already been used more than 8 million times, according to the company. That’s Amazon, though, which explains why it has been deployed in Amazon stores and more than 500 Whole Foods Market stores in the U.S., but only […]

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Figma’s stock soars in its highly anticipated IPO, market cap instantly hits $45B

Figma began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday after a long delay. It soared so quickly that trading was halted for a short time due to market volatility. The price is currently bouncing between $101 and $112 with a mid-day market cap of $45 billion, Yahoo Finance reports. The company and existing

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Ramp hits $22.5B valuation just 45 days after reaching $16B

Eric Glyman, co-founder and CEO of expense management startup Ramp, announced on Wednesday a fresh $500 million raise at a whopping $22.5 billion post-money valuation. This new round, led by Iconiq Growth with participation from Founders Fund and D1 Capital Partners, comes just 45 days after Ramp’s last round. In June, Ramp raised $200 million

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How 2 UC Berkeley dropouts raised $28 million for their AI marketing automation startup

AI-powered marketing automation startup Conversion, founded five years ago by two UC Berkeley dropouts, has raised a $28 million Series A led by Abstract, with participation from True Ventures and HOF Capital. The company’s founding story sounds like it could have been an episode of the HBO show “Silicon Valley.” The story begins all the

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How 2 UC Berkeley dropouts raised $28M for their AI marketing automation startup

AI-powered marketing automation startup Conversion, founded five years ago by two UC Berkeley dropouts, has raised a $28 million Series A led by Abstract, with participation from True Ventures and HOF Capital. The company’s founding story sounds like it could have been an episode of the HBO show “Silicon Valley.” The story begins all the

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Golden Dome may not be the golden ticket Silicon Valley is hoping for

Golden Dome, the Trump administration’s gambit to build a next-generation missile defense system, has startups and longstanding defense contractors preparing to duke it out for a piece of a $151 billion multi-year contract.  The process to qualify for the $151 billion contract vehicle, essentially an umbrella program, is stacked against most startups – not because

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Why Dispo’s co-founder made the leap from social media to steelmaking

Daniel Liss, co-founder of the social network Dispo and the dating app Teaser AI, is convinced he’s onto the next big thing: steelmaking.  It all started, incongruously, with a few op-eds he wrote for TechCrunch about anti-trust enforcement in social media. The commentaries apparently caught the attention of some folks in Washington D.C., Liss told

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How a Y Combinator food delivery app used TikTok to soar in the App Store

The internet trend is simple: A friend or family member looks into the camera and tells viewers, in a slightly aggressive tone, that they are about to witness a presentation and that they had better be nice.  That’s what Kendall, the sister of Lucious McDaniel IV, did, and after she stepped aside, her brother pitched

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This industrial AI startup is winning over customers by saying it won’t get acquired

When industrial AI startup CVector meets with manufacturers, utility providers, and other prospective customers, the founders are often asked the same question: will you still be here in six months? A year?  It’s a fair concern in an environment where the biggest, richest tech companies are luring top talent with eye-watering salaries and increasingly targeting

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