Turkey’s Spyke raises $55M in a seed round to bring a social twist to casual mobile games

Istanbul has become a city to watch when it comes to casual gaming startups, boosted by the likes of Peak (acquired by Zynga for $1.8 billion) and Dream (valued at $1 billion in a funding round last year). Now, a new startup is announcing a major round of funding to make its own mark on […]

Tado, the German smart home energy startup, plans to go public via a SPAC at a €450M valuation

Tado, the German smart home startup that specializes in thermostats and more recently moved into flexible “time of use” energy tariffs based on loadshifting technology, is today announcing the next step in its life as a business. It’s going public by way of a SPAC deal. GFJ ESG Acquisition, a German SPAC entity focused specifically […]

Yahaha Studios, a platform for building no-code, immersive games, raised $50M in 3 rounds ahead of its launch this year

The success of Roblox and other user-created gaming experiences like Overwolf have democratized the concept of making games and have taken it into the mainstream. Now, a startup founded by veterans from Unity, Microsoft and EA that is building a new platform for creators to build immersive games, and related communities around like-minded people, is […]

Global Processing Services adds $100M to its coffers to grow its embedded finance and API payments platform

Embedded finance continues to be the engine driving the growth of fintech, with one group of companies building core banking, payments and other financial technology, and a much bigger group tapping that technology through APIs to build customer-facing businesses. Today, one of the bigger players on the core technology side — Global Processing Services — […]

Turing books $87M at a $1.1B valuation to help source, hire and manage engineers remotely

When it comes to engineering talent in the world of tech, demand continues to outpace supply, a predicament so acute that by 2030, that disparity will balloon to 85 million positions being unfilled, according to research from Korn Ferry. Today, a startup that believes it can stem that tide with a more inclusive, global approach […]

India’s Cars24, a used-vehicle sales platform, raises $400M, now at a $3.3B valuation, to double down on growth

With supply chains in the automotive industry continuing to be disrupted due to Covid-19, demand has surged in the used-car market. Today, one of the startups that’s seeing a lot of growth as a result of that is announcing a big round of funding to further tap the opportunity. Cars24, a startup out of India […]

Gopuff, the instant grocery startup, is raising $1.5B in a convertible note at up to a $40B valuation, ahead of going public as soon as mid-2022

Instant grocery — where urban-dwelling consumers buy food and other essentials and can get them delivered in 15 minutes or less — continues to be a big business, and one of the juggernauts in the space is now raising a big round of funding to meet that opportunity: Gopuff is in the process of raising […]

Voly raises $13M led by Sequoia to deliver instant groceries in Australia

The trend that is instant grocery delivery — online ordering of essentials with your purchases being delivered to you in under an hour — continues to proliferate across multiple markets, and in the latest development, Sequoia is leading an investment in one out of Australia. Voly, a five-month-old Sydney-based startup that offers thousands of SKUs […]

AvantStay, a platform for kitting out — and then renting out — high-end vacation rental homes, raises $160M

Another travel startup that found itself scrambling to pivot as the COVID-19 pandemic took off is now announcing a huge round of funding after finding its feet and proving that it can grow, even under adverse circumstances. AvantStay — which has built a platform where it decorates and then lists properties owned by others for […]

Flink, the Berlin-based instant grocery startup, is now valued at $2.85B after raising $750M in a round led by DoorDash

Instant grocery delivery continues to be a very frothy market, but today comes news of a major funding round for one player in it that investors believe will still be standing after the hype has died down. Flink, the Berlin-based startup that sells food and other essentials at supermarket prices and aims to deliver them […]