EU retail giant Schwarz Group snags security startup XM Cyber for $700 million

Schwarz Group, an EU-based retail company, announced today that it has acquired Israeli security startup XM Cyber for $700 million. It may seem like a strange partnership, as Schwarz is best known as the owners of the Lidl and Kaufland supermarkets, but the company believes that extending into security will ultimately help benefit its retail […]

AutoCloud raises $4M to commercialize its OSS cloud visualization service

AutoCloud announced a $4 million seed round this morning. The cloud-focused startup’s investment was led by Animo Ventures, with participating checks from Uncorrelated Ventures, B Capital Group and Moxxie Ventures. AutoCloud is the commercial side of the CloudGraph open source project. The hybrid open source (OSS) and commercial combination is an increasingly popular startup method […]

Equity Monday: Paytm’s rocky debut gets rockier

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Happy Monday everyone, and welcome to a holiday week here in the United States. Yes, we here in the good ol’ States will be off the second half of this week. TechCrunch won’t […]

Ireland’s Fonoa raises $20.5M to help digital-first businesses stay tax compliant as they scale globally

There are myriad tax pain points that come from selling goods, content or services globally.  As the world has seen a surge in cross-border transactions, digital-first businesses face the challenge of understanding and managing global tax and compliance matters as they grow and scale internationally. Enter Dublin, Ireland-based Fonoa. Founded by three ex-Uber alumni — […]

Render secures $20M Series A to scale its DevOps cloud platform

DevOps cloud platform Render, which won our Disrupt SF 2019 Startup Battlefield, announced today that it closed a $20 million Series A funding round led by Addition alongside existing investors General Catalyst and South Park Commons. Addition first made a small investment in Render in February 2020 when the company was not looking to raise […]

As crypto unicorns multiply, the US stands out as ground zero for blockchain winners

The market for crypto-focused investing is growing rapidly. News that Paradigm put together a $2.5 billion fund the other day is a reminder of the scale of funds now available to startups looking to build on the blockchain. Andreessen Horowitz has a mega-fund in the market as well, while Coinbase Ventures is setting a blistering […]