At first blush, the $12 billion Intuit-Mailchimp deal might not make a heck of a lot of sense. But people tend to pigeonhole companies, and in this case they might see Intuit as purely a financial software company and Mailchimp as an email marketing firm and nothing more. If that’s as far as your perspective […]
SpotOn raises $300M at a $3.15B valuation and acquires Appetize
Last year at this time, SpotOn was on the brink of announcing a $60 million Series C funding round at a $625 million valuation. Fast forward to almost exactly one year later, and a lot has changed for the payments and software startup. Today, SpotOn said it has closed on $300 million in Series E […]
Microsoft acquires TakeLessons, an online and in-person tutoring platform, to ramp up its edtech play
Microsoft said in January this year that Teams, its online collaboration platform, was being used by over 100 million students — boosted in no small part by the Covid-19 pandemic and many schools going partly or fully remote. Now, it’s made another acquisition to continue expanding its position in the education market. The company has […]
Microsoft acquires video creation and editing software maker Clipchamp
Video editing software may become the next big addition to Microsoft’s suite of productivity tools. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced it’s acquiring Clipchamp, a company offering web-based video creation and editing software that allows anyone to put together video presentations, promos or videos meant for social media destinations like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. According to Microsoft, […]
Notion acquires India’s Automate.io in push to accelerate product expansion
Notion said on Wednesday it has acquired Automate.io, an Indian startup that builds connectivity and integrations with over 200 services, as the workplace productivity startup looks to accelerate its product expansion to become more compelling for tens of millions of individuals and businesses that are increasingly moving to digital collaborative tools. The San Francisco-headquartered startup, […]
DigitalOcean enhances serverless capabilities with Nimbella acquisition
As developers look for ways to simplify how they create software, serverless solutions, which enable them to write code without worrying about the underlying infrastructure required to run their applications, is becoming increasingly popular. DigitalOcean announced today that it is enhancing its existing offering in this area with the acquisition of serverless startup Nimbella. The […]
H2O Hospitality secures $30M Series C to expedite hotel digital transformation
The pandemic has triggered more demand for contactless and staff-less operations in the hospitality sector, and now H2O Hospitality, the unmanned hotel management company, has closed a $30 million round on the back of that boost. The South Korea and Japan-based startup automates front and backend processes including accommodation reservation, room management and front desk […]
Nigeria’s Autochek acquires Cheki Kenya and Uganda from ROAM Africa
Nigerian automotive tech company Autochek today is announcing the acquisition of Cheki Kenya and Uganda from Ringier One Africa Media (ROAM) for an undisclosed amount. Per a statement, Autochek will finalize the deal in the coming weeks. With the acquisition, Autochek completes its expansion into East Africa and follows the first acquisition made almost a […]
Talking shop with Twitter’s recent head of corp dev — and now VC — Seksom Suriyapa
Seksom Suriyapa was seemingly destined to land at a venture firm. A Stanford Law graduate, he worked at two blue-chip investment banks before joining the cybersecurity company McAfee as a senior corp dev employee, later logging six years at the human resources software company SuccessFactors and, in 2018, landing at Twitter, where he headed up […]
Zip acquisition of Payflex means Africa is ripe for BNPL disruption
Australian buy now, pay later (BNPL) company Zip this week acquired South Africa-based BNPL player Payflex for an undisclosed amount. It’s a piece of news that once again highlights the hype around BNPL services and the quest for global dominance among the leading players. This year we have covered BNPL services from the likes of […]