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 […]

Vertical farming startup Infarm raises $200M for international expansion

Europe-based vertical farming firm Infarm this week announced a $200 million Series D. The round, led by the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), follows last year’s $170 million raise. It pushes the company’s total funding to north of $600 million, while placing its valuation “well” north of $1 bililion, earning its place as Europe’s first vertical […]

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 […]

AI-powered VFX startup Wonder Dynamics raises $10M A round

Wonder Dynamics aims to make “blockbuster-level” visual effects achievable by living-room-level creators using AI and cloud services, though it has kept its product closely under wraps. The secretive company, which boasts a star-studded set of advisors, has raised a $10M A round ahead of a planned launch later in 2022. The company was founded by […]

Kalendar AI wants its sales bots to win your next customers

Kalendar AI, a San Francisco-based startup that’s been building on top of GPT-3‘s language model — developing a SaaS for automating lead generation and sales outreach to make it easier for companies to get initial meetings with prospective customers — has raised $3.2 million in pre-seed funding from 500 Startups; The Lean Startup author, Eric […]

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 […]

Cequence adds $60M Series C to improve API security

When we last checked in with Cequence Security in February 2019, the company had just closed a $17 million Series B and was concentrating on security to protect business logic. While it still does that, it has shifted focus to API security, and today it announced a $60 million Series C. Menlo Ventures led the latest […]