Day: December 23, 2019

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today the big news that falls into our orbit is about DraftKings, a sports betting service focused on fantasy sports that will go public via a reverse merger. Not too long ago DraftKings and its […]

Just in time for Christmas, Lyft has brought back its pedal-assist e-bikes. The plan is to roll out hundreds of bikes each week until it hits 4,000 by the end of April 2020. This comes after Lyft had to pull its e-bikes in light of battery-related fires in July. “After identifying the root cause of […]

American automotive technology startup Rivian has raised $1.3 billion in new funding, the company announced today. The new investment is the fourth round of capital announced by the company in 2019 alone, following prior announcements of $700 million led by Amazon, $500 million from Ford (which includes a collaboration on electric vehicle technology) and $350 […]

MasterCard announced today that it is acquiring RiskRecon, a Salt Lake City startup that uses publicly available data to build security assessments of organizations. The companies did not share the purchase price. It’s become increasingly important for financial services companies like MasterCard to help customers navigate cyber security and RiskRecon will give customers an objective […]

Eddy Travels, an AI-powered travel assistant bot which can understand text and voice messages, has closed a pre-seed round of around $500,000 led by Techstars Toronto, Practica Capital and Open Circle Capital VC funds from Lithuania, with angel investors from the US, Canada, UK. Launched a year ago in November 2018, Eddy Travels claims to […]

Boeing’s CEO Dennis A. Muilenburg is CEO no longer, the company announced today. Effective January 13, 2020 current Board Chairman David L. Calhoun takes over the top executive officer spot at the aerospace company, and becomes President as well. This is far from a surprising decision: Boeing’s year has been marked primarily by its handling […]

Tesla has reportedly secured over $1.4 billion in financing in the form of loans from multiple Chinese banks in order to help fund the construction of its new gigafactory in Shanghai. First Reuters and now Bloomberg reported the funding as confirmed on Monday morning, with an official announcement to happen sometime this week. The loan will […]

HomeLane, a Bangalore-based startup that helps people manage home renovations and interior design, today announced it has raised $30 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its proprietary technology. The financing round, dubbed Series D, was led by Evolvence India Fund (EIF), Pidilite Group, and FJ Labs. Existing investors Accel Partners, […]