Ingrid Lunden
Writer
The Latest from Ingrid Lunden
Google acquires Actifio to step into the area of data management and business continuity
In the same week that Amazon is holding its big AWS confab, Google is also announcing a move to raise its own enterprise game with Google Cloud. Today the company announced that it is acquiring Actifi
Bizzabo raises $138M for a platform that helps you build and run virtual conferences
Conferences have — for better or worse (and if you’ve ever been trapped in a cavernous CES exhibition hall, you might say worse) — become a significant cornerstone of how industries
SoftBank takes a $690M stake in cloud-based Swedish customer engagement company Sinch
On the heels of Facebook taking a big step into customer service with the acquisition of Kustomer for $1 billion, another big move is afoot in the world of customer relationship management and engagem
GoSite snags $40M to help SMBs bring their businesses online
There are 12 million small and medium businesses in the U.S., yet they have continued to be one of the most underserved segments of the B2B universe: That volume underscores a lot of fragmentation, an
Databand raises $14.5M led by Accel for its data pipeline observability tools
DevOps continues to get a lot of attention as a wave of companies develop more sophisticated tools to help developers manage increasingly complex architectures and workloads. In the latest development
Facebook buys Kustomer for $1B to expand into customer service tools
Today Facebook made one of its biggest plays yet to build out the services it provides to businesses on its platform: It is acquiring Kustomer, a startup founded with the aim of disrupting the custome
Cyber Monday came in at $10.8B spent online in the US, at the low end of the range but still a record one-day total
Cyber Monday, traditionally the biggest shopping day online in the year, followed in the footsteps of Thanksgiving and Black Friday this year: big gains on 2019, but still falling short on expectation
ServiceNow is acquiring Element AI, the Canadian startup building AI services for enterprises
ServiceNow, the cloud-based IT services company, is making a significant acquisition today to fill out its longer-term strategy to be a big player in the worlds of automation and artificial intelligen
HungryPanda raises $70M for a food delivery app aimed at overseas Chinese consumers
Food delivery apps have been a big deal this year both for consumers stuck at home and unable (or unwilling) to go to restaurants or grocery stores, and for investors who are eyeing the opportunity to
Gartner: Q3 smartphone sales down 5.7% to 366M, slicing COVID-19 declines in Q1, Q2
We are now into the all-important holiday sales period, and new numbers from Gartner point to some recovery underway for the smartphone market as vendors roll out a raft of new 5G handsets. Q3 smartph
Black Friday online shopping comes in $9B, $3.6B on smartphones
Black Friday — the day that launched 1,000 other shopping holidays — may have lost its place as the “start” of the Christmas shopping season by now (it gets bigger and earlier
Tony Hsieh, iconic Las Vegas tech entrepreneur, dies aged 46
Tony Hsieh, the former head of Zappos who catapulted the shoe company into the big leagues with a sale to Amazon and then used the proceeds of his success in a huge project kickstarting regeneration o
Thanksgiving online shopping hits record $5.1B, up 21.5% on 2019, 47% of sales via mobile
Thanksgiving for many is about eating, seeing family, reflecting and relaxing for the day. But for an increasing number of us, it also seems to be about shopping. Collectively, consumers in the U.S. s
Amazon expands IP Accelerator to Europe after US SMBs register 6,000 trademarks
As we head into the biggest shopping period of the year — which this year may well have an even stronger online component than usual because of COVID-19 — Amazon has launched its latest ef
Industrial drone maker Percepto raises $45M and integrates with Boston Dynamics’ Spot
Consumer drones have over the years struggled with an image of being no more than expensive and delicate toys. But applications in industrial, military and enterprise scenarios have shown that there i
Kahoot drops $50M on Drops to add language learning to its gamified education stable
After raising $215 million from SoftBank to double down on the surge of interest in online learning, Kahoot has made an acquisition to expand the scope of subjects that it covers. The popular startup,
Snap acquired Voisey, an app to create music tracks overlaying your own vocals
Snapchat helped pioneer the use of lenses on faces in photos and videos to turn ordinary picture messages into fantastical creations where humans can look like, say, cats, and even cats can wear festi
SellerX raises $118M to buy up and grow Amazon marketplace businesses
As Amazon’s Marketplace continues to grow and mature, a new opportunity has emerged in the world of e-commerce for a new breed of startups to consolidate the most promising of the smaller busine
Language learning app Duolingo confirms it has raised $35M on a $2.4B valuation
Last week, we reported that popular language learning app Duolingo, with 500 million total app downloads​, was raising $35 million on a valuation of at least $2.21 billion — the latest chapter
Quid raises $320M to loan money to startup employees using their equity as collateral
Startups that take time to scale before going public or getting acquired can represent big, if long-term, returns for employees that hold equity in them. Big, because tech companies have proven to be