Ingrid Lunden
Writer
The Latest from Ingrid Lunden
Used-car marketplace Vroom nabs $254M to take its growth up a gear
There have been a lot of bumps in the road for startups building used-car marketplaces, but now one of the longer-standing of them has closed a major round of funding — a clear sign of the milea
Kustomer raises $60M for its omnichannel-based CRM platform
Kustomer, a CRM startup that’s taking on the likes of Zendesk, Salesforce and many other bigger and older providers, has closed yet another round of funding — no less than its third fundra
Rapyd, which offers fintech-as-a-service via a single API, adds $20M more to its coffers at a $1.2B valuation
One of the biggest trends in the world of financial technology has been an ongoing push towards consolidation, where larger fish are snapping up smaller fish (including a proliferation of interesting
Cyber Monday totalled $9.4B in US online sales, smartphones accounted for a record $3B
Cyber Monday — the final day of the extended Thanksgiving weekend that traditionally kicks off holiday season spend — broke another e-commerce record: US shoppers racked up a total of $9.4
Black Friday sees record $7.4B in online sales, $2.9B spent using smartphones
Following swiftly on the heels of a Thanksgiving that broke records with $4.2 billion in online sales, Black Friday also hit a new high, although it just fell short of predictions. According to analyt
Online shopping on Thanksgiving hit $4.2B, up 14.5% on 2018, 45% of sales via mobile
With popular social networks seeing some downtime, most shops closed, and many people off work for Thanksgiving, bargain hunters flocked online to start their holiday shopping. Sales for the day total
Vinted, the second-hand clothes marketplace, raises $141M at a $1B+ valuation
The market for second-hand clothes — the “circular economy” as it’s sometimes called — has been on the rise in the last several years, fuelled by economic crunches, a des
Trouva, an online marketplace for independent boutiques, raises $22M
Amazon helped pioneer and now dominates the online marketplace business model, where a variety of merchants post items for sale on its platform for billions of consumers to discover and buy them. Toda
Tray.io brings in $50M more at a $600M+ valuation for its workflow automation tools
Organizations are always looking for new ways to work more efficiently, but too often the problem is that, in a digital-first environment, they have to get in line to ask their in-house IT experts (or
Taiwan’s Appier raises $80M for AI-based marketing technology
Artificial intelligence continues to be the theme of the moment in enterprise software, and today a company out of Asia that has built a suite of AI-powered marketing and ad tools is announcing a roun
VTEX, an e-commerce platform used by Walmart, raises $140M led by SoftBank’s LatAm fund
E-commerce now accounts for 14% of all retail sales, and its growth has led to a rise in the fortunes of startups that build tools to enable businesses to sell online. In the latest development, a com
Linear takes $4.2M led by Sequoia to build a better bug tracker and more
Software will eat the world, as the saying goes, but in doing so, some developers are likely to get a little indigestion. That is to say, building products requires working with disparate and distribu
Celonis, a leader in big data process mining for enterprises, nabs $290M on a $2.5B valuation
More than $1 trillion is spent by enterprises annually on “digital transformation” — the investments that organizations make to update their IT systems to get more out of them and re
Vouch raises $45M led by YC Continuity for business insurance that targets startups
“Move fast and break things” is a term we usually associate with Facebook (at least, until 2014) and the general startup ethos of being disruptive. Now, in true entrepreneurial fashion, th
Vayyar nabs $109M for its ‘4D’ radar tech, which detects and tracks images while preserving privacy
The future of the connected home, connected car and connected everything will have a lot of imaging technology at the center of it: sensors to track the movement of people and things will be a critica
BlueVine raises $102.5M more for banking services that target small businesses
When it comes to fintech plays, small and medium businesses are not often the target audience: they’re too small and fragmented compared to big-spending corporates; and they’re too demandi
Juno shuts down its operations in NYC as owner Gett signs strategic partnership with Lyft
Gett, the ridesharing company backed by Volkswagen and valued at around $1.5 billion, is putting the brakes on a major part of its growth strategy. Today, the company announced that it is closing its
John Legere is stepping down as CEO of T-Mobile, succeeded by deputy Mike Sievert on May 1
He’s reportedly not going to take over WeWork, but John Legere is definitely on his way out of the CEO role at T-Mobile, the carrier that is currently merging with SoftBank-controlled Sprint. To
Elavon to acquire Sage Pay, a gateway that competes with Stripe, PayPal and Adyen, for $300M
E-commerce continues to gain momentum — a trend we’ll see played out in the next two months of holiday shopping — and with that comes more consolidation. Today, Elavon, the payments
Iran shuts down country’s internet in the wake of fuel protests
Iran, one of the countries most strongly identified with the rise cyber terrorism and malicious hacking, appears now to be using an iron fist to turn on its own. The country has reportedly shut down n