sound ventures

Sound Ventures has already plugged half its new $240 million AI fund into three companies

Sound Ventures, the eight-year-old, Beverly Hills, California-based venture firm led by general partners Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary and Effie Epstein, announced a new $240 million AI fund just last we

Pearpop raises $18M at a $300M valuation to scale its social collaboration marketplace

Pearpop, a marketplace for social collaborations, announced today that it has raised an extension to its 2021-era Series A funding round. The company has added $18 million to its Series A, bringing it

Sardine raises $51.5M led by a16z to sniff out fishy fintech transactions

As fintechs become more efficient, so too do fraudsters. “Faster instant payments mean faster fraud,” Sardine CEO and co-founder Soups Ranjan told TechCrunch. That’s the thesis behin

Live Nation bets millions on high-tech reusable cups to combat plastic waste

Picture the aftermath of a festival: A sea of fans depart, leaving behind any number of empty water bottles, disposable cups, wristbands, lost IDs and maybe even some used-up whipped cream chargers. F

Tarci secures capital for AI designed to spot SMB sales leads

While small- and medium-sized (SMBs) businesses are the bulwark of the economy, driving up to 44% of activity in the U.S. alone, it can be hard for sales teams to get an accurate picture of them. That

Cryptoys banks a16z funding to build NFTs for kids

The past several months haven’t been entirely kind to the NFT market — while transaction volume hasn’t stuttered too significantly, the dollar amount invested in the space has been i

Bored Apes NFT project gets official ‘ApeCoin’ token

Even among the fastest-growing crypto startups, Yuga Labs has had a particularly explosive year. The startup is behind the NFT project Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC), which only launched in April of las

MetaMask parent company ConsenSys raises Series D at $7B valuation

Crypto developer ConsenSys, which owns the popular Ethereum-based MetaMask wallet, announced a $450 million Series D round today that values the company at $7 billion, nearly double in worth since its

Web3 ‘Proof of attendance’ startup raises $10M to mint shared memories as NFTs

If blockchains are immutable records of our digital history, what kinds of history do we want to inscribe on them? Predictably, most records thus far have been transaction data, but as entrepreneurs e

Is cell-cultured meat ready for prime time?

Cell-cultured meat is a hot topic, yet the process for producing meat in this manner remains slow and costly.

General Catalyst leads $7M investment in AR startup selling NFT jetpacks

After months of NFT mania and Facebook’s recent name change to Meta, it’s fair to say that “metaverse” chatter has reached a fever pitch. And while crypto investors are buying

Collective, a back-office platform for the self-employed, raises $20M from Ashton Kutcher’s VC

With so much focus on the “creator economy”, and countries hit by the effects of the pandemic, the self-employed market is “booming”, for good or for ill. So it’s not too muc

Live video platform Bright lets you Zoom with your favorite creators

What if you could Zoom with your favorite creator and ask them questions? That’s the promise of Bright, the new live video platform launching today from co-founders Guy Oseary and early YouTube

This startup wants to use technology to help solve Austin’s housing shortage problem

The sheer volume of people migrating to Austin from all over the country, but particularly from the San Francisco Bay Area, has been making headlines for a while now. One result of this continued migr

Titan nabs $12.5M for ‘next generation’ investment management

Titan, a startup that is building a retail investment management platform aimed at millennials, has closed on $12.5 million in a Series A round led by VC heavyweight General Catalyst. A bevy of other

Ashton Kutcher’s Sound Ventures targets $150M for third fund

Sound Ventures, a fund co-founded by Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary, has filed paperwork indicating plans to raise a third fund at $150 million. Notably, the firm filed paperwork for the same total in

Weather forecasts get an AI update with Atmo as businesses grapple with climate-related catastrophes

“Almost every business on earth is affected by weather,” says Alexander Levy, an investor serial entrepreneur whose latest company is the new weather prediction startup Atmo. The company,

Papa raises $18 million to expand its business connecting older adults with virtual and in-person companions

The Miami-based startup Papa has raised an additional $18 million as it looks to expand its business connecting elderly Americans and families with physical and virtual companions, which the company c

Update: Closing on $75 million in new cash, Truepill plans at-home testing service as it nears $200 million in annual revenue

Truepill, the white-label healthcare services company that provides telehealth and pharmacy fulfillment services, is adding at-home medical testing as the third branch of its services powering the off

The Station: Bird and Lime layoffs, pivots in a COVID-19 era and a $2.2 trillion deal

Hello folks, welcome back (or hi for the first time) to The Station, a weekly newsletter dedicated to the all the ways people and packages move around this world. I’m your host, Kirsten Korosec,
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