The Techee

Bay Area based Energy storage startup Quantumscape which started as a spin-off from Stanford University in 2010 has now raised a huge $100 million from Automobile giant Volkswagen Group to accelerate the development of solid-state battery technology which is very useful for the manufacturing of long range electric vehicles and represents a huge bet by Volkswagen to lead in the automotive solution being worked on currently. Several major automobile companies including BMW, Hyundai, Toyota, Nissan, Fisker and a host of others have partnered with several companies and heavily invested in the production of solid state battery technology and VW aims to gain a huge edge in the market through this investment which will see the company work with and offer its talent pool for collaboration with Quantumscape on the development of this technology. Quantumscape was started by serial entrepreneur Jagdeep Singh who was involved in the founding of telecom equipment company Infinera which is curren

image credit : Flickr/Web Summit The CEO of Santa Clara based technology corporation and chip manufacturer Intel just been announced to be taking a leave from the company amidst the disclosure of a consensual relationship with an employee which violated the company's non-fraternization policy which restricts certain employees and mostly those at managerial from having certain kinds of relationships with one another. Intel's policy doesn't allow Managers and current employees in the same department from having relationships with individuals who directly or indirectly report to them and in the wake of this issue, The Intel CEO has now stepped down from his position after an on-going investigation from the company's internal and external counsel. Brian Krzarnich's penned resignation has now been accepted by the company's board of directors with the CEO position now being taken temporarily by the company's current CFO Robert Swan while Intel searches for

image credit : VIPKid Online education startup VIPKid which is notable for its widely used online education service for children in China has now raised a huge $500 million completion of its Series D investment round which was led by a combination of Tencent, Sequioa Capital, Coatue Management and YF Capital. VIPKid which currently has over 40,000 teachers registered on its network along with over 300,000 students and has been one of the hottest companies in the Chinese startup space is now valued at over $3 Billion as was predicted by previous reports with the total amount raised by the startup now standing at a huge $850 million since its start just 5 years ago. The company's previous investment round of $200 million was led by notable Menlo Park based investor Sequioa Capital with the company counting a team of leading investors consisting of Sequioa, ZhenFund, Sinovation, Tencent, and Jack Ma led YF Capital amongst many others. Concerning this huge investment, NY

Just yesterday, Ride-hailing company Uber outed a new plan where it will spend money on paying drivers an extra fee and also provide special membership services and app features to drivers who make use of electric vehicles. The company announced it's pilot program which will see drivers in some incentives get financial incentives for the use of electric vehicles on the Uber service with the company also partnering UC-Davis researchers and other organizations to explore newer ways of encouraging the use of electric vehicles. The program dubbed "EV Champions Initiative" is being done in a bid by the company to boost up sustainable transportation methods in the environment which provides a good transport solution for the eco-system of various cities as Uber is now focusing on electrification as part of their efforts. Drivers in the city of San Diego who use EV Vehicles will now get bonuses of up to $20 per week in addition to a $1 bonus per ride made in an elect

image credit : Swiggy Indian based food delivery startup Swiggy which food ordering solutions from neighborhood restaurants to various customers in the Indian region has now joined the unicorn club after raising $210 million in a new Series G investment round led by Naspers with notable investor DST Global, Chinese internet company Meituan Dianping and Phillipe Laffont led notable tech investor Coatue Management also participating in the investment round. The company raised this whooping $210 million round at a valuation of $1.3 Billion which has shot it into the global unicorn club amidst other major food delivery players in the space. This investment which brings the total raised by Swiggy to a huge $465 million comes 4 months after the company raised a Series F investment round of $100 million from Naspers and Meituan Dianping who also participated in this round. Swiggy which is a major market player in the Indian food delivery space has also seen huge competition from oth

image credit : Beamery London based startup Beamery which offers a platform for talent Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and is one of the most notably used recruitment tech platforms has just raised $28 million in Series B funding in an investment round led by EQT Ventures and also saw participation from other investors including Index Ventures, M12 (Formerly named Microsoft Ventures), AngelPad and a slew of others. Beamery was founded 4 years ago to provide quality CRM services for various companies which provides them with competitive advantage as they get the best talent recruited for their teams, The company currently counts Facebook, E-commerce firm Lazada, VMware, Ride-hailing firm Grab and ad-tech company Criteo as its current customers. This new investment will be put into the area of customer growth for the company as the company will be boosting up hiring at its offices to pitch its products and gain more customers in addition to the long list of people who curr

Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger image credit : Wikimedia/Nehrams2020 via CC License As of recently, The Fox media empire which has been prepping for a sale with different bids from both media titans Comcast and Disney has now accepted Disney's just recent upped bid of $71.3 Billion in both cash and stock according to a recent report from Bloomberg. This deal by Disney represents the company's largest media acquisition surpassing its 2006 acquisiton of Pixar Studios for $7.4 Billion along with a huge 2001 acquisition of Fox Family Worldwide for $5.3 Billion and a 2012 acquisition of Star Wars producer LucasFilm for $4.1 Billion. This acquisition move began after Disney proposed to acquire Fox's assets for $52.4 Billion December last year and with competing deals from Philadelphia based Comcast which brought an acquisition deal of $65 Billion, Disney had to boost its acquisition price to amount to $38 a share which is higher than the $35 a share bid by Comcast an

Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky After the recent wake of the immigration issue of family separation which has seen several children separated from their parents as the U.S.-Mexico border and caused a wide outcry across the globe amidst released info and photos of worried parents seeking to be re-united with their children who are left isolated from both them and their family members, The founders of online marketplace and hospitality service Airbnb where travellers around the globe and is a huge mover in the world of immigration has condemned the act of family separation by immigration enforcement in a statement which describes the act as "Cruel, Immoral and counter to the values of American Belonging" and calling for the need to stop this injustice and re-uniting these children with their parents. Along with Airbnb, Apple CEO Tim Cook describes described this act as "Inhumane", Software giant Microsoft described this act as "Dismayed" with C

Hyperwallet CEO Brent Warrington image credit : Hyperwallet Founded 18 years ago with a mission of making global payment services readily and easily accessible to all, Fintech company Hyperwallet which offers payout platforms to several financial institutions and various companies has now been acquired by payments giant PayPal which will further its goal and add it to its list of financial services which the technology company offers to various consumers around the globe. Hyperwallet's platform offers multiple currency transfer around the globe to various consumers and this feature makes it a very desired addition for PayPal's suite of products which it offers to its over 230 million worldwide users. Paypal and its Braintree service users which was also added through an acquisition is poised to get "multi-currency payment distribution capabilities in more than 200 markets with numerous disbursement options" according to Hyperwallet which counts huge glob

Irvine based cybersecurity startup Cylance which provides AI based cyber-security services to organizations just like its competitor CrowdStrike which recently raised a huge $200 million to expand its services has now raised a huge $120 million in a Series E round from investment company and asset manager Blackstone to boost up its math based cyber-security solutions which it provides to its global customers around the world. Cylance is getting this huge investment from Blackstone who also led its most previous Series D round where the company raised $100 million from a slew of investors which also included Dell Ventures, DFJ, Khosla Ventures, Capital One, KKR, IVP amongst others. The company which reached a $100 million annual revenue rate early this year has now raised a total of $297 million since its inception just 6 years ago. The company counts 4,000 enterprise customers currently using and paying for its cyber-security products with many huge companies, government agenc

image credit : SigFig San Francisco based wealth management startup SigFig which makes use of deep data science and technology to provide better and quality investment advice to financial services firms around the globe has raised $50 million in its latest Series E round led by NY based major tech investor General Atlantic and also saw participation from Bain Capital, Union Square Ventures and Eaton Vance Management who are both returning investors amongst others who participated in the round. With this latest investment, SigFig has raised a total of $117 million since its start in 2007 and counts Zenefits co-founder and former CEO Parker Conrad as a co-founder before his departure in 2012 after a falling out with the other co-founder of the company Mike Sha. SigFig is making use of this latest investment to accelerate its technology based solutions to provide more in-depth and resourceful advice for wealth advisors, banks and a series of other financial customers. The c

Scopely co-founder and CEO Walter Driver image credit : Scopely Los Angeles based Gaming startup and entertainment network Scopely which was founded in 2011 and is notable for publishing various popular game titles such as WWE Champions, The Walking Dead: Road to Survival, Dice with Ellen and a series of other widely played games has raised an additional $100 million for its latest Series C round to make new investments and acquisitions. The company originally raised $60 million in this Series C round but due to over-subscription and very good interest from various investors, The company has taken on this additional $100 in funding from Maryland based Greenspring Associates which currently manages over $7.3 Billion in investing assets and provides customized venture capital partnerhips for notable individuals and corporations around the world. This brings the amount totally raised by Scopely to a huge $250 million with the company also very notable for its vast individua

Boston based startup ezCater which provides business catering and online ordering services to bring good food to meetings and business gatherings has now raised a huge $100 million in a newly announced Series E investment round led by Boston based major investor Wellington Management Company and also saw participation from Insight Venture Partners(IVP) and Iconiq Capital. The company which currently provides its services across the U.S. is making use of this investment for international expansion of its catering services. This new funding brings the company's valuation to a huge $700 million with a total of $170 million raised for the company's operations and expansion. ezCater prior to this raised a $35 million investment round January last year and has been growing rapidly since its founding 11 years ago. ezCater is currently led by Stefania Mallett who started the company along with serial entrepreneur Briscoe Rodgers who has started and sold two companies Azuris

CrowdStrike co-founder and CEO George Kultz image credit : CrowdStrike Sunnyvale based Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike which was founded 7 years ago to provide endpoint security, threat analysis and other computer security services has now raised $800 million in a Series E round which values the company at a huge $3 Billion and was led by notable investor General Atlantic and saw participation from other VCs including Accel, Google's Capital G and IVP. This new investment brings the total raised by the company to a huge $481 million having first raised its Series A funding totaling $26 million sometime in 2012. CrowdStrike now joins the ranks of the most valued cybersecurity companies in the private market space along with other major players including Tanium, CloudFlare, Cylance, Illumio, Chinese based Tongdun technology and a slew of others. CrowdStrike is making use of this new investment to speed up the global expansion of its Falcon suite of products which provi

image credit : Flickr/ JD Lasica $20 Billion+ payments company Square which was notably started by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey (pictured above, right) just confirmed it has gotten its license to essentially start providing Bitcoin trading services to New York residents. This represents a huge boost for the financial technology company and also New York residents who will now get to exchange crypto-currency easily through the use of Square's app. This greatly boosts Square's virtual currency ecosystem as it has been fixated towards expansion and the provision of a wider array of financial services to consumers as of recent. New York is considered primarily as the financial capital of the globe which still remains a huge market for financial consumers and companies alike and with this new license, Square is targeted to provide speedy trading services for numerous residents and Wall Streeters while also racking up huge revenues for itself. Square's Cash app wi

image credit : Flickr/Open Grid Scheduler Multi-national technology company Xerox which is very notable for its print and digital document solutions has been embroiled into a legal battle regarding the botched sale of Fujifilm which is notable for its cameras and photography technology which agreed to be acquired for $6.1 Billion by Xerox who then backed out of the deal on the 13th of last month. Fujifilm is accusing Xerox of succumbing to pressure by activist investors Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason who have combined 15% shareholdings and board seats in the company and opposed the purchase of the digital imaging company after an acquisition deal had been reached. Fujifilm is now seeking $1 Billion in punitive damages and also a $183 million termination fee owed to it for breaking the legal agreement due to opposition from Billionaire investor Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason who is the largest individual shareholder in the company and became one after selling his IT services company

image credit : Flickr/ Núcleo Editorial In a recently spotted functionality move, Google maps which notably allowed Uber rides to be booked from inside the app without the need of going to the Uber app itself has now stopped this collaborative feature for currently unknown reasons. Right now, Users will still be able to get estimated transportation costs between destinations but will have to go to the Uber app itself to hail a ride for their journey. This feature was also previously present on Google Maps' iOS app before being removed sometime last summer. As the reason for the removal is unknown, It can be speculated that this may be due to the recent $1 Billion Google's parent company Alphabet made in Uber's major U.S. competitor Lyft and in an effort to avoid conflict of interest while providing direct access to Uber or that Uber as of now prefer its users go directly through its app to hail rides to their destinations. As the reason is yet unclear, Uber no

image credit : Konfio Konfio, A Mexican fintech company which makes online lending to small businesses has just raised $25 million in a Series C funding round led by Bermuda based VC Vostok Emerging Finance to expand its financial services and products in the Mexican region. This brings the total amount the company has raised to a huge $102.7 million in addition to a debt financing round of 200 million Pesos it raised along with this Series C investment. Konfio makes use of in-depth data which provides rapid credit assessment for small businesses which streamlines the loan application processes for these businesses while they focus on expanding their company and market operations. In a recently outed press release, Vostok can be quoted as saying “We are excited to announce our latest portfolio investment and our first in Mexico. Konfio is an asset we have tracked for 2 years now and it represents a truly unique opportunity and a stand-out asset in Mexican SME credit spac

Domo CEO and founder Josh James image credit : Domo Business Intelligence and Big Data startup Domo which was last valued at $2 Billion in its private round of funding just set the terms for its IPO as of recent and things don't really good for the company's filing. The company filed for going public with an outstanding 24,953,806 shares priced between $19-22 each which implies an an IPO value of $546 million which is way lower than its $2 Billion unicorn status for the company which raised over $600 million from several investors including TPG, Bezos Expeditions, BlackRock, IVP and a slew of others. This represents a loss for the company which currently operates under negative cash flow with operation costs of $148.7 million for the most recent fiscal year ended Jan 31 but with only $71.9 million cash at hand. Domo booked $116 million in sales for the 12 months leading to April 30 2018 and is aiming to raise $189 million through the sale of 9.2 million shares in th

image credit : Toss Viva Republica, A top Korean startup and notable payments provider with provides peer-2-peer payments through its widely downloaded app Toss has now raised a huge $40 million in a Series D round co-led by Sequioa China and Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC. This investment is ear-marked for the growth of the company which processes US$1.4 billion worth of transaction volumes each month through major investments and acquisitions and brings the total raised by the company to a huge $117.2 million dollars. The fintech company which counts notable investors including the likes of PayPal, Qualcomm, Bessemer Ventures and a slew of others as previous backers was founded in 2013 by Seunggun Lee who was previously a dentist at Samsung's hospital arm and has enormously grown from there with its Toss P2P app racking up over 8 million users and is ever expanding its wide userbase. This investment also counts as Sequioa China's first investment in a S

image credit : Flickr/Daniel Cukier As part of efforts to grow its business landscape in the Chinese region and also take on major tech competitor Amazon, Google is committing to a new startegic partnership with the e-commerce firm in a move which will see JD and its huge selection of products come to Google Shopping and with the search and software giant expanding its retail ecosystem is investing $550 million in JD.com to scale up efforts and invest in exploring new ways of making shopping effortless for global and Chinese consumers. Google is receiving 27.1 million of JD.com's class A shares priced at $20.29 for this huge investment in addition to the collaborative effort to boost e-commerce operations will not be featuring a major operation in the country of China where Google is currently banned for issues relating to censorship laws. Google also joins notable alike investors in the company as Tencent, e-commerce giant Alibaba and Walmart have previously invested and cu

image credit : Mi3 Just recently, Mountain View based cloud cyber-security company Mi3 was snapped up by mobile security technology company Zimperium which marks the first acquisition for the company which has raised a total of $60 million from several notable investors including Samsung, Warbug Pincus, Sierra Ventures and Softbank amongst others. With this acquisition, Zimperium is adding an important and major resource to its pool of operations as Mi3's RECON Security Platform which provides in-depth application monitoring and threat analysis will be incorporated into Zimperium's z3A app analysis platform to provide better and wider intelligent services for its users. Zimperium which is based in San Francisco and was founded in 2010 by two hackers and security experts raised its most previous round of funding March last year and is currently fixated on growth and the offering of its services to more users, enterprises and various consumers and it makes absolute sense

Notable crypto investor, enthusiast and asset manager who was one held a spot as No 317 on the Fobres 400 American rich list and was also featured in this year's Forbes crypto rich list has led a Series A investment round through asset management and digital services firm Galaxy Digital which he founded after his previous stint at notable investment giant Fortress which was later acquired by major tech investor Softbank into New York based digital asset exchange and blockchain platform AlphaPoint to the tune of $15 million for the expansion of its operations. AlphaPoint which is a fintech company focused on crypto-currency and was founded 5 years ago will now make use of this investment to expand its services and invest more into resourceful expansion of the company which provides asset digitization and white label exchange for several institutions around the globe. This investment represents the third major round participated in by Galaxy Digital which began investing this ye

Image credit : Cloud9 Notable e-sports league player Cloud9 which competes and is a leader in so many notable game tournaments including Fortnite, PUBG, League of Legends, Overwatch, Clash Royale and Rocket League amongst many other popular game titles has extended its partnership with energy drink brand Red Bull which will now flaunt its logo on the Cloud9 Jersey and become the official energy drink sponsor for the e-sports team. Californian based Cloud9 which has raised a total of $28 million major investors including Yammer co-founder David Sacks, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and WWE to expand its professional multi-game e-sports operations and operates like a traditional sport team but this time focusing on video games will also get notable perks consisting of fitness training, sleep analysis and other physical services for its e-sports players from Red Bull. Cloud9 With this extended sponsorship, The Red Bull embedded Cloud9 jersey has also been officially mad

image credit : Fourth Partner Indian based Solar energy company which was started 2010 to provide solar energy services to various institutions, corporations and consumers has raised a huge $70 million in a Series B investment round from notable private equity giant TPG who invested through its Rise Fund. This brings the total investment that the sustainable energy company has gotten to $72 million in addition to its Series A round which fetched $2 million 3 years ago for the company's growth and operations expansion. Fourth Energy which was founded by 3 entrepreneurs 8 years ago and currently counts beverage giant Nestlé, Axia bank, Ferrero SpA and Airtel amongst its customers provides long term solar power purchase and offers a real-time monitoring platform for customers to get live statistics on their installations and has garnered over 80 notable customers so far. TPG's The Rise Fund will make use of its network of investments and extensive company growth exp

Several employees of major wearable technology device maker Fitbit have been sued by another player in the wearables space, Jawbone which was once valued at a huge $3 Billion but recently fell into hassles and has been undergoing liquidation since last year amidst falling into revenue and growth issues for alleged stealing of trade secrets and confidential R&D materials before leaving the company to join Fitbit which is a violation of confidentiality agreements as stated by the company. Jawbone alleges that the 6 employees who were working at the company before receiving job offers from Fitbit took with them confidential documents which included internal financial presentations, design specs for new products, market study copies and also pricing and supplier lists which was reportedly handed over to Fitbit and was illegally used by the company. This legal dispute doesn't represent the first time Jawbone brought several accusations against Fitbit as the company also s

image credit : Netflix Notable San Rafael based game developer Telltale just recently made known with a tweet that the game studio is currently working on a game title for science fiction-horror and very popular web television series Stranger Things which will be published to different consoles and the PC at a later date. This was confirmed in a tweet by Telltale who is notable for its current video game titles which include Minecraft: Story Mode, The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, The Wolf Among Us and other interesting game titles. Separately, we're thrilled to confirm that Telltale is developing a game based on Stranger Things that we'll publish to consoles and computers at a later date. (2/3) — Telltale Games (@telltalegames) June 13, 2018 The video game company also stated of being incredibly proud of its partnership with Netflix with the company slated to reveal official details on the new development at later time. This news notably comes after a previous ann

Reonomy co-founder and CEO Richard Sarkis image credit : Richard Sarkis via Twitter NY based real estate analytics tech company Reonomy just recently made known that it has closed a Series C round of a $30 million investment into the company, An investment round which was notable led by Sapphire Ventures and also saw participation from Softbank and Bain Capital. This investment round led by German software giant SAP's venture capital arm Sapphire now brings the total raised by the real estate technology company to over $69 million with other previous investors in the company including Softbank who also participated in this round, Jaws Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank. Reonomy currently offers a subscription software with a basic package of $34 per month for access to in-depth real estate and property data and is slated to expand its operations as it gains many more subscribers and revenues from its service. Reonomy currently has a workforce of 45 employees and plans to do

image credit : Nubank Brazilian fintech unicorn Nubank which was valued at a huge $2 Billion in its most previous round of funding and offers credit cards to over 4 million subscribers has now reached a huge 1.5 million users for its digital bank services which it aims to expand to people beyond its credit card user base in an effort to expand its operations and increase competition with traditional bank models of offering financial services. This 1.5 million users is just the first set who have registered through the company's beta service available for current credit card holders with the number slated to increase more in future time. The service dubbed NuConta offers a digital account with no fees attached and the ability to send money to other Brazilian accounts without any transaction charges, NuConta also provides unlimited peer-to-peer transactions for its users. With these huge number of current registered users, The financial technology startup has garnered a lot

image credit : YITU Chinese AI and computer vision technology company Yitu Technology which provides various industrial AI technologies to different enterprises has now raised a huge $200 million Series C round from various investors to expand its operations of offering its wide range of smart services which includes Intelligent Healthcare, Security, Smart City and Hardware platforms. The company which was founded in 2012 and counts notable investors including Sequioa Capital and Zhenfund as earlier investors will make use of this huge investment to expand its team and pool huge resources into the development and scaling of its AI services for its numerous customers. Yitu which engages in fundamental research to provide computer vision and learning services to various companies and is currently led by notable co-founders Zhu Long who was postdoctoral Fellow at MIT's AI Laboratory and also Lin Chenxi who previously held positions at e-commerce giant Alibaba and software and

At a recent interview at The David Rubenstein Show, Apple CEO Tim Cook talked about the values at Apple, working with Steve Jobs and other issues including privacy and equality and one notable thing he spoke about in the interview dubbed "The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations" was where he talked about Apple's employees all having 100 % standing desks with him stating that switching working positions between sitting and standing is much healthier for the work lifestyle. The desks for Apple employees accommodate both standing and sitting and will greatly improve productivity whilst reducing body stress for the employees and providing more healthier body postures and mobility for the people at Apple's notable spaceship campus dubbed The Apple Park. Tim Cook detailed how the use of the Apple Watch led to the use of these standing desks in the company's new base which opened last year as several people who used The Apple Watch at the company w

image credit : GM According to recent reports from different sources, Automobile giant is considering a listing of the shares of its Cruise Automation' self-driving unit which it acquired for $581 million two years ago and also recently got a huge $2.25 Billion investment commitment from major tech investor Softbank and also a huge $1.1 Billion from GM itself. The report which was first made known by Bloomberg  states that GM is currently having internal discussions and is also conversing with different banks about different options on listing its self-driving car unit which is a major player in the company's future on the public stock market or spin off the unit from GM to reflect its separate value in the stock market. GM hasn't yet made any long-standing decision on this and may not go on with these plans they're currently exploring depending on how things come to play up for the company, But GM considering this is another indication of how far and wide Crui

Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos Founder (left) image credit : Flickr/TechCrunch Theranos, The Biotech company once valued at $9 Billion by investors and have been hit with different issues recently amidst charges the company provided false claims and misled investors about its technology has now seen its founder Elizabeth Holmes step down from the CEO position she has held since the company's founding to this current time where it's in a midst of problems after being sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for false or exaggerated claims with Holmes agreeing to return 18.9 million shares of the company return and relinquishing her voting control of Theranos as penalties for those charges. The The Department of Justice has now revealed that Holmes was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and also nine counts of wire fraud and will be departing from the company in relation to these charges leveled against the Theranos CEO