Whopping startup valuations may be deflating, but they aren’t flat yet. This past week, the education startup founded by AI scientist Sebastian Thrun, Udacity, raised more than $100 million at a billion-dollar valuation. Here’s that funding news, and more:
Capital Gains: An Ed Tech Unicorn, Cable Companies Bet on VR and More Funding News
Remember Digg? Digg raised money too.
Todd Bernard
- Taiwanese electric scooter maker Gogoro landed a $30 million investment from Taiwan’s government as part of its latest $130 million funding round. Gogoro’s scooters began hitting the streets earlier this year (Taipei Times).
- Udacity, the online education startup that offers “nanodegrees” in technical areas like artificial intelligence and programming, raised $105 million at a $1 billion valuation. The company was founded four years ago by Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford professor who worked at Google. The German media company Bertelsmann led the latest round, whose participants included Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Charles River Ventures and Emerson Collective, among others (Wall Street Journal).
- Fiverr, an Israel-based competitor to TaskRabbit, raised $60 million in a round led by Square Peg Capital; Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Qumra Capital also contributed (VentureBeat).
- Berlin-based travel booking service GetYourGuide raised a $50 million Series C led by KKR. Spark Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Sunstone Capital and Nokia Growth Partners also contributed, giving the company just under $100 million in total funding (TechCrunch).
- Health industry-focused messaging startup TigerText scored $50 million in a new round led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Invus Group, Accolade Partners, Shasta Ventures, OrbiMed and investor Reed Elsevier (Fortune).
- Virtual reality startup NextVR, which recently helped CNN broadcast a presidential debate in VR, raised a $30.5 million Series A round led by Formation 8. Time Warner and Comcast* kicked in as well, as traditional media companies look to experiment with the medium (Fortune).
- H2O.ai, a data analysis startup that employs machine learning AI technology, raised $20 million from a group of investors that includes Paxion Capital Partners and CapitalOne (SiliconANGLE).
- Video ad technology startup VideoAmp landed a $15 million Series A investment led by Europe’s RTL Group, with participation from Third Wave Capital, Anthem Venture Partners and other firms (MediaPost).
- Tech industry data analytics service CB Insights raised a $10 million Series A from investment firm RSTP. This is the company’s first outside financing (Reuters).
- Contactually, a D.C.-based startup that makes Web-based CRM software, raised $8 million in Series A funding co-led by Rally Ventures and Grotech Ventures (Washington Business Journal).
- The social news site Digg, which was kind of like Reddit before Reddit, has slowly come back to life in the past couple years. The company, part of the Betaworks incubator, raised $4 million from Tokyo-based Digital Garage (VentureBeat).
*Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, which owns this site.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
See More:
