Category: finance
Runa Capital closes Fund III at $157M, with an added focus on Quantum computing
VC fund Runa Capital was launched with $135M in 2010 and is perhaps best known for its investment into NGINX which powers many web sites today. In more recent years it’s participated or led investments into startups such as Zipdrug ($10.8M); Rollbar this year ($11M); and Monedo (for €20M). HQ’d…
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Why COVID-19 could delay Interswitch, Africa’s next big IPO
The economic effects of COVID-19 could delay Africa’s next big IPO — that of Nigerian fintech unicorn Interswitch. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time the Lagos-based payments company’s plans for going public were postponed; the tech world has been anticipating Interswitch’s stock market debut since 2016. For the…
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Robinhood raises $280M, pushing its valuation to $8.3B
As expected, Robinhood has closed a new round of capital. The late-stage, consumer investing app announced today that it has closed a $280 million Series F funding at an $8.3 billion valuation. This closely tracks prior coverage that the firm was hunting for a nine-figure round at a valuation of…
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Africa Roundup: Visa connects to M-Pesa, Flutterwave enters e-commerce
It seems the demand for Safaricom’s M-Pesa payment product never eases. Since its 2007 launch in Kenya, the fintech app has commanded over 70% of the mobile money market in that country. When COVID-19 hit the East African nation of 53 million in March, the Kenyan Central Bank turned to…
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Silver Lake to invest $747M in India’s Jio Platforms
Weeks after Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Indian telecom giant Jio Platforms, private equity firm Silver Lake is following suit. Silver Lake announced on Monday it will be investing 56.56 billion Indian rupees (about $746.74 million) in the top telecom operator Jio Platforms, giving it a valuation of $65 billion. Reliance…
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Index and Credo lead a $2.75M seed in anti-fraud tech, Resistant AI
Prague based Resistant AI has nabbed a $2.75M seed round. The security startup’s machine learning technology is designed to be deployed on top of AI systems used for financial decision making to protect customers in markets such as financial services and ecommerce from attacks such as targeted manipulation, adversarial machine…
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