Top tech startup news stories you need to know this Friday, May 4

Good morning! Here are some of the top tech startup news stories today Friday, May 4

ServiceNow buys AI startup Parlo for for its NLP technology. ServiceNow announced Thursday that it will acquire Parlo, a Silicon Valley-based startup that trains algorithms for conversational machines. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. ServiceNow plans to integrate Parlo’s natural language understanding technology named Broca into its ServiceNow platform for business process automation.

Salesforce Ventures to invest $100 million in Canadian enterprise cloud startups. Salesforce.com Inc., the online customer-management software giant, is investing $100 million in Canadian technology through a venture fund to support tech startups. The  San Francisco-based company said Thursday it has set up the Trailblazer Fund to help cloud-computing startups in the country.

SoundHound raises $100 million to drive international expansion in China and Europe. SoundHound announced today it has raised $100 million in new funding to drive adoption and distribution of its Houndify voice AI platform across verticals including automotive, Internet of Things, consumer products, and enterprise apps and services. The funding will accelerate global expansion, including new offices in China, France and Germany, in addition to furthering momentum in the US, Japan, and South Korea. With the new funding, SoundHound wants to give every brand a voice. The funding came from group of strategic investors including Chinese tech giant, Tencent Holdings Limited, Daimler AG, and others.

Former Goldman Sachs executive director joins cryptocurrency startup HOLD as CEO. Former Goldman Sachs Executive Director, Priyanka Lilaramani, has recently joined HOLD, a Maltese crypto startup, as a new CEO. The cryptostartup announced on its Medium blog. Priyanka Lilaramani was a Director at Goldman Sachs for more than 10 years. In 2017, she was listed in the UK’s Innovate Finance FinTech Powerlist. Lilaramani earned an MBA in Finance from NYU Stern, a Masters in Information Systems from CMU and 17 years of experience on international business.

Former NSA chief’s startup raises $78 million, helps defend U.S. power grid. IronNet Cybersecurity Inc. has raised $78 million in additional funding, the company told Reuters on Wednesday, a day ahead of a planned announcement. The startup is led by former U.S. National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander.

Activist startup CivNet to close. CivNet, an Albuquerque startup that developed an online platform for community organizing, will shut down on July 1. The company, which launched in 2015, reported about 2000 people New Mexico had signed up to use its CivNet platform. CivNet enables group members to communicate from email, text, and Slack.

Xiaomi filed to go public in Hong Kong. The company generated $18 billion in revenue in 2017, up 68 percent after a painful 2016. The Chinese smartphone maker could be worth anything from $70 billion to $100 billion.

Tesla’s stock price plummeted, after its own self-induced disaster. Tesla fell as much as 8.6 percent Thursday after Elon Musk brushed off analysts’ questions in favor of those from a YouTuber.

Cloud-based global payroll startup CloudPay raises $25 million to expand its global presence. CloudPay is the world’s only cloud-based platform for integrated global payroll and payments processing, collaboration and delivery. Through its unified SaaS platform, the company enables its customers to improve business performance through greater fiscal control, see people costs through enhanced visibility, assure local and global compliance, and reduce payroll and payment operational costs. CloudPay today announced that it has raised an additional investment of $25 million in capital from Rho Ventures, Pinnacle Investment Partners, and Hercules Capital. This new funding will be used to further enhance CloudPay’s award-winning technology platform and expand its market and global presence.

FIS and The Venture Center selected ten startups to participate in the 2018 VC FinTech Accelerator program. The US economy is booming and investment in startup is at all time high. In 2017 alone, global funding to VC-backed startups jumped 50% to $164.4 billion. This does not necessarily reflect investment backed by from governments and non-profit organizations. Now FIS, a global leader in financial services technology, is fueling startup investment with the announcement to bring ten startup companies into its accelerator program.