Top startup news stories you need to know this Wednesday, January 17
Nickie Louise
Posted On January 17, 2018
Good morning! Here are some of the top tech startup news stories today Tuesday, January 16.
AI fintech startup Trend Lab secures $12.7 million angel funding. Trend Lab, a startup developing artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for the FinTech market, announced it raised $12.7 million angel funding, the company said in a press release issued Tuesday (January 16). Founded less than 3 months ago, the Founder and CEO Tin Mok said he wants to enhance FinTech across Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region.
Deep learning speech startup Babblabs raises $4 million. New advanced speech processing startup, Babblabs, announced today it has secured a Series Seed investment of $4 million to fund its initial development and finalization of advanced cloud and embedded speech processing systems using deep neural network and audio processing technologies. The funding round is led by Cognite Ventures, with additional funding support from Jerry Yang, founding partner of AME Cloud Ventures, and notable independent investors John Hennessy, Harvey Jones, James Hogan and Kurt Keutzer.
Seattle startup Usermind raises $23.5 million to expand internationally. Seattle-based startup Usermind has pulled in $23.5 million from prominent Silicon Valley investors to help it expand overseas. The latest round of funding will help Usermind set up its first international office in London.
Qatar Airways says offered 25 percent stake by U.S. startup airline. A U.S. startup airline has offered a 25 percent stake to Qatar Airways, CEO Akbar al-Baker said on Wednesday, providing another opportunity for the Gulf airline to broaden its reach. The CEO did not name the airline when speaking with reporters.
Tencent invests $51 million in Canadian startup Wattpad. Chinese internet giant Tencent Holdings has invested $51 million in the Canadian story-sharing platform WP Technology, known as Wattpad. The new funding will be used to expand the company’s global entertainment effort, increase machine-learning activities and hire more workers.
Ed-tech startup Rubix raises pre-Series A round. India-based ed-tech startup Rubix108 Technologies has secured $1 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Polaris Fund, a company announced in a statement. The startup will use the funding to acquire more customers, on board more schools, and enter foreign markets such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Middle East.
Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator awards more than $1 million in cleantech grants. The Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2), funded by Wells Fargo Foundation and jointly administered by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, today announced more than $1 million in support of eight projects and 19 organizations to address gaps in clean-energy technology development and commercialization.
