Top tech startup news stories you need to know this Friday, April 27

Good morning! Here are some of the top tech startup news stories today Friday, April 27.

Mammoth Biosciences is a new startup that wants to use CRISPR to diagnose disease. Mammoth Biosciences, the CRISPR-based platform for disease detection, is developing point-of-care diagnostic tests that work by using CRISPR to pick up bits of genetic material circulating in your blood, spit, or urine. The company is the first to use proprietary CRISPR technology licensed exclusively from UC Berkeley, to democratize disease detection with a credit-card sized, point-of-care test for fast, easy, and affordable detection of multiple conditions at once, for use both in the hospital and at home.

FlowX is a startup on a mission to eliminate traffic jams. FlowX is a startup founded by Cambridge university graduate, Richard Cartwright, to help and save commuters from wasting valuable hours sitting in traffic. With cities sitting on wealth of underutilized information in their existing CCTV cameras, FlowX wants to extract and using data from CCTV cameras and provide insightful, granular source of traffic information to better manage traffic.

Guesty Raises $19 Million for Vacation Rental Sales. Guesty, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup, has raised $19.75 million in Series B funding.  The startup helps to simplifies the operations of property management companies and facilitates recieving customers from Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, and other sources.

Amazon is raising the price of its Prime membership to $119. Amazon announced yesterday its raising the price of its Prime membership program from $99 to $119 per year. The e-commerce giant announced the price increase during a call with investors Thursday. The change will go into effect May 11, and it will apply to Prime renewals beginning June 16.

Sequoia Capital raised the bulk of its planned $8 billion fund. The global growth fund will help the company respond to the growing threat posed by SoftBank.

Pantera Capital CEO thinks $40 trillion cryptocurrency market cap is “definitely possible.” The founder and CEO of cryptocurrency hedge fund Pantera Capital, said on Thursday during an exclusive interview with Bloomberg, that he believes the cryptocurrency market cap could one day be worth $40 trillion. “Obviously, we’re very bullish on the space. We think we’re way below, maybe an order of magnitude — or two — below the real fundamental fair value of blockchain,” he said, stating later that “the industry as a whole is $400 billion. It easily could go to $4 trillion, and $40 trillion is definitely possible.”

Square acquired website builder startup Weebly for $365 million. Square announced its acquiring website-building company Weebly for $365 million. The acquisition will be a mix of cash and stock of approximately $365 million, the company announced on its website before its release financial results for the first quarter of 2018 scheduled for May 2, 2018. This is Square’s largest acquisition to date. It gives the company access to Weebly’s millions of customers and more than 625,000 paid subscribers. The acquisition will enable sellers to easily start or grow an omnichannel business with one cohesive solution. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2018.

Real estate startup leaseABLE raises $1.5 million to transform the commercial leasing process. Seattle and San Francisco-based startup, leaseABLE, has rraised $1.5 million to bring the fragmented and secretive world of commercial real estate leasing online. leaseABLE is currently an early stage startup that provides transformative solutions to track, close and report commercial leasing transactions so landlords and brokers can fill vacancies quickly and improve their portfolio performance efficiently.