Top startup news for today, Thursday, January 24, 2019

Good morning! Here are some of the top technology startup news stories for today, Thursday, January 24.

TechAccel launches RNAissance Ag; Invests in biotech startup GreenLight Biosciences.  TechAccel, a Kansas City-based venture and technology development organization focused on agriculture and animal health, has launched RNAissance Ag LLC, a new company that holds the exclusive license to RNA-interference technology in partnership with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri. TechAccel identifies and invests in new technologies AND fund science advancement initiatives with leading research universities to drive the innovations to market. The new startup company will use the proprietary technology to develop sprayable insect control measures.  In addition to the new launche, TechAccel also announced it participated in GreenLight Biosciences’s latest funding round, with an interest in collaborative research leveraging GreenLight’s technology in advancing biopesticides.

Humio raises $9 million in Series A Funding to fulfill grow global demand for its services. Humio, a provider of a solution enabling live observability through scalable log management, available for on-premises and cloud infrastructures, raised $9m in Series A funding to grow its ability to fulfill demand from across global markets and expand the development of its unique platform. The round was led by Accel. In conjunction with the funding, Andrei Brasoveanu, Accel, will join Humio’s board. Founded in January 2016 by Christian Hvitved, Kresten Krab Thorup, and Geeta Schmidt, CEO, Humio provides a solution enabling real-time observability through log data management. Deployable on any infrastructure including both in the Cloud and On-Premises, Humio enables data aggregation, exploration, reporting and analysis from a range of sources ingesting massive volumes of log data instantly. Its innovative data storage and in-memory search/query engine technologies provide customers a log management and analysis solution, requiring less hardware and engineering resources.

Boeing’s flying taxi lifts off in a first successful test flight, bringing Uber Air closer to reality. As we reported yesterday, Aerospace giant Boeing has successfully completed the first test of air taxi. The battery powered prototype lifted off and landed in vertical fashion on Tuesday in Manassas, Virginia, Boeing said in a news release. The passenger air vehicle prototype is battery powered and will have a range of 50 miles. The Boeing NeXt program tests prototype goal is to advance safety and technology of urban air mobility. The PAV prototype completed a controlled takeoff, hover and landing during the flight, which tested the vehicle’s autonomous functions and ground control systems. Future flights will test forward, wing-borne flight, as well as the transition phase between vertical and forward-flight modes. This transition phase is typically the most significant engineering challenge for any high-speed VTOL aircraft.

Mobility and roadside assistance startup Urgent.ly bags $21 million investment from Porsche, BMW and Jaguar. Urgent.ly, the mobility and roadside assistance startup, has just received a $21 million is Series B funding to fuel world-class customer experience for present and future mobility. The top three auto companies, BMW i Ventures; InMotion Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s venture capital fund; and Porsche Ventures, participated in the oversubscribed funding round. Founded in 2013 by Chris Spanos, Lokesh Kumar, Luke Kathol, Ric Fleisher, Rick Robinson, and Surendra Goel, The Vienna, Virginia-based Urgent.ly is the only global digital roadside assistance platform that provides Roadside as a Service.

Popular classified website Craigslist is raking in $1 billion a year, according to one researcher’s estimates. Classified advertising is alive and well. Craigslist, the most popular classified website online, has seen its annual revenue grown past $1 billion, according to a report from CNBC citing AIM Media Group, a digital marketplace consulting group. The increased revenue is due to price increase on in-demand ads. The 50-person company is owned entirely by its founder, Craig Newmark, and CEO Jim Buckmaster. According to AIM estimates, Craigslist brought in $1.034 billion in 2018, an increase of nearly 50 percent from 2016 revenue. Craigslist projected annual revenue was just $7 million back in 2003 when the firm started studying Craigslist’s ads.

Microsoft acquires another open-source startup company, Citus Data. Microsoft just announced today that it’s acquiring Citus Data, an opensource database startup company that has commercialized opensource database software PostgreSQL. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. This is Microsoft’s second open-source acquisition in less than a year. Last year, Microsoft acquired GitHub in a $7.5 billion deal. GitHub is a place where developers collaborate on, explore and access open-source projects.