Top startup news for today, Monday, April 29, 2019

Good morning! Below are some of the top tech startup news stories for today, Monday, April 29.

Chinese app TikTok now the third-most downloaded app in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2019. Back in February of the year, we wrote about popular Chinese app, TikTok,  when the company reported 500 million monthly active users across the globe. Now TikTok is the third-most downloaded app in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2019, just behind Facebook Messenger and a game called “Color Bump 3D.” According to Sensor Tower, apps developed by Chinese firms or by companies with large Chinese investors, brought in revenues of $674.8 million in the U.S., in the first quarter of 2019.  That’s a 67 percent year-on-year rise.

AI startup Intellimize lands $8 million in Series A funding to expand operations. Intellimize, an AI based website personalization company, raised $8M in Series A funding to expand operations, accelerate growth, and its business reach. The round was led by Amplify Partners, with participation from Homebrew, Precursor Ventures, and several angels. Founded in 2016 by machine learning and advertising veterans from Yahoo, Twitter, and BrightRoll, and led by CEO Guy Yalif, Intellimize uses machine learning to personalize mobile and desktop web experiences, and automatically optimizes websites to drive revenue and customer acquisition.

“Crypto winter is over and new all-time highs by 2020 are likely,” says Bitcoin bull Tom Lee. It was on December 17, 2017 that Bitcoin reached its peak of $19,783.06. Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency has shed over 60 percent if its value since then. Bitcoin bull Tom Lee thinks the the crypto drought is now behind us and crypto winter is over. Lee told CNBC in an interview that bitcoin will move higher and may even be in a bull market already. Of the 11 signs that the “crypto winter” is over, Lee’s top bullish drivers for bitcoin have to do with blockchain, technical indicators and trading volumes. Lee believes the year-on-year boost seen in January was helped by turmoil in Venezuela and Turkey, where people losing faith in their countries’ currencies may have turned to bitcoin as an alternative.

Morgan Stanley selects 10 tech startups for its third Cohort of Multicultural Innovation Lab targeting women founders. Investment bank and financial services giant, Morgan Stanley, today announced the third cohort of the Multicultural Innovation Lab, which invests in multicultural and female tech entrepreneurs who have traditionally faced institutional and cultural barriers to funding. The program, now in its third year, targets companies with a multicultural or woman founder, co‐founder, CTO or other C-suite member that is developing innovative solutions across sectors. Selected from over 300 applicants globally, the 2019 cohort startups include BLUEWAVE Technologies, Care Advisors, Cosynd, Five to Nine, Gappify, Looklive, Mighty Well, ShopJenzy, SmartGurlz and Taina Technology – companies with innovative strategies across the health, software development, legal, medical hardware, HR, fintech, fashion and education sectors

ZeroNorth raises $10 million in Series A funding for R&D, marketing and sales. ZeroNorth a provider of an orchestrated risk management platform, has raised $10m in Series A funding to accelerate its focus on software and infrastructure risk management by strengthening research and development, and investing in sales, marketing, and services. The round, which brought total funding to $18.6m, was led by ClearSky Ventures with participation from Crosslink Capital, Rally Ventures and existing investor Petrillo Capital.

AI startup SofBoost partners with Scott Verner to launch rehabilitation tools using Artificial intelligence and disrupt the $36 billion rehab industry. SofBoost is a pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI) body recognition technology, today announced it has partnered with notable healthcare entrepreneur, Scott Verner, in jointly launching their latest venture, RehabBoost. Rehab Boost is a cross-platform holistic rehabilitation suite that provides remotely administrable treatment programs. These generate real-time, persistent, secure data that is visualized meaningfully for both therapist and patient perspectives, all without a visit to the clinic.

Uber is pitching itself to investors as the next Amazon, despite no path to profits. With no serious path to profitability and billions of dollars losses, Uber, the world’s biggest ride-sharing company, is reportedly pitching itself to investors as the next Amazon, according to a report from The New York Times. Even though Uber is losing $1.8 billion a year, the company plans to compare itself to Amazon during its pre-IPO roadshow in order to justify the billions of dollars in losses.