Top tech startup news for today, Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Good morning! Below are some of the top tech startup news for today, Tuesday, August 6, 2019.

Snoop Dogg-backed company Klarna is now Europe’s biggest fintech startup valued at $5.5 billion. Swedish online payments startup Klarna said Tuesday it had reached a valuation of $5.5 billion, following a $460 million funding round, making it Europe’s largest private fintech company. Klarna offers a ‘buy now, pay later’ service for shoppers. Klarna provides e-commerce payment solutions for merchants and shoppers. Founded in 2005 by Niklas Adalberth, Sebastian Siemiatkowski, and Victor Jacobsson, the Stockholm, Sweden-based Klarna provides e-commerce payment solutions for merchants and shoppers. Klarna is now one of Europe’s largest banks and is providing payment solutions for 60 million consumers across 90,000 merchants in 14 countries.

BlockFi raises $18.3 million in Series A funding. BlockFi, a New York City-based wealth management solution for crypto investors, raised $18.3m in Series A funding to add new products to its existing platform, which includes interest-earning accounts for Bitcoin and crypto-backed USD loans. The round was led by Valar Ventures with participation from Winklevoss Capital, and others. Co-founded by CEO Zac Prince and Flori Marquez, BlockFi offers financial products that enable cryptocurrency holders to put their crypto to work. The company services customers worldwide, including 47 U.S. states, with interest-earning accounts and low-cost USD loans backed by crypto.

Big tech lost over $162 billion in market value in just one day. Big Tech companies are showing signs of recovering after a big market sell-off on yesterday triggered by trade tensions between the U.S. and China. Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Facebook losing a combined $162 billion in market value.

Artificial intelligence startup Stratifyd receives $10 million in growth capital funding from CIBC. Customer analytics startup Stratifyd has received a $10-million debt-financing round from CIBC Innovation Banking  to help facilitate future growth. Stratifyd’s AI-powered platform ingests, analyzes and visualizes omni-channel customer feedback, making real-time insights. The platform looks at star ratings, surveys, marketplace reviews, call center transcripts, social media content, and many other forms of data.

Software testing startup Ultranauts secures $3.5m in Series A funding to accelerate growth. Ultranauts (formerly ULTRA Testing), a software testing startup employing talent on the autism spectrum has closed $3.5 million in Series A funding to accelerate the company’s growth and impact, including investments in R&D, training and sales to aid the company’s further expansion into data quality engineering. The round was led by SustainVC and The Disability Opportunity Fund led the round, with participation from a diverse group of impact investors including The Libra Foundation and others.

KB Financial Group enters into into a strategic partnership with Plug and Play for startup acceleration. KB Financial Group (KBFG), Korea’s leading bank and financial services provider, has entered into a strategic partnership with Plug and Play to join as an Anchor Partner in Silicon Valley and help KB Starters (KBFG’s membership startups for open-innovation) grow from a domestic to global champion. The partnership will open a two-way channel to support Korean startups expanding abroad and international startups to enter the Korean market regularly. Plug and Play is the world’s largest innovation platform and has accelerated over 1,100 startups in 2018, has a presence in around 30 locations worldwide, and developed more than 300 corporate partnerships globally.

Zero scores $2.8 million in additional seed funding to accelerate growth. Zero, a San Francisco, CA-based health and wellness platform for fasting, raised $2.8m in additional funding to further accelerating its growth plans and adding expertise to bring new and expanded product offerings to market. Investors include True Ventures and Trinity Ventures. To date, Zero has raised a total of $4 million in total seed funding. Originally founded by Kevin Rose and now led by Chief Executive Officer Mike Maser, a serial entrepreneur and former founder of Fitstar (acquired by FitBit in 2016), Zero provides a health and wellness platform for fasting available for iOS and Android in the App Store and Google Play.