Top tech startup news for today, Friday, September 20, 2019

Good morning! Below are some of the top tech startup news for today, Friday, September 20, 2019.

Amazon founder unveils ambitious plan to tackle climate change. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled a sweeping plan Thursday to solve the climate change problem. As part of the plan, Amazon  agreed to purchase 100,000 electric delivery vans from vehicle manufacturer startup Rivian. In addition, Bezos said Amazon is committed to meet the goals of the Paris climate agreement 10 years early. Amazon founder also expects 80% of his company’s energy use to come from renewable sources by 2024, before transitioning to zero emissions by 2030. “We want to use our scale and our scope to lead the way,” Bezos said at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “One of the things we know about Amazon as a role model for this is that it’s a difficult challenge for us because we have deep, large physical infrastructure. So, if we can do this, anyone can do this.”

Clutter Buys The Storage Fox Portfolio, for $152 million. Clutter, a storage startup that manages the pickup, storage and retrieval of customers’ belongings, has acquired The Storage Fox portfolio, for $152 million. Founded in 2015 by Ari Mir, Clutter is a provider of on-demand storage services, operating in seven major market areas and over 1,000 cities and towns across the US. The acquisition will bolster Clutter’s presence in the city and will allow the company extend its services to customers who need regular access to their belongings, such as small business owners, contractors, pharmaceutical representatives and teachers. Clutter will rebrand all four facilities and expects them to be fully operational under its brand by November 2019.

Google is investing $3.3 billion to expand its European data centers. As part of its commitment to renewable energy and solving the global change problem, Google announced today its investing $3.3 billion (3 billion euros) to expand its data centers across Europe over the next two years. In a blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company would invest an additional 600 million euros into its Hamina, Finland data center next year, bringing total investment in that site to 2 billion euros. “Our Hamina data center is a significant driver of economic growth and opportunity,” Pichai said. “It also serves as a model of sustainability and energy efficiency for all of our data centers.” The investment will create about 1 billion euros’ worth of new infrastructure in the EU, Pichai said.

MoviePass shuts down after burning through $68.7 million of investors’ money.  MoviePass, a subscription service that allows customers the freedom to see a movie every single day for the cost of $9.95 a month, has shut down its operation. Founded in 2011 by Hamet Watt and Stacy Spikes, MoviePass employs location-based technologies to allow individuals to watch movies at local theaters for a fixed monthly price. MoviePass’s parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics, notified MoviePass subscribers on Friday that it would be interrupting the service effective Saturday, September 14, 2019. Before shutting down, MoviePass raised a total of $68.7M in funding over 3 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Oct 3, 2018 from a Series B round.

Boundless Bio raises $46 million in Series A funding to accelerate its technology capabilities. Boundless Bio, a biotech startup interrogating and targeting extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in aggressive cancers, has completed a $46.4m Series A funding round to continue to build technology capable of identifying and characterizing ecDNA-driven tumors; identify and validate novel cancer targets; and develop targeted, proprietary treatments that exploit ecDNA’s vulnerabilities. The round was co-led by ARCH Venture Partners and City Hill Ventures, with participation from Vertex Ventures, GT Healthcare Capital Partners, Boxer Capital of the Tavistock Group, Alexandria Venture Investments, and other undisclosed investors.

Canadian AI startup Daisy Intelligence closes $10 million in funding to scale its AI platform. AI startup Daisy Intelligence today announced it has raised $10 million (CDN) in Series A financing led by Framework Venture Partners and partnered by European-based corporate investor, Sonae IM. The funding will enable Daisy to expand globally, invest in sales and marketing, provide further support for its customer success teams, and expand its operational infrastructure as growth demands. Founded in 2003 by Gary Saarenvirta, Daisy Intelligence is a focused artificial intelligence (A.I.) software-as-a-service company for retail that transforms transaction log (TLOG) data into weekly promotion, pricing, and inventory forecasting recommendations.