Elevate Brands, a company that acquires and operates Amazon third-party business, has announced an additional fundraise of $250 million. The majority of the fund came from its existing investors and a global group of technology, fintech and e-commerce business leaders, the company said in a press release.

Vaayu, an automated platform to help retailers cut down their carbon emissions, has raised $1.57 million in its pre-seed funding round led by CapitalT. A number of angel investors, including Atomico’s Angel Program, Planet Positive LP, Saarbrücker 21, Expedite Ventures and NP-Hard Ventures- participated in the funding round, reports state.

Microsoft has announced a definitive agreement to acquire RiskIQ, a security company providing digital threat management solutions for software vendors. The deal is aimed to help customers build a comprehensive view of the global threats, better understand vulnerable internet-facing assets, and build world-class threat intelligence.

Gembah has raised $11M in a Series A funding round led by ATX Venture Partners. The total funding raised by the company now crosses $14M and it looks to use the proceeds from this funding towards expanding its engineering and marketing team, develop UX/UI.

HelloFlow, a fintech business, has raised € 1.3 million (about USD 1.5 million) in a seed round from PreSeed Ventures and Seedcamp. The cash will be utilized to strengthen the platform’s advanced capabilities and speed up product development. HelloFlow is a no-code platform that connects with local ID authentication providers to change client onboarding and identity verification in local markets and in banks.

Tide, a fintech firm, has raised $100 million in a $650 million Series C investment. The round’s leader was Apax Digital. Tide will use the extra funds to strengthen its business finance platform, expand internationally, and expand its market share. While Tide’s user base has gradually increased since its inception, in 2020, the number of users in the United Kingdom more than doubled.

Vara, a staff-management platform for Southeast Asian small and medium enterprises (SME), has announced the raise of $4.8 million in a seed round from Go Ventures, RTP Global, AlphaJWC, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, FEBE Ventures and Taurus Ventures, reports state.

Robin AI has raised USD 2.42 million in a funding round led by Episode 1. The increased funds will be used to expand the firm’s client base. Robin AI will receive $2 million from the Google Black Founders Fund in addition to the funding round. Robin AI’s software solution combines machine learning and human intelligence to automate legal labor. Richard Robinson is a Black attorney-turned-entrepreneur who is passionate about promoting diversity in the workplace.

Dovetail studios, a full-service venture capital business, has raised AUD 10 million (USD 7.5 million) for a new fund. One of Dovetail’s goals is to train entrepreneurs to approach other VCs for funding. Dovetail is a full-service venture studio based in Sydney and Auckland that works with entrepreneurs who have a great idea but lack technical knowledge. Afterpay enlisted Dovetail’s help to build its digital infrastructure and create consumer-facing solutions.

Wobot.ai has announced the launch of a SaaS-based version of its product with a range of features to revolutionize how one perceives cameras and the information derived from them. Having announced its entry into the US market, the company would also look to solidify its position as a one-stop video analytics platform there.

Didomi has raised $40M in a Series B funding round co-led by Elephant and Breega, a round which takes its total funding to $46M. The company plans to invest in technology, expand into the US and European home markets using the funding.

Netskope has raised $300M in an additional round. The company’s total funding to date crossed $1B as per Crunchbase and valuation has increased to $7.5B post this round. It plans to use the fresh capital to expand its platform and go-to-market aspirations rapidly.

In a Series B financing led by Tiger Global Management, Flash has raised $22 million. It’s a platform that offers firms and employees in Brazil a variety of flexible perks. Flash is on a mission to modernize what it perceives as an old-fashioned manner of offering employee perks in South America’s largest country.

Frontier has received $2.8 million in a funding round led by NFX. Frontier calls itself a “vertically integrated” job market. Frontier’s concept is that it pre-screens candidates, selects the best, and allows them to schedule interviews with companies directly, saving time and money.

Smile Identity received a $7 million Series A investment from Costanoa Ventures and CRE Venture Capital. Smile Identity intends to utilize the extra funds to strengthen its services, expand into new locations, and serve a larger range of ID kinds. John Cowgill, a Costanoa partner, will join Smile Identity’s board of directors. Smile Identity provides ID solutions in Africa and throughout the world for banking, telecoms, financial services, and shared economy applications.

IBM plans to acquire BoxBoat Technologies, a well-known DevOps consulting firm and Kubernetes-certified enterprise service provider. BoxBoat will join IBM Global Business Services’ Hybrid Cloud Services business, which is constantly growing. BoxBoat provides a wide range of services, including customized Kubernetes and Enterprise Container Platform adoption strategies, application containerization, and DevSecOp training and facilitation.

Peter Boyce II, a General Catalyst partner, has left the company to form his own firm called Stellation Capital. He plans to raise $40M for his company’s fund. Mr. Boyce joined GC in 2013 and is in charge of Ro, Macro, towerIQ, and Atom investments.

Switzerland’s national postal service has acquired a major stake in the end-to-end cloud-based file synchronization and management software provider, Tresorit. It said that the move falls in line with its broader aspirations of supporting the Swiss economy in times of digital transformation.

Rootly, a startup helping companies recover and learn from incidents, has announced the raise of $3.2 million in seed round funding led by Ross Fubini at XYZ Venture Capital with participation from 8VC (investors in Asana, Palantir) and Y Combinator.

Toronto-based Clearco, a fintech capital provider, has raised $215 million in new funding round, just months after it turned unicorn, rebranding itself from Clearbanc, raising Canadian Dollars (CAD) $125 million ($100 million) in Series C at $2 billion valuation.

Nairobi-based MarketForce, a B2B end-to-end platform that helps customer brands deliver essential goods and services, has announced the raise of $2 million in a pre-Series A funding round.With this round, its total funding stands at $2.5 million. Investors who participated in this round were – Y-Combinator and P1 Ventures joined by V8 Capital, Future Africa, Greenhouse Capital, Launch Africa, Rebel Fund, Remapped Ventures, and a couple of strategic angels.

Botman, a cybersecurity software-as-a-service business, has received $200K from Modulor Capital and Pentathlon Venture in a seed round. The funds will be used to grow the company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution for the digital advertising supply chain. The company wants to get rid of IVT (invalid traffic) from the digital ad ecosystem.

Avataar Ventures and Ascent Capital led a Series B investment of $16 million for CRMNEXT. Avataar Ventures and Ascent Capital lead a $16 million Series B investment for CRMNEXT. Across 100 major banking and insurance firms around the world currently use the startup’s services.

Outbrain, a recommendation platform connecting advertisers with open web consumers, has announced its raise of $200 million in a private equity round from The Baupost Group at an undisclosed valuation. The fundraising comes a week after it filed a proposal for the IPO of its common stock with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Lidya, a digital financial services platform, has raised $8.3 million in a pre-Series B funding round led by Alitheia Capital with participation from Bamboo Capital Partners, Accion Venture Lab and Flourish Ventures, reports state.

Localyze, a Y-Combinator-backed startup aiding cross-border employee relocation, has raised €10M ($12M) from Blossom Capital in Series A. Its previous round (Seed) was closed in 2020, and with this funding, Localyze plans to accelerate expanding into other markets besides its base, Germany.

Juni, an e-commerce platform, has announced the raise of $21.5M in a Series A funding round, co-led by DST Global and Felix Capital. The company had only launched in 2020 and raised its seed round funding around November last year. The proceeds from this funding would be used in product development and hiring across teams.

San Francisco’s mmhmm has announced the raise of $100 million in its Series B funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, exactly a year after its private beta launch. Since its launch in 2020, mmhmm has raised about $136 million in four funding rounds in less than a year, with the most recent Series A and debt financing round in October 2020, where it raised $35 million collectively, as per Crunchbase. Sequoia Capital, Mubadala Capital, Human Capital, World Innovation Lab (WiL), and many earlier investors participated in the round.

Dataminr has bought WatchKeeper, a situational awareness platform, for an unknown sum. With the purchase of WatchKeeper and its integration with Dataminr Pulse, Dataminr will grow its global corporate customer base. As part of an early access program, business customers will be able to utilize the integrated version of Dataminr Pulse later this year. The broader release is slated for early 2022.

ZeroFox, external threat intelligence and security firm, has bought Vigilante, a dark web threat intelligence firm. Vigilante will be incorporated into ZeroFox right away, giving customers a one-of-a-kind Dark Ops solution. Vigilante will provide clients with information and security resources, allowing them to make better decisions.

Hopin, a platform for event management, has announced the purchase of Attendify to strengthen and expand its event marketing capabilities. Hopin will soon provide Campaign Manager with Attendify, allowing event marketers to leverage a strong email engine. Attendify’s products, such as Audience CRM, a complete attendance data platform, will enhance Hopin’s portfolio in various ways.

Unit21, a no-code risk, fraud, and compliance software, received a $34 million Series B investment round led by Tiger Global Management. The money will be utilized to expand the engineering, R&D, and go-to-market teams within the firm. Unit21 was formed because the current method of fraud prevention and detection, which relied on “black box” machine learning, was flawed.

Opaque, a company that helps businesses analyze encrypted cloud data, has received $9.5 million in a seed round sponsored by Intel Capital. With Opaque, clients can work with secure data on the cloud while guaranteeing that the data isn’t exposed. Secure hardware enclaves and cryptographic fortification are part of Opaque, which is a mix of two essential technologies built on top of state-of-the-art cloud security.  

Repeat has secured $6 million in a Series A round of funding led by Battery Capital. The funds will be used to grow the company’s operations. Client purchasing patterns are tracked by the platform, which alerts them when it’s time to repurchase. It then builds a personalized shopping basket for each, which makes replenishing a breeze.

Cloverly has raised $2.1 million from TechSquare Ventures in a seed round. Customers may purchase carbon offsets from public markets to offset their carbon footprints while also utilizing technology to develop solutions. Cloverly monitors the offset market to ensure that the providers are trustworthy and continuously looking for new ones.

Fountain9, an AI-driven company that focuses on predictive inventory planning, has raised $1.9 million in a seed round. The money will be used to improve the intelligence of the startup’s demand sensing engine, increase its product offerings, and expand into new areas.

San Francisco’s r2C, a software security startup, has announced the raise of $27 million in a Series B funding led by Felicis Ventures with participation from existing investors Redpoint Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Alongside the funding, it announced on its official blog that its open-source product, Semgrep, would now integrate with GitLab.

Seattle’s WellSaid Labs has announced the raise of $10 million Series A funding led by FUSE, with participation from Voyager, Qualcomm Ventures LLC and GoodFriends. The company would use the fresh capital to enhance its AI-generated synthetic voice business.

San Francisco’s Renegade Partners has announced the close of its first fund, $100 million, to partner with companies going through a critical inflection point, which it cites as a supercritical stage, in their venture and help them become outliers. The VC firm made its announcement in a series of tweets.

Copenhagen-based Pleo, which offers smart payment cards for employees, attained unicorn status, raising $150 million in Series C funding at a $1.7 billion valuation from Bain Capital Ventures and Thrive Capital. Pleo said that this is the largest Series C investment raised by any Danish-headquartered company.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) has announced the cancellation of the ten-year JEDI contract with Microsoft. The move comes after US Federal Judge Patricia Campbell-Smith rejects the DoD and Microsoft’s motions to dismiss Amazon’s challenge of awarding the contract to Microsoft. Alongside the termination of JEDI, The Pentagon has announced a new JWCC contract, considering evolving cloud requirements

Magic Fund, a global collective of founders backing other founders, has raised $30 million in its second dedicated fund, Magic Fund II, to continue its mission of supporting early-stage startups across Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.In an official announcement, Magic Fund stated that it would be writing checks between $100K and $300K in early-stage companies across different sectors and geographies and enunciated its aspirations and vision behind supporting them. 

Tata Consultancy Services has released Jile 5.0, a SaaS-based solution. Jile 5.0 is available in two versions. The Standard edition and the Enterprise edition. Jile 5.0 gives organizations a unified picture of their portfolios and programs, allowing them to align execution with strategy better. This will help business stakeholders, and teams collaborate more effectively and reduce the time it takes to launch new software.

TravelPerk, a business trip booking website, has purchased the UK-based Click Travel. Click Travel oversees £300 million in business travel for its clients, which will help TravelPerk expand in the future. With the addition of Click Travel’s 2,000+ SME clients, TravelPerk’s UK and European business has been reinforced, increasing the total number of customers to little more than 5,000 after the acquisition.

Hubble, an online marketplace for flexible office space, has announced that it has raised €2.7 million (approx. USD 2.7 million) in a funding round led by Pi Labs. Other participants include JLL Spark and Starwood Capital.The new funds will help in launching Hubble’s new suite of solutions geared at facilitating hybrid working. 

Toqio, a provider of SaaS global financial platform, has announced its raise of €8 million ($9.4 million) seed round funding led by Seaya Ventures and Speedinvest, with participation from SIX FinTech Ventures. The company would use the proceeds to scale its platform. Taking the announcement to its official LinkedIn and Twitter Handle, Toqio thanked the investors and enunciated its vision.

Vienna’s byrd, a global e-commerce fulfillment network providing online shops logistics solutions on Monday, announced the close of its Series B fundraise of €16 million, roughly $19M from Mouro Capital. The company had raised €5 million ($5.9 million) in Series A funding in July last year and with the close of Series B, its total amount raised has crossed €26 million ($30.7 million). Existing investors – Speedinvest, Verve Ventures, Rider Global and VentureFriends- participated in the funding round, the company said in a press release.

Speciale Invest, a deep-tech venture capital firm, invested $375K in Neverinstall’s seed round. To improve the platform, the money will be utilized to hire a world-class technical staff. Neverinstall is a startup developing a cloud platform for bringing any graphical user interface (GUI) program to the browser, independent of OS or device type. The startup intends to give free and open access to software programs without any fees or limitations imposed by the hardware of the user’s device.

CanBank Venture Capital Fund Ltd has invested an undisclosed sum in CoRover, a conversational AI startup. CoRover plans to use the funds to grow its business and invest in research and development to improve its AI-based platform. People from all around the world utilize CoRover. It claims to have the largest user base in India.

VC Holdings has signed a sale and purchase agreement to acquire some of IDreamSky’s SaaS-related software and the entire issued share-capital of Dream Impression Holdings, IDreamSky’s indirectly owned subsidiary, in an $11.23 million deal (HK $87.32 million).

Obviously AI, a no-code platform helping people without a technical platform build and run AI models, has announced an extension of its $3.6 million seed round that it raised in May this year. With the close of this extension round, led by a deep tech investment firm, University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners (UTEC), the company’s seed funding raised to $4.7 million.

ExpenseOut, Infiniti Software Solutions’ flagship product, has been reintroduced by the company, which provides travel technology service. The product scans invoices automatically and assesses them for accuracy, policy compliance, and legitimacy using artificial intelligence. The program offers options for accurately collecting and reimbursing mileage data using GPS.

Antler India has provided early-stage funding to PeakPerformer, a leadership development company. As it builds its AI platform and expands its client base, the funds will be used to hire engineering expertise. PeakPerformer is a tech-enabled executive development platform that helps companies upskill their executives at all levels.

TWID, a rewards-based payment network, has raised $2.5 million in a round led by BEENXT and the Surge Fund of Sequoia Capital India. The firm, which is located in Singapore and India, links clients with merchants to pay using points earned through a “Point Issuer” scheme. Surge’s fifth batch of 23 companies includes TWID, which has developed unique digital solutions to assist businesses and individuals.

In a pre-Series A financing led by IIFL Securities Capital Enhancer Fund, Leegality, a platform for document execution, received an undisclosed sum. The additional funds will be used to recruit more individuals in critical roles, speed up product development, and expand the company’s operations. Leegality’s e-sign, e-stamp, and document processing technology, launched in 2016, enables Indian businesses to sign and manage documents.

MyMobiForce, an AI-powered crowdsourcing platform, has raised ₹10 crores ($1.42 million) in a pre-Series A funding round led by Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund, reports state. The round witnessed participation from angel investors led by Manu Iyer of Bluehill Capital, Acsys Investments, and Ashutosh Agrawal (ex- Urban Company).

Du and Wipro have announced the launch of their multi-cloud platform that aims to simplify, accelerate digital transformation and cloud adoption across the UAE. It is set to help organizations reimagine their infrastructure, create new cost inefficiencies and deliver more secure solutions.

Huawei and Temenos have teamed up to allow Temeonos’ cloud-native core banking solution on Huawei’s public cloud. It would focus on the APAC region, with a focus on China and other areas. With the move, banks would be able to achieve their go-to-market strategy and open up new business models.

REvil, a cybercriminal group, used flaws in Kaseya’s update system to target hundreds of businesses in a devastating ransomware attack. The ransom demand is the highest in recent memory, and if paid, it will be the most expensive ransom ever paid in response to a cyberattack. The attackers hit MSPs’ Kaseya infrastructure, then the MSPs inadvertently distributed malware to their clients by seeding their ransomware using Kaseya’s trusted distribution method.

Intervue, an Indian SaaS hiring platform, has completed a seed round led by Titan Capital for an undisclosed amount. The funds will be used to grow the product and strengthen the core staff. Intervue combines live coding and video conferencing with other tools like whiteboarding, take-home projects, a question bank, and more to enable a company to hire better employees faster.

Cairo-based MaxAB, a B2B e-commerce platform connecting food and grocery retailers to suppliers, has raised $40M in Series A funding from North Africa’s investor RMBV. The company would look to expand its market other regions, especially the MENA, and scale its recently launched business verticals

Locad, an eCommerce logistics business, has raised $4.9 million in a seed round led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge program. The funds will be used to develop the startup’s courier and distribution networks. Locad is a company that offers an “end-to-end solution” to cross-border e-commerce businesses.

Shenzhen-based Kingdee International Software Group Company recently signed an official contract. It held a kick-off meeting for a cooperation project with the Shagang Group, a leading provider of iron and steel material manufacturers and integrated service providers. In a statement to the press, Kingdee enunciated that both companies have reached a consensus to work in tandem to mobilize all internal and external resources for the digital transformation of the iron and steel industry, setting a benchmark with a great significance in a demonstration.