And it is using an undisclosed portion of its cash reserve to acquire Regate, an accounting and financial automation platform.
Qonto originally started with online business accounts with debit cards specifically tailored for small and medium businesses.
After a while, Regate will be integrated in Qonto directly to improve several accounting automation features of Qonto, such as invoicing, accounts payables, accounts receivables, etc.
Qonto finds itself in a different position from Payfit, another French unicorn (or former unicorn) that provides a software-as-a-service tool focused on payroll.
As many fintech startups are struggling to raise a new funding round, Qonto could become a consolidator in the space.
London-based fintech company Monzo raised a late stage funding round of $430 million (£340 million), confirming a report from the Financial Times from a few weeks ago.
Founded in 2015, Monzo provides UK current accounts, debit cards and several financial products with a digital-first approach.
That’s why Monzo is sort of defying the odds with this new funding round, with Google playing a big part in this investment.
Monzo reached a post-money $4.5 billion valuation in 2022.
Now, Monzo has nine million retail customers in the U.K.
Venture capital funding has never been robust for women or Black and brown founders.
Read about funding for Black foundersFunding to Black founders has been on a steady decline since 2021, implying that investors have either lost interest or focus on backing Black founders.
This is a big deal because after the murder of George Floyd, the venture and startup ecosystem made promises to better support Black founders.
Since 2022, TechCrunch has been speaking with experts to find out what is needed to help boost funding to Black founders.
To help gather data, last year, Crunchbase announced it would officially start tracking the amount of venture capital dollars allocated to LGBTQ+ founders.
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups.
Use AI to sift through self-published stories on their app, pick the ones that scream potential, and then tweak them into bestsellers.
Money for photos: Photoroom, a Paris-based AI photo-editing app, has successfully closed its latest funding round, securing $43 million at a $500 million valuation.
Money for AI: Mistral AI announced a significant development in its journey with the unveiling of a new large language model named Mistral Large, aimed at competing with giants like OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Apple pours more resources into AI: Apple CEO Tim Cook is promising that Apple will “break new ground” on GenAI this year.
Silence Laboratories, a startup that builds infrastructure using multiparty computation (MPC) to help enterprises keep data private and safe, said it has raised a $4.1 million funding round.
Pi Ventures and Kira Studio co-led the recent funding, which brings its total raised to $6 million, along with angel investors.
The startup will use the funding to scale its teams and beef up its R&D pipeline.
The outfit started as a multifactor authentication (MFA) company and pivoted its business to building a cryptographic security firm.
It also recently launched Silent Compute, which lets corporations collaborate on processing information without revealing their own private data to third parties and enrich insights while maintaining compliance and trust.
Motional, the autonomous vehicle company borne out of a joint venture between Hyundai Moor Group and Aptiv, told employees Wednesday it will cut about 5% of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned.
The autonomous vehicle company last had layoffs in December 2022, when it cut about 10% of its workforce.
Motional operates an autonomous vehicle taxi service in Las Vegas (still with human safety operators behind the wheel) on Uber, Lyft and Via platforms.
A production-ready autonomous vehicle, equipped with the kind of redundancies designed for safe operations without a human driver, is a critical milestone required for commercial operations.
During CES 2024, the company announced plans to work with Kia on a next-generation vehicle that will enter commercial operations later this decade.
Black Tech Nation Ventures launched in 2021 to address the funding gap for Black founders amid a wave of venture diversity initiatives after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Three years later, amongst growing backlash against DEI and diversity-focused investments, the firm’s mission may be more important now than when it started.
The firm found initial fundraising success in 2021, and held a first close on $25 million that year, he explained.
“We have seen funding to diverse founders and Black-led venture funds decline rapidly.
The firm will also collaborate with Black Tech Nation, the nonprofit that is run by BTNV general partner Kelauni Jasmyn that created a digital network of Black tech professionals, when it can.
At the time, it looked like it would be more than $50 million; in the end it ended up a little lower.
This latest round brings the total raised by the company, which was founded about four years ago, to $64 million.
Photoroom plans to use the funding to hire more people and to continue investing in its R&D and infrastructure.
Other features it offers includes AI-generated backgrounds, scene expansions, AI-generated images, and a plethora of image editing tools.
“Photoroom’s generative AI capabilities are unparalleled, and we have no doubt that they will continue to lead the way in this rapidly evolving landscape.”
Shadowfax, one of the largest logistics service providers to hyper-local and on-demand delivery businesses in India, has raised $100 million in a new funding round as it clocks an yearly growth of 35%.
Shadowfax says it makes over 2 million packages delivery each day and has amassed over 3.5 million registered users.
Shadowfax operates a logistics and delivery network of over 125,000 monthly active delivery personnels, and works with numerous firms including Flipkart, Meesho and many direct-to-consumer brands.
Shadowfax is Mirae Asset’s first investment in India and the venture firm has participated in each subsequent round.
“We believe that logistics is fundamental to ecommerce and hyperlocal commerce and that it enables the growth of these markets.
Well, it seems the EV market is a tad more cutthroat than anticipated, with pricing pressure mounting like the suspense in a bad thriller movie.
Most interesting startup stories this weekStaying in the world of automotive, there’s been a lot of movement from the avant-garde of EV manufacturers.
These price adjustments from Ford and Lucid come hot on the heels of EV industry poster child Tesla’s price reductions, suggesting that the EV market is maturing and that customers are becoming more price conscious.
Despite all their rage, they’re still just a rat in a Faraday cage: Struggling EV startup Faraday Future owes the landlord of its Los Angeles headquarters nearly $1 million after missing the last two months’ rent.
This week’s big trend: The AI train keeps rumblin’ alongOpenAI has introduced a new generative AI model named Sora, capable of creating videos from text descriptions or still images.
