TechTaka, a South Korean online shopping fulfillment startup that provides third-party logistics services for e-commerce sellers, has raised $9.5 million (12.6 billion KRW) in a Series B round of funding from a sole investor, Altos Ventures.
The outfit helps e-commerce sellers manage the supply chain, from warehousing, order packing and shipping, so that TechTaka users can focus on product and marketing.
His expertise and interests in logistics and optimization led him to start TechTaka to offer quick and reliable logistics services.
(Coupang has its own fulfillment centers, and Naver bolsters its fulfillment service in collaboration with logistics and fulfillment companies like TechTaka.)
“We tested our service in the U.S. by introducing Korean e-commerce sellers to Amazon, starting in May 2023,” Kim said.
Rebellions, a South Korean fabless AI chip startup, said today it has closed $124 million (165 billion KRW) in a Series B round of funding to develop its third AI chip, called Rebel.
Rebellions’ fundraise comes at a key moment in the chip industry, specifically around the development and use of AI chips.
Nvidia is the AI chip market leader, its name synonymous with the AI boom that is currently sweeping the technology world.
In May 2023, Rebellions’ strategic investor, KT, installed Atom, Rebellions’ data-center targeted AI chip, in its cloud-based neural processing units (NPU) infrastructure.
Rebellions CEO Sunghyun Park, a former quant developer at Morgan Stanley in New York, and four co-founders set up the AI chip startup in 2020.
Aniai, a startup that has built a burger-grilling robot, Alpha Grill, said today it has raised $12 million.
“Burger chains hire six to eight kitchen staff per shift to grill burgers,” Aniai CEO Gunpil Hwang said.
If the user’s patty does not meet its cooking recipes, specifications and requirements, Alpha Grill promptly notifies the cooking staff to ensure quality control.
It has also been testing Alpha Grill with burger chains in the U.S. since last year.
Other companies in this space include Miso Robotics, which is behind Flippy, a burger-flipping robot; Botinkit, a cooking robot maker in China; and Chef Robotics in San Francisco.
Korea’s Myrealtrip cashes in on travel rebound with $56M in new fundingMyrealtrip is the latest travel tech company to ride a growing post-pandemic tourism industry.
“The travel industry was fragmented 12 years ago in South Korea, and there was no platform that provided travel information,” CEO of Myrealtrip Donggun Lee said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch.
Myrealtrip acquired Startrip in 2022 to capture the number of foreign tourists visiting South Korea post-pandemic.
This travel platform lets users discover and book Korean-pop (K-pop) themed spots, including popular boy band BTS music video filming locations.
Myrealtrip also invested in IwaTrip, a Korean travel platform that helps users find available spots to travel with kids, and O-Peace, a co-working and co-living space platform designed for digital nomads workers.
Figure today announced a “commercial agreement” that will bring its first humanoid robot to a BMW manufacturing facility in South Carolina.
BMW has not disclosed how many Figure 01 models it will deploy initially.
Nor do we know precisely what jobs the robot will be tasked with when it starts work.
Adcock alludes to Figure 01 being tasked with an initial set of jobs that require high dexterity.
Figure 01 will very much be learning on the job, as well, refining its approach during real-world testing, much as we humans do.
Google is set to build a new subsea cable connecting Chile with Australia, via French Polynesia — the first such cable to directly connect South America with Asia-Pacific.
While countless other submarine cables traverse the Pacific Ocean, they substantively connect Asia with North America, though some do snake down the Pacific coast from the U.S and Mexico to various landing points in the South of the continent.
Indeed, Google completed its first entirely private cable project four years ago with Curie, connecting California with Chile.
Google hasn’t given any indication as to when Humboldt will be complete, but rather than going it alone as it has done with other recent cable projects, the internet giant is partnering with Chile’s Desarrollo País and Office des postes et télécommunications de Polynésie française (OPT) to lay the 9,200 mile (14,800KM) cable.
Tech companies including Meta, Microsoft and Amazon have also invested in various internet infrastructure programs, and alongside Google the quartet are said to either own or lease around half of all subsea cabling bandwidth.
South Korean internet giant Kakao — in the middle of multiple investigations over antitrust and securities violations — has appointed a new CEO as it tries to turn the ship around.
Shina Chung, who had been running the company’s venture arm, is moving to the top role at the company.
Separately, just last month, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol called for a review of the monopolistic practices of Kakao’s taxi-hailing unit, Kakao Mobility.
Korea’s antitrust regulator had already fined Kakao Mobility about $20.3 million for unfair service in February.
Kakao Mobility, which has about 74% of the ride-hailing market in the country as of September, separately is trying to lower the temperature around this controvery.
TUNL, a South African parcel shipping platform, has secured $1 million in pre-seed funding from investors, including Founders Factory Africa, Digital Africa Ventures, E4E Africa, and Jozi Angels.
The current challenges in cross-border shipping cost African businesses an estimated $50 billion annually in missed opportunities.
TUNL’s founders identified a recurring issue among small- and medium-sized South African merchants during the pandemic: Shipping costs sometimes surpassed the value of their products.
On the TUNL platform, merchants offer customers various shipping options during checkout.
South Africa is known for its wine industry, with exports reaching 368.5 million liters last year.
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