How your diamond ring may be funding Russia’s war in Ukraine

What to know about Ukraine’s counteroffensive The latest: The Ukrainian military has launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces, opening a crucial phase in the war aimed at restoring Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and preserving Western support in its fight against Moscow. The fight: Ukrainian troops have intensified their attacks on the front line in … Read more

ShareChat faces large valuation cut in new funding

ShareChat is in final stages of deliberations to secure about $50 million in new funding that trims the startup’s valuation to below $1.5 billion, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Existing backers including Temasek and Tencent are among the investors in advanced stages of talks to invest in the new round, the sources … Read more

Saudi shopping and BNPL platform Tamara tops $1B valuation in $340M Series C funding

Tamara, a buy now pay later platform for consumers in Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC region, has raised $340 million in a financing C round that values the fintech at $1 billion. Saudi asset manager and financial institution SNB Capital and Sanabil Investments, a wholly-owned company by Saudi’s sovereign wealth fund Public Investment Fund … Read more

LineNext secures $140M funding for its web3 service

LineNext, a web3 unit of the Japanese messaging app Line, raised $140 million in its funding led by Crescendo Equity Partners, a Peter Thiel-backed private equity firm in South Korea, to expand its web3 platform.  The new funding comes nearly a year after LineNext released its browser-only beta service — consumer-to-consumer(C2C) marketplace launched on its … Read more

South African e-commerce startup TUNL gets funding to accelerate growth of its exports platform

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 platform, which claims to help e-commerce merchants save between 50% and 80% on international shipping costs, said the funding will fuel its expansion in its primary … Read more

Ukraine faces heavy attack from air and cyberspace while Zelenskyy in US presses for more funding

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine came under heavy attack from the air and from cyberspace on Tuesday, local officials said, as nearly 600 Russian shells, rockets and other projectiles rained down on a southern region and unidentified hackers knocked out phone and internet services of the country’s biggest telecom provider. Ukraine also claimed a successful hacker … Read more

Tribe Capital eyes leading $75M-plus funding in India’s Shiprocket

Tribe Capital is in talks to lead a $75 million to $100 million funding into the logistics aggregator Shiprocket, according to a person familiar with the matter, a notable financing deliberation at a time when Indian startups are struggling to raise capital. The funding talks are ongoing and the terms may change, the people said, … Read more

Mistral AI, a Paris-based OpenAI rival, closed its $415 million funding round

French startup Mistral AI has officially closed its much anticipated Series A funding round. The company has raised €385 million, or $415 million at today’s exchange rate — according to Bloomberg, it values the company at roughly $2 billion. Mistral AI is also opening up its commercial platform today. As a reminder, Mistral AI raised … Read more

SumUp taps €285M more in growth funding to weather the fintech storm

SumUp — the fintech that provides payments and related services to some 4 million small businesses in Europe, the Americas and Australia — has picked up some growth funding to navigate the choppy waters of the current fintech market, waters that have tipped and swayed SumUp itself. The startup, which has roots in Germany but … Read more

Five-month-old Indian AI startup Sarvam scores $41 million funding

Sarvam AI has come out of stealth mode and announced it has raised $41 million as the five-month old Indian startup races to build a suite of full-stack generative AI offerings. The $41 million funding raise is across the Seed and Series A financing rounds. Lightspeed led the rounds with participation from Khosla Ventures and … Read more