TechChrounch

1. Extra Crunch roundup: Antitrust jitters, SPAC odyssey, white-hot IPOs, more

   Some time ago, I gave up on the idea of identifying a thread that could connect each story in this weekly roundup. There are no unified theories for technology news.

2. GitLab oversaw a $195 million secondary sale that values the company at $6 billion

   GitLab has confirmed with TechCrunch that it oversaw a $195 million secondary sale that values the company at $6 billion. CNBC broke the story earlier today. The company’s impressive valuation comes after its most recent 2019 Series E in which it raised $268 million on a 2.75 billion valuation, an increase of $3.25 billion in […]

3. Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson says wisdom lies with your developers

   Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson knows a thing or two about unleashing developers. His company has garnered a market cap of almost $60 billion by creating a set of tools to make it easy for programmers to insert a whole host of communications functionality into an application with a couple of lines of code. Given that […]

4. Rapid growth in 2020 reveals OKR software market’s untapped potential

   Today, let's peek at new and historical growth numbers from Gthmhub, Perdoo, WorkBoard, Ally.io, Koan and WeekDone.

5. Harness snags $85M Series C on $1.7B valuation as revenue grows 3x

   Harness, the startup that wants to create a suite of engineering tools to give every company the kind of technological reach that the biggest companies have, announced an $85 million Series C today on a $1.7 billion valuation. Today’s round comes after 2019’s $60 million Series B, which had a $500 million valuation, showing a […]

6. Germany’s Xentral nabs $20M led by Sequoia to help online-facing SMBs run back offices better

   Small enterprises remain one of the most underserved segments of the business market, but the growth of cloud-based services — easier to buy, easier to provision — has helped that change in recent years. Today, one of the more promising startups out of Europe building software to help SMEs run online businesses is announcing some […]

7. Pat Gelsinger stepping down as VMware CEO to replace Bob Swan at Intel

   In a move that could have wide ramifications across the tech landscape, Intel announced that VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger would be replacing interim CEO Bob Swan at Intel on February 15th. The question is why would he leave his job to run a struggling chip giant. The bottom line is he has a long history […]

8. Vdoo raises $25M more to develop its AI-based security for IoT and connected devices

   It’s estimated that there were some 50 billion connected devices globally in 2020, and while that really says a lot about how far we’ve come in tech, for many it also speaks to a big issue: security vulnerabilities, with the devices themselves, plus all the components and services running on them, all potential targets for […]

9. Stacklet raises $18M for its cloud governance platform

   Stacklet, a startup that is commercializing the Cloud Custodian open-source cloud governance project, today announced that it has raised an $18 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Addition, with participation from Foundation Capital and new individual investor Liam Randall, who is joining the company as VP of business development. Addition and Foundation Capital also […]

10. ‘Brand tech’ company You & Mr. Jones adds $60M to its Series B

    You & Mr. Jones announced today that it has added $60 million in new funding from Merian Chrysalis, bringing the Series B round announced in December to a total of $260 million. The round values the company at $1.36 billion, post-money. You & Mr. Jones takes its name from CEO David Jones, who founded the […]

11. Gett raises $115M for its on-demand ride-hailing platform for business users

    As ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft continue to find their feet in a new landscape for transportation services — where unessential travel is being actively discouraged in many markets and people remain concerned about catching the coronavirus in restricted, shared spaces — a smaller player that has carved out a place for itself targeting […]

12. Slim.ai announces $6.6M seed to build container DevOps platform

    We are more than seven years into the notion of modern containerization, and it still requires a complex set of tools and a high level of knowledge on how containers work. The DockerSlim open-source project developed several years ago from a desire to remove some of that complexity for developers. Slim.ai, a new startup that […]

13. Cockroach Labs scores $160M Series E on $2B valuation

    Cockroach Labs, makers of CockroachDB, have been on a fundraising roll for the last couple of years. Today the company announced a $160 million Series E on a fat $2 billion valuation. The round comes just eight months after the startup raised an $86.6 million Series D. The latest investment was led by Altimeter Capital, […]

14. Extra Crunch roundup: 2 VC surveys, Tesla’s melt up, The Roblox Gambit, more

    Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week. I hope we can all look forward to a nice, boring weekend with no breaking news alerts.

15. F5 snags Volterra multi-cloud management startup for $500M

    Applications networking company F5 announced today that it is acquiring Volterra, a multi-cloud management startup, for $500 million. That breaks down to $440 million in cash and $60 million in deferred and unvested incentive compensation. Volterra emerged in 2019 with a $50 million investment from multiple sources, including Khosla Ventures and Mayfield, along with strategic […]

16. RedHat is acquiring container security company StackRox

    RedHat today announced that it’s acquiring container security startup StackRox. The companies did not share the purchase price. RedHat, which is perhaps best known for its enterprise Linux products has been making the shift to the cloud in recent years. IBM purchased the company in 2018 for a hefty $34 billion and has been leveraging […]

17. Glia raises $78M for its integrated, hands-on, AI-based customer service platform

    The ongoing push for social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19 has meant that more people than ever are using internet-based services to get things done. And that is having a direct impact on digital customer service, which is seeing unprecedented traffic and demands when things are not running smoothly. Today, one of the […]

18. Lacework lands $525M investment as revenue grows 300%

    As the pandemic took hold in 2020, companies accelerated their move to cloud services. Lacework, the cloud security startup, was in the right place at the right time as customers looked for ways to secure their cloud native workloads. The company reported that revenue grew 300% year over year for the second straight year. It […]

19. Atlanta’s SalesLoft raises $100M for its digital sales platform, now valued at $1.1B

    The COVID-19 pandemic and specifically need for social distancing to slow the spread of the virus have continued to keep many of us away from the office. Now, increasingly, many organizations and people believe that it could usher in a more permanent shift to remote, distributed and virtual work. Today, a startup that has built […]

20. How Segment redesigned its core systems to solve an existential scaling crisis

    The systemic issues became apparent the way they often do -- when customers began complaining.