Adam Tempkin / Bloomberg:
SEC filing: Figure, which uses blockchain to provide loans and is led by Mike Cagney, ex-CEO of SoFi, plans to raise $250M via a SPAC — – Ex-Sofi CEO Cagney’s blockchain fintech Figure creates SPAC — Ellington Management has ‘economic interest’ in effort: filing
Coco Feng / South China Morning Post:
China’s Zhejiang province, home to companies like Alibaba and NetEase, has approved the country’s first regional law focusing on public data and digital economy — The legislation was hailed by tech leaders as a milestone for the ‘governing the digital industry according to the law’ Zhejiang’s …
Reddit says it has cut ties with a controversial former UK politician who it had recently hired, after 200+ subreddits, like r/Music, went private to protest — UPDATE: Reddit has now confirmed that it has fired Aimee Knight from her position with the company.
Paul Tamburro / GameRevolution:
Catherine Shu / TechCrunch:
Indonesia-based BukuKas raises $10M Series A led by Sequoia Capital India to digitize SMBs with an “end-to-end software stack”, bringing total raised to $22M — The backbone of Indonesia’s economy are small- to medium-sized businesses, which account for 60% of its gross domestic product.
Hotmart, which offers cloud-based services for creators to build, run, and manage their online businesses, raises $130M Series C led by TCV — Hotmart Company, an Amsterdam, The Netherlands-based provider of a cloud-based platform for creators to build, run, manage, and grow their digital businesses …
Annie Musgrove / Tech.eu:
Libeo, a French startup that lets SMEs easily process invoices and B2B payments, raises €20M Series A and says it is processing €100M annually — Libeo, a French fintech software that simplifies invoices and payments for SMEs, has closed a €20 million Series A round …
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Q&A with Unity CFO Kim Jabal, about the impact from Apple’s upcoming IDFA changes, the tug of war between targeted ads and privacy, competition with Epic, more — Unity Technologies recently reported better than expected earnings for the fourth quarter ended December 31.
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch:
Copenhagen-based Labster, which sells virtual STEM lab software to educational institutions, raises $60M Series C led by a16z, bringing total raised to $100M — Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm with $16.5 billion in assets under management, has poured millions into an edtech startup …
Sean Burch / The Wrap:
Sensor Tower: Clubhouse was downloaded 2.7M times in March, a 72% decline from February’s 9.5M+ — After pulling in 9.5 million downloads in February, Clubhouse only had 2.7 million downloads in March, according to new data from Sensor Tower — Is the party on Clubhouse already dying out?
Sources: Huawei notifies suppliers that it plans to order components for 70M to 80M smartphones this year, down over 60% from the 189M it shipped last year — China’s largest handset maker suffers from US sanctions Biden appears to back — TOKYO — Huawei Technologies has notified …
