Indian lending platform Capital Float raises $22M Series C extension from Amazon

Capital Float, the fintech startup that says it is India’s largest online lender, announced today that it has raised $22 million in new funding from Amazon. At the end of last year, reports surfaced that Amazon was considering an investment in Capital Float as an extension of its $45 million Series C, which was announced …

Through luck and grit, Datadog is fusing the culture of developers and operations

There used to be two cultures in the enterprise around technology. On one side were software engineers, who built out the applications needed by employees to conduct the business of their companies. On the other side were sysadmins, who were territorially protective of their hardware domain — the servers, switches, and storage boxes needed to …

Do you need a blockchain?

Blockchain technology is set to have a profound impact on a wide variety of industries, ranging from capital markets to the music business. While some use cases may seem obvious, the technology is still surrounded by its fair share of hype and uncertainty. As a manager, how should you approach the subject, and when should you put …

Apple says its global facilities are now powered by 100-percent clean energy

Last week, Apple called out the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to rollback the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. The company cited both the obvious environmental impact of such a move, along with potential economic fallout. It turns out Apple’s got quite a bit invested in the latter.  The company announced today that its global facilities are …

Data is not the new oil

  It’s easier than ever to build software, which makes it harder than ever to build a defensible software business. So it’s no wonder investors and entrepreneurs are optimistic about the potential of data to form a new competitive advantage. Some have even hailed data as “the new oil.” We invest exclusively in startups leveraging …

Voicery makes synthesized voices sound more like humans

Advancements in A.I. technology has paved the way for breakthroughs in speech recognition, natural language processing, and machine translation. A new startup called Voicery now wants to leverage those same advancements to improve speech synthesis, too. The result is a fast, flexible speech engine that sounds more human – and less like a robot. Its …