- DroneBase, a company providing drones as a service to capture high-resolution aerial photos, announced that it raised $20 million in a funding round led by Euclidean Capital with participation from Union Square Ventures, Upfront Ventures, Energy Transition Ventures, Hearst Ventures, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and Valor Equity Partners. - The company says that the funds will be put toward expansion in the renewable energy industry and other segments with “high-value” infrastructure, like commercial real estate and insurance. - Investments in drone startups are growing as the benefits of AI applied to aerial photography become clear. For example, algorithms analyze images from drones to monitor for corrosion, pests, and even livestock health. And insurers like State Farm leverage drones for claims inspections, assessing on-the-ground damage, and emergency resources following a disaster.

– Code Climate announced $50M in Series C funding.
– The round was led by PSG and joined by previous investors Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, and NextView Ventures.
– Code Climate’s Engineering Intelligence products are trusted by over 1,000 companies from start-ups to enterprises.
– Code Climate experienced continued strong growth, more than doubled its headcount, and brought on an experienced executive leadership team.
– Funding will help Code Climate advance its product vision, extend its sales reach, and scale customer success – furthering its mission of helping engineering align activities with strategic priorities, deliver high quality software, and improve team performance.

– Mindset, a platform featuring personal story collections from recording artists, announced that it raised $8.7 million in seed funding.
– The round was led by Union Square Ventures with strategic participants like record executive Scooter Braun (of TQ Ventures), who has more recently made headlines over the Taylor Swift masters controversy.
– Other backers include Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Opendoor co-founder Eric Wu, and more.

– Agentero, a digital insurance network, raised $13.5m in Series A funding.
– The round was led by Alma Mundi Ventures with participation from existing institutional investors Foundation Capital, Union Square Ventures, Financial Venture Studio, and Two Culture Capital.
– The new investment will be used to continue to expand operations and its business reach.

– Dwolla is a Des Moines, Iowa-based modern payments platform provider.
– Company raised $21m in funding.
– The round was led by Foundry Group with participation from Park West Asset Management LLC, Union Square Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners, Firebrand Ventures and Next Level Ventures, and Jeremy Andrus, CEO of Traeger.
– The new investment will be used to conduct growth initiatives with international payments, expansive partner relationships through a partner API and further accelerate its product roadmap focused on a real-time payments experience.

– ShopShops, an interactive, global livestream shopping platform, announces a major finance milestone with its new $15M, Series B.
– The financing was co-led by LightShed Ventures and Acrew Capital and supported by existing investors Union Square Ventures, Forerunner Ventures and The Chernin Group (TCG). Dave Lu from Hyphen Capital and Gaingels also participated in the round.
– The funding will be used to accelerate the expansion of ShopShops in the U.S. as well as to continue its growth among premium cross-border shoppers in China.
– Since 2018, the ShopShops mobile app has given shoppers in China access to a best-in-class marketplace of well-known prestige brands, emerging designers and vintage retailers hailing from 30 cities around the world.

– Sift, a fraud prevention company, raised $50m in funding.
– The round was led by Insight Partners and joined by Union Square Ventures and Stripes.
– The company has over several hundred customers, including Twitter, Airbnb, Twilio, DoorDash, Wayfair and McDonald’s.
– It has over 70 billion events per month.

– Soon(a) announced it has raised $10.2M in Series A funding, led by Union Square Ventures.
– The company will use the funding to expand its proprietary Camera-to-Cloud technology and introduce a subscription product.
– soona solves three main problems associated with brand content by delivering high-quality creative from professional crews, a quick 24-hour turnaround time, and transparent pricing — all within one collaborative and intuitive platform.
– If you’re launching a business, growing rapidly online, or expanding into new channels and markets, soona is the right solution.
– The need for innovation in producing content for the e-commerce stack is evident by soona’s growth, which increased 400 percent in 2020 and is on track to do the same again in 2021.

– Dapper Labs, a blockchain company, raised $250m funding.
– The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and joined by Warner Music Group, Union Square Ventures, and others.
– It brings the company to a valuation of $2 billion.

– Codecademy, a coding class platform, raised $40m in Series D funding.
– The round was led by Owl Ventures and joined by Prosus and Union Square Ventures.
– The company plans to use the funding to acquire businesses, grow internationally in India and other countries, and hire.
– It also wants to “invest deeply” in a paid product it launched in the wake of the pandemic, Codecademy For Business.

– Sentry has raised $60m in a series D round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from existing investors Benchmark, Index Ventures, and Union Square Ventures.
– The company is now valued at $1bn.
– Application performance monitoring startup Sentry today announced it has secured $60 million in series D financing for a post-money valuation of $1 billion.
– Sentry says the funds will fuel product development and go-to-market functions, as well as hiring across the company’s San Francisco, Toronto, and Vienna offices.

– SmartHop from Miami, FL, is a tech-enabled platform giving truckers easy load booking, end-to-end back-office support, and above-market RPMs so they can truck smarter not harder.
– The company announced a $12m Series A financing round, led by Union Square Ventures with participation from RyderVentures – a new corporate venture capital fund by leading logistics company Ryder System; as well as Equal Ventures and Greycroft.