– Sleeper is a San Francisco, CA-based fantasy sports company.
– Company raised $40m in Series C funding.
– The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from angel investors including Klay Thompson (Thompson Family Foundation); Shane Battier; and Baron Davis, Byron Jones, Ros Gold-Onwude, Kevin Lin, Tim Chen, and Rich Kleiman and Kevin Durant.
– The new investment will be used to expand the game offerings on its platform and build a new feature called Wallet that will enable users to sync their preferred payment methods to the platform.

– Joshin, a digital care platform that connects care providers to families with specialized care needs, announced today that it has closed a seed funding round of $3m.
– The round was led by Anthemis Group and The Autism Impact Fund.
– Joshin is also expanding its services to the West Coast markets of Los Angeles and Seattle, continuing its strong growth in the past year with a 200% increase in its community base, including care providers and members.

– yellow.ai raised $78.15M in Series C funding led by WestBridge Capital along with Sapphire Ventures and Salesforce Ventures.
– Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated in this round, which brings total funding raised so far to $102.15M.
– yellow.ai enables enterprises to leverage its proprietary NLP engine and platform to build chatbots and voice bots, in 100+ languages, across 35+ channels that automate functions like Customer Support, Customer Engagement, Conversational Commerce, and Employee Experience.
– The platform comes pre-integrated with enterprise applications like Salesforce, Shopify, Cisco, Avaya, SharePoint, and 100 more.

– Wildfire Systems from Solana Beach, CA provides a financial technology platform which enables enterprise partners to embed social commerce, rewards, and cashback offerings within their existing services.
– The company raised $15M in Series A funding.
– The round was co-led by TTV Capital and QED Investors with participation from new investors B Capital, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, and Daher Capital, and existing investors including Mucker Capital, Bonfire Ventures, Moonshots Capital, and BAM Ventures.
– The new investment will be used to expand the launch of its new white-label monetization platform.

– Gupshup, a San Francisco, CA-based conversational messaging company, raised $240m in follow-on funding.
– The round was led by Fidelity Management and Research Company LLC, Tiger Global, Think Investments, Malabar Investments, Harbor Spring Capital, White Oak, Neeraj Arora and others.
– The company continues to invest in product innovation for digital commerce enablement as well as expanding go-to-market initiatives in mobile-first economies around the world.

– Octane AI from San Francisco develops a data marketing platform to help ecommerce marketers collect zero-party data and power a personalized customer journey.
– The company raised $5m in funding.
– The round was led by Javelin Venture Partners with participation from existing investors Bullpen Capital, General Catalyst and Boost VC.
– In conjunction with the funding, the company added Alex Gurevich, Managing Director at Javelin Venture Partners, as a Board Observer, Alex Gurevich (a different one) as new VP of Finance and Operations, and Vincent Silvey as VP of Engineering.

– Switzerland-based privacy startup Nym Technologies has raised $6m.
– The round was led by Polychain Capital and joined by Eden Block, Greenfield One, Maven11, Tioga and 1kx.
– The company plans to use the funding to continue commercial development of network infrastructure.

– Censia is a San Francisco, CA-based Talent Intelligence technology company.
– The company raised $21M in Series A funding.
– The round was led by Marbruck Investments, which joined existing investors Streamlined Ventures, Merus Capital, The CXO Fund, and CerraCap.
– The new investment will be used to expand go-to-market efforts, scale their API-first offering, and continue product innovations for talent acquisition and workforce planning powering HR technologies of the future with AI.

– Ably from London, UK provides a platform that powers synchronized digital experiences in realtime for distributed applications, devices, and hybrid cloud environments.
– The company closed a $70m Series B funding.
– The round was co-led by Insight Partners and Dawn Capital with participation from existing investors Triple Point, Digital Horizon, Forward Partners, and MMC.
– The new investment will be used to accelerate growth, adding a further 125 hires to strengthen its core UK team and growing its US presence over the next 15 months.

– Compose.ai, a language model for writing, raised $2.1m in seed funding.
– The round was led by Craft Ventures and joined by other investors.
– The company is building the capability for its AI-powered backend to learn your voice, imbibe context to help provide better responses, and, in time, absorb a company’s larger voice to help align its aggregate writing output.

– SignalWire, a software-defined telecom that uses distributed infrastructure that runs in the cloud, announced that it raised $30 million.
– The company says the funds will be put toward expanding its workforce and supporting product R&D.
– SignalWire, which was founded in 2017, offers an elastic cloud network that lets companies integrate messaging and video capabilities into their apps or infrastructure.
– SignalWire’s cloud messaging platform supports programmable SMS that can be used to reach customers on their preferred channel, or to embed chat experiences without having to reconfigure network policies.
– SignalWire Work, a newer service, supports 4K video and over 100 participants as well as AI-based noise cancellation and transcripts.
– From a workflow perspective, it divides things up into virtual offices with individual rooms that persist in the cloud.

– IntelePeer is pleased to announce the completion of $110M in new funding, with $75M in convertible notes and debt financing from Sixth Street Growth and $35M in equity from Savant Growth.
– The new funding allows continued execution on IntelePeer’s growth and acquisition strategy to become the world’s leading CPaaS innovator.
– IntelePeer was recently named a major player in IDC’s IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Communications Platform as a Service 2021 Vendor Assessment.

– Fireflies, an AI voice assistant that joins videoconferencing meetings to take notes, announced that it raised $14 million in series A funding led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Canaan Partners and angel backers.
– It plans to use the proceeds to expand its platform and acquire new customers, as well as to grow the size of Fireflies’ workforce.
– Remote work is on the rise. With the need to manage distributed workforces, organizations have ramped up their usage of videoconferencing platforms. Global Market Insights predicts that the videoconferencing market will grow 19% between 2020 and 2026, reaching $50 billion in value by 2026. Zoom alone now hosts 45 billion minutes of webinars a year.

– Loom is a video messaging platform for work.
– The company raised $130m in Series C funding.
– The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Iconiq Growth, Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management, and General Catalyst.
– The new funding will be used to drive product innovation and scale operations globally.

– Uptrust, a service that connects people returning to society with their public defenders and court records, raised $2m in seed funding.
– The round was led by Decarceration Fund, Luminate, and Stand Together Ventures Lab.
– It brings the company to a valuation of $10m.

– MessageBird, a cloud communications platform that creates APIs for developers and AI-powered contact center tools, is shelling out $600m to acquire SparkPost, an email delivery, optimization, and analytics platform.
– Alongside the acquisition, Netherlands-based MessageBird announced that it has significantly extended its series C round of funding from the $200m it announced in October to $1bn.
– Founded in 2011, MessageBird serves up a Twilio-like platform that enables app makers to add WhatsApp messaging, voice, SMS, and email functionality to their software through APIs — saving them from having to develop the infrastructure internally.
– Last year, MessageBird launched Inbox, an omnichannel contact center platform that centralizes in-bound communications.

– Gupshup, a San Francisco, CA-based conversational messaging company, raised $100m in funding at valuation of $1.4b.
– The round was led by Tiger Global Management.
– The funding will be followed by a second close with significant additional funds raised from more investors, to be announced later.
– The company intends to use the funds to scale product and go-to-market initiatives worldwide.

– Sendbird, the leading mobile engagement & communication company across in-app chat, voice and video, has closed $100m in Series C funding.
– STEADFAST Capital Ventures led the investment round with participation from Emergence Capital, Softbank Vision Fund 2*, and World Innovation Lab also participated.
– The company was founded in 2014 and is based in San Francisco, California.

– Termii, a Nigerian communications platform-as-a-service startup, raised $1.4m seed funding.
– The round was co-led by African early-stage VC firm Future Africa and Japanese but Africa-focused VC Kepple Africa Ventures.
– Other investors include Acuity Ventures, Aidi Ventures, Assembly Capital, Kairos Angels, Nama Ventures, RallyCap Ventures and Remapped Ventures.
– Angel investors like Ham Serunjogi, co-founder and CEO of Chipper Cash; Josh Jones, former co-founder and CTO, Dreamhost; and Tayo Oviosu, co-founder and CEO of Paga also participated.

– Hi Marley, creators of the only intelligent communication platform built for the insurance industry by people who know insurance, today announced the company has closed a $25m Series B financing round.
– The investment was led by Emergence Capital, with Founder and General Partner Gordon Ritter taking a seat on Hi Marley’s Board.
– Returning firms Underscore, True Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and Greenspring also participated in the round, along with additional investors including Brewer Lane Ventures.
– Hi Marley makes it simple for insurance carriers to seamlessly communicate with policyholders via text to increase transparency and cut through inefficiencies.
– By providing a smart SMS platform purpose-built for the insurance industry, inside of which the entire ecosystem of service providers can communicate, carriers delight customers, achieve faster time to resolution, and see financial results.

– Songclip™ announced that it has raised $11m in new funding.
– The round was led by Gregg Smith of Evolution VC Partners.
– Songclip works in partnership with the music industry to properly protect and monetize music IP, opening up a new $5 billion marketplace for music in apps.
– This new raise includes participation by The Kraft Group, Michael Rubin, Raised in Space, Gaingels, and Forefront Venture Partners.
– Industry executives Jason Flom, Steve Greenberg and the band AJR, join previous investors such as iHeartMedia Ventures, SWAT Equity Partners and Northwood Ventures.
– To date, Songclip has raised $22m.
– Songclip works on behalf of the music industry to supply back-end technology and licensing to facilitate music integrations, compliance, measurement and monetization across a variety of consumer app sectors.

– Songclip, a music search and sharing platform, raised $11m in funding.
– The round was led by GGV Capital and joined by existing investors including Sequoia Capital, Upfront Ventures, and Shasta Ventures.
– The company plans to use the funding to expand its team and grow its technology.

– Snapcommerce announced an $85M USD growth round to bring total capital raised to over $100M USD.
– The round was co-led by Inovia Capital and Lion Capital with participation from Acrew DCF, Thayer Ventures and Full In Partners, and included existing investors Telstra Ventures and Bee Partners.
– Snapcommerce will use the investment to expand into new consumer verticals executing its broader vision of improving the way people shop on their phones.
– Snapcommerce is a flexible, AI-driven platform that is vertical-agnostic and uses messaging to personalize the mobile shopping experience and deliver the best promotional prices.
– Snapcommerce is projected to cross over $1B USD in total mobile sales in 2021.
– Over 100 Million messages have been exchanged with over 10 Million customers through the Snapcommerce platform to-date.

– Stream, the creator of enterprise-grade activity feed and chat APIs, today announces the close of its $38m Series B funding round, led by Felicis Ventures’ Aydin Senkut with participation from Series A lead investor GGV Capital and 01 Advisors.
– The Series B follows just six months after the company’s $15m Series A round in August 2018, bringing total financing to $53m.
– The accelerated financing rounds signal market uptake of Stream’s innovative technology as chat becomes the dominant medium for day-to-day communications.
– Stream provides APIs which enable product teams to build chat and activity feeds for their applications at scale in a fraction of the time and cost of developing in-house.

– Jigsaw, an anti-superficial dating app, raised $3.7m in seed funding.
– The round was led by The Relationship Corp., with backing from angel investors in the U.S. and U.K.
– The startup plans to expand to the U.S.