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Vekst Capital To Invest In West Michigan Businesses

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 8, 2023

Vekst Capital announced it had tapped West Michigan native Steve Tolger to run its private investment firm that invests long-term in family-owned West Michigan companies. Grand Rapids businessman Tim Engen is the founder of Vekst and Tolger will drive the vision and investments as company president. Steve Smith will serve as Vekst’s chief financial officer.

Transcend: $20 Million Raised To Automate Critical Infrastructure Design

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 7, 2023

Transcend Software - a leading SaaS provider of generative design tools for critical infrastructure - recently announced it has closed on its Series B financing round with participation from Autodesk, a leading software provider for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, product design, and media and entertainment industries. The existing investors, including HG Ventures, PureTerra, and Aspen Capital Group, participated in the round, along with new investors Arosa Capital and Riverstone Holdings LLC.

PacBio To Buy Apton Biosystems In Deal Up To $110 Million

By Annie Baker ● Aug 7, 2023

PacBio - a leading developer of high-quality and highly accurate sequencing solutions - recently announced that it has agreed to acquire Apton Biosystems, a company developing a high throughput short-read sequencer using state-of-the-art optics and image processing, paired with novel clustering and chemistry, that is designed to enable the sequencing of billions of clusters of DNA on one flow cell.

Heartland Ventures: This $75 Million Venture Firm Connects Startups With New Customers In The Midwest

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 7, 2023

Heartland Ventures is a venture capital firm that connects high-growth startups with new customers in the Midwest. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Heartland Ventures Managing Director Max Brickman to learn more.

Sprout Social Acquires Tagger Media In $140 Million Deal

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 7, 2023

Sprout Social, an industry-leading social media management software provider, recently announced the acquisition of Tagger Media, a leading influencer marketing and social intelligence platform. This acquisition will further establish Sprout as the social media software market leader with a comprehensive platform that empowers brands to execute a holistic social strategy at scale.

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise: A Discussion About Customer Experience, Supply Chain Automation, And ESG

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 7, 2023

Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is a company that offers communication equipment and services to telecommunications companies, ISPs, and data providers. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise EVP, Chief Business Officer Rukmini Glanard, and EVP of Global Operations, Business Technology and Quality Rasheed Mohamad to learn more.

Orbital: Finance And Crypto Payments Company Secures £5 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 6, 2023

Orbital - a London, Tallinn and Gibraltar-based traditional finance and crypto payments platform for global enterprises - recently announced it has raised £5 million ($6.4 million) in an oversubscribed growth round led by Golden Record Ventures at an attractive valuation in which the founders are maintaining a large majority. The participants in the round include New Form Capital, GSRV, Psalion and Luminous Futures.

Lionsgate And Hasbro Buying Independent Content Platform eOne In A $500 Million Deal

By Annie Baker ● Aug 6, 2023

Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF.A, LGF.B) and Hasbro (NASDAQ: HAS) recently announced that they have signed an agreement under which Lionsgate will acquire the independent content platform eOne in a transaction valued at approximately $500 million, comprised of cash of $375 million subject to additional purchase price adjustments, and the assumption of production financing loans. This agreement is subject to customary closing conditions.

Language I/O: Business-Accurate Translation Technology Company Secures $8 Million

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 6, 2023

Language I/O (LIO) - a leader in real-time, business-accurate translation technology - recently announced an $8 million Series A1 funding round led by Joint Effects, a venture capital firm based in Boston, MA.

Fungies.io: Pre-Seed Funding Round Closed To Help Game Developers Set Up Web Shops

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 6, 2023

Fungies.io recently announced the closure of its Pre-Seed funding round with investments from firms like Depo Ventures, Czechfounders.VC, Necto Labs, CV VC, Outlier Ventures, Tatum, and StartupYard.

Sonio: FDA 510(k) Clearance Received For Use Of AI In Prenatal Ultrasounds

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 5, 2023

Sonio - an AI company revolutionizing fetal ultrasounds - recently announced that their proprietary approach to ultrasound exams on pregnant people has been recognized in the United States as a product that meets health performance and safety standards. And Sonio has received Regulatory Class II FDA clearance for Sonio Detect. This product uses AI to ensure high-quality exams, automatically detecting views and quality criteria of ultrasound images.

Lightbend: Enhanced Developer Experience for Kalix Launches

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 5, 2023

Lightbend - the company providing cloud-native microservices frameworks for some of the world’s largest brands - recently announced a completely new Developer Experience (DX) for Kalix, a unique Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering that delivers an innovative programming model explicitly designed to quickly build scalable, mission-critical, stateful applications in a serverless architecture while focusing solely on the application's business logic.

New Relic Being Taken Private By Francisco Partners And TPG For $6.5 Billion: Details

By Amit Chowdhry ● Aug 5, 2023

New Relic (NYSE: NEWR) - an all-in-one observability platform for every engineer - recently announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Francisco Partners, a leading global investment firm that specializes in partnering with technology businesses, and TPG, a leading global alternative asset management firm, for $87.00 per share in cash. The all-cash transaction values New Relic at an equity valuation of approximately $6.5 billion.