All posts tagged: 20m

The pitch trick that helped an eSports startup raise M when VCs only wanted AI

The pitch trick that helped an eSports startup raise $20M when VCs only wanted AI

Published by skeptic

Earlier this year, Lucra Sports founder and CEO Dylan Robbins did something that no one else has ever done. He landed famed public investor Cathie Wood and her ARK Invest Venture Fund as a lead in a startup fundraising round. Lucra announced last month that it raised a $20 million Series B, led by the ARK fund, with participation from several other VCs. Robbins attracted ARK even though the fund had previously gotten badly burned on a similar eSports company: Skillz, a skill-based gaming platform in which the fund invested heavily before divesting at a loss. On top of that, Dylan landed this big fish as an investor even though his company is not in the one area that all VCs are currently chasing: AI. Lucra offers white-label interactive gaming competitions as a novel kind of loyalty program for businesses that serve consumers. Rather than, say, earning points toward a coupon, Lucra’s clients offer online tournaments for prizes, or supports friendly wagers between their customers on who will win games. Its customers include Five Iron Golf, …

Financial risk management platform Pillar raises M seed in round led by a16z

Financial risk management platform Pillar raises $20M seed in round led by a16z

Published by skeptic

Pillar, a platform that helps commodity-driven businesses (like those in metals, food, and airline companies) manage financial risk, announced Tuesday a $20 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz.  Others in the seed round include Crucible Capital, Gallery Ventures, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. The company has raised $23 million to date. Pillar, founded in 2023, automates hedging processes for such businesses. Hedging is when a company places a trade that can offset or cancel out losses from other priced trades. Geopolitics has not been kind to the commodities market, which has seen much volatility in the past year.  Harsha Ramesh, the company’s co-founder and CEO (founded alongside Chinmay Deshpande, the company’s CTO), said the company uses AI to ingest and parse data from client contracts, cash flows, inventories, ERP software, spreadsheets, and even WhatsApp messages to “continuously analyze exposure across commodities, FX, and freight.” It can then build and manage a hedge portfolio for its clients, and adjust positions automatically based on “market conditions, volatility, and the client’s risk tolerance,” Ramesh continued. The platform …

The Feds Took Down a ‘Full-Service Cybercrime Platform’ Behind M in Phishing

The Feds Took Down a ‘Full-Service Cybercrime Platform’ Behind $20M in Phishing

Published by skeptic

Cybercrime is a big business, driving nearly $21 billion in fraud and theft in 2026 alone. The FBI and the Indonesian National Police took a chunk out of that late last week when the pair took down infrastructure vital to the W3LL phishing kit, a piece of software that could steal someone’s account credentials and data to bypass multi-factor authentication.  The W3LL phishing kit was best known for targeting Microsoft 365 accounts, but a crook could purchase it for $500 online and target any number of services. They could then deploy a website that captures a user’s login information and session data, giving the criminal access to the account without going through multi-factor authentication.  Read more: Best Password Manager in 2025 The cybersecurity firm Group-IB, which first documented the W3LL phishing kit in 2023, described it as an all-in-one phishing tool capable of making custom phishing tools, providing email lists, and granting access to compromised servers. Its developer also made a couple of bulk email spam tools called PunnySender and W3LL Sender before the W3LL phishing …

Prince William praises ‘incredible milestone’ as Deborah James’s bowel cancer fund raises over £20m | UK News

Prince William praises ‘incredible milestone’ as Deborah James’s bowel cancer fund raises over £20m | UK News

Published by Sam Flores

The Prince of Wales celebrated the “amazing legacy” of Dame Deborah James after a fund set up shortly before her death raised over £20m. Prince William posted on his Instagram to say the achievement by the Bowelbabe Fund for Cancer Research UK was “an incredible milestone and an amazing legacy”. He added: “Deborah is in our thoughts today, as are all those who loved her. W.” Instagram This content is provided by Instagram, which may be using cookies and other technologies. To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies. You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Instagram cookies or to allow those cookies just once. You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options. Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Instagram cookies. To view this content you can use the button below to allow Instagram cookies for this session only. Enable Cookies Allow Cookies Once The journalist and campaigner’s frank accounts of life with bowel cancer shed …

Lucid Bots raises M to keep up with demand for its window-washing drones 

Lucid Bots raises $20M to keep up with demand for its window-washing drones 

Published by skeptic

Andrew Ashur, the founder and CEO of window cleaning robot startup Lucid Bots, likes to joke that his company is the antithesis of the robotics industry right now. While many companies are trying to build humanoids or tout demos of their robots dancing and doing flips, Lucid Bots’ drones are out in the field making traditionally unsexy and dangerous work, like cleaning windows, safer and more efficient. “The sad truth is most are still selling a lot of hype and headlines, and we sell performance on the job site that shows up in our customers, profits, and losses,” Ashur told TechCrunch. “We’re not just in the lab and simulators. We’ve got dirt under our fingernails, and we’re out on job sites getting work done.” Charlotte, North Carolina-based Lucid Bots is a full-stack robotics company that sells its Sherpa drones and Lavo robot to cleaning companies to help them on their job sites. The company designed and manufactures its own robots in the U.S. and just raised a $20 million Series B round co-led by Cubit …

India’s Varaha bags M to scale carbon removal from the Global South

India’s Varaha bags $20M to scale carbon removal from the Global South

Published by skeptic

Varaha, an India-based climate tech startup, has raised $20 million in fresh funding as it looks to scale carbon removal projects from the Global South and position itself as a lower-cost supplier for verified emissions reductions. The investment marks the first portion of a planned $45 million Series B round led by WestBridge Capital, the venture firm’s first investment in climate tech, with participation from existing investors including RTP Global and Omnivore. Founded in 2022, Varaha has raised about $33 million in equity to date, alongside $35 million in project financing and $500,000 in grants, as it builds carbon removal projects across Asia and Africa. India has emerged as an increasingly important base for carbon removal projects, offering lower operating costs, deep agricultural supply chains, and a large pool of technical talent as corporate demand for verified removals rises, including from companies facing growing energy use from data centers and AI workloads. Varaha is positioning itself to capitalize on those advantages, arguing that its execution-focused model allows it to deliver carbon removal at lower cost …

Luke Littler seals record £20m deal with dart supplier | UK News

Luke Littler seals record £20m deal with dart supplier | UK News

Published by Sam Flores

Luke Littler has secured a historic payday after agreeing a record £20m deal with his dart supplier. The 18-year-old, who claimed the first £1m prize pot when he won the World Championship at Alexandra Palace last Saturday, has renewed his contract with Target Darts. The Press Association understands the deal, including potential earnings and bonuses, as well as a percentage of sales of products and equipment, is worth £20m over 10 years and will be the biggest the sport has ever seen. English player Littler has helped to bring darts to the mainstream since his debut run to the 2024 World Championship final as a 16-year-old. Image: Pic: PA “Target has believed in me from day one and I’m delighted that there are many more years to come,” said Littler, who is also managed by the company. Read more from Sky News:TikTok creator jailed for nine yearsVideo from ‘personal’ series released on Kate’s birthday Littler, who bought all the staff at Target Apple AirPods for Christmas, has already won nearly £2.8m in prize money in …

OpenAI ordered to share 20m ChatGPT logs with news publishers

OpenAI ordered to share 20m ChatGPT logs with news publishers

Published by Sam Flores

ChatGPT. Picture: Shutterstock A US judge has ordered OpenAI to share 20 million anonymised ChatGPT user logs with news publishers who are suing for breach of their copyright. OpenAI is currently removing anything that can identify its users from 20 million output logs (out of the tens of billions it has stored in total) and has been ordered to hand these over to the news publishers within seven days of completing that process. Lawyers for the news publishers will then be able to analyse the 20 million conversations looking for responses that reproduce their copyrighted work in whole or part. The New York Times was the first major news publisher to sue OpenAI (and its partner Microsoft) over the alleged crawling of millions of its articles to train ChatGPT, which it has argued can repeat large amounts of that material almost verbatim. Since then several other publisher lawsuits have been joined to the NYT case, including 17 publications owned or managed by Alden Global Capital subsidiaries MediaNews Group or Tribune Publishing such as The New …