AOL ramps up ad tech offerings by inking deals with AlephD and Taboola
AOL announced on Tuesday it will partner with Taboola to share content between all the brands under the AOL umbrella, including: AOL.com, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, AOL Mail and MapQuest. Taboola makes widgets that recommend 300 million pages to 750 million unique visitors every month. It is used by many online publishers including USA Today and Business Insider. Taboola has worked with AOL since 2013, but the deal expands its reach to all the "premium brands" under the AOL umbrella. [Business Insider]
Girls Who Code offering $1 million in scholarships for nationwide classes
Since Saujani founded Girls Who Code in 2012, the program has grown from a single class of 20 girls in New York to a national movement with partners throughout the tech industry volunteering time and space to introduce girls to computer science. This year,
is offering $1 million in scholarships to offset the cost of forgoing a summer job to attend the seven-week program. Local classes will be hosted by AT&T, Goldman Sachs and IBM, among other partners. [Built In NYC]
Samsung opens VR film studio in NYC
In an announcement at Sundance last week, Samsung USA marketing chief Marc Mathieu stated that the company plans on opening a VR production studio based in one if its New York City offices. [The Verge]
Media conglomerate Viacon taps startup Canvs to hone in on emotions across social media
Viacom tapped New York-based
to help them assess the reaction to their content and advertising among social-media users in a quantitative way. Canvs categorizes social-media comments into 56 emotional categories and uses a dictionary of 4 million words and phrases keyed into millennial slang and social-media shorthand. [Variety]
Fundings of the week
, $40 million
Investors: Accel, Costanoa Venture Capital, SoftTech VC and Greg Waldorf, and Vayner Capital.
Grovo offers “micro-learning” content and related technology/services to help businesses train their employees. Over the course of 2015, Grovo’s team doubled from 100 to 200 people and its annualized recurring revenue (it charges a subscription fee) went up 400 percent. Grovo’s new customers include WeWork, the Wyndham Hotel Group and the NBA.The company plans on using the funding to add new kinds of content to its platform, including GIFs, quizzes and podcasts. [TechCrunch]
, $20 million
Investors: Accel Partners, Greycroft Partners, Burch Creative Capital, Aspect Ventures, Hubert Burda Media and DSW.
BaubleBar offers fashionable jewelry pieces that don’t break the bank. In addition to being an online shop, BaubleBar has relationships with several retailers including Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, and Anthropologie, all of whom now sell its products in stores. And more recently, the company launched a special line of tech accessories at Target.
Investors: Claridge Israel (CI), la Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), BRM, FTV and Intel Capital.
GigaSpaces Technologies provides pure-play cloud orchestration and data scalability platforms. The funding will accelerate global awareness and adoption of GigaSpaces’ cloud application orchestration and data scalability solutions, drive continued product innovation, and expand its sales organization worldwide in the area of hybrid cloud, NFV and real-time analytics. [VentureBeat]
Olo, $40 million
Investors: The Raine Group
With over 150 restaurant groups as clients, Olo works with large chains, including Chipotle, Five Guys and Jamba Juice, to power their online ordering and pick-up business. [TechCrunch]
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