Plus: Italian food service Porta raises $10.5M to fill a General Assembly-sized hole.
The Retail Times is a weekly newsletter covering retail tech news from Canada and around the globe.
Subscribe to R|T using the form at the bottom of this page to ensure you don’t miss out on the most important retail tech news every week!
Porta raises $10.5-million for frozen, ready-to-cook Italian meal delivery service (BETAKIT)
Toronto-based Porta, which offers frozen, ready-to-cook Italian food, has raised a $10.5-million CAD Series A funding round. With eyes on national expansion, Porta might just fill the frozen-pizza-shaped hole left by General Assembly.
Clutch financing in works would slash online car seller’s valuation by 97 per cent from peak (THE GLOBE AND MAIL)
Canadian online car seller Clutch Technologies Inc. is in advanced stages of securing funding that would slash its valuation to $15 million, a tiny fraction of its late-2021 peak of $575 million.
Clutch chief executive Dan Park confirmed a financing was in the works and expected to close soon but declined to disclose details, adding that it would take “a two page essay” to explain the “super complicated” deal.
POWERED BY: UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOOBolt into the future with student talent.
The next generation of talent and consumers is here. Know what they want by hiring the right talent. Co-op students can help accelerate your business with diverse perspectives and digital insights.
With access to 70 percent of funding opportunities, students are affordable talent.
Hire today!
PacifiCan invests nearly $23 million in BC cleantech, zero-waste projects (BETAKIT)
Through its Pacific Economic Development Agency of Canada (PacifiCan), the federal government has made a number of investments in June to drive startup expansion and technology commercialization in British Columbia.
Made in three separate announcements, the investments total some $23 million in funding for cleantech and zero-waste technology in the province.
Amazon’s iRobot deal in EU antitrust crosshairs (REUTERS)
Amazon’s $1.7 billion acquisition of robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot may reduce competition and strengthen Amazon’s position as online marketplace provider, EU antitrust regulators warned on Thursday.
The European Commission opened a full-scale investigation and will decide by November 15 whether to clear or block the deal.
Tiptap and Omnirobotic pursue restructuring after startups fail to raise additional funding (BETAKIT)
Burlington, Ont.-based Tiptap and Laval, Qué.’s Omnirobotic are restructuring after both startups were unable to secure the financing necessary to support their existing operations and obligations.
As VC funding dried up, many companies have cut staff to preserve cash and pursue profitability, explored costly down rounds or debt financings, filed for creditor protection, sold for a fraction of their previous value, or shut down altogether.
CADDi raises $89M Series C to scale its B2B supply chain marketplace for manufacturing parts (TECHCRUNCH)
CADDi, which operates a business-to-business marketplace for the manufacturing industry, said it has raised $89 million in a Series C round, bringing its total capital to $164 million, to scale its business and help those equipment manufacturing players.
The outfit says the CAADi Manufacturing platform eliminates some procurement work and aggregates orders to help find similar materials, processes and suitable delivery schedules.
Here’s a list of all the Startupfest afterparties (BETAKIT)
The team that pulled together a community-submitted list of all the events surrounding Collision conference in Toronto has done the same for Startupfest in Montréal, which takes place from July 12 to 14.
Some of the events on the list are completely free, or can be attended without a Startupfest pass. Others require tickets to be purchased or are invite-only.
Food-Delivery Companies Sue New York City Over Minimum Pay Law
(THE NEW YORK TIMES)
While delivery workers currently make around $11 per hour, New York City’s new pay standard would require gig platforms to pay about $18 per hour and to increase that amount to $20 per hour by 2025.
Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub argue that the city used poor data to calculate how much food delivery workers should earn and that the change would hurt consumers.
AI risks: overblown, existential threat, or something else? VCs and tech experts disagree (BETAKIT)
From “AI godfather” Geoffrey Hinton to Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez, AI experts took centre stage at Collision in Toronto to discuss the promises and perils within the future of AI.
Overworked and unable to quit: Delivery drivers in Brazil found something worse than gig work (REST OF WORLD)
Guilherme became a subcontracted delivery worker because of the promise of stable hours and pay — but like many other such drivers, he faces unmanageable amounts of work that he said he cannot afford to refuse.
“From Sunday to Sunday you are not allowed to do anything but work,” he said.
Shipping container marketplace Boxhub raises $12.4 million for global expansion (BETAKIT)
Toronto-based startup Boxhub, which offers an online marketplace for shipping containers, has raised a $12.4-million Series A round.
Founded in 2017, Boxhub provides an e-commerce and logistics platform for the purchase and delivery of new and used shipping containers.
Subscribe to The Retail Times
Don’t forget to subscribe to The Retail Times using the form below to make sure it hits your email inbox every week!
.
