Black Ambition, owned by world-renowned singer and producer Pharrell Williams, recently announced its $3 million investment in content curator platform Trend. The pre-seed funding round was led by venture capital firm Flybridge and included a range of investors, including Techstars Ventures, live-streaming service Twitch, famous anime brand Crunchyroll, and reviewer platform Rotten Tomatoes. The investment firm, Black Ambition, which was founded by Pharrell in 2020, is dedicated to supporting Black and Latinx business owners. The non-profit organization aims to bridge the gap to success for entrepreneurs of color working in
How do you allow — and make it easier for — anyone to start a company? That’s the question driving Pulley, the cap table and equity management platform that has just raised $40 million in Series B investment funding. The new investment brings Pulley’s total funding to $50 million to date. The funding round was led by Keith Rabois at Founders Fund, including investors Stripe and Elad Gil. The latest investment fund comes a year after the company’s rapid growth, supporting over 1,600 companies across 80 countries. The serial investor
Black-owned investment accelerator, 1863, has unveiled its investment strategy for “New Majority” entrepreneurs, a term that they use to describe Black and Brown business owners who have been historically marginalized. The investment funding will go towards helping early-stage entrepreneurs develop their businesses to achieve generational wealth and hit their target goals. 1863, founded by Melissa Bradley in 2020, is a business development program designed to bridge the gap between entrepreneurship and equity. The platform works with marginalized entrepreneurs to help accelerate them from high potential to high growth. The firm
Carbon transformation company Twelve has raised $130 million in Series B funding to further support the engineering and manufacturing industries. The funding round was led by DCVC and included Series A investors Capricorn Technology Impact Fund and Carbon Direct Capital Management. Breakout Ventures, Munich Re Ventures, Elementum Ventures, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, and other investors participated in the funding round. The new funding will deploy the world’s first carbon transformation product. The product, designed to create a wide range of products with a lower carbon footprint, will use transformative technology
On July 11, New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, announced that the city will be boosting its STEM programs with the help of a $1.5 million grant from Pfizer, a biopharmaceutical company known for developing a COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer’s donation to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City will specifically support students in two STEM-related initiatives, Exploring Futures and College Now for Careers. The programs help support the city’s science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) educational programs. The extra funding will also go towards building a career pathway for students to help them break into the industry. “Thanks
Marketplace website MinorityBiz has a 51-page directory to find, compare, and hire minority- and Black-owned businesses across the U.S. to service your company’s needs. It’s not the only directory out there that’s trying to shine a light on Black professionals and their ventures. Here is a list of online directories to help you find the right Black-owned business partners for your needs. We will continue to update this list as we find more resources. Official Black Wall Street Official Black Wall Street hosts a variety of local and online consumer products as well as business
Senegal-based fintech startup, Wave, raises a syndicated loan of $91.5 million from International Finance Corporation (IFC), Blue Orchard, Symbiotics, responsAbility, and Lendable. Wave Mobile Money, founded by Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk in 2018, has quickly grown to become the largest mobile money remittance in Senegal. In 2021, the company closed the most extensive Series A round for an African fintech at $200 million. The digital fintech platform uses technology to build a radically inclusive and affordable financial network. As a result, Wave has built a life-changing economic infrastructure for
Kenyan and Canadian-based solar energy platform, Solar Panda, has raised $8 million in Series A funding. The funding round was led by investors Oikocredit and Electrification Financing Initiative. The pay-as-you-go solar home system was founded by Andy Keith in 2016, to help provide clean, affordable solar energy to rural communities in Africa. The platform has already provided more than 200,000 solar home systems to households across Kenya from its 37 retail branches. “We are excited to partner with leading global impact investors Oikocredit and EDFI ElectriFI and thankful that this
Black-founded startups recently saw record amounts of investment, with quarterly funding commitments nearing or even topping $1 billion. But according to new data from Crunchbase, venture capital funding has dropped significantly in the second quarter of 2022, down to just $324 million. So far in 2022, only 100 U.S. startups with a Black founder have received funding, with $100 million invested in seed rounds, $591 million in early-stage rounds, and approximately $876 million in later-stage rounds. Startups with at least one Black founder received 1.9% of deal counts and 1.2% of
NFL Star Jonathan Taylor has invested $6 million into Sports Tech company Strive in a Series A funding round. The funding round, led by venture capital firm, Future Communities Capital, included a range of investors, including SeaChange Fund and Seed to B Capital. NFL quarterback Troy Smith and Jonathan Taylor were new investors who also participated. Strive, founded by Nikola Mrvaljevic in 2016, aims to provide accurate muscle data to athletes and teams. Mrvaljevic decided to launch the company after seeing that college coaches welcomed his ideas on using data
