The era of the personal car is in decline.
In cities around the world, young people are opting for bikes and ridesharing services over owning an automobile. And with the swelling wave of the self-driving car very much on the horizon, it’s really only a matter of time before there isn’t a single whip left to ghost-ride.
Traditional car manufacturers are taking note.
Last week, there were three big stories about old guard car companies getting in bed with tech. Google and Fiat Chrysler are reportedly going to collaborate on a self-driving minivan. General Motors is teaming up with Lyft to get started on testing self-driving cabs on roads within the year.
Perhaps the most eyebrow raising news was Pivotal’s sizeable $258 million Series C funding round led by Ford. The round, which puts the “mobility software” company’s valuation at $2.8 billion, included investments from Microsoft, EMC, VMware, and General Electric.
At Index we gather tech coverage into one platform for tech enthusiasts to keep up with the news and access that data. In this series, we fill you in at the start of every week on what’s been happening in tech.
A look at the big picture
In the past week, Index logged 247 funding events from 31 different countries. The top 10 countries from North America and Europe in terms of number of rounds can be seen below:
North America
This week in North America there were 149 investments made at a total of $1.72 billion in capital deployment.
Besides the impressive investment into Pivotal mentioned above, education app company Age of Learning also received an impressive $150 million round, earning it a place among the unicorns with a $1 billion valuation. Check out the breakdown in series in North America below:
Europe
Europe saw 52 funding rounds for a total of $314 million.
Fashion e-commerce company Farfetch, based in London, hauled in a $110 million Series F round led by Temasek, IDG Capital and Eurazeo. It’s a pretty good time to be proud of European Startups on this Europe day! Below you can see the breakdown of rounds for the week.
A look back
In this section we look back at the past eight weeks and compare Angel and Seed level rounds, and Series A rounds in both regions. The charts show the fluctuations in average capital volume of the rounds.
Last week’s must-reads
Google and Chrysler will have a fleet of self-driving minivans on the road by 2017 [The Next Web]
IBM just beat Google to a brand new type of computing [Business Insider]
GM, Lyft to Test Self-Driving Electric Taxis [Wall Street Journal]
Elon Musk says Tesla’s Bioweapon Defense Mode ‘is real’ after life-saving car demo [The Next Web]
The steroid era of startups is over — here’s what 8 top VCs think will happen next [Business Insider]
Second Oracle v. Google trial could lead to huge headaches for developers [Ars Technica]
Facebook tests its first new reaction just for Mother’s Day [The Next Web]
Google given access to healthcare data of up to 1.6 million patients [The Guardian]
Intel spent more than $10 billion to catch up in mobile. Then it gave up. [Re/code]
Vimeo acquires VHX to help it challenge YouTube on a different level [The Next Web]
Tune in next week for another update on the state of tech. If you can’t wait that long, consider signing up to the Index.co newsletter to get the week’s hottest tech news straight in your inbox!
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