- Stripe doubled its valuation to $3.5B; payment start-up that partners with Apple Pay, Alipay, Facebook, Twitter: Stripe, an e-commerce start-up based in San Francisco, announced on Tuesday that it had raised a new $70 million round in venture capital. The round, which includes Sequoia Capital and Thrive Capital, values Stripe at $3.5 billion, twice the amount the company was valued at less than one year ago. The company, which was founded by brothers, John and Patrick Collison, in 2009, offers payment processing services for small and medium-size businesses that want to sell items online. It competes with the likes of companies like PayPal, which has long dominated the online payments industry. The company has also secured partnerships with Facebook and Twitter — which allow for users to buy things directly inside of these social platforms — and recently announced a deal with Alipay, one of the largest e-commerce platforms in China. Stripe plans to use its new capital to continue to add to its existing staff of 180 employees, and push harder into international markets. It also plans to bolster the set of tools it offers to developers who use Stripe to process payments for their businesses. More here and here.
- IBM signs $1.25B cloud deal with WPP, and differentiates with hybrid focus: IBM seeks to differentiate its offering by focusing on hybrid clouds, which mix together the private, on-premise computer systems for which it has long been known with newer public-facing Internet, mobile and analytics systems, allowing clients to move existing systems to the cloud at their own pace. This hybrid approach means companies can wait for years before they consider moving their most sensitive core financial systems to the cloud computers. It also gives them the option of never having to move. Secondly, European clients demand that their data remain stored locally in European data center, a requirement IBM has met by building seven public cloud data centers across Europe in London, Amsterdam, Paris and one in Germany, with another to follow there shortly.
- Tumblr adds action buttons - simpler than Twitter buy button, but no payment integration: Tumblr, which has apparently overtaken Instagram as the fastest-growing social media property — has today announced a test of a new feature that will give it more interactivity, and more of a social commerce spin. Users that post links from a selection of sites — Etsy, Artsy, Kickstarter and Do Something — will now automatically see action buttons appear in the top right corner of the posts for people to “buy”, “browse”, “pledge”, or “do something”. For now, the actions are limited to these four sites. Down the road, if Tumblr decides to integrate the buttons into links from a wider range of properties — taking in e-commerce behemoths like Amazon and eBay, for example — it could feasibly become much more of a competitor against the likes of Pinterest, Facebook and others, positioning Tumblr not just as a place to consume content but to transact, too. the buttons on Tumblr are somewhat reminiscent of the buttons that Twitter has been adding to Tweets,but Tumblr’s buttons are much more simple for anyone (not just businesses or power users) to create — they come up literally when you a copy/paste of a link. And while Twitter has integrated with payments companies to underpin its own buy button, Tumblr’s implementation is, well, a bit more rough and tumble. It’s unclear, for example, if Tumblr is getting an affiliate cut on any traffic that it sends to these sites as a result of the button. If anything, it feels more like Tumblr has added these buttons to test the waters, looking at how such a feature might potentially get monetised in the future, perhaps as an ad unit for businesses using the button. The offering is desktop only — not mobile.
- Smart home-audio market continues to heat up - Sonos raises $130M: After Amazon's launch of Echo, and Apple's purchase of Beats, Sonos, in the smart home audio business since 2002, just raised $130 million, according to an SEC filing. The funding adds to Sonos’ previous $325 million, bringing it to around $455 million. That makes it a very, very well capitalized startup. It’s so big that probably no one but Google or Apple could afford to acquire it. Considering Apple’s personal audio buyout of Beats’ headphones business, and Google’s invasion of the smart home, either could be a smart alternative to an IPO for Sonos. Sonos has been steadily improving its core product — home stereo systems where each room can be separately controlled to wirelessly play music from online and local sources. It ditched its proprietary controller to let you use iOS and Android devices as remotes, and eliminated the need for its “Bridge” gadget you had to plug into your wireless router. Alongside Spotify, Pandora, iTunes, Deezer, Sirius XM, and your own music library, Sonos recently added support for SoundCloud and Google Music. What’s left is to become a household name. Sonos has already begun buying expensive commercials on primetime music TV shows like The X Factor. It’s also running huge outdoor ad campaigns on the sides of buildings in Europe
