Xyte raises $30M so any hardware maker can run devices as a subscription
The Israeli startup lets hardware OEMs build, price and manage device subscriptions — a 'Shopify for hardware-as-a-service' in a declining hardware market.
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300 RECENT CASES · REGULARLY UPDATEDVAIA turns storm-felled Alpine wood into a regeneration business
After Storm Vaia downed 8.7 million cubic metres of Alpine trees, an Italian B Corp upcycled the timber into design objects and reinvests the profit in forests.
Read the caseSugar Lab's founders bought their 3D food-printing tech back from 3D Systems
Nine years after 3D Systems acquired Sugar Lab, its founders raised $5M at a $16M valuation to buy the CURRANT 3D food printer back and run it themselves.
Read the caseStasher bootstrapped to 8,000 luggage-storage locations and profitability on under £5M
The UK founders refined 'Airbnb for storage' into same-day left luggage via shops and hotels — 8,000+ locations in 80 countries, profitable on 100% YoY growth.
Read the caseEx-Tesla engineer's Sirona bets Tesla-speed iteration can make direct air capture cheap
Belgium's first direct air capture startup, founded January 2023 by a Tesla engineer and a thermodynamics PhD, hit its third prototype within six months.
Read the caseSideChef turned 20,000 recipes into a shopping cart wired to Walmart
An ex-Blizzard developer who couldn't cook built a recipe app, then survived the lesson that users won't pay for recipes by wiring them to grocery checkout.
Read the caseSELANA Alpha is the Netherlands' first fully legal e-scooter (interview)
Six years after the Netherlands banned e-scooters, Max Schalow's RDW-approved SELANA Alpha became the country's first fully legal one, at about EUR 1,900.
Read the caseEx-Icertis execs raise $7.55M for Rivvun to recover the money contracts leak
Rivvun AI's agents sit on SAP, Ariba and Salesforce data to close the gap between what enterprises negotiated and what actually reaches their books.
Read the caseProbablyMonsters' $250M studio collective sold its star studio and right-sized
Two years after a $200M Series A — gaming's largest — Harold Ryan's people-first collective sold Firewalk to Sony, shelved Cauldron's game and cut staff.
Read the casePast Maps walked away from AI money and built a 300K-user old-school web business
Ex-Meta engineer Craig Campbell turned a metal-detecting map tool into a subscription site — 300,000 monthly users at $9 weekly or $52 a year, no VC.
Read the caseKarat bought a runway-end Triplebyte to own the technical interview end to end
With hiring in a downturn, the $1B interview platform absorbed Triplebyte's adaptive quizzes and 300,000-test dataset while winding down its talent network.
Read the caseReliance's JioHotstar went global without the cricket that built its audience
From 2026-09-02 JioHotstar replaces Hotstar in the UK, Canada and Singapore — 160,000 hours of entertainment, but none of the sports behind its 500M users.
Read the caseWalmart shut Jet.com four years after paying $3B for it to fight Amazon
Acquired in 2016 as Walmart's Amazon-killer, Jet was quietly discontinued in a quarterly report as its e-commerce division bled a reported $2B a year.
Read the caseHuskeys raises $27M led by Blackstone to manage the messy network edge
Every CDN, WAF and cloud tool brings its own console and policies; Huskeys sells one orchestration layer above them — and calls the category NESM.
Read the caseWill Wright's memories game can't get funded even after The Sims
Gallium Studios' Proxi maps your memories as explorable 3D snow globes with generative AI — and as of April 2025 the team is nearly out of money.
Read the caseELVTR bets live classes from working pros beat university — 90% finish (interview)
ELVTR runs live online courses taught by practitioners from Meta, Ubisoft and Marvel — and reports 90% completion against a 10-15% online norm.
Read the caseDoorDash paid $175M for Symbiosys to push its ads beyond its own app
DoorDash, whose ad business crossed $1B annualized, bought off-site adtech startup Symbiosys for $175M to reach consumers on Google and Instagram.
Read the caseDirecto turns TikTok's reverse-image-search booking hack into a Chrome extension
Gen Z travellers reverse-image-search listings to book direct and skip OTA commissions; Directo automated the hack and sells hotels access to the demand.
Read the caseDevolut builds Happy Returns-style return points for Latin America's e-commerce
The Mexico startup pairs a no-box, QR-code return-point network with AI that pushes exchanges over refunds — instant refunds, 50% lower returns costs.
Read the caseCyera pays $162M for year-old stealth startup Trail Security as buyers demand platforms
Trail raised $35M and never launched — its founder chose to sell to Cyera rather than fight a market that only wants all-in-one data security platforms.
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