TechTaffy

tech:

taffy

Echo Nest Closes $17.3M Financing Round

By TechTaffy Desk

[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

The Echo Nest, a music intelligence platform, has closed a $17.3 million financing round led by Norwest Venture Partners. Prior investors Matrix Partners, Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Fringe Partners, Jim Pallotta and board member Michael Brown also participated in this round. Jeff Crowe from Norwest will be joining the company’s board of directors.

This latest round of funding will help The Echo Nest further strengthen its market-leading position with a focus on international sales and marketing. The financing will also support continued development of ‘Fanalytics,’ data-driven solutions to better understand music fans.

The Echo Nest powers smarter music applications for media companies and independent developers, with a customer base that reaches over 150 million music fans every month. Over 340 applications have been built on The Echo Nest platform, says the company. A four-time National Science Foundation grantee, the Echo Nest was co-founded by two MIT PhDs. Investors include Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, Commonwealth Capital Ventures, and three co-founders of MIT Media Lab.

[Image courtesy: Echo Nest]

Just in

IT

IBM to acquire HashiCorp for $6.4B

IBM and HashiCorp have entered into an agreement for IBM to acquire HashiCorp, a provider of infrastructure and security management products, for $6.4 billion.
AI

OpenAI introduces new enterprise features

OpenAI announced new features aimed at enterprise users on Tuesday, at the wake of Meta's recent LLama 3 announcement.
Around the web

Oracle is moving its world headquarters to Nashville to be closer to health-care industry — CNBC

Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said Tuesday that the company is moving its world headquarters to Nashville, Tennessee, to be closer to a major health-care epicenter, writes Ashley Capoot.
Industry

Square expands offline payments globally

Payment processing company Square has announced the expansion of its offline payments feature to all hardware devices and countries.
Around the web

U.S. bans noncompete agreements for nearly all jobs — NPR

The Federal Trade Commission narrowly voted Tuesday to ban nearly all noncompetes, employment agreements that typically prevent workers from joining competing businesses or launching ones of their own, writes Andrea Hsu.