tech:

taffy

Echo Nest Closes $17.3M Financing Round

[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

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. 

The Coca-Cola Company commits $1.1B to Microsoft Cloud and AI partnership

The Coca-Cola Company and Microsoft announced a five-year partnership on Tuesday. As part of the collaboration, Coca-Cola has committed $1.1 billion to Microsoft Cloud and generative AI capabilities. 

Apple deletes WhatsApp, Threads from China app store on orders from Beijing — CNN

Apple has removed WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China, following an order from the country’s internet watchdog, writes Juliana Liu.

Singtel, Vonage partner to integrate Paragon platform

Singtel has announced a partnership with Vonage, a cloud communications company and subsidiary of Ericsson, to help enterprises and telcos innovate and scale their services through Singtel's orchestration platform, Paragon.