TechTaffy

tech:

taffy

Optimal Raises $7M

By TechTaffy Desk

Optimal

[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

Social media advertising and analytics company Optimal has added $7 million in funding.

New participants in funding Optimal include DoubleRock, The Social Internet Fund, Siemer Ventures, Signal Ventures, John Pappajohn, Warren Adelman (former CEO of GoDaddy), Social Starts, James Altucher and Silicon Valley Bank.
Existing Series A investors Neu Ventures (Jerry Neumann), Stonnington Asset Allocation Fund, and WGI Group (led by Mike Walrath, the founder and former CEO of Yahoo Right Media, and Noah and Jonah Goodhart) also participated in the funding round.

As part of its Series B, James Altucher (independent) and Suraj Kumar Rajwani (DoubleRock) are joining the company’s board of directors.  The company is also hiring Paul Suh as CFO.

Optimal is a member of Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) program and is based in San Francisco, with offices in Palo Alto, New York, and Chicago.

Just in

Fundings

Island raises $175M

Dallas, Texas-based enterprise browser company Island raised $175 million in Series D funding, raising the company's valuation to $3 billion.
Around the web

Binance founder Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao sentenced to 4 months in prison — Gizmodo

Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering violations as part of Binance’s agreement with the United States Department of Justice, writes Maxwell Zeff in Gizmodo. 
AI

CoreWeave raises $1.1B

CoreWeave, a specialized cloud provider for AI, has secured $1.1 billion in new funding.
Fundings

StepSecurity raises $3M

Seattle, WA-based cybersecurity startup StepSecurity has closed a $3 million seed funding round.
Around the web

Microsoft’s latest Windows update breaks VPNs, and there’s no fix — PCWorld

Microsoft said this week that the most recent Windows security update for Windows 10 and Windows 11 may break VPN connections, writes Mark Hachman in PCWorld.