TechTaffy

tech:

taffy

Needle Raises $10.5 Million Series B Funding

By TechTaffy Desk

[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

Needle has closed a $10.5 million series B funding round, co-led by Shasta Ventures and Rembrandt Venture Partners. Jim Barnett, a partner at Shasta Ventures, and Douglas Schrier, a partner at Rembrandt Venture Partners, will both join Needle’s board of directors.

Needle provides ecommerce companies the ability to link certified product experts and fans of the brand with customers shopping the site to provide guided shopping assistance via chat, video or voice.

Morgan Lynch (Founder and CEO, Needle): Today’s buyer expects authenticity and expertise, and passing them off to a person in a contact center who has no genuine experience with the company’s products and is using canned answers is the antithesis of that.

Needle is a privately held company based in Salt Lake City. It was founded in 2009 by entrepreneur Morgan Lynch. This marks the second time Shasta Ventures has invested in a company founded by Mr. Lynch, having previously backed his startup company Logoworks, which was acquired by HP in 2007. Prior to this round, Needle raised a series A round of $2 million.

[Image Courtesy: Needle]

Just in

Around the web

Biden signs TikTok ‘ban’ bill into law, starting the clock for ByteDance to divest it — The Verge

President Joe Biden signed a foreign aid package that includes a bill that would ban TikTok if China-based parent company ByteDance fails to divest the app within a year, writes Lauren Feiner.
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.