tech:

taffy

Pebble Raises $15M Series A Funding

Pebble, the smartwatch that can connect to iPhone and Android smartphones, has received $15 million in Series A funding from Charles River Ventures. The funding will be used to grow the software engineering team, expand Pebble’s open development platform and scale up, says the company.

Eric Migicovsky (Founder, Pebble): The tremendous response we received from Kickstarter backers validated our belief in the value of a smart watch as a wearable computer, but also in the value an open platform brings to truly personalizing the watch to their daily activities.

Pebble’s launch on crowd funding site, Kickstarter, saw over 68,000 backers pledging over $10 million. Over 8,000 developers have downloaded the Pebble SDK, resulting in more than 5,000 unique watchapps and 300,000 watchapp installs in just over a month.

Just in

Vercel raises $250M

San Francisco-based Vercel, a frontend cloud platform provider, has secured $250 million in Series E funding, bringing the company's valuation to $3.25 billion.

Worky raises $6M (Mexico)

Mexico City-based Worky, a provider of HR and payroll software solutions for Mexican companies, has closed a $6 million Series A financing round.

Amazon announces $1.31B investment in France

Amazon has announced a new investment of about $1.31 billion (€1.2 billion) in France, which the company says will lead to the creation of over 3,000 permanent jobs in the country.

Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky to step down — CNBC

Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon’s cloud computing business, will step down from his role next month. Matt Garman, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Amazon Web Services, will succeed Mr. Selipsky after he exits the company June 3, writes Annie Palmer. 

Palo Alto Networks, Accenture expand alliance to offer generative AI services

Palo Alto Networks and Accenture have announced the expansion of their strategic alliance to provide new offerings that combine Palo Alto Networks' Precision AI technology with Accenture's secure generative AI services.