VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Paris-l’hospital, France-based car rental startup Drivy secured $8.3 million (€6 million) in a new funding round with Index Ventures and Alven Capital as lead investors to fuel its expansion in Europe.

Irvine, US-based fitness trainer app PEAR Sports took home $5 million in its Series B funding led by previous backers Innovate Partners and Nordic Ventures to ramp up its marketing efforts and third-party sales.

San Jose, US-based payments giant PayPal fired Rakesh "Rocky" Agrawal as its vice president (VP) of strategy this weekend after releasing some insulting words about his colleagues on the social network Twitter.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is planning to start a commercialized space-based solar energy farm that would convert sunlight into electricity in a bid to replace the many nuclear power plants built on earthquake-prone areas.

Reston, Virginia-based social lending marketplace StreetShares bagged $1.2 million in its seed funding round with Accion Venture Lab as the lead investor to back veteran-owned and main street businesses after it launches this month.

Boulder, US-based robotic toy maker Orbotix raised $15.5 million in its Series D funding round led by Shea Ventures to create new categories of connected toys and to expand globally.

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based e-book deals service BookBub scored $3.8 million in its first funding round led by NextView Ventures and Founder Collective to expand its workforce and services and tap into international markets.

Fremont, US-based intellectual property (IP) management firm Lecorpio bagged $10 million in an unneeded funding round with Los Angeles-based investor M2O to guarantee the safe exchange of ideas and information for its enterprise clients.

New York, US-based open-source video platform Kaltura bought Tel Aviv, Israel-based pay TV service startup Tvinci for an undisclosed amount to gain flexibility in the video business and grow its revenue.

Tesla Motors quietly secured permits to modify a former Chrysler facility in California and is hiring 32 workers for the said facility, according to a Bloomberg report published last week.

New York, US-based mobile gameplay-recording startup Kamcord raised $7.1 million in a Series A funding round led by TransLink Capital to conquer the giant gaming markets of Japan, China, and South Korea.

Madison, US-based weather forecasting and analytics startup Understory bagged $1.9 million in a seed funding round led by True Ventures to build software and a forecasting model that will be able to generate weather data through ground-level observation.

London, UK-based music streaming startup Bloom.fm announced via Twitter that it shut down right after it was banned from Apple's ad network and its sole investor, Russian TV channel TNT, pulled its fundings.

Los Altos Hills, California-based software as a service (SaaS) security startup Vorstack bagged $5.2 million in a new funding round led by Glenn McGonnigle and Tom Noonan to ramp up its real time data protection services.

Palo Alto, US-based cloud data service and enterprise software provider Apigee raised $60 million in new funding to expand its existing services beyond the basic application programming interface (API) technology.