Recent tech announcements include a $95 million funding round for talent platform Shiftsmart, a $22 million funding round for TextUs, an acquisition by Textkernel and an acquisition by background check firm ClearStar. In addition, Didi Chuxing announced plans to delist from the New York Stock Exchange.
Shiftsmart
Talent platform Shiftsmart raised $95 million in a Series B funding round. Founder and CEO Aakash Kumar announced the round in a blog post on Thursday. D1 Capital Partners led the round with participation from Imaginary Ventures, Spieker Partners and S12F, among others. S12F is an investment platform founded by Jeff Leventhal, who was also founder of firms such as WorkMarket, which was sold to ADP, and OnForce, which was sold to The Adecco Group.
Shiftsmart was founded in 2015. Its platform enables onboarding and training, scheduling of workers, next-day payments, communication, time and attendance, and more.
The New York-based company has a network of more than 500,000 workers in more than 50 countries, TechCrunch reported. It now has $117 million in total investments.
TextUs
Text messaging platform TextUs announced this week that it raised $22 million in a Series C funding round. Leading the round were venture capital firms Eastside Partners and Access Venture Partners.
“Business texting is a $4 billon market on a path to exceed $15 billion by 2028,” TextUs CEO Martin Payne said. “This investment, coupled with the expertise that these firms have in marketing software, will allow us to extend our leadership position in our target segments of this rapidly growing market.”
TextUs is based in Denver.
Textkernel
Textkernel announced that it acquired Sovren, a provider of résumé parsing and candidate matching and sourcing software based in Texas.
Textkernel, based in Amsterdam, provides AI-fueled search and matching technology for résumé and cover-letter databases. It also provides multilingual résumé and cover-letter parsing.
Both companies’ customers include staffing firms.
Textkernel itself was acquired in September 2020 by Dutch investment firm Main Capital from CareerBuilder.
ClearStar Inc.
ClearStar Inc., a technology-based provider of background and medical screening, acquired background checking firm Employment Screening Resources. ClearStar reported the acquisition will bolster its West Coast operations.
ClearStar is based in Alpharetta, Georgia, while Employment Screening Resources is based in Novato, California.
This is the second acquisition for ClearStar in the past three months.
Didi
Didi Chuxing, a Beijing-based rideshare work services platform similar to Uber Technologies Inc., announced it will immediately start delisting from the New York stock exchange and start preparations for listing in Hong Kong.
Didi did not explain its reasons for the plan but said in a separate statement it would organize a shareholder vote at an appropriate time and ensure its New York-listed stock would be convertible into “freely tradable shares” on another internationally recognized stock exchange.
Sources told Reuters last month that Chinese regulators had pressed Didi’s top executives to devise a plan to delist from the New York Stock Exchange due to concerns about data security.
Didi Chuxing in June filed to go public in the US by offering American depository shares. It operates in 4,000 cities in 15 countries, including countries in Asia and Latin America as well as Russia and Australia but not in the US.