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Furnished rental startup Blueground defies proptech woes with revenue of $560 million, a new raise of $45 million

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Alex Chatzieleftheriou founded Blueground in 2013 after being frustrated by the shortage of short-term furnished housing in Europe. He traveled as a McKinsey consultant and lived almost exclusively in hotel rooms for months.

“Once, a company needed to pay as much as €15,000 for a hotel room in Amsterdam. And there wasn’t enough space or kitchen to cook,” he said. “I attempted renting apartments for a month or longer. However, it was difficult and the owners weren’t open to purchasing furniture. So I created a company that solved my problem.

Just a few years later, at the peak of the pandemic, business in his startup’s category of short-term furnished apartment rental firms was booming as people roamed the world working from home.

Now that many employers have called staff back to offices, demand for temporary housing has dropped.

Some of his competitors didn’t survive. Life of Zeus AND Hike they locked the door and returned the keys. Some became acquisition opportunities for Blueground. In 2022, the corporate gained a strong position in Latin America, including: I purchase Tabas, operator of over 9,000 furnished apartments in Brazil. Within a few months, Blueground took over Travelers’ haven, a 15-year-old company that gives on-demand housing to staff in nearly 20,000 cities across the United States. In 2023, it acquired Nestpick, a marketplace for furnished apartment operators corresponding to Kasa and Placemakr, providing customers with access to additional 18,000 apartments.

Blueground currently operates a global network of move-in ready homes for stays of a month or longer and has raised $45 million in Series D funding from new investor Susquehanna Private Equity Investments along with other backers including WestCap, Chatzieleftheriou told TechCrunch. The New York-based company said it also secured a debt facility from Barclays with participation from Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and HSBC, which replaced and augmented Blueground’s $40 million debt facility obtained from Silicon Valley Bank in 2021.

Blueground rents apartments in popular neighborhoods after which furnishes and furnishes them to tenants. Currently, the corporate manages 15,000 apartments in 32 markets in 17 countries. In addition to stepping into its own leases, Blueground recently introduced franchising, which works with local operators in Japan and Thailand and lists units of third-party operators on its platform.

The company didn’t disclose a new valuation, but Chatzieleftheriou said the corporate’s value has increased because the previous round. This the valuation was reportedly $750 million After raising $140 million in Series C in September 2021.

It’s no secret that the fundraising environment has been extremely difficult for late-stage firms, especially those within the proptech sector, which is struggling with rising rates of interest.

Chatzieleftheriou told TechCrunch that his company’s rapid growth and near-profitability helped persuade investors to commit to the newest financing.

Chatzieleftheriou said sales increased 70% to $560 million in 2023, compared with $300 million in gross revenue in 2022. Net margin on sales – that’s, after paying landlords for rent – is around 35%, he added, and he expects that Blueground might be money flow positive in 2024.

While further acquisitions seem likely given Chatzieleftheriou’s predictions of industry consolidation, the immediate focus is to integrate recent purchases. The new financing might be used for market expansion, technology investments and maybe the last word financial goal: an initial public offering.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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US medical device giant Artivion says hackers stole files during a cybersecurity incident

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Artivion, a medical device company that produces implantable tissue for heart and vascular transplants, says its services have been “disrupted” resulting from a cybersecurity incident.

In 8-K filing In an interview with the SEC on Monday, Georgia-based Artivion, formerly CryoLife, said it became aware of a “cybersecurity incident” that involved the “compromise and encryption” of information on November 21. This suggests that the corporate was attacked by ransomware, but Artivion has not yet confirmed the character of the incident and didn’t immediately reply to TechCrunch’s questions. No major ransomware group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

Artivion said it took some systems offline in response to the cyberattack, which the corporate said caused “disruptions to certain ordering and shipping processes.”

Artivion, which reported third-quarter revenue of $95.8 million, said it didn’t expect the incident to have a material impact on the corporate’s funds.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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It’s a Raspberry Pi 5 in a keyboard and it’s called Raspberry Pi 500

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Manufacturer of single-board computers Raspberry Pi is updating its cute little computer keyboard device with higher specs. Named Raspberry Pi500This successor to the Raspberry Pi 400 is just as powerful as the present Raspberry Pi flagship, the Raspberry Pi 5. It is on the market for purchase now from Raspberry Pi resellers.

The Raspberry Pi 500 is the simplest method to start with the Raspberry Pi because it’s not as intimidating because the Raspberry Pi 5. When you take a look at the Raspberry Pi 500, you do not see any chipsets or PCBs (printed circuit boards). The Raspberry Pi is totally hidden in the familiar housing, the keyboard.

The idea with the Raspberry Pi 500 is you could connect a mouse and a display and you are able to go. If, for instance, you’ve got a relative who uses a very outdated computer with an outdated version of Windows, the Raspberry Pi 500 can easily replace the old PC tower for many computing tasks.

More importantly, this device brings us back to the roots of the Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi computers were originally intended for educational applications. Over time, technology enthusiasts and industrial customers began using single-board computers all over the place. (For example, when you’ve ever been to London Heathrow Airport, all of the departures and arrivals boards are there powered by Raspberry Pi.)

Raspberry Pi 500 draws inspiration from the roots of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a non-profit organization. It’s the right first computer for college. In some ways, it’s a lot better than a Chromebook or iPad because it’s low cost and highly customizable, which inspires creative pondering.

The Raspberry Pi 500 comes with a 32GB SD card that comes pre-installed with Raspberry Pi OS, a Debian-based Linux distribution. It costs $90, which is a slight ($20) price increase over the Raspberry Pi 400.

Only UK and US keyboard variants will probably be available at launch. But versions with French, German, Italian, Japanese, Nordic and Spanish keyboard layouts will probably be available soon. And when you’re in search of a bundle that features all the things you would like, Raspberry Pi also offers a $120 desktop kit that features the Raspberry Pi 500, a mouse, a 27W USB-C power adapter, and a micro-HDMI to HDMI cable.

In other news, Raspberry Pi has announced one other recent thing: the Raspberry Pi monitor. It is a 15.6-inch 1080p monitor that’s priced at $100. Since there are quite a few 1080p portable monitors available on the market, this launch is not as noteworthy because the Pi 500. However, for die-hard Pi fans, there’s now also a Raspberry Pi-branded monitor option available.

Image credits:Raspberry Pi

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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Apple Vision Pro may add support for PlayStation VR controllers

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Vision Pro headset

According to Apple, Apple desires to make its Vision Pro mixed reality device more attractive for gamers and game developers latest report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

The Vision Pro was presented more as a productivity and media consumption device than a tool geared toward gamers, due partly to its reliance on visual and hand controls moderately than a separate controller.

However, Apple may need gamers if it desires to expand the Vision Pro’s audience, especially since Gurman reports that lower than half one million units have been sold to this point. As such, the corporate has reportedly been in talks with Sony about adding support for PlayStation VR2 handheld controllers, and has also talked to developers about whether they may support the controllers of their games.

Offering more precise control, Apple may also make other forms of software available in Vision Pro, reminiscent of Final Cut Pro or Adobe Photoshop.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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