Although last week was cut short for Thanksgiving, several tech companies found time to raise funds, go public and launch new partnerships. Catch up on the latest tech news you might have missed last week with the Built In LA Weekly Refresh.
Grindr went public. The LA-based dating app for the LGBTQ+ community announced plans to go public via a $2.1 billion SPAC merger back in May. A few months later, Grindr appointed a new CEO. On November 18, the company merged with Tiga Acquisition Corp. and became a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbols “GRND” and “GRND.WS.” Grindr is actively hiring for more than a dozen roles, including software engineers, a data scientist and a product designer. [NPR]
Riot Games partnered with Ubisoft. The game developers are working together on a research project called the “Zero Harm in Comms” to identify and react to in-game harmful language and behavior with artificial intelligence. Research from the project will be released sometime next year. LA-based Riot Games is known for developing League of Legends and Valorant. Ubisoft, which is based in France but has a presence in San Francisco, developed well-known games like Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance. [Built In LA]
LA Tech Quote of the Week
Swell Energy raised $120M. Swell connects customers, utilities and third-party service providers and creates virtual power plants that aggregate distributed energy resources. The energy management and smart grid solutions provider will use the fresh capital to integrate its virtual power plants across the U.S. and continue its mission of providing 26,000 energy storage systems in homes and businesses. The round was co-led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Greenbacker Development Opportunities Fund I. [Business Wire]
Carv pulled in $4M. Led by Vertex, this funding round values Carv at $40 million. Carv is a decentralized identity startup for the gaming industry. It creates unique user IDs by pulling gamer data from both Web 2.0 and Web3. Carv launched its beta version six months ago and now works with over 90 games and more than 300,000 users. [TechCrunch]
Plant Prefab announced its expansion into West Hollywood. The construction tech company will bring its prefabricated and sustainable homes to West Hollywood with a four-unit, 6,000-square-foot multifamily development. Plant Prefab said it can build multi-family homes faster than traditional building methods with up to 30 percent less waste. According to Crunchbase, the Rialto-based company has raised $38.6 million to date, including a $30 million Series B in August 2021. [L.A. Business First]
