Google Play Countersues Epic Video games; Funnel elevate USD$66m in Funding

In today’s ExchangeWire-News Digest: Google Play Sues Epic Games in Cartel War; Funnels are raised $ 66 million (£ 48.4 million) in pre-IPO investment; and KAWO raised $ 5 million (£ 3.7 million) from the Sequoia China Seed Fund.

Google is suing Epic Games


Google has announced that Epic Games is allegedly bypassing Google Play’s payment system in one
2020 update on their hit game Fortnite on Android. The multinational technology platform claims that as a result, millions of Android users who previously downloaded the game through the Play Store will still be able to access Epic’s external system after its removal. The antitrust case follows a similar path as Apple did, with the company filing a counterclaim last month.

Epic Games sued both Google and Apple on similar monopoly reasons after both giants removed Fortnite from their app stores. Since then Apple has applied for a stayafter being instructed to allow payments from outside the app store.

Google has in their. asserts Suit notes that the video game developer “deliberately” violated its Play Store Developer Distribution Agreement “to prevent Google from paying anything at all for the fraction of the transactions for which Google’s service fee would be charged.” They added, “Alternatively, Epic has been wrongly enriched at the expense of Google.”

Funnel brings in $ 66 million (£ 48.4 million) in pre-IPO investment

funnel
Funnel data management platform raised $ 66 million (£ 48.4 million) in a pre-IPO investment round led by The Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund and Stena Sessan. The financing round was supported by existing investors such as Balderton Capital, Eight Roads, F-Prime, Oxx and Industrifonden and marks the last private financing round before the company’s planned IPO. Stena Sessan’s Investment Director Fredrik Konopik praised the growth in SaaS scaling and mentions that “the company is well positioned for the public market in Sweden”.

Funnel went through a Series B funding round in January 2020 that raised $ 47 million (£ 34.5 million). Since then, it has been found that over 1200 digital marketing teams are using Funnels data platform. Funnel CEO and Co-Founder Fredrik Skantze comments: “Since Per Made and I founded Funnel, the market has matured significantly. In 2014, it was mainly e-commerce and app companies that took care of measuring digital marketing performance. Today, for virtually every marketing company, it is first and foremost what is evident with our customers and has driven our strong growth. With AP4 and Stena Sessan, we are bringing two large public market investors on board and we look forward to working with them in preparing for the IPO. “

The company has not yet announced the current valuation.

KAWO has raised $ 5 million (£ 3.7 million) from the Sequoia China Seed Fund


bringKAWO social media management platform has raised $ 5 million (£ 3.7 million) from Sequoia China Seed Investment. “KAWO will use the funds to invest in machine learning to reduce manual labor, make marketing teams more productive, and enable smarter decision-making. We want to better answer your most pressing questions, ”explains Alex Duncan, co-founder of the Chinese software company.

KAWO was founded in 2017 by Duncan and Brian van Damme to build an easy-to-use management platform to empower social media teams across China. China is an estimated 10 years behind the West in adopting Software as a Service (SaaS) in the workplace, according to the press release announcing the investment. KAWO therefore hopes to use the newly acquired funds to accelerate the digital transformation.

Alex Li, CEO of KAWO, points out, “Marketing teams have been working in the same inefficient way for years, hoping for different results. Their social channels are performing poorly while teams are burned out from overtime. It’s time to work smarter, not harder. “

Also on the news:

– Evorra raises major pre-seed round to launch a global, privacy by design audience marketplace for brands and agencies

– Brand Metrics hires Taylor Sturtevant as it focuses on US growth

– The Dream Stream: streaming services with “better value” and more entertaining content for the British than cable or satellite TV

– Insights and Analytics – Sublime is expanding its research and analytics solutions for brands

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