02 October 2020
Online staffing platform Braintrust announced a US$18 million funding round. France-based robotics firm Exotec raised US$90 million, and Israel-based payroll firm Papaya Global reported a US$40 million round.
Braintrust
Braintrust announced it raised US$18 million in a strategic growth round. The company is an online staffing platform that aims to connect workers and companies without charging the workers fees while clients pay 10%. The company came out of stealth mode in June amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Coindesk reported the talent marketplace will essentially be owned by the freelancers and companies using it; Braintrust will use a system of blockchain-based tokens that will serve as ownership shares and allow users to vote on things such as fee levels and categories of work to be added.
The funding round was led by venture capital firms Acme and Blockchange Ventures.
Braintrust’s clients include Coursera, Nestle, Porsche, TaskRabbit and NASA.
While Braintrust is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, it has a distributed workforce in 15 countries around the world.
Exotec
Exotec, a French startup that aims to build robots to automate warehouses, raised US$90 million, according to 83North, a venture capital firm that led the funding round.
TechCrunch reported Exotec’s system is based on tiny robots called Skypods that roam warehouse floors to pick up standardized bins of products. The company also provides logistics software to coordinate the robots. Exotec previously raised US$17.7 million in 2018 and US$3.8 million in 2016.
Papaya Global
Papaya Global announced last week that it raised US$40 million in a series B funding round. The Israel-based firm is a global payroll and payment platform. The round was led by Scale Venture Partners.
The company aims to provide a solution for payroll, employer-of-record and contractors across 140 countries.
“Payroll is an exciting industry and relevant to any enterprise, especially those that intend to expand internationally,” CEO Eynat Guez said. “However, it is painfully complex to manage payroll in different countries with multiple suppliers while maintaining a grasp of the nuances of local compliance and particular local payroll components. These pain points are experienced by companies of all sizes.”
The latest funding round brings total investment in Papaya Global to US$95 million.
