Capital Gains: Ello Gets $5.5 Million, Mitel's $540 Million Offer for ShoreTel and More

Here’s a roundup of the big funding headlines from this week, brought to you by Re/code:

• The Canadian telecommunications company Mitel made public its $540 million offer to acquire its smaller, U.S.-based competitor ShoreTel. Late last year, Mitel paid $374 million for the Canadian company Aastra Technologies in order to expand Mitel’s European presence.
• In a bit of slightly different funding news, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen announced he would be putting $100 million toward fighting the Ebola outbreak in Africa.
• Tipalti, a cloud-based enterprise technology company, announced a $13 million Series B round led by Wicklow Capital (PYMNTS). Tipalti’s product is a global payments service primarily for small businesses.
• The subscription billing and payments company Recurly closed a $12 million Series B round of funding (VentureBeat). The round was led by Devonshire Investors, with participation from Greycroft Partners, Polaris Partners, e.ventures and others.
• Glamsquad, which is kind of an “Uber for beauty products,” raised $7 million in funding (TechCrunch). The company, now led by Gilt Groupe co-founder Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, netted the money in a Series A round led by SoftBank Capital.
• The new social network Tsu, which pays its users to post, raised $7 million in a funding round led by Sancus Capital Prive.
• The ad-free social network Ello, which caught fire briefly last month when it got so many signups from new users it had to freeze the signup process, raised $5.5 million funding. The round was led by the Boulder, Colorado-based Foundry Group, Bullet Time Ventures and other investors.
• Okay, another Uber knockoff. This time it’s the “Uber for valet parking” service Luxe, which raised $5.5 million in seed funding from 11 different venture capitalists.
• NuCurrent, a company that specializes in wireless technology, raised $3.48 million in a Series A funding round (PRWeb). Investors include Independence Equity, Hyde Park Angels, Harvard Business School Angels and others.
• Shuddle, which really is “Uber for small children,” has employees with childcare experience shuttling kids around for a per-month fee and a per-ride cost. The company raised $2.6 million from Accel Partners, Forerunner Ventures and Comcast Ventures.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

Will you join us?

Our biggest supporters are our readers — and we’re so grateful to everyone who has made a contribution during our September campaign. We’re less than 1,000 contributions away from reaching our goal for the month, which in turn will allow us to say yes more often when our incredible journalists come to us with questions they want to answer and projects they want to pursue. Will you make a contribution before the month ends and support our policy coverage through 2024 and beyond?

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via