Habi, a startup that emerged in 2019 to digitize the process of buying and selling homes in Colombia, this week became Colombia’s second unicorn. The startup’s model is two-sided. For those who want to sell properties, Habi buys them expeditiously, within 10 days. And to those looking to buy, Habi offers real estate, helping them obtain a mortgage loan. The company operates in more than 15 cities in Colombia and Mexico.
Spot2, a Mexican brokerage startup, announced a $4.2 million seed round led by Streamline Ventures. HOF Capital, Acrew Capital, H20 funds, and angel investors. Spot2 was founded in 2021. It holds the promise of enabling commercial real estate identification, validation, and lease closing in six times less time than usual. The proptech developed technology based on an algorithm that offers solutions to connect brands with available commercial spaces successfully.
Egyptian startup Instabug, a mobile monitoring, crash and bug reporting solution for mobile teams, has raised US$46 million in Series B funding to add to its product and build what it says will be the first mobile observability and performance monitoring platform.
Disney has agreed to license more than 200 characters, costumes, and environments (but not voices or talent likenesses) to OpenAI for Sora, its gen AI video platform. This is highly unusual for Disney, which generally sues AI models for copyright infringement; in fact, it sued Google for that a day before announcing the OpenAI deal. Disney will also invest $1 billion in OpenAI, nicely illustrating how very eager they are to join the AI party.