Yellow, an asset financier for solar energy and digital devices in Africa, has raised $14 million series B funding in a round led by Convergence Partners with participation from the Energy Entrepreneurs Growth Fund, managed by Triple Jump, in addition to follow-on investment from Platform Investment Partners.
Seedstars Capital and Fondation Botnar have announced the launch of the Seedstars Youth Wellbeing Ventures mandate, to invest US$20 million in early-stage, purpose-driven companies with the aim to improve the wellbeing of young people in low-and middle-income countries across the continent.
Nigeria’s Eze, a wholesale marketplace for used and new electronics, has secured US$3.7 million in seed funding to develop its technology infrastructure, broaden its product offering and expand into new markets in Africa, Europe and South America. Eze is a B2B wholesale marketplace for smartphones, laptops, tablets, and other electronics, which connects thousands of buyers from across the world to over 200,000 SKUs that have been vetted, tested, and can be purchased at the click of a button.
Salesforce is buying Airkit.ai, which builds low-code, AI-powered e-commerce customer service agents. You might have thought Salesforce could already do that, but presumably Airkit does it better. It doesn’t hurt that the company founders sold a previous business to Salesforce, the company was partly funded by Salesforce Ventures, and the product is already listed on AppExchange. Price was not announced.