Here are the top six things we’re paying attention to in the San Francisco tech scene this week.
—AdRoll, the San Francisco-based ad retargeting platform, closed a $70 million funding round lead by Foundation Capital. The San Francisco startup plans to use the funding to expand its reach on mobile devices, so that products you browse on your laptop might show up in ads on your cell phone. Other investors in the Series C round include Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), Northgate Capital, Performance Equity, and Glenmede.
—Airbnb’s latest fundraising round of $475 million values the company at $10 billion, tying cloud storage company Dropbox as the highest-valued American startup. Meanwhile the company was in court in New York on Tuesday, after the state attorney general issued a subpoena for the company’s list of hosts in the state over concerns they are breaking rental laws.
—The billionaires’ club gets even bigger, as enterprise storage company Pure Storage announced $225 million Series F funding round and a valuation of over $3 billion. Investors include T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and Tiger Global and, Wellington Management Company.
—Earlier this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal that the device maker is “on the prowl;” the tech giant has acquired more than two dozen companies in the last 18 months, and it expects to do more.
—On Monday, Square denied a report in the Wall Street Journal that it was considering a sale; a spokesman for the mobile payments startup told USA Today that the company had never been in serious talks about selling.
—Nike’s decision to lay off the majority of the team that created its FuelBand fitness tracker has critics questioning what that means for San Francisco-based wearable makers like Jawbone and Fitbit. Meanwhile, Facebook announced that it has acquired ProtoGeo Oy, the maker of a fitness app called Moves.
