Stripe’s $150m Series D, Investigatory Powers Bill signed into law & more in the Week in Tech

Welcome to your Week in Tech – a roundup of the week’s top technology news.

In this episode, we bring you Appsumer’s $1m Seed round, the $150m Series D funding raised by Stripe and the controversial Investigatory Powers Bill.

This week, we filmed from WeWork Old Street, a coworking space in the heart of Tech City.

Watch the video, or read on, for all this and more.

Investments

In investment news, Appsumer closed a $1m Seed round led by Galvanise Capital. The firm plans to use the funds to develop its user acquisition intelligence platform for apps.

London-based Finimize raised £450,000 in a Seed round led by Passion Capital. The startup aims to help young people take control of their finances.

Zapnito raised £442,000 from a group of investors. The firm’s platform enables organisations to share, promote and monetise collective expertise.

British news

Despite a petition gaining over 134,000 signatures, the Queen signed the Investigatory Powers Bill into law this week.

The controversial bill requires internet service providers to keep a record of all the websites visited by UK citizens for 12 months.

International story

Overseas, payments provider Stripe has raised $150m in Series D funding.

Led by CapitalG and General Catalyst, the round puts the San Francisco-based firm at a total valuation of over $9bn.

Download

Our download of the week is Mush. The Tinder-style app helps local mums to connect, chat and organise play dates.

The app also features a messaging service and ‘Mush guides’, to help mums through the daily challenges of being a parent.

And Finally…

And finally, this week’s drop in temperature is a reminder that the festive season is upon us.

If you want to get into the Christmas spirit, ‘Neural Karaoke’ can help with that. The AI programme will take any digital photo and turn it into a computer-generated singalong!

That’s all for this week’s episode of The Week in Tech. For more technology news, visit our homepage and follow us on Twitter.