TL;DR: Polygon Labs has closed its acquisition of Coinme, gaining access to 37 state money-transmitter licences and 11 applicable exemptions. The move is designed to connect its on-chain payment technology with regulated US money movement.

Polygon has spent years making it easier to move assets on blockchains. Its latest acquisition is about the far less glamorous problem of getting money into and out of that system legally.

On October 14, Polygon Labs confirmed that it had completed its purchase of Coinme, a US crypto payments and cash-access business. The acquisition brings 37 state money-transmitter licences, 11 applicable exemptions and registration as a money services business with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network into Polygon’s broader payments operation. The combined footprint covers 48 states.

Coinme was part of an acquisition package, announced in January, that also included wallet infrastructure company Sequence. Polygon previously valued the combined transactions at more than $250 million; that figure should not be mistaken for the purchase price of Coinme alone.

The new assets are feeding into Polygon Open Money Stack, an infrastructure offering that aims to bring bank and card money into on-chain settlement and then back out to recipients. Customers named by Polygon include Tazapay, Mesh, Toku and Kira, whose businesses span cross-border payments, financial connections and payroll.

The regulatory licences are potentially as important as the underlying blockchain. Businesses trying to offer stablecoin payments must satisfy customer checks, money-transmission obligations and cash-handling rules in the real world.

The acquisition does not mean a new nationwide consumer product is available immediately. Polygon says the unified platform is still being introduced to selected customers. But the direction is evident: competing in payments increasingly requires both blockchain infrastructure and the boring-but-essential permissions to use it.

Significant cybersecurity M&A deals announced by Dragos, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, Kiteworks, and Upwind.

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Seattle voice AI startup Ultravox, which launched as Fixie, has been acquired by Inworld for an undisclosed sum.

Ultravox was founded in 2022 by Google and Apple veterans to build a speech model for real-time, natural-sounding AI voice agents.

In perhaps its most whimsical project, the startup launched the HiSanta.ai website in December 2023, allowing users to chat with Santa Claus, who spoke with a British accent, as well as Rudolph, Mrs. Claus and other North Pole notables. The site is no longer active.

The company announced a $17 million seed round in March 2023, and PitchBook put its valuation at $51.46 million at the time. Redpoint Ventures led the round, which included Madrona Venture Group, Zetta Venture Partners, SignalFire, Bloomberg Beta and Kearny Jackson. Current and former executives at Google, Amazon and Apple also invested.

Ultravox has 10 employees, according to LinkedIn. It was unclear whether the entire team would join Inworld, which is based in Mountain View, Calif.

“We’re excited to welcome members of the Ultravox team and continue building the platform,” said Inworld CEO Kylan Gibbs in a statement.

The acquisition will allow Inworld to adopt Ultravox’s technology for managing turn-taking and interruptions in voice conversations with AI, which should improve performance in real-time chats.

Inworld has raised $119.8 million since launching in 2021 and is valued at $515 million, according to PitchBook.

Ultravox co-founder Zach Koch was most recently the company’s CEO. His LinkedIn profile says he is now vice president of product at Shopify. Peter Salas, who joined the company as a software engineer in 2023, is currently listed as chief technology officer.

The startup’s original CEO, Matt Welsh, departed two years ago and is now head of AI systems at defense company Palantir Technologies. Co-founders Hessam Bagherinezhad and Justin Uberti also left, in 2023 and 2024 respectively, and both joined OpenAI.

The release announcing the acquisition said Ultravox customers would be upgraded to Inworld’s Realtime TTS-2 voice technology.

Row Zero, the Seattle-based startup behind high-performance spreadsheet software built for massive enterprise datasets, has been acquired by data and AI giant Databricks.

Databricks plans to integrate Row Zero directly into its platform and Genie AI assistant, giving non-technical teams a familiar grid interface to analyze datasets without leaving their data environment.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed in a news release.

Founded in 2021 by former Amazon Web Services engineers Breck Fresen and Nick End, Row Zero set out to build a spreadsheet capable of processing millions of rows at cloud scale without lagging or crashing.

The startup, which raised a $10 million Series A round last year, pitched its software as a faster, more secure alternative to traditional tools like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets.

In a LinkedIn post announcing the acquisition, Fresen, Row Zero’s CEO, said the startup’s standalone product will remain available to existing users, while the team focuses on embedding its technology across Databricks.

“What is changing is the speed at which we’ll be able to put Row Zero in the hands of customers,” Fresen wrote, noting that Databricks serves more than 20,000 organizations, including 70% of the Fortune 500.

In an email to GeekWire, End said Databricks made sense as a buyer because the two companies already serve many of the same enterprise customers looking to analyze cloud data via spreadsheets. He noted that even as AI agents perform more data analysis, humans still need a familiar interface to verify the results.

“Tons of companies are thinking about how AI changes the way knowledge workers interact with data, but we think Databricks, with its data governance foundation and AI coworker tools like Genie, is one of the best-positioned companies to lead that shift,” End said.

Beyond product alignment, End pointed to Databricks’ corporate culture and leadership stability as a key factor in the decision.

“It’s rare to find a company at this scale where all (seven!) of the original founders are still involved,” he said. “That says a lot about the place, and it’s a big part of why this felt like the right fit.”

End, who previously launched a shoe-fitting startup with Fresen called Shoefitr, which was acquired by Amazon in 2015, said the majority of our Row Zero team will be working out of the Seattle Databricks office.

San Francisco-based Databricks, founded in 2013 by the creators of Apache Spark including CEO Ali Ghodsi, has grown into a data and AI juggernaut. The company employs hundreds of workers across offices in Seattle and Bellevue.

The acquisition comes as Databricks continues a period of rapid growth. The company announced in August that it crossed a $7 billion annualized revenue run-rate — up more than 80% year-over-year — and raised a $5 billion strategic funding round led by Coatue that brought its valuation to $190 billion.

“Genie is helping make every knowledge worker dramatically more productive and impactful. As more finance, operations, and go-to-market teams adopt Genie, incorporating a seamless spreadsheet experience is a must-have,” Patrick Wendell, co-founder and VP of engineering at Databricks, said in a statement.

Row Zero’s backers included IA Ventures, as well as Seattle-area venture firms Trilogy Equity Partners and Founders’ Co-op. Other investors included Ludlow Ventures, K9 Ventures, Functional Capital, and Wes McKinney, co-founder of Voltron Data.

Seattle-based real estate tech startup Truelist has been acquired by San Francisco-based Mainstay as part of an $18 million growth funding round aimed at expanding AI-powered tools across the residential property market.

Founded in 2024, Truelist built an AI-powered listing platform to help real estate brokers and agents manage, create, and distribute property listings across fragmented MLS systems.

Mainstay — which was carved out of Opendoor as an independent startup in August 2024 — operates an “intelligent system of record” that automates data and transactions across the residential real estate lifecycle, primarily serving major institutional investors.

Truelist founder and CEO Carey Armstrong brings a deep Seattle real estate tech background to Mainstay, where she will serve as chief strategy officer.

Armstrong spent seven years as vice president of Premier Agent at Zillow before co-founding real estate fintech Tomo in 2020, alongside former Zillow leader Greg Schwartz. That startup raised a $40 million seed round backed by high-profile investors, including former Trulia CEO Pete Flint and ex-Zillow chief executive Spencer Rascoff. Armstrong served as COO before launching Truelist four years later.

“I’m grateful to everyone who supported Truelist along the way, and especially to the team who put so much talent, care, and hard work into building,” Armstrong said on LinkedIn. “If you don’t know Mainstay yet, don’t worry, you will soon.”

For Mainstay, the deal allows the startup to expand beyond its core client base of large institutional investors into the broader market of brokerages, agents, and smaller property owners.

Mainstay is led by CEO Dod Fraser — the former president of Opendoor — alongside fellow Opendoor veterans J.D. Rasmussen and Michael Dulfer. The company’s new $18 million funding round was backed by investors including Khosla Ventures, Era Ventures, Parker89, Stackpoint, Alpaca VC, and FJ Labs.

Mainstay said it has facilitated more than $12 billion in real estate transactions and serves 95% of the 60 largest residential real estate investors. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

“Joining forces means we stop duplicating effort and start compounding it,” Armstrong said in a statement. “I have enormous respect for what Dod and the team have built, and I’m excited about what we can do together.”