LinkedIn Buys News Reader Pulse For $50M+

LinkedIn is paying $50M to $100M for mobile news reader’s Pulse, which is based in San Francisco. Alphonso Labs, which makes the Pulse app has raised about $10M from Redpoint Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Mayfield Fund, Lightspeed Investment Partners, NEA and Lerer Ventures. Pulse claims 20M+ users.

We met company CEO Akshay Kothari and his co-founding CTO Ankit Gupta a couple of years back when they were just starting out but already has traction despite all the media attention on their rival Flipboard. The company is not terribly big - just 26 people.

While there are a lot of users today for Pulse and Flipboard we imagine that these are tough companies for investors to hold on to. Users are fickle with readers and whose to know if another great new news reader doesn’t launch any day. So it makes sense the Pulse would want to sell at this point in it life.

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