TechCrunch
In what appears to be part of a summer shopping spree, Apple is reported to be buying Swell, a radio app much like Pandora but focused on talk radio. According to Re/Code, the deal is worth approximately $30 million. Swell is a product out of Concept.io, a startup founded back in 2012 in Mountain View and led by CEO and co-founder G.D. “Ram” Ramkumar. Swell takes all the best parts of Pandora and applies them to talk radio, but even goes a step further to deliver an amazing talk radio experience inside the car, a transition that has been difficult for some music streaming startups.
Watching your behavior while you use the app combined with a touch of human curation allows the app to serve up content you’ll like with little input needed from you. The company raised a total of $7.2 million in the last couple years — a $1.8 million seed round was led by CRV and Andreessen Horowitz in 2012, and a $5.4 million Series A was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, with participation from Google Ventures, InterWest Partners, Correlation Ventures, and Draper Nexus Ventures. That most recent round just closed earlier this month.