Skift Take
Mapbox’s funding shows that Google will once again face competition for location-based data, which is good for market dynamics.
Each week we round up travel startups that have recently received or announced funding. The total raised this week was more than $480 million.
>>Tujia.com, China’s largest domestic vacation-rental platform, received $300 million in financing, led by China’s largest travel portal Ctrip and investment firm All-Stars, as we noted earlier this week. The round values Tujia at $1.5 billion.
>>Mapbox, a startup that sells mapping and location-search technology to companies in various sectors, has raised a $164 million investment round, led by Softbank.
The startup provides mapping data to travel companies, with clients including Airbnb, Lonely Planet, and Snapchat. But its most lucrative market appears to be helping businesses attempting to build self-driving vehicles, which need mapping data to work.
Since its f