Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher, and Tesla founder Elon Musk invested $40 million in the second funding round of secretive artificial intelligence (AI) startup Vicarious.

The US Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) awarded $17 million to clean energy businesses across 13 states to tackle the big problem of energy consumption.

San Francisco, US-based online restaurant reservation service OpenTable will shut down Los Altos, California-based restaurant recommendation app Ness, which it acquired in February, on April 21.

Arusha, Tanzania-based solar energy provider Off Grip Electric scored $7 million in a funding round led by Vulcan Capital, SolarCity, and Omidyar Network to power homes with prepaid electricity.

Denver, US-based health tech firm Welltok Inc acquired Seattle-based health app developer Mindbloom for an undisclosed amount to establish itself in the mobile health space.

The co-founders of New York, US-based ad tech startup Spotfront decided to turn down seed funding from strategic investors and bootstrap the firm to give them more independence in their company decisions.

Pamela York, the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of AccelerateMSP, scrapped the nonprofit entrepreneurship organization's plan to raise a seed fund for Twin Cities startups but will instead focus on mentoring them after they have raised capital.

Cupertino, US-based tech giant Apple is mulling on launching its own on-demand music service to compete with music streaming giant Spotify as the number of downloads goes down.

Chicago, US-based big data startup Food Genius analyzes and detects future trends in the US and shares it with restaurant chains, convenient stores, and other companies to help them determine their standing or future strategy in the food market.

Austin, Texas-based startup CitySprout is raising $2 million in its second financing round to help consumers establish a link with the local farmers who produce their food.

Zaragoza, Spain-based paper and packaging firm Saica purchased Istanbul, Turkey-based paperboard producer OMK for an undisclosed amount to establish its position in the European market.

Winston-Salem, US-based specialty crop developer Technology Crops International (TCI) bought Hampshire, UK-based firm Premium Crops Ltd for an undisclosed amount to expand its product portfolio.

Hermosa Beach, US-based payments firm Oink found a way to let parents monitor and control their kids' in-app purchases by linking a credit card to their accounts and letting them set a purchase limit for a specified length of time.

Developers have modified the open source Bitcoin software and released a new version to resolve the transaction flaws and to prevent a Mt Gox-like incident from happening again.

London, UK-based Video-on-Demand (Vod) service Screenburn raised $500,000 (£302,000) in an angel funding round to fuel its expansion for 2014 and to continue monetizing the presence of music and film artists on Facebook.

Chicago, US-based digital interactive application developer elevate DIGITAL scored an additional $3 million in its Series A funding round from SFX Entertainment to expand into new markets.

Makati, Philippines-based cooling solutions provider Concepcion Group is buying a stake in elevator company Otis E&M Co Philippines as a joint venture with Hartford, US-based multinational conglomerate United Technologies Corp (UTC) for an undisclosed amount.

Pasadena, California-based kinetic desk maker Stir raised $1.5 million in a seed funding round led by Vegas TechFund and Zach Ware to scale up its production and distribution efforts.

Toronto, Canada-based hardware engineering collaborative platform Upverter bagged $2.3 million in a seed funding round led by Version One Ventures to grow its enterprise business and develop its product.

Redwood City, US-based video streaming service Qik will shut down on April 30 after its features have been integrated into Skype, which acquired it for $150 million three years ago.

San Jose, California-based LEGO rental startup Pley closed $6.75 million in its Series A funding round led by Allegro Venture Partners to fuel its product, workforce, and international expansion efforts.

Bangalore, India-based payment solutions provider Innoviti nabbed INR10 crore in debt funding from Tata Capital and other investors from London and India to scale up its Middle East operations and beef up its management team.

Twitter is now offering an alternative way of sending Tweets via SMS after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lambasted social media for linking him to a corruption scandal and blocking the social network in the country.

New York, US-based brand advocacy startup Crowdtap picked up $5 million in a Series B funding round led by Foundry Group to continue inspiring its customers to create quality promotional content on blogs and social media sites.

Internet company Mail.ru signed an agreement to buy the 12% stake of Ivan Tavrin in Russian social network VKontakte.com for an undisclosed amount to bring its total holding to 52%.

San Francisco, US-based health tech firm Metabiota pocketed $2.38 million in a venture round to monitor emerging threats of viral diseases around the world using big data analysis.

Tysons Corner, US-based secure digital ID network ID.me scored $10 million in combined venture capital and debt funding to build its own online marketplace for its users.

Mayor Michael Nutter announced the five startups in Philadelphia that will each receive a $25,000 grant from the Commerce Department's Startup PHL Call for Ideas to promote entrepreneurship in the city.

American rap superstar Kanye West is buying 10 Burger King outlets across the UK, France, and Italy for an undisclosed amount as a wedding present for fiancee Kim Kardashian.

Brisbane, Australia-based diversified alternative asset manager Blue Sky Alternative Investments entered a deal to purchase Adelaide-based hedge fund Investment Science Asset Management for an undisclosed amount.