It’s the perfect time for two travel-oriented startups to get cash.

Between now and the end of the year people will be flitting from state to state driving long hours, hoping not to encounter bad weather, and looking forward to visiting with good family. Perhaps the traffic is on investors minds. Our biggest round today went to Waze competitor Moovit, an app that takes people’s crowdsourced traffic information and gives you real time traffic stats. Social travel startup Minube also got some capital.

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Planet Labs grabs $52M to launch a flock of small satellites into space

With all our aspirations of escaping the planet and traveling the galaxy, we still don’t know that much about the Earth itself — or at least as much as we could, anyways. Thankfully, startups like Planet Labs exist to change that. And today, the company announce that it’s closed a fresh $52 million round of funding to set its plans into motion. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Moovit raises $28M to help you avoid public transportation nightmares

Moovit is using the wisdom of the crowd to make riding public transportation a breeze. The startup has closed a $28 million round for its app that combines public transport data with input from the community, to give commuters a real-time perspective of what their trip will be like and suggest the best routes. Moovit was founded in Israel in 2011 by Nir Erez, Roy Bick, and Yaron Evron. It publicly launched at the end of 2012. Waze founder Uri Levine is a member of the board, along with Sequoia’s Gili Raanan. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Datameer picks up $19M to help companies do analytics along with Hadoop

Hadoop, the leading framework used by companies to process huge amounts of data, has become all the rage right now. And commercial distributors of Hadoop, including Cloudera and Hortonworks, receive the bulk of the mindshare. But there’s another set of companies that offer analytics on top of Hadoop, and they benefit when the Hadoop companies like Cloudera get new business. That sort of trickle-down business is why investors are betting $19 million more on Hadoop analytics company Datameer. Next World Capital’s Fu is joining Datameer’s board. Alongside Next World, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Redpoint Ventures also joined the round. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Soundhawk raises $5.7M to bring wearable superhearing to the masses

Can a wearable device give you the super hearing you’ve always wanted? Soundhawk thinks so. Over the past four years the startup has been secretly working on a device that it says will greatly enhance the wearer’s ability to hear the world around them. And this is far from just a hearing aid: Soundhawk says that its device, coupled with its smartphone app, will work with the wearer’s “unique hearing profile” to improve hearing in even the loudest environments. As crazy as that sounds, it’s already backed by some real investor money. The company announced today that’s raised $5.7 million to create the device, which it expects to release in the first half of next year. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Pie Digital gets $5 million, SEC filing shows (headline)

Pie Digital raised $4 million in funding, according to an SEC filing. Pie offers a cloud-based platform to make it easier to manage home and small business networks and devices. The startup has been consistently raising funds all year — it raised $1 million in debt financing in October of 2013.

Robinhood’s pitch to millennials: free stock trading

Robinhood.io isn’t your parents’ stock broker. The startup has raised $3 million in seed funding for its mobile stock brokerage app that will offer stock, options, and corporate bonds trading to its members, and will do so without a commission. Index Ventures led this round, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Rothenberg Ventures, and angel investors. Google Ventures is also a backer. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Curoverse gets $1.5M to build a secure platform to store genetic data

In Boston, a small team of entrepreneurs are developing an infrastructure, called Curoverse, to help biomedical researchers store and analyze health data. The company today secured its first $1.5 million in seed funding from Hatteras Venture Partners, Point Judith Ventures, Common Angels, MassVentures, and Boston Global Ventures, among others. Curoverse’s technology is still in private beta, but the founders plan to release the first set of commercial products in 2014. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Minube gets $1.37M for social travel

Madrid-based startup Minube, which makes products for social travel, has taken a round of funding in the amount of one million euros. The cash comes from Kibo Ventures, Bonsai Venture Capital and Sputnik Ventures. The company was founded in 2007 and launched its first iOS app in 2011.

Datameer picks up $19M to help companies do analytics along with Hadoop