It’s tempting to think the trend of EV startups merging with special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) to go public has ended, seeing how many of them are struggling or defunct. But that’s not quite true. A startup called Thunder Power Holdings went public on the Nasdaq exchange in June through a SPAC, and is now
Month: September 2024
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. You won’t find any Founder Mode discourse in this week’s newsletter, although the memes keep coming. Instead, here’s your usual dose of startup news, from oversized rounds,
Hydrogen startup C-Zero has raised $5 million of an $18 million funding round, according to an SEC filing. The company is developing a way to strip hydrogen from methane without emitting carbon dioxide. The resulting hydrogen can be used in a range of industries today, including ammonia and petrochemical production, and potentially others in the
Venture capitalist Tim Draper’s international pitch competition, “Meet the Drapers,” is partnering up with TikTok as it heads into its seventh season. Under the new tie-up, entrepreneurs will pitch their startups to the public through the short-form video app for one of the show’s upcoming episodes. The general public will then be able to vote
Europe doesn’t have many large language model (LLM) makers but one of these rare AI beasts — Germany’s Aleph Alpha — appears to be preparing to rule itself out of the running, per Bloomberg, which has an interview with CEO Jonas Andrulis on its pivot to a broader generative AI-support play. The idea with a
Vay, a startup that has put a teleoperated twist to car-sharing in Berlin and Las Vegas, is expanding into commercial and business-to-business services buoyed by recent deals with French automaker Peugeot and Belgium-based Poppy. Vay isn’t a traditional ride-hailing or car-sharing startup, nor does it operate a robotaxi service. And yet, when customers in Las
Salesforce has acquired Own Company, a New Jersey-based provider of data management and protection solutions, for $1.9 billion in cash. Own is Salesforce’s biggest deal since buying Slack in 2021. In a press release, Salesforce GM Steve Fisher said that the acquisition “underscores [Salesforce’s] commitment to providing secure, end-to-end solutions that protect our customers’ most
Launching a phone company is a remarkably difficult — some even say foolish — thing to do. OSOM Products, which rose out of the smoldering ashes of Essential in 2020, is closing shop. Android Authority was first to report the news, after gaining access to an internal announcement from CEO Jason Keats. OSOM always had
French clean tech startup Calyxia has profitability within sight. The company just raised a $35 million Series B round that will help it further ramp up industrial production of its sustainable alternatives to microparticles and microcapsules, setting it on the path to net profitability by 2026. But co-founder and CEO Jamie Walters says the B
Software documentation — the resources that explain how software works and how to use it — has evolved dramatically over the past few decades. Once mostly in the form of PDFs and static plaintext, docs today are more interactive and user-friendly than they used to be. But crafting them is still a time sink. Han
For over two decades, Jay Chandarana relied on commercial banks to meet the day-to-day, working capital needs of his family business, the sesame seed exporter Dhaval Agri. It was an arrangement that basically worked: the company grew to have a 13% share of the country’s total exports, making it the largest sesame seed exporter in
Copper is critical to the energy transition away from fossil fuels. The metal is an excellent conductor of electricity, used in everything from electric vehicles to wind turbines. But by the end of the decade, the International Energy Agency expects copper supplies to fall 20% short of demand. One stealthily operating startup thinks it can
YouTube on Thursday announced a new set of AI detection tools to protect creators, including artists, actors, musicians and athletes from having their likeness, including their face and voice, copied and used in other videos. One key component of the new detection technology involved the expansion of YouTube’s existing Content ID system, which today identifies
HR and payroll software company Paylocity has agreed to acquire corporate spend startup Airbase for $325 million, the companies announced Wednesday. The deal is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close in the first or second quarter of Paylocity’s fiscal year, which would be sometime in the next 30 to 60 days. It
For financial institutions, complying with regulations is becoming a costlier proposition. According to a recent poll, 76% of financial services firms increased their compliance expenditure from 2022 to 2023, with most blaming new laws. With the cost of compliance averaging out to around $10,000 per employee these days, many firms are searching for ways to
European regulators are pushing hard for greener energy. The REPowerEU plan calls for 10 million additional heat pumps to be added by 2027, and solar panels are also on the rise. But most installations are done by small businesses that could be more productive with better work processes. This is where German startup Reonic comes
Some major consolidation is afoot in the world of internet communications — and it will have implications for competition and consumer internet access in U.S. On Thursday, Verizon announced that it would gobble up Frontier Communications for $20 billion — more than double Frontier’s market cap at the close of trading the night before. Frontier
Cowboy, the Brussels-based company that has been designing and selling electric bikes that you can see in major cities across Europe, has closed a small, strategic funding round of €5 million (around $5.5 million at current exchange rates). That includes €1 million in debt facilities. While the amount isn’t as impressive as some of Cowboy’s
If you spend time on X or Threads, where snarky memes rise and fall, you’ve probably seen posts referencing “founder mode” over the last few days, like this: https://www.threads.net/@carnage4life/post/C_eaQAxyIcV Or maybe this: You may even have seen this parody about “goblin mode.” The chatter ties to a recent blog post that Y Combinator founder and
The American sports betting market produced $10.9 billion in revenue in 2023 for casinos, sportsbooks and iGaming, according to the American Gambling Association. One of the reasons this industry is so lucrative is because the majority of people who bet on sports lose. A three-year-old San Francisco-based startup called DubClub is trying to change that.
Time is running out to take advantage of our Student Pass discount for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Students and recent graduates can still save up to $200 until September 6 at 11:59 p.m. PT. With classes back in full swing and the job market tougher than ever for recent grads, we know how tight money can
Navin Chaddha, the leader and managing partner of 55-year-old VC firm Mayfield Fund, has a penchant for approaching venture investing in a way that deviates slightly from other established firms. When Mayfield raised a $955 million fund last year, Chaddha told TechCrunch the firm didn’t need a multibillion-dollar fund because “copying somebody else is strategy
New climate tech VC firms have emerged in recent years, but existing ones are also raising larger funds. Founded in 2007, Dutch firm SET Ventures is one of the latter. Its fourth fund, which just closed at €200 million, is twice the size of its previous one, and will be deployed into 20 to 25
YouTube is expanding its existing set of parental controls with a new feature that would allow a parent to link their account to their teen’s account in order to gain insight into the teen’s activity across the video-sharing platform, the company announced on Wednesday. Once linked, parents will be alerted to their teen’s channel activity,
Microplastics are everywhere. Everywhere. They are in our waters, in our food and even crossing blood barriers to enter our brains. Sarah Paiji Yoo launched Blueland in 2019 to help consumers minimize the amount of microplastics they come into contact with each day. This meant creating special tablets that dissolve in water and can be
At Uber, Gurjit Pannu remembers moving billions in cash across bank accounts globally, realizing almost immediately the importance of effective cash flow management. Christian Sobkowski, meanwhile, recalls his days working in financial services, most notably at PayPal, where helped expand the company’s business across Europe. It’s no wonder then, that the two decided to come
The new Paper Pro tablet from reMarkable moves the company’s vision of combining PC with paper closer to reality, adding color and capability while keeping the philosophy of focus intact. The Norwegian company has been something of an unlikely success story. In a day and age where more and more functionality is crammed into our
Indian online pharmacy startup PharmEasy, once valued at $5.6 billion, is still about 92% below its peak valuation, according to estimates by its investor Janus Henderson. According to the British-American global asset firm, which disclosed how it values its shares in the Indian startup in a securities filing, PharmEasy’s implied valuation at the end of
Digital lending platforms have become an easy and swift alternative source of credit for microenterprises and individuals overlooked by traditional banking institutions. These platforms have turned into a lifeline for millions of underbanked and demand will keep growing, pushing the value of the digital lending platform market in the Middle East and Africa to reach
Social networking startup Bluesky continues to benefit from X’s shutdown in Brazil having now added over 2 million new users over the past four days, up from just half a million as of Friday. This rapid growth led some users to encounter the occasional error that would state there were “Not Enough Resources” to handle