Fundings and Exits

When Mosa Meat served up a first-of-its-kind, lab-grown hamburger in 2013, it cost over $300,000. Eleven years later, around 200 startups worldwide remain hopeful that growing meat from cells, rather than slaughtering animals, will one day be a major portion of our food supply.  Despite their optimism, such success is not a given. In 2024,

Sri Lanka isn’t renowned for its startup ecosystem, but one company has been something of an outlier in the South Asian island nation these past two decades. An open source enterprise software provider with customers such as Samsung, Axa, and AT&T, WSO2 recently agreed to be acquired by private equity giant EQT, at a valuation

Self-driving technology company Aurora Innovation was hoping to raise hundreds of millions in additional capital as it races toward a driverless commercial launch by the end of 2024. The company, which had arranged to sell up to $420 million worth of shares, exceeded its goal and raised $483 million. The newly raised funds come a little

As widely reported, Wiz recently said no to a $23 billion acquisition offer from Google. At that price, it would have been Google’s biggest acquisition ever. It’s possible the Google team got cold feet during due diligence, or there may have been concerns that regulators would have challenged an acquisition of this size. But all

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 will be in San Francisco on October 28–30, and we’re already excited! Disrupt brings innovation for every stage of your startup journey, and we could not bring you this world-class event without our world-class partners. Take advantage of the opportunity to leverage the expertise and resources of some of tech’s leading companies. Their participation

Molly Alter wears a lot of hats. She’s a mocumentary filmmaker working on a project about an alternate reality where charades is big business. She’s a caesar salad connoisseur and documents her rankings of different restaurants’ attempts on a blog called JULIUS. She’s also Northzone’s newest partner. Alter’s path to venture capital was not an

Microsoft has a long and tangled history with OpenAI, having invested a reported $13 billion in the ChatGPT maker as part of a long term partnership. As part of the deal, Microsoft runs OpenAI’s models across its enterprise and consumer products, and is OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider. However, the tech giant called the startup a

While venture capitalists and the rest of the technorati are off on holiday or attending the Paris Olympics, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and its staff attorneys are keeping busy this summer.  For the second time this week — and at least the fourth time in the past several months — the SEC has

AI lobbying at the U.S. federal level is intensifying in the midst of a continued generative AI boom and an election year that could influence future AI regulation. New data from OpenSecrets, a nonprofit group that tracks and publishes metrics on campaign financing and lobbying, shows that the number of groups lobbying the federal government

Startups are attracting serious funding to provide fun, alcohol-free drink options at the bar and in other social contexts. Earlier this year, canned water company Liquid Death announced that it has raised $67 million in new funding at a $1.4 billion valuation. And Athletic Brewing Company, which describes itself as America’s largest non-alcoholic brewery, said

Google had good news and bad news last week. The good news was that the cloud division — including Google Workplace software as a service and Google Cloud infrastructure services — generated $10 billion for the quarter for the first time. That had to take the sting out of losing out on its second potential

The software supply chain faces threats from all sides. A 2024 report by the Ponemon Institute found that over half of organizations have experienced a software supply chain attack, with 54% having experienced one within the past year. Supply chain attacks typically target services from third-party vendors or open source software that make up a

Airtable today announced that it has acquired Dopt, a startup focused on helping other startups build product onboarding experiences for new users. Earlier this year, Dopt introduced a number of features that helped users add AI-based assistance tools to their respective services — those are the main reason Airtable is now acquiring the company. The

Zoe, a nutrition company based in London, is expanding its presence in the United States after raising $15 million in a Series B extension. Here’s how it works: Zoe sends customers at-home testing materials to collect blood or feces to test blood fat, blood sugar, and gut microbiome health. Following those results, the company scores

Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today’s episode is packed with M&A talk, how one YouTuber succeeded at the creator economy, why Twitch is still losing money and an autonomous vehicle company that is making a comeback. First up, senior reporter Rebecca Bellan took a look

The California Department of Motor Vehicles this week granted Nuro approval to test its third-generation R3 autonomous delivery vehicle in four Bay Area cities, giving the AV startup a positive boost after facing some setbacks and financial struggles. The approval gives Nuro the ability to test its driverless delivery vehicle in Mountain View, Palo Alto,

Working and even living in space has shifted from far-off fantasy to seemingly inevitable reality, but the question remains: what exactly will the next generation of space habitation look like? For Max Space, the answer is clear, and has been for decades — centuries, even. A new generation of expandable habitats could offer both safety

Clutch, a marketplace for digital marketing services, has been acquired by the online social network Plaiced, Clutch’s co-founder, Madison Long, told TechCrunch.  The deal closed earlier this week for undisclosed terms.  “The creator economy is growing rapidly, we knew to remain competitive and really be able to take over market share, an acquisition would be

Payments giant Stripe has acquired a four-year-old competitor, Lemon Squeezy, the latter company announced Friday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As a merchant of record, Lemon Squeezy calculates and pays global sales tax for digital products, handling legal processing and fees in every country. It primarily serves SaaS and software businesses. In a

Skip exited stealth this week to announce a partnership with outdoor clothing specialist Arc’teryx. The deal is the first to bring Skip’s MO/GO technology to market: “powered pants” that utilize a soft exoskeleton technology, developed in-house at Alphabet’s X Labs moonshot factory. MO/GO, short for “mountain goat,” is a hybrid soft/rigid exoskeleton system designed to

Amid the generative AI boom, companies are spending a lot on cloud infrastructure — and they’re concerned about it. According to a 2024 survey from cloud cost monitoring platform CloudZero, less than half of companies think that they have “healthy” cloud costs, with 58% saying their costs are too high. A number of public cloud

The Floorr launched earlier this year to shake up the digital styling experience by empowering personal shoppers and stylists to manage and expand their businesses in an increasingly competitive environment. Available on the web and iOS devices, The Floorr offers tools for conducting sales, hosting tailored styling sessions, creating mood boards, and engaging in text

Until a year ago, Arjun Pillai had the comfortable yet important role of chief data officer at ZoomInfo, a B2B database company. But the serial entrepreneur was getting antsy. He had already founded and sold two startups, including Insent, which ZoomInfo bought in 2021. “Once you start a startup, you always have that bug,” he

Maven Ventures general partner Sara Deshpande has been investing in the consumer tech space for a decade. Over time, the seed-stage venture firm has backed the likes of Zoom, Cruise, Hello Heart, Perplexity and x.AI and has grown to over $200 million in assets under management. Now, with a new $60 million fund — and

Investments in generative AI startups — those that are creating AI-powered products to generate text, audio, video and more — aren’t slowing down. But they’re being consolidated into a shrinking number of early-stage ventures. In the first half of 2023, from January to July 16, 225 startups raised $12.3 billion from VCs, according to Crunchbase

Thousands of stories have been written about former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick. If anyone knows a thing or two about losing control of your own narrative, it’s him. Now, Kaepernick is launching an AI storytelling platform, Lumi, to help creators tell and own their stories. If you said “Huh?” when reading

Platforms like TikTok and Spotify have experimented with events on their platforms. But rather than concentrating on concerts and large gatherings, event startup Posh is focusing on intimate gatherings of up to a few hundred people where you might know a friend, a friend of a friend, and a person you met at some party.

Digital banking startup Mercury is no longer serving customers in certain countries, including Ukraine, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Mercury made headlines earlier this year when it was caught up in federal scrutiny through one of its partners, Choice Bank, around the practice of allowing foreign companies to open accounts.  The FDIC was “concerned” that

Hustle culture is embedded into the Silicon Valley startup ethos, but the expectation to grind all the time can be detrimental to a founder’s mental health. We’re pleased to welcome Bonobos co-founder and former CEO Andy Dunn to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 for a fireside chat to discuss how founders can live up to the VC

Choosing between New York City’s nearly 25,000 restaurants can be overwhelming. The pressure is especially high when you’re trying to impress a first date (or investor) or entertain family from out of town. A new app launched over the weekend to address precisely that. The Scene, an iOS-only “pocket concierge service,” uses machine learning to