Fundings and Exits

I’m thrilled to announce this TechCrunch Live event. The startup Cambrian BioPharma is developing a life-changing technology while pioneering a radical approach to a pharmaceutical company. Don’t miss this TechCrunch Live taking place on May 3 at 12 p.m. PDT. Register here. It’s free to watch and participate. Cambrian BioPharma bills itself as a new

Based on my conversations last week at TechCrunch Early Stage, VCs are very open to first-time founders who can demonstrate more than just enthusiasm. But dealmaking is idiosyncratic: a few investors might be content to make a deal over coffee, but early-stage teams still need a sturdy pitch deck or memo they can leave behind.

ZEBOX, an international accelerator network founded by shipping conglomerate CMA CGM to introduce more tech innovation into the supply chain industry, announced today the launch of its APAC headquarters. Based in Singapore, ZEBOX Asia will also look at markets like Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan and Korea. The APAC hub is backed by Enterprise Singapore, a

Every time a member of their crew changes, maritime crew managers need to handle immigration regulations, COVID requirements and travel plans for each person. This is usually done through emails with port agents, and can quickly lead to an overwhelming number of messages, sent across multiple time zones, especially if multiple people are leaving or

Blake Byrne Contributor Blake Byrne is building a stealth mode biomanufacturing startup. A recent graduate of the University of Cambridge, he previously served on the Good Food Institute’s Science & Technology team. Using microbial organisms like yeast and fungi as cell factories to produce animal proteins, Pat Brown and his early team at Impossible Foods

“There’s a ton of stuff that really could be impacting the lives of everybody on Earth, that is not making it out of the lab and into practical application,” said David Van Wie, founder and chief investment officer at Aventurine Capital Group. That’s how he summarizes the problem he is trying to solve with his

Your first slide is obviously important for a pitch deck; first impressions count, and having a solid introduction goes a long way. It seems that founders often forget that the last slide is just as important. There’s a simple reason for that: Investors easily look at hundreds of slide decks per month, and it’s hard

Welcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. This week, I look into cybersecurity sales, developer content marketing, and fundraising pitches through a common lens: The importance of understanding your audience and

Photonics is proving to be a tough nut to crack Kyle Wiggers 7 hours The growing compute power necessary to train sophisticated AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT might eventually run up against a wall with mainstream chip technologies. In a 2019 analysis, OpenAI found that from 1959 to 2012, the amount of power used

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hey, TechCrunchers, happy Friday. I hope this is your favorite time of day because Haje and I really enjoy bringing you the news of the day written by the fabulous people we

If someone said “startup” while we were playing a word association game, I’d respond with “fundraising.” (I bet you would, too.) Asking people for money is a key aspect of every founder’s journey, but Techstars Managing Director Collin Wallace says it can also “accelerate your demise.” For example, raising a round to rev up engineering,

Betterdata, a Singapore-based startup that uses programmable synthetic data to keep real data secure, announced today it has raised $1.55 million. The seed round, which it says was oversubscribed, was led by Investible with participation from Franklin Templeton, Xcel Next, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Bon Auxilium, Tenity, Plug and Play and Entrepreneur First.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hello, and Happy Thursday. Just one more day to go for the workweek. Haje is in Boston taking fabulous photos of the activities going on at TechCrunch Early Stage today, so I’m

Honeycomb raised $50 million to make the new landscape of platforms and services more observable. Its long-term goal is to make life easier for people operating large software platforms. “What we saw in 2015 and 2016 is the world moving in a direction where that complexity was unavoidable, whether in a heightened interest in being

In recent years, calling oneself a startup founder was certainly seen as a flex. For those who wielded that role or the coveted CEO position, you were likely to be placed on a pedestal or be viewed as a visionary, aided by a venture capital market that experienced an overextended bull run in the background. 

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Helloooooooooo, midweek Crunchers! Today, we are pretty excited about life in general. Also, is your company still in stealth? Apply to Startup Battlefield 200 anyway — and announce your public debut at

Stability AI, the startup behind the generative AI art tool Stable Diffusion, today open-sourced a suite of text-generating AI models intended to go head to head with systems like OpenAI’s GPT-4. Called StableLM and available in “alpha” on GitHub and Hugging Spaces, a platform for hosting AI models and code, Stability AI says that the

While Generative AI is buzzy right now, what OpenAI, Microsoft and Google are doing may be only part of the story. There is also the process of using biology: the idea of using stem cells to create biocomputers that could potentially be smarter and more energy efficient than what we are used to today. Australian

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Happy Tuesday Crunch, our crunchiest of friends. So happy to see you again. Yesterday, Haje wondered if he was an AI, so clearly he needs a holiday. Today, shall we bask in

It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times Ron Miller 8 hours It seems like it’s the best of times for founders thinking about launching an AI startup, especially with OpenAI releasing ChatGPT to the masses, as it has the potential to really put AI front and center in business and perhaps everything

Healthcare startups are scrambling to reassess how their websites and apps are built, and how third parties may, inadvertently or not, be putting patients’ protected health information at risk. In March, U.S. mental health startup Cerebral admitted it shared the private health information of more than 3 million users with Facebook, Google, TikTok and other

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Happy Monday Crunch! Haje is wrapping up this newsletter before heading to TechCrunch Early Stage 2023 in Boston on April 20. It’s not too late to get your ticket! Meanwhile, on the

Cure, a functional hydration brand, is entering a new phase of its growth that includes nearly quadrupling its retail presence from 2021, rounding out its leadership team and closing on $5.6 million in Series A funding. It’s been a hot minute since TechCrunch checked in on the brand — almost three years, actually — which

Anyone in the U.K. who has tried to book an NHS medical appointment of late will know just how much of an ordeal it can be, with median waiting times for consultant-led elective care (i.e. pre-planned clinical treatment) currently sitting at around 14.6 weeks in England. This has led to a spike in people turning

Welcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week.

Welcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. This week, I am diving deeper into what generative AI means, or doesn’t mean, for enterprise buyers. I also have some notes on why

Hello, friends. Looking for a recap of this week’s news? You’re in the right place. It’s Week in Review (WiR), the (more or less) regular newsletter that recaps the top stories from the past few days written by the talented TC team. (Woot, alliteration.) There’s no quicker way to catch up on the stuff that

Let’s start with an obvious truth: Hardware is hard. We’ve all heard the cliché — and implicitly understand it to be truth. The good news is such difficulties give us a lot to talk about — and as it happens, for the first time, hardware is getting its own stage at Disrupt 2023. The event,

Creative platform EVEN, which allows artists to sell music directly to fans, said it has closed a $2.2 million seed round led by CSA Partners. The platform positions itself as the first stop before artists release music on streaming platforms. Fans, in return, receive access to exclusive content and experiences. The company’s CEO and founder,

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Happy Friday, our crunchiest of friends! Over the last few days, we’ve been telling you about all the cool stuff that’s happening at Disrupt. Well, guess what — we’re getting a hardware