Fundings and Exits

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha interviewed Sarah Oh, the co-founder of T2, a Twitter

In 2016, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states signed the Value Added Tax (VAT) agreement paving way for the introduction of the general levy on consumption across the region. The United Arabs Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia became the first member states to adopt the treaty in 2018, and its implementation meant that for

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. What’s up, Crunchers? Good to see you again! We’re so glad to have you with us. It’s been a really busy day on the site today, and Haje has been busy getting

Paris Heymann Contributor For the tech community, the rallying cry in 2022 was about moving from the growth-at-all-costs mindset toward emphasizing profitability. We believe that in turbulent times, startups and scaleups alike need to ensure: They have sufficient runway to ride out a downturn without relying on large amounts of external funding. They are developing

Solar-powered electric vehicle maker Lightyear said it’s halting production on its flagship Lightyear 0, its premium EV with a sticker price of €250,000. Despite only starting production on the vehicle three months ago, Lightyear is restructuring to focus on building a more affordable model, the Lightyear 2 for around €40,000, reports Electrek. The news comes

Today, baby registry and product discovery platform Babylist announced that it has acquired health and wellness tool Expectful for an undisclosed price. The deal, announced today, brings together two companies focused on parental support, now helping people navigate everything from eco-friendly diapers to mental wellness around fertility. The overlap, however, is in more than the mission.

Microsoft today announced that it’s extending its partnership with OpenAI, the startup behind art- and text-generating AI systems like ChatGPT, DALL-E 2 and GPT-3, with a “multi-year, multi-billion-dollar” investment. OpenAI says the infusion of new capital — the exact amount of which wasn’t disclosed — will be used to continue its research and “develop AI that

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.

W elcome 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. Buy now, pay later is an alluring option for consumers, perhaps even more so in a recession. But with rising debt and inflation,

Howdy, folks! Happy Friday. While our fearless Week in Review leader Greg enjoys parental leave, I’m filling in, curating the latest on the tech news front. It was a roller coaster of a week once again as economic headwinds took a brutal, demoralizing toll, and as chaos reigned at Elon Musk’s Twitter. Somewhere in the

Many of us would feel better if we ate better. But for patients with chronic diseases, the issue is more pressing: Fixing their diet is often key to keeping their condition under control. According to the CDC, six in 10 adults in the U.S. have a chronic disease such as diabetes or heart conditions. Millions

Area 120, the Google in-house incubator responsible for products such as Checks, Tables, Stack and ThreadBite, has been significantly affected by broader layoffs at Google parent company Alphabet. A spokesperson tells TechCrunch via email that the majority of the Area 120 team has been “winded down,” and that only three projects from the division will

People can never land on a word to explain what is happening to women and minorities within venture. Are such founders overlooked or undersought? Underestimated and underrepresented? Marginalized? Discriminated against? Or just ignored? The excuses used to justify these sobriquets are equally scattered. Women received just 1.9% of all venture capital funds last year because

Swiggy plans to lay off 380 jobs and shut down its meat marketplace as the Prosus Venture and SoftBank-backed Indian food delivery giant looks to navigate the market downturn that has forced firms to become leaner and more disciplined. In an email to employees on Friday, Swiggy co-founder and chief executive Sriharsha Majety said the

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Thursday! This week has just flown by, and we’re still reeling from the excitement that a company is leaning into compliments. Compliments? In this day and age? Is there actually hope for

There’s no shortage of tools for brainstorming, collaboration and keeping all your knowledge in one place. Still, judging from the number of new tools that come to market on a regular basis, it seems that people are frustrated with the available tools. Scrintal recently raised $1 million to build its visual collaborative knowledge base tool

PhonePe’s valuation has more than doubled to over $12 billion in a new funding round as the Indian fintech giant readies for life without parent firm Flipkart. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup said it has raised $350 million and anticipates raising up to another $650 million as part of the round in a remarkable feat at a

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Helloooo, Crunchers! The heavy goods train of tech news keeps on rollin’ down (and sometimes off) the tracks. Apropos tracks, we’ve been a little besotted with this absolutely magnificent music video of

The past few years have been a rollercoaster for the startup world’s herd of unicorns. Two years ago, we saw a record number of companies cross the $1 billion valuation milestone. But that momentum slowed to a trickle last year, and this year’s market conditions look likely to reverse course to a point that we

GoMechanic has laid off 70% of its workforce as the Sequoia India-backed startup grapples with funding crunch after the existing and prospective investors found that the founders had misstated facts. The move comes as the Gurgaon-headquartered GoMechanic, which offers auto-services such as repairing and carwashing, has been struggling to raise funds for over a year

PeopleFund, a South Korean marketplace that connects borrowers and investors to enable lending, has recently added $20 million to its $63.4 million Series C. Existing backer Bain Capital led the extension, with participation from previous investors such as Access Ventures, CLSA Capital Partners Lending Ark Asia, D3 Jubilee Partners, 500 Global, Kakao Investment, TBT Partners

Welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. It’s Tuesday, not Monday, but hey, the week ahead is as busy as ever. Here’s what I chatted about today: As always, you can support me by following me on Twitter and Instagram. The show also

Alice Delahunt believes the future of fashion is in web3 and created Syky (pronounced “psy-key”) to put the wheels in motion. She launched the company in November after a career in marketing at luxury fashion houses, serving in roles including chief digital and content officer at Ralph Lauren and digital and social marketing director at

Late last week, in a rare sit-down before a small audience, this editor spent an hour with Sam Altman, the former president of Y Combinator and, since 2019, the CEO of OpenAI, the company he famously co-founded with Elon Musk and numerous others in 2015 to develop artificial intelligence for the “benefit of humanity.” The

Never rely on external resources to do your fundraising for you Haje Jan Kamps 13 hours Occasionally, in my role as a consultant, I am approached by companies that have a plan in place for their fundraising that doesn’t involve the CEO or a member of the founding team running point on the fundraising process.

Kwara, a Kenyan fintech digitizing credit unions (saccos), more than doubled its client base last year, and its eyeing enormous growth in the coming years after raising a $3 million seed extension, and signing an exclusive digital solutions distribution agreement with the Kenya Union of Savings & Credit Cooperatives (Kuscco), the national umbrella body representing

During the pandemic, Tita Ardiati and Bayu Puspito Bhaskoro began developing life coaching content to support employees who were increasingly burned out by working from home. They got a good enough reception that they decided to develop their product into an employee assistance program called Mindtera, which now serves more than 10,000 employees in Indonesia.

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, welcome, folks, to Week in Review, TechCrunch’s regular column that recaps the last week in news. If you’d like it in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here. Hope you’re sitting comfortably with a warm beverage on this wintery Saturday afternoon. Expecting Greg’s byline? Not to worry — he’s still enjoying parental leave, as

W elcome 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. Are VCs really sitting on record amounts of cash waiting to be deployed into new startups? I wish. But if it sounds too