Fundings and Exits

Viva Republica, an operator of South Korean finance super app Toss, has finalized a $405 million Series G funding and it says it is now valued at 9.1 trillion won ( $7 billion), up from 8.5 trillion won in June 2021, when it raised $410 million in pre-Series F funding at a $7.4 billion (8.5 trillion

Life as a startup founder is never dull. That’s doubly true for Black founders, who routinely struggle to raise funds, be noticed and get their fair share of attention. For the new year, TechCrunch+ conducted a mini-survey to found out what Black founders are expecting in 2023. All three founders brought up the same concerns

For a rapid valuation climb, think, ‘What’s the highest risk right now, and how do I remove it?’ Haje Jan Kamps 16 hours You’ve likely heard of pre-seed, seed, Series A, Series B and so on and so forth. These labels often aren’t super helpful because they aren’t clearly defined — we’ve seen very small

Here are the stories that garnered the most interest from readers Mary Ann Azevedo 12 hours W elcome 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

Hello, hello! Greg here again with Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly recap the most read TechCrunch stories from the past seven days. Been too busy to read tech news? WiR should leave you with a pretty good idea of what people were reading/talking/tweeting about. Want it in your inbox every Saturday AM?

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. As we get closer to the end of the year, I thought it would be a good time to catch up with a

When a cat is scared, it may hide under the couch; a startled fish will swim into a dark hole. And when humans feel uneasy, we tell ourselves stories. An example: “growth at all costs” is a fairy tale made possible by cheap money that helped venture capitalists set expectations for founders — and each

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. Fridaaaaaaaay! Today we particularly enjoyed the Equity podcast team’s 2023 predictions on the future of building, crypto, and AI. Meanwhile, good luck to Alex (who mostly looks after TechCrunch+ these days, but

Despite shrinking investment into startups in 2022, venture capital funds of all sizes are still being raised. However, not many of these are led by solo general partners (GPs), and although that trend is on the rise, even fewer are led by women or people who don’t come from venture capital. The above makes Nichole

Fashion startup Virgio, co-founded by Amar Nagaram, former chief executive of Myntra, has raised $37 million in a new financing round as the young firm looks to build “a global fashion brand” from the South Asian market. Prosus Ventures, Alpha Wave and Accel co-led Virgio’s Series A funding, valuing the one-year-old startup at $161 million

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. The TC crew are a bunch of bookworms. Alex collected the top reads from 2022. Haje’s favorite was “A Deadly Education” (Naomi Novik’s first book in the Scholomance trilogy), which incidentally was

Aztec Network, a privacy layer for web3, has raised $100 million in a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the startup’s co-founders Zac Williamson and Joe Andrews exclusively told TechCrunch. “At a high level, Aztec is an encrypted version of Ethereum,” Andrews said. “Normally on Ethereum everything is public, but we are making

In countries where English is not a main language, listed companies not only have to deal with financial disclosure regulations, but make sure their investor materials are available in English for global backers. WritePath make the process faster and scalable by combining its AI tech with human translators. The Taipei-based startup’s clients include Foxconn, ASUS,

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 Wednesday! As I write this, I am also enjoying a virtual “holiyay” celebration with my fellow TechCrunchers. Haje is leaving on a jet plane, but he’ll be back tomorrow.

According to Grand View Research, the global sports betting market is expected to grow to $182.12 billion in revenue by 2030, up from $76.75 billion last year. So we are seeing a number of startups throng around this market. Thus, HotStreak, a web3 platform for daily fantasy sports (DFS) contests, is betting that a decentralizing

Cislunar space is quickly becoming ripe for government and civil use. This is particularly true in light of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to establish a permanent human presence on the moon in the long-term. But a ton of critical infrastructure will need to be in place before that happens: everything from communication systems to

About 29% of Indonesia’s workforce is in the agriculture sector, but many small farmers face challenges like low access to working capital. Eratani is an end-to-end management system that helps them get financing and supplies, and then helps them sell crops once they are ready. The startup announced today it has raised an oversubscribed $3.8

News that former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested yesterday in the Bahamas set the technology world alight. After the dramatic implosion of FTX’s crypto empire, which resulted in the loss of hundreds of millions of invested capital and billions of paper wealth, many in the larger crypto community were incensed that he was not

HR organizations are faced with a widening skills gap, economic headwinds and changing expectations around work. It’s no surprise, then, that burnout and exhaustion are widespread in HR, with one survey finding that 42% of teams are struggling under the weight of too many projects and responsibilities. Change starts with personnel and management, some might

TL;DR: Enough to hit the milestones to raise your next round of funding Haje Jan Kamps 14 hours The correct amount of money to raise for your startup is “as much as you need to hit the milestones to raise your next round of funding.” It isn’t rocket science, and yet, the vast majority of

Dan Roy, a former software engineer at Delta, says he witnessed firsthand the challenges companies face when making the shift from an on-premises model to a software-as-a-service business. Accucast, where he served as CTO after leaving Delta, struggled with this as it pitched software and services for email marketing. The solution, he came to believe,

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.

The ‘ask and use of funds’ slide is an opportunity to shine as a founder. Don’t waste it. Haje Jan Kamps 12 hours There’s one slide that almost every founder gets wrong when they are putting together a pitch deck to raise money from venture capitalists. The slide is usually known as “the ask,” and

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. It seems like everyone has been talking about Lensa AI this week, but a less obvious point of this AI-enabled chart topper caught

Hello again! Greg here again with Week in Review. WiR is the newsletter where we take the most read TechCrunch stories from the last seven days and wrap them up in as few words as possible — no fluff, no nonsense,* just a quick blast of everything you probably want to know about in tech

This column would like to apologize for somehow missing the buildup to Getaround‘s SPAC combination, which was voted on yesterday and began trading this morning. I don’t know how we managed to get so far behind on this particular news item, but we will rectify our tardiness today. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

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. We’ve made it to Friday, folks. If you’re anything like me, that means finishing the workday with a well-deserved nap and reruns of “The Office.” Tweet, toot or Post at me about

Microsoft today announced that it acquired Lumenisity, a U.K.-based startup developing “hollow core fiber (HCF)” technologies primarily for data centers and ISPs. Microsoft says that the purchase, the terms of which weren’t disclosed, will “expand [its] ability to further optimize its global cloud infrastructure” and “serve Microsoft’s cloud platform and services customers with strict latency

Rule one: Don’t throw out a number Evan Fisher 10 hours Evan Fisher Contributor Founder of Unicorn Capital and Minimal Capital, Evan Fisher‘s pitching and investor strategy has helped startups raise more than $2.5 billion. More posts by this contributor The pre-pitch: 7 ways to build relationships with VCs Don’t send VC a cold deck

Artificial intelligence is taking over almost every industry. The investment and finance industry is no exception. In Deloitte’s 2019 report, the firm reveals that AI is transforming the financial ecosystem to reduce costs and make operations more efficient by providing automated insights and alternative data, analysis and risk management. Technology such as AI has digitized