Fundings and Exits

Eric Velasquez Frenkiel had a seemingly simple thought when visiting his family in the Philippines, impressed by the cashless economy that had formed. Instead of sending money to his family once a year — a costly, fee-heavy affair — why can’t he just leave his credit card there? As with many things in fintech, it

As the jobs market remains tight (mass layoffs and hiring freezes in tech aside), companies are laser-focused on retaining staff. One of the areas they’re investing in is upskilling, which aims to teach employees new skills in departments with which they’re unfamiliar. For example, Walmart announced in 2021 that it would invest nearly $1 billion

WeWork co-founder and former chief executive Adam Neumann’s career arc has felt synonymous with the rise and eventual fall of unicorn dreams. The entrepreneur, whose fall from grace has attracted global interest, just found a ladder in the form of a check from storied venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Andreessen Horowitz announced on Monday that

Jenny Q. Ta Contributor More posts by this contributor How should web3 companies approach fundraising during a downturn? The financial market crash this year has had a unique effect on the web3 industry. Web3 companies are the newest members of the fintech ecosystem, and the current downturn marks the first major “hit” for the industry.

There is a host of startups working on decentralized identities for the next generation of the internet. Four Tencent veterans want their offering .bit, an identity protocol built on the blockchain, to become the universal identification system in web3 like how emails and phone numbers became ubiquitous in web2, while giving users control over their

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

Plus, the ‘What’s going on temp check vibe check of Coinbase’ Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann worked with Grace to record yet another weekly roundup on all the tech news that may have flown past your

Living as we are in an IPO drought, new data points about the financial health of unicorns are annoyingly scarce. Unicorns — private tech companies worth $1 billion or more — have become an asset class of their own. Crunchbase counts 1,386 global unicorns, pegging their value at $4.8 trillion. CB Insights counts 1,180 worth

A stitch in time saves nine, they say — and a blood thinner in time saves a trip to the emergency room for a heart attack, as Diagnostic Robotics hopes to show. The company’s machine learning-powered preventative care aims to predict and avoid dangerous (and costly) medical crises, saving everyone money and hopefully keeping them

There are a number of startups working to improve trash sorting with robots. AMP Robotics is near the top of the list, coupling a picker and a conveyor belt to sort materials in large, automated facilities. The technology aims to correct human shortcomings when it comes to recycling. Too often people either don’t bother to

In the video game Katamari Damacy, players control an avatar who rolls a sticky ball that captures anything it touches. The goal is to create a sphere large enough to become a star or moon. E-commerce aggregators work in much the same way by purchasing smaller brands, then optimizing their manufacturing and sales channels to

Positive Food Co., providing freshly packaged salads, heat-and-eat prepared meals and vegan overnight oats, raised $7 million in funding as it goes after the $34 billion fresh prepared foods market. In 2018, co-founders Schuyler Deerman and James Chan started selling healthy meals at WeWork offices around Los Angeles out of giant Yeti coolers, standing around

Coinbase earnings reports carry weight because the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange commands material market share in a budding portion of the digital economy. Additionally, it’s an active startup investor and a key data point in determining the current health of the crypto market. Naturally, TechCrunch was all over its recently released financial data, pulling out a

Amanda Barbour Contributor Across the globe, financial transactions have trended upward. In 2021, international merger and acquisition (M&A) activity increased significantly, eclipsing $5 trillion in deal volume for the first time in history, growing 64% over the previous year. I’ve worked at startups, private equity firms and high-growth companies, handling acquisitions as both the acquirer

Venture capital firms continue to raise new funds, at what seems like lightning speed. Two firms stuck out in recent days, including Urban Innovation Fund, which closed with commitments of $100 million for its Fund III and $20 million Opportunity Fund, and VMG Catalyst‘s $400 million Fund II. Both firms are led by women, Clara

Nightfall AI, a startup providing cloud data loss prevention services, today announced that it raised $40 million in Series B financing from investors including WestBridge Capital, Venrock, Bain Capital Ventures and — for some reason — athletes and celebrities including Paul Rudd, Drew Brees and Josh Childress. CEO Isaac Madan says that the proceeds will

After enduring a multiquarter selloff that started in late 2021, the value of software companies on the public market is recovering. The modest rebound posted thus far appears to have formed after a bottom in valuation terms was reached in mid-June, toward the end of the second quarter. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Achieving similar marbling and texture as a cut of animal meat has been a challenge for food technology startups aiming to produce whole cuts of cultivated meat, but Novel Farms believes it has cracked the code with its pork loin. Armed with $1.4 million in SAFE notes, or simple agreement for future equity, the company,

In this challenging fundraising environment, more startups than ever are turning to alternative financial solutions such as debt. Despite the negative connotation associated with debt, a startup should not view it as an act of desperation during downturns, as TechCrunch’s Kyle Wiggers and Alex Wilhelm have recently noted. Companies that have high recurring revenue and

Frederik Mijnhardt Contributor Frederik Mijnhardt is the CEO of Secfi, an equity planning platform for startup executives and employees. More posts by this contributor Late-stage tech companies must do right by their employees: Reassess your 409A valuations Inside Secfi’s 2021 state of stock options equity report Last year was a record 12 months for the

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is making some pretty heavy bets on the healthcare space as it acquired Amcare, which runs high-end children’s and women’s hospitals across China. The buyout cost ByteDance $1.5 billion, according to Bloomberg. A spokesperson for Xiaohe Health, ByteDance’s healthcare business, confirmed the acquisition but declined to comment on the deal size.

The pandemic prompted countless companies to migrate to the cloud. By 2025, driven partly by the need for digital services, 85% of enterprises will have a cloud-first principle, according to Gartner. But the transition isn’t always easy. In a recent MuleSoft survey, 84% of organizations said that data and app integration challenges were hindering their

Miferia, a Mexico-based business-to-business wholesale marketplace, bagged $7 million in seed funding to continue developing its curated website connecting independent retailers in Mexico with domestic brands in categories like cosmetics, food and beverage and home décor. In 2021, nearly 300 million people were shopping online in Latin America; Mexico accounted for 27% of that e-commerce

Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest and most interesting technology, startup and markets news. This morning was a fun mix of stuff that we don’t always get to, so strap in for the following: We are back Wednesday! Chat soon! Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6

AI’s strength lies in its predictive prowess. Fed enough data, the conventional thinking goes, a machine learning algorithm can predict just about anything — for example, which word will appear next in a sentence. Given that potential, it’s not surprising that enterprising investment firms have looked to leverage AI to inform their decision-making. There’s certainly

It’s clear that remote and hybrid work are here to stay — the pandemic forever changed the way many companies do business. But it’s introduced roadblocks from an HR perspective. For example, for payroll, businesses with employees in multiple states face barriers to opening the necessary accounts for disbursements. Others — fearful of the consequences

Kontempo, a startup offering buy now, pay later (BNPL) and interest-free installment plans to business-to-business (B2B) customers, today announced that it raised a $30 million seed round in a mix of equity ($6.5 million) and debt ($25 million). CEO and co-founder Matthew Meehan tells TechCrunch that the new cash will be used to hire staff,

Ghost Security, which its founders describe as an “app security” company, today emerged from stealth with $15 million in combined funding from 468 Capital, DNX Ventures, and Munich Re Ventures at a $50 million valuation. CEO Greg Martin said that the capital will go toward expanding the team, building Ghost’s product, and launching pilots with

Databricks, an enterprise software company focused on data and analytics, announced this morning that it has surpassed a $1 billion annual revenue run rate. The Wall Street Journal first reported news of the financial result. The milestone comes after the company raised a mammoth $1.6 billion round last August at a $38 billion valuation. At the

Most startups don’t have a clean run from their pre-seed round through an IPO when it comes to fundraising. Quickly growing tech companies sometimes pause at certain stages, raising a little extra cash against their prior round’s terms, for example. This becomes especially true when the economy changes for the worse and startups are incentivized