Fundings and Exits

French startup moka.care has raised a new $16 million Series A funding round (€15 million). The company is focused on mental well-being in the workplace. It offers a full-fledged service that sits in between employees and HR departments. Left Lane Capital is leading today’s funding round. Existing investor Singular is participating once again. VC firm

SwipeRx, a platform for pharma professionals, said Tuesday it has secured a $27 million Series B round led by Indonesia’s MDI Ventures, with participation from the Gates Foundation, Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, Susquehanna International Group and existing backers. Pharmacies in Southeast Asia were largely fragmented, mom-and-pop shops operating in silos when the company —

Weeks after laying off about 30% of its staff, MainStreet is said to be raising another round of funding at a $200 million valuation, sources tell TechCrunch. The news is significant in that MainStreet, which helps other startups uncover tax credits, raised $60 million in March of 2021 at a post-money valuation of $500 million.

Welcome back to The Interchange, the weekly TechCrunch series that looks at the latest — and what’s ahead — in the global fintech industry. It’s an incredible time to be a financial technology journalist. Besides the fact that over 20% of all venture dollars last year went into fintech startups, I am particularly excited about

Xendit, a payments infrastructure platform for Southeast Asia, has raised $300 million in fresh funding. The company’s new valuation wasn’t disclosed, but it hit unicorn status in its last round of funding in September 2021. The new round brings its total raised to $538 million and was led by Coatue and Insight Partners, with participation

While we had the chance to be at home more over the past few years, you may have spruced up a home office or replaced a couch. However, once the new item was in your home, you may have had some buyer’s remorse or the item didn’t live up to its website photo. In any

Time is a flat circle, and all that was once old is new again. For example, back in the venture days of yore, inside rounds were considered a poor market signal; if a startup could not attract a new lead investor for its next round, what did that say about the company? Last year, that

Unless you live near a port, you probably don’t think much of the tens of thousands of container ships tearing through the seas, hauling some 1.8 billion metric tons of stuff each year. Yet these vessels run on some of the dirtiest fuel there is, spewing more greenhouse gases than airplanes do in the process.

The technological advances we’ve made over the last few thousand years are stunning, but the construction industry still relies on centuries-old technology. Configuring a robot to mix cement is easy, but delivering a CementTron 3000 to a job site, training employees on its use, and keeping it maintained are not the kinds of disruptions builders

Ghosting a $44B date Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. The whole team was back together this week, which was pretty darn good as there was a lot to get through. Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and Mary Ann Azevedo were on the

How much difference a year makes. In April 2021, TechCrunch published a venture capitalist’s take that “the era of the European insurtech IPO will soon be upon us.” At the time, the perspective made some sense. After all, just last June, this column explored the rapid-fire fundraising in the insurance technology startup market, declaring that

Historically, the relationship between landlords and tenants can be a contentious one. At the same time, the experiences of managing a property, and renting one, are not always smooth. Belong, a startup that aims to address both these issues while giving renters a way to save toward home ownership, has just raised $50 million in

Tech valuations have endured stark declines this year. But after continued selling, it’s now possible to argue that the selling has gone too far — that tech valuations are now suffering more than is warranted in the wake of the 2020-2021 tech stock bubble. U.S. stocks opened lower today, adding to a miserable year’s trading.

Indonesia’s 60 million blue collar workers contribute 20% to its gross domestic product, but they face a lot of uncertainty. Many are forced to bounce from job to job, some fall victim to scam job postings and without a steady employment history, are unable to qualify for financial services, say the founders of Pintarnya. That’s

Payments and software startup SpotOn has closed on $300 million in a Series F financing that values the company at $3.6 billion. Dragoneer Investment Group led the latest round, which included participation from existing backers Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), DST Global, Franklin Templeton and Mubadala Investment Company, as well as new investor, G Squared. The investment

Heartex, a startup that bills itself as an “open source” platform for data labeling, today announced that it landed $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Redpoint Ventures. Unusual Ventures, Bow Capital, and Swift Ventures also participated, bringing Heartex’s total capital raised to $30 million. Co-founder and CEO Michael Malyuk said that

Singapore-based venture firm Jungle Ventures is digging deeper into Southeast Asia and India with the close of its fourth fund. Fund IV totals $600 million, with $450 million for new investments and $150 million earmarked for follow-up investments in its portfolio companies. The fund’s close brings Jungle Ventures’ total assets under management to over $1

The importance of designing accessibility in software from the ground up has only been emphasized by the pandemic, and as a consequence Fable’s on-demand accessibility experts have proven their value many times over. The company has raised $10 million to scale up and pursue its goal to “make Inclusive Product Development the status quo,” as

Arrived has raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Forerunner Ventures to give people the ability to buy shares in single-family rentals with “as little as $100.” Returning backers include Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment company of Jeff Bezos; Good Friends, a venture fund run by the CEOs and co-founders of

A trio of PayPal Ventures alumni has raised $158 million for Infinity Ventures, a new early-stage venture firm dedicated to investing in fintech startups globally. Jeremy Jonker, Jay Ganatra and Mario Ruiz left PayPal Ventures in May 2021 and had their first close last June and final close by October 2021. They left PayPal because

Business cards feel almost as outdated as Victorian calling cards, but they are still a networking staple. Melbourne-based Blinq wants to do away with them altogether. The app generates a QR code that shows your professional info, including social media links, as soon as someone scans it, even if they don’t have the app installed.

Curious Thing founders Dr. Han Xu, Sam Zheng and David Mckeague Sydney-based Curious Thing is an aptly-named startup. The voice AI communication platform can call people and ask them questions like “How are you feeling today?” and then follow up with “how does it feel compared to yesterday?” Used primarily by health and financial companies,

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week we recorded live, which is always good fun, meaning that we took some questions from the audience. If you want that version of the show, we have a YouTube archive of it here.

While stocks looked for a comeback on Friday after another torrid week of selloffs, it’s a fact that software valuations are testing new levels of price depression. There’s widespread damage as a result of all of those red charts plummeting down and to the right: The decline in the value of public software companies has

TechCrunch is more than just a site with words. We’re also building a growing stable of podcasts focused on the most critical topics relating to the startup and venture capital worlds. To help you find the right show for your interests, we’ve compiled our audio output from the week here. Embedded below is the latest

Because no one parties harder than I do, I spent a portion of my week reading through Coinbase’s investor call after its earnings report. The U.S. crypto exchange pulls in some questions from non-analysts during its chats, which makes for a slightly more entertaining set of prompts and responses. You can read it all here.

Inflection AI, the machine learning startup headed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and founding DeepMind member Mustafa Suleyman, has secured $225 million in equity financing, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The source of the capital isn’t yet clear — Inflection didn’t immediately respond to a request for more information

If there’s one area that has thus far felt insulated from the global venture downturn, it’s infrastructure. Companies that offer banking as a service and help other businesses offer their own financial services and products in particular continue to rake in the dollars. The latest such company in Latin America is São Paulo-based Dock, which

The first quarter was a hot time for crypto-focused startups. According to a recent dataset from CB Insights, crypto startups raised more capital than ever before in Q1 2022 and set records across a host of other metrics. If you closely watched the first-quarter venture capital cycle, this should not come as a surprise. As

Grocery delivery unicorn Instacart filed privately to go public yesterday, a long-awaited event for the well-known private company. During its startup days, Instacart raised huge amounts of capital and grew rapidly. When the pandemic arrived, Instacart’s business turbo-charged as demand for its service reached a fever pitch. The last year has been less kind. Growth slowed as