Fundings and Exits

Berlin-based Mayd, a startup that’s building an on-demand medicine delivery platform in Europe, has fast followed a chunky seed raise last fall — with a €30 million (~$34M) Series A funding round led by US investor Lightspeed Venture Partners. Previous investors Target Global, 468 Capital and Earlybird Venture Capital also chipped into the Series A.

Black Sheep Foods, a food tech company making plant-based heritage breed meats and wild game, took in $5.25 million in seed funding as it continues developing its patent-pending flavor compounds. Sunny Kumar, co-founder, told TechCrunch that where some plant-based meats fall short is relying on the taste to be generated by the mouth. Rather, his

You’ve got a hundred-million-dollar mission — why are you using software built in the ’90s to design and launch it? That’s the question being asked by many new space companies, and Epsilon3 is looking to help them bring their operations out of spreadsheets and Word docs and into a modern and collaborative work platform. We

A sari-sari store owner who uses GrowSari GrowSari, the Manila-based startup that helps small shops grow and digitize, announced today that KKR will lead its Series C round with a $45 million investment. The funds will be used to enter new regions in the Philippines and expand its financial products. The Series C round is

Companies make acquisitions for a host of reasons. Sometimes it’s about filling a hole in a product road map, or expanding market share, or finding good people. Finding the right company to acquire takes special talent. But once the deal is through, it takes skill and a deft hand to integrate the acquired company smoothly

Amid this long-lasting startup era, 2021 may go down as the peak venture capital year. When The Exchange looked at global data for venture capital activity in 2021, we used words like “bonkers” and “record-setting.” Those might have been a little modest when we compare just how much the venture asset class has grown from

Meet Zoi, a new French startup that wants to combine routine medical checkups with preventive care through a mobile app. The startup has been co-founded by Ismaël Emelien, former special advisor to Emmanuel Macron during the early days of its presidency, and Paul Dupuy, who previously worked on Workwell. Before I tell you more about

Jeremy Abelson Contributor Jeremy Abelson is the founder and lead portfolio manager of Irving Investors. Combining his experience as an operator and institutional investor, Abelson runs Irving as a multi-strategy platform making long-term durable investments in both the public and private markets. More posts by this contributor IPO Slowdown: A Look At Company Profitability Down

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. If you own stuff, I am sorry to report that you are probably poorer today than you were on Friday, and even less wealthy than you were the Friday before. Things are selling

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 Friday episode, a run-down of key news headlines, startup funding rounds and whatever else is popping in the worlds of startups and tech. The whole gang was in the huddle

TechCrunch got its teeth into the pandemic trade and its possible conclusion yesterday. As a refresher: After the initial onset of COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdowns, changes to work environments and restriction of travel, some companies saw their values quickly appreciate as they found investor favor. The reasons for some sectors gaining luster in the

Following nearly four years in the prototype phase, Cana Technology is unveiling what it calls the “world’s first molecular beverage printer” after securing $30 million in funding from venture foundry The Production Board. If you’re wondering exactly what this might be, it’s basically a SodaStream meets a computer printer. The smart connected device is about

Grocery delivery startup Calii is carving out a piece of Latin America’s $1 trillion groceries and food delivery market with its approach to cut inefficiencies in the food supply chain so it can bring produce and thousands of other grocery items to customers’ doorsteps in less than two hours. Calii app To continue on that

Berlin-based startup Moss announced earlier this week that it has closed a new $86 million Series B funding round (€75 million). The company offers corporate credit cards for small and medium companies so that they can more easily spend and track their spending. Following today’s funding round, Moss has reached a valuation of $573 million

Since the Ant Group IPO was canceled by central authorities, China’s government has been on a regulatory tear. You know the broad outlines: After a lengthy period of growth, capital investment and aggressive business practices, China’s central government spent much of 2021 reining in its technology sector. While some of the actions were reasonable from

While buy now, pay later startups have largely focused on the consumer, a growing group of them are now focusing on the B2B space. The premise behind that is that after all, businesses need more flexible payment options, too. For example, in December, Affirm spinout Resolve, which specializes in “buy now, pay later” capabilities for

Frederik Mijnhardt Contributor Frederik Mijnhardt is the CEO of Secfi, an equity planning platform for startup executives and employees. Last year set a new record for public exits, with more than 844 U.S. companies going public via an initial public offering (IPO), a direct listing, or through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). That’s 105%

Plaid, a fintech unicorn known for its APIs that connect consumer bank accounts to financial applications, announced today that it is buying Cognito. The price is around $250 million, paid in a blend of cash and stock TechCrunch understands, though we couldn’t suss out the exact mix of each. The deal highlights where Plaid is

A SaladStop worker uses StaffAny to clock in StaffAny, a management platform for SMEs with shift workers, has raised a $3.4 million Series A led by GGV Capital. The round included participation from East Ventures, FreakOut Shinsei Fund, Far East Ventures, Farquhar Venture Capital and angel investors including Allen Shim, former CFO of Slack. The

The global startup fundraising boom has lifted nearly every sector you can name: Edtech took off during the pandemic, software in general got a lift, and even more risky and long-term wagers like space tech and biotech are seemingly doing well in today’s risk-on startup fundraising market. But no single category or niche in startup

Pyxis One, now Pixis, closed on $100 million in Series C funding to continue developing what it touts as “the world’s only contextual codeless AI infrastructure for complete marketing optimization.” SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led the round and was joined by new investor General Atlantic, and existing investors Celesta Capital, Premji Invest and Chiratae Ventures.

Buy now pay later (BNPL) startups are proliferating around the world and the Philippines is no exception. Today, one of the country’s biggest BNPL providers, BillEase, announced it has raised an $11 million Series B. The round was led by BurdaPrincipal Investments, growth capital arm of Hubert Burda Media. Other participants included Centauri, a joint

Maria Lepskaya Contributor Maria Lepskaya is a senior associate at Runa Capital, leading investments in different branches of quantum technologies and advanced materials. Market trends are the best indicators we have to judge the maturity of the quantum industry. While they don’t perfectly reflect technological progress, they showcase investors’ willingness to write checks for the

Six months after its $20 million Series A, payroll connectivity platform Pinwheel just announced that it has nabbed another $50 million in a round led by new investor GGV Capital.  Pinwheel serves neobanks and fintechs like Block, Acorns, and Current by providing application programming interfaces (APIs) linked to payroll, income, and employment data. Historically, systems

Mio, the Vietnamese social commerce platform, has raised an $8 million Series A, less than a year after announcing its seed round. The funding was led by Jungle Ventures, Patamar Capital and Oliver Jung, with participation from returning investors GGV, Venturra, Hustle Fund, iSEED SEA and Gokul Rajaram. TechCrunch first covered Mio at the time

This morning Rebundle, a hair-focused startup based in St. Louis, announced that it has raised $1.4 million in a pre-seed round. M25, a venture firm with a geographic focus on the Midwest, led the funding event. Prior to its pre-seed round, Rebundle had raised what CEO and co-founder Ciara Imani May described as six-figures worth of

Customer service tickets tend to fall into the same few buckets — returns, refunds or quality control questions. Not only are these repetitive, but it leaves little time for customer engagement on more complex requests, like relaying information on products or helping a customer find the best product for them. Maja Schaefer and Matt Ciolek,

UBITS, a B2B online learning platform for upskilling employees in Latin America, has raised $25 million in funding led by Riverwood Capital. Julián Melo and Marta Forero founded UBITS in Bogota, Colombia, in 2018 after the pair came up with the idea of “creating the Netflix for corporate training for LatAm.” They applied to Y

Checkout technology company Bolt continues to make quick work of attracting new capital. The company announced Friday $355 million in Series E financing to give Bolt an $11 billion valuation, according to sources close to the company. Bolt’s one-click checkout product aims to give businesses the same technology Amazon has been known for since 1997,

Like you, I check NFT marketplace volume a few times each day to keep tabs on the burgeoning market for buying and selling digital signatures on various blockchains that point to images and the like. We’re very cool. Mostly, the data is steady. OpenSea volumes tend to lead the space, with other, smaller NFT exchanges