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Equity crowdfunding — or community raises, as the fundraising platforms involved prefer to call it — has grown steadily over the last few years. Regulations governing the process continue to evolve in the market’s favor, and 2022’s venture funding pullback may be the final piece needed to quiet the fundraising strategy’s naysayers for good. This

There’s a reason the term “daily driver sports car” exists. It’s because typically, purpose-built performance cars suffer from an inherent lack of usability: they’re loud, uncomfortable and they require pristine driving conditions. What’s more, they’re often bereft of the accessories we’ve grown used to, and when they’re included, they’re usually subpar.  These might sound like

Testing new satellites and space-based technologies has never been easy exactly, but it definitely could be easier. Slingshot 1, a 12U Cubesat mission just launched via Virgin Orbit, is an attempt to make building and testing a new satellite as easy as plugging a new keyboard into your computer. To say it’s “USB for space”

Hello and welcome back to Week in Review, where we recap the biggest stories from the week. If you want this in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here. Greg Kumparak is still on vacation, but not to worry! He’ll be back at the helm next week to bring you our biggest stories. Until then,

Tech innovation is a cycle, especially in the main character-driven world of early-stage venture capital and copycat nature of startups. The latest proof? Y Combinator this week announced Launch YC, a platform where people can sort accelerator startups by industry, batch and launch date to discover new products. The famed accelerator, which has seeded the

Crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC) has filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in New York, according to a report in Bloomberg. The mega fund, founded by Credit Suisse traders Zhu Su and Kyle Davies, at one time managed an estimated $10 billion in assets and was a linchpin among crypto finance players. Its insolvency

Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX is taking advantage of rampant instability in the crypto lending market to assert itself while propping up major institutions. The company’s U.S.-based arm has a deal in place with troubled crypto lender BlockFi that gives them the option to buy the startup, recently valued at $2 billion, for up to $240 million

It’s a big week for startups developing technology for e-commerce marketplaces. We saw companies like Nautical Commerce bag $30 million in Series A funding to help any sized business create their own marketplace. Meanwhile, Shop Circle made its public debut with $65 million under its belt with apps so that Shopify merchants can quickly set

Medical diagnostics company Visby Medical raised $100 million in a Series E round earlier this year. Today, the company told me it extended that round by an additional $35 million at the same valuation as the rest of the round. This financing will enable Visby Medical to scale production capacity from tens to hundreds of

Welp. Three straight weeks of work travel amid a seemingly endless pandemic finally caught up with me. Forgive me, as I’m writing this under the influence of green tea and antivirals, so thank you in advance to the regularly Herculean efforts of our copy editor, David. Apparently the old adage of things happening in Vegas

Storytelling platform Wattpad is introducing a new creator program for writers that can earn them up to $25,000 in compensation. The company is also debuting a new metric called “Engaged Readers,” to help writers gauge readers’ interest in their stories, and Wattpad Creator Portal, a new site for writers to get tips and tricks about

Very soon, humanity will get to view the deepest images of the universe that have ever been captured. In two weeks, the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — NASA’s super expensive, super powerful deep space optical imager — will release its first full-color images, and agency officials today suggested that they could just

Pokémon Go developer Niantic is running into trouble as it builds “the real-world metaverse.” Like so many other tech companies facing turbulent economic times, the company decided to let go of 8% of its staff, affecting about 85 to 90 people. Just seven months ago, the company raised $300 million at a $9 billion valuation,

Walmart is expanding its array of virtual try-on services for shoppers with today’s news that it’s planning to acquire Memomi, an AR optical tech company and current Walmart partner offering virtual try-on experience for eyewear. Deal terms were not disclosed, but Memomi has enabled digital measurements for all Walmart and Sam’s Club customers since 2019,

The Federal Trade Commission is suing Walmart for sitting by while scammers bilked customers out of more than $197 million, the agency alleged in a statement on Tuesday. It’s seeking a court order that would force Walmart to give money back to customers, on top of civil fines. In a brief response, Walmart described the

Facebook announced today that it’s introducing new features for Facebook Groups, including “Channels” that will let users connect with each other in smaller settings. Admins can create channels to connect with their groups in more casual settings within their communities to have more focused discussions. There are three types of channels that admins can create:

Vezeeta, a healthtech startup operating in the Middle East and Africa, reportedly laid off about 10% of its staff last week. The number of affected employees isn’t known; however, multiple sources who posted the news on LinkedIn, including affected employees, revealed that up to 50 people were let go. Vezeeta has almost 500 employees, according to

Edtech up-skilling platform Degreed has acquired Learn In, which creates talent resource hubs for employers to better spin up education services for their teams. While we’d nearly always cover a notable acquisition in a relevant tech sector, the extra interesting bit here is a personnel one: both companies were co-founded by the same entrepreneur, David

The Cadillac Celestiq, the brand’s halo EV set to debut during Monterey Car Week in August, will reportedly start around $300,000, pushing it well above the top variants from other luxury EVs, including the Lucid Air Dream Edition, Porsche Taycan Turbo S and Tesla Model X Plaid. While Cadillac would not confirm the eye-popping price

Africa-focused venture capital firm TLcom Capital has appointed Eloho Omame as a partner six months after announcing the first close of TIDE Africa Fund II, its $150 million second fund (it expects to reach a second close later this year, according to its partners). appoints TLcom Capital is known for investing from seed to Series

Backstage Capital has downsized its staff from 12 to three people, managing partner and founder Arlan Hamilton said during her “Your First Million” podcast that was published Sunday. The layoff comes nearly three months after Backstage Capital narrowed its investment strategy to only participate in follow-on rounds of existing portfolios. This workforce reduction further underscores

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

This week on the TechCrunch Podcast I talk with Jacquelyn Melinek about the power and pitfalls of crypto communities and Devin Coldewey about why Pornhub’s COO and CEO have unceremoniously stepped down. And as always, you’ll get a rundown of the week’s top news on TechCrunch. Articles from the episode: Other news from the week:

Hello and welcome back to Week in Review, your one-stop spot for the biggest stories from the week. Greg Kumparak is off enjoying the beginning of summer and has entrusted me to keep you updated in his absence. If you want this in your inbox every Saturday, sign up here. And while you’re at it,

The startup, valued at $2.2B, has sights set on an IPO — but certainly not a SPAC Jaclyn Trop 9 hours Rimac Group made headlines in June after it raised €500 million ($537 million) in a Series D round led by Goldman Sachs and SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The deal valued the Croatian startup at

Scooter and micro-mobility company Bird has to fly at a slightly higher altitude — at least if it wants to keep its New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) listing. The company issued a press release on Friday noting that it had received word from the NYSE that its share price was “not in compliance” with the

As a veteran startup worker who has been laid off during economic downturns, it’s dissonant to hear investors say this is a good time to launch a software company. They’re not wrong, however. An analogy: In California, nearly 10,000 wildfires burned more than 4 million acres two years ago, causing billions of economic damage and

Zendesk this morning agreed to sell itself to an investor consortium for $10.2 billion in cash, or $77.50 per share. The deal comes months after the U.S. software company declined a $17 billion offer. The Zendesk saga of 2021 and 2022 has been complicated, full of twists and turns. That it is closing out its

Brex’s announcement last week that it would stop serving small-to-medium-sized businesses shocked — and upset — many in its suddenness and delivery. The fintech decacorn, which started its life as a provider of cards to startups and SMBs, began notifying customers last week that they would be cut off from Brex’s services as of August

Ro, a healthcare unicorn that last raised $150 million just months ago at a $7 billion valuation, has cut 18% of its staff to “manage expenses, increase the efficiency of our organization and better map our resources to our current strategy,” leadership wrote in an e-mail obtained by TechCrunch and confirmed by multiple sources. “Due