Startups

As expected, the Broadcom-VMware deal is a go. The chip giant intends to snap up the virtualization software company for $61 billion in cash and stock, along with taking on $8 billion in VMware debt. It’s not an inexpensive transaction, but thanks to a “go-shop” provision that gives VMware 40 days to “solicit, receive, evaluate

‘The industry is going to contract differently’ Rebecca Bellan 8 hours Dan Lewis, co-founder and CEO of digital freight company Convoy, didn’t start his company because he had a deep and abiding passion for trucking. At least, not at first. The executive has a background in strategy and management consulting that progressed into a career

Welcome 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. Cannabis, sex tech and psychedelics are often lumped together under the “vice” category — a characterization that prevents many VCs from investing in these

Hey everyone, and welcome back to Chain Reaction. Last week, we talked about the rough road ahead for Coinbase. This week, we’re talking a bit about Andreessen Horowitz’s multibillion-dollar bet on web3’s continued viability. Read on to check out the latest episode of the Chain Reaction podcast as well. To get this in your inbox

When consumed in moderation, sugar is not bad for us, and humans’ ability to detect sweetness is etched into our DNA, but with the abundance of it in today’s food and drinks, we are getting more than we should. Companies have created alternatives to sugar over the years, like Stevia, while others have tapped into

Eric Landau Contributor Before Eric Landau co-founded Encord, he spent nearly a decade at DRW, where he was lead quantitative researcher on a global equity delta one desk and put thousands of models into production. He holds an S.M. in Applied Physics from Harvard University, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and a B.S. in Physics

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. It’s Thursday, May 26, 2022, and we have a busy day of news on the site today. Here are the gems sparkling in the spotlight of our journalistic gaze. For later in

Substack, the five-year-old newsletter platform that has aggressively positioned itself as a disruptive force in media, has abandoned efforts to raise a Series C round, the New York Times is reporting today.  According to its sources, Substack held discussions with potential investors in recent months about raising $75 million to $100 million at a valuation

Todd Olson Contributor Todd Olson is the co-founder and CEO of Pendo, a software platform that helps product teams and application owners improve their users’ experience. More posts by this contributor How startups outside the Bay Area can fundraise in a big way In today’s digital economy, you can tell a lot about a company

Joby Aviation — the publicly-traded electric air vehicle company with a current market cap of $3.1 billion — has received the necessary certification from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin on-demand commercial air taxi operations, the company said on Thursday. While it’s a significant milestone that puts Joby closer to its stated goal of launching

Republican lawmakers are facing growing anger over the deadliest mass shooting at an American school in nearly a decade yesterday, with many of their constituents expressing frustration over their repeated votes against even modest gun control reforms. Social media can’t solve the problem. Indigov, a three-year-old, 70-person New York-based startup, can’t solve it either, but

Bearish markets and high interest rates often cause private investors to turn away from anything resembling a risky investment. Yet, now is a very apt time to take another look at the cannabis opportunity in the U.S. Quite a lot has changed since our previous U.S. cannabis survey from 2020. Recreational cannabis is now legal

There’s a vast unmet demand for medical consultation in developing markets like Egypt due to low doctor supply. As of 2018, Egypt’s doctor to citizen ratio stood at 1:2,000; you can paint a picture when you walk into any government hospital and see long queues. These problems and pandemic-changing habits have resulted in an uptake

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. It’s the 24th of May, 2022, and today Amanda made us laugh with her “Welcome to Hell, we all drive Teslas,” subhead to her story about Everything you wanted to know about

It’s Demo Day time! Today marks the 30th Demo Day for Alchemist, the enterprise-focused accelerator that helped grow companies like LaunchDarkly, Rigetti Computing, and Privacera early on. As an enterprise accelerator, the companies Alchemist backs generally focus on selling things to other companies as opposed to selling straight to consumers. Some of the companies might

Monday May 23, 2022, and we’re listening to our brand-new podcast called the TechCrunch Podcast. In it, we talk to TechCrunch writers about the stories they’re most excited about. The first episode is live now, featuring Darrell and Taylor talking about … UFOs‽ — Haje and Christine The TechCrunch Top 3 Hey, you, get into

Andrea D’Ambra Contributor Andrea D’Ambra is a partner in Norton Rose Fulbright’s New York office and the U.S. head of Technology and the U.S. head of eDiscovery and Information Governance. Susana Medeiros Contributor Susana Medeiros is an associate in Norton Rose Fulbright’s New York office and member of the information governance, privacy and cybersecurity group

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi’s shareholders have voted to delist the company from the NYSE. The decision is a long-expected result of the company finding itself in hot water with the Chinese government after a rushed and later troubled public-market debut in the United States. Didi went public in the middle of 2021 in an offering

Egypt is home to one of Africa’s largest vehicle fleets, with over 6 million cars (80% are passenger cars) on its roads. According to this finding, most are used cars; their ratio to new vehicles is 3:1. But the used cars market isn’t only enormous in Egypt; it is in almost every country with a

Recent product news from Stripe and Plaid indicate the two private companies are gunning for one another as the market for B2B financial technology matures, expands and individual players increasingly overlap. It might sound silly that Stripe, best known for its payments technology, and Plaid, best known for its API that connects consumer bank accounts

The good news? Well-run companies can still thrive Ron Miller 7 hours The inevitable physics of economics is upon us — what goes up must come down — and we appear to be headed for the down part of the equation. But all is not lost. If you need a reminder, Venmo, Instagram, Uber and

On the Chain Reaction podcast this week, we dove into a topic that tends to stir up strong emotions, even from those outside the crypto space — the metaverse. Mercedes Bent, an investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners who focuses on consumer investments in crypto, joined us to unpack this loaded term and explain why she

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh, human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. “You can often pick up significant market share in an economic downturn by just staying alive,” top startup accelerator Y Combinator wrote in an internal e-mail to its founders this week. The

But it could lead to more balance later this year Ron Miller 8 hours As bad economic news piles up seemingly on a daily basis, we don’t know what the future holds except that change is on the way. Although we are seeing layoffs and hiring freezes at some companies, it doesn’t necessarily mean the

Founders have gotten the memo that the ground is shifting under their feet right now. What to do about it is the question. Already, teams are making plans to scale back their spending to preserve capital. They’re making painful staff cuts toward that same end — or else instituting hiring freezes. But they should also

Walker Drewett founded NuBrakes in May 2019. According to Mike Ghaffary, GP at Canvas Ventures, Drewett is building a high-growth business powered by a marketplace model, which is why Ghaffary led the company’s Series A. The product is simple: On-demand vehicle brake repair services. Join this episode to hear how Drewett raised capital and built

Welcome to Online Day at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022! Opportunity knocks just as loud online as it does IRL, but this knock can be heard around the world. You’ll find everything listed in the event agenda, but here’s a quick rundown of what’s in store. Plan your day to reap optimal opportunities! But first: If

TechCrunch is excited to announce Swyft Cities won the TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility 2022 pitch-off and is fast-tracked into the Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt in October. Beyond Aero is runner-up. The Mountain View-based company is committed to improving transportation through the use of autonomous, lightweight, fixed-cable vehicles. The company says that its solution offers a

Thursday May 19, 2022, and it’s the last day of our in-person Mobility event. Tomorrow we take the journey to the mean streets of the world wide web, and you can still join us virtually! — Haje and Christine The TechCrunch Top 3 Tl;dr: We know you don’t have 32 minutes to read Meta global

Back in March, I wrote about how BoxedUp pivoted to enable high-end video production gear sharing and its $2.3 million seed round. At the time, the company’s founder David Boone stuck out, so when I started the pitch deck teardowns, I knew I wanted to feature BoxedUp in one of the installments. Today, we’re taking a close