Startups | TechCrunch

Tesla makes Musk best-paid CEO of all time and Fisker bites the dust

Haje Jan Kamps — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 19:05:00 +0000

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje‘s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Elon Musk just convinced Tesla shareholders to approve his $56 billion pay package, making him the highest-paid CEO in history — assuming he can dodge a […]

E-fuels startup Aether Fuels is raising $34.3 million, per filing

Tim De Chant — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 18:31:31 +0000

The e-fuels startup is working on producing fuel for aviation and maritime shipping using carbon dioxide and other waste carbon streams.

OpenAI buys Rockset to bolster its enterprise AI

Kyle Wiggers — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 15:55:15 +0000

The Rockset buy fits into OpenAI's broader recent strategy of investing heavily in its enterprise sales and tech orgs.

Khosla-backed Marble, built by former Headway founders, offers affordable group therapy for teens

Marina Temkin — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 15:00:59 +0000

Rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts are surging among U.S. teens. A recent report from the Center of Disease Control found that nearly one in three girls have seriously considered suicide, and a significant number, 13% have actually attempted it. Psychologists have various theories about what’s causing adolescent mental health crises. Some blame the […]

A new startup from Figure’s founder is licensing NASA tech in a bid to curb school shootings

Brian Heater — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 14:55:00 +0000

Cover says what sets it apart is the underlying technology it employs, which has been exclusively licensed from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Kevin Hartz’s A* raises its second oversubscribed fund in three years

Rebecca Szkutak — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Venture firms raised $9.3 billion in Q1 according to PitchBook data, which means this year likely won’t match or surpass 2023’s $81.8 billion total. While emerging managers are feeling the fundraising market’s frost the most, some emerging VCs like A* have enough name recognition, and a good enough track record, to still find success. A*, […]

Zepto, a 10-minute delivery app, raises $665M at $3.6B valuation

Manish Singh — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 05:30:33 +0000

Zepto, an Indian quick commerce startup, has more than doubled its valuation to $3.6 billion in a new funding round of $665 million.

Language learning app Speak nets $20M, doubles valuation

Kyle Wiggers — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 04:48:19 +0000

Speak, the AI-powered language learning app, has raised new money from investors at double its previous valuation.

Brex’s compliance head has left the fintech startup to join Andreessen Horowitz as a partner

Mary Ann Azevedo — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 20:48:44 +0000

Ali Rathod-Papier has stepped down from her role as global head of compliance at corporate card expense management startup Brex to join venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) as a partner and compliance officer, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. Rathod-Papier and a16z declined to comment on the move. According to her LinkedIn profile, Rathod-Papier now “oversees a16z’s […]

Influencer shopping app LTK gets an automatic direct message tool

Lauren Forristal — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 18:13:49 +0000

LTK (formerly LiketoKnow.it and RewardStyle), the influencer shopping app with 40 million monthly users, announced on Thursday the launch of a free direct message tool for creators to instantly share preset responses with followers. The new tool, called LTK DM, is integrated into the posts section of the LTK app. When a creator shares an […]

PayPal Ventures leads $20M round into Gynger, which offers companies ‘buy now, pay later’ for technology purchases

Mary Ann Azevedo — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 14:30:00 +0000

Gynger, a platform that lends capital to companies for technology purchases, has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by PayPal Ventures, it told TechCrunch exclusively. The financing brings the New York-based startup’s total venture capital raised to $31.7 million and included participation from Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI-focused venture fund), Velvet Sea Ventures, […]

Roots introduces a screen time app for tracking ‘digital dopamine’

Sarah Perez — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 13:30:40 +0000

Roots is designed to help people get a better handle on what sort of apps are worth spending time on and which are not.

Materia looks to make accountants more efficient with AI

Rebecca Szkutak — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 13:06:39 +0000

The U.S. is facing an accountant shortage. Fewer first-time candidates took the CPA exam in 2022 than in 2006, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. One possible reason people aren’t as interested in the field is the large amount of drudge work involved: Accountants have to rifle through large amounts of unstructured […]

Ex-HubSpot exec builds an AI-powered CRM that learns for you, with $4M seed led by Sequoia

Marina Temkin — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Christopher O’Donnell has hobbies. He likes music and playing guitar, but above all, he loves building software. Which is why three years after leaving HubSpot, he built Day.ai, a CRM for the age of AI. Unlike modern CRMs, which are essentially giant spreadsheets that somebody needs to populate and keep updated, Day learns everything about […]

Daydream rakes in $50M seed funding to build an AI-powered search engine suited for e-commerce

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 12:00:00 +0000

Online shopping trends are expected to stay strong this year, but e-commerce is more fragmented than ever. With brands selling on so many platforms — from TikTok Shop, to established marketplaces, live shopping and owned channels — you’d think it would have become easy for shoppers to find what they’re looking for. But that’s not […]

‘Lawyer-in-the-loop’ startup Wordsmith wants to bring AI paralegals to all employees

Paul Sawers — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Wordsmith, a fledgling Scottish legal tech startup, has somehow managed to attract the backing of two well-known venture capital firms. The startup targets in-house legal teams and law firms with an AI platform that they can configure to help other workers in the company. This way, anyone in the company can solicit help with legal […]

Hero wants to save the day for companies facing a working capital crunch

Romain Dillet — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Hero, a new fintech startup based in Paris, is announcing an €11.3 million all-equity funding round led by Valar Ventures ($12.2 million at today’s exchange rate). For the past couple of years, the company has been quietly building an ambitious banking product for small companies that can essentially replace everything you’d expect from a traditional […]

C12, a French quantum computing startup founded by twin brothers, raises $19.4M

Romain Dillet — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 20:30:00 +0000

C12 is announcing that it recently raised an €18 million funding round ($19.4 million at today’s exchange rate). Originally founded in 2020 as a spinoff from the Physics Laboratory of the École Normale Supérieure, the company has been working on a unique process to create quantum computers based on carbon nanotubes. While the concept of […]

The fall of EV startup Fisker: A comprehensive timeline

Henry Pickavet — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Here is a timeline of the events that led fledgling automaker Fisker to file for bankruptcy.

Société Générale to sell its freelancer challenger bank Shine to Ageras

Romain Dillet — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 14:10:31 +0000

Four years after acquiring Shine, a French fintech startup that offers bank accounts to freelancers and very small companies, Société Générale has announced plans to sell Shine to Ageras. In 2020, TechCrunch reported that Société Générale spent around €100 million to acquire Shine. It wasn’t a huge acquisition but it attracted quite a bit of […]