Venture Capital News | TechCrunch

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 […]

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*, […]

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 […]

Announcing the agenda for the Space Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

Aria Alamalhodaei, Devin Coldewey, Richard Smith — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 15:00:00 +0000

We’re out-of-this-world excited to announce that we’ve added a dedicated Space Stage to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. It joins Fintech, SaaS and AI as the other industry-focused stages — all under one big roof. And we’re excited to share we’ll be hosting a pitch competition this year “The Space Challenge, powered by Aerospace” as part of […]

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 […]

Paris-based VC Breega hits first close of $75M Africa fund to back pre-seed and seed startups

Tage Kene-Okafor — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 08:47:05 +0000

Paris-based VC firm Breega has observed Africa’s tech ecosystem mature over the years. From receiving less than a billion dollars in venture capital per year to a record-high $6 billion, there’s also been an increase in high-growth companies, from one unicorn to seven within the span of three years. Now the VC wants to put […]

‘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 […]

General Catalyst merges with Venture Highway in India push

Manish Singh — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 03:30:00 +0000

General Catalyst is linking up with Venture Highway to make a deeper push into India, where it plans to invest over $500 million in coming years.

France leads the pack for generative AI funding in Europe

Ingrid Lunden — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 23:43:17 +0000

Like it or hate it, artificial intelligence — especially generative AI — is the technology story of 2024. OpenAI, with its rollouts of viral services like ChatGPT and billions in funding, may have gobbled up the lion’s share of attention and money so far. But according to a new report out from top VC Accel […]

Zal Bilimoria just raised a $50M fourth Refactor Capital fund, and still relishes his solo GP status

Christine Hall — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Being a solo GP hasn’t slowed Bilimoria a bit. He went on to raise three additional funds and has now closed a new fund to invest in biotech, climate and hard tech startups.

Loop Golf looks to take the stress out of booking a tee time

Rebecca Szkutak — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 12:42:04 +0000

Golf has exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to the pandemic and the popularity of Netflix’s Full Swing documentary series. More than 531 million rounds of golf were played in the U.S. in 2023 alone, according to the National Golf Foundation. Because of this surge in interest, golfers are finding that nabbing a tee […]

Deal Dive: BeReal got its best-case scenario exit

Rebecca Szkutak — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 16:00:00 +0000

There has been a lot of bad news about social media startups lately. Multiple companies, including Twitter alternative Post News, and IRL have shut down. And ShareChat’s valuation has dropped more than 50% after a recent funding round. But amid the negative headlines, the recent exit of French social network BeReal looks like a bright […]

A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs

Cody Corrall, Alyssa Stringer — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 19:20:00 +0000

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized […]

What StepStone’s $3.3B venture secondaries fund tells us about LPs’ current appetite for venture

Rebecca Szkutak — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 19:19:53 +0000

StepStone raised the largest fund dedicated to investing in venture secondaries ever, the firm announced last week. This fundraise doesn’t just say a lot about StepStone’s venture secondaries investing prowess, but also about how LPs are thinking about the current venture market. The fund, StepStone VC Secondaries Fund VI, raised $3.3 billion. This marks a […]

GPTZero’s founders, still in their 20s, have a profitable AI detection startup, millions in the bank and a new $10M Series A

Julie Bort — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 16:00:00 +0000

GPTZero's growth and financials made it one of the AI startups ruthlessly pursued by VCs. And Footwork's Nikhil Basu Trivedi won the deal.

Why being the last company to launch in a category can pay off

Rebecca Szkutak — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 23:48:52 +0000

When Jordan Nathan launched his DTC nontoxic cookware company, Caraway, in 2019, he knew he was not the only founder trying to sell a new brand of pots and pans to millennials scrolling through Instagram. But he found that launching after his peers ended up being a blessing in disguise in all areas but one. […]

Foresite Capital raises $900M sixth fund for investing in life sciences companies

Marina Temkin — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Venture fundraising has been a slog over the last few years, even for firms with a strong track record. That’s Foresite Capital’s experience. Despite having 47 IPOs, 28 M&As and 58 FDA-approved drugs under its belt, the 13-year-old multi-stage healthcare and life sciences firm took two years to raise its sixth fund. “Almost all of […]

Friends & Family Capital, a fund founded by ex-Palantir CFO and son of IVP’s founder, unveils third $118M fund

Marina Temkin — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Small VC firms require deep trust, mutual support and long-term commitment among the partners — a kinship that, in many ways, resembles a family dynamic. Colin Anderson (Palantir’s ex-CFO and former research VP at Peter Thiel’s Clarium Capital) and John Fogelsong (the son of IVP co-founder Norm Fogelsong) didn’t need to cultivate a family-like relationship […]

Gorilla, a Belgian startup that helps energy providers crunch big data, raises $25M

Paul Sawers — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 09:51:21 +0000

Gorilla, a Belgian company that serves the energy sector with real-time data and analytics for pricing and forecasting, has raised €23 million ($25 million) in a Series B round led by U.S. venture capital firm Headline. Founded in 2018, Antwerp-based Gorilla works with energy providers across Europe, the U.S. and Australia, including British Gas’ parent […]