Startups

Daily Crunch: Kurtosis raises $20M Series A to give web3 developers ‘a place to play around’

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Haje and I are swapping places for the next two days while he gets some much-needed rest. While he’s away, please enjoy his latest Pitch Deck Teardown on Glambook. In the meantime, TechCrunch Disrupt is coming closer: Meet the final five Disrupt Audience Choice roundtable winners, and if you are a student, enter our video competition for a chance to win a free pass.

And don’t forget, applications close tomorrow for Startup Battlefield 200! Apply today to join Startup Battlefield 200 for the chance to exhibit your startup for free at TechCrunch Disrupt this October and win the $100,000 equity-free prize. Applications close August 5. Be sure to get your applications in by tomorrow! Apply today.

See you tomorrow! — Christine

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Tooling around: Two years ago, two former Palantir engineers started Kurtosis, a crypto-focused developer tool system, and have now raised $20 million in fresh funding to hire a team to get a new product out in the next year, Jacquelyn reports.
  • Strapping on some capital: Argentine fintech Geopagos leaves the bootstrap life behind as it takes in $35 million in new capital to help businesses launch their own financial services products, Mary Ann writes.
  • ‘Snap’ping into some share buybacks: Moves by Snap and Airbnb to buy back shares amid slower growth has Alex raising his eyebrows and looking under the hood to see what’s going on.

Startups and VC

Lots of startup news again today, so let’s dig in. First, Natasha M brings us some additional layoff news from On Deck, which is cutting another third of its staff after cutting a quarter a few months ago. For those of you who can add fractions, that’s a lot, right?

We enjoyed reading Becca’s investor survey story, where she interviewed six first-time fund managers about their approach to weathering the downturn.

Also, buy now, pay later is still more prevalent in the world of consumers (see Anita’s funding story on Halliday), but businesses want in on the fun, too. That’s where Kontempo comes in with $30 million and its approach to enabling sales teams to approve credit, Kyle reports.

From NDA to LOI: What really happens when your startup is being acquired?

Kawaii cookie vector illustration. Japanese kawaii style chocolate cookie with eyes and mouth. Flat character isolated on white background.
Image Credits: Anna Minkina (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Last week, VP and managing director of Dell Technologies Capital Yair Snir shared an article explaining why founders should plan on getting acquired, particularly since their odds of going public are so long.

In a follow-up, he takes readers inside the postacquisition integration period/process:

  • The shopping sprint
  • The road to an LOI
  • Bringing in bankers
  • Diving into due diligence
  • Defining “day one”
  • You’ve been acquired!

“While IPOs may get more headlines, a well-timed, well-planned acquisition can mean even larger opportunities for you, your team and the technologies you’ve built,” says Snir.

From NDA to LOI: What really happens when your startup is being acquired?

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Big Tech Inc.

When it comes to cryptocurrency, BlackRock is now saying, “Why beat them when you can join them?” Anita writes about the asset managing giant joining forces with Coinbase to provide its clients with access to crypto, initially Bitcoin. And speaking of Coinbase, Jacquelyn and Alex write for TechCrunch+ on why that partnership, and others Coinbase has, is delighting investors.

In the realm of social media, we enjoyed Amanda’s story where she spoke with Patreon CEO Jack Conte on why Instagram and Facebook are on his list, and not in a good way. And Aisha tells us what’s up with some new Clubhouse features.

More TechCrunch

The fashion industry has a huge problem: Despite many returned items being unworn or undamaged, a lot, if not the majority, end up in the trash. An estimated 9.5 billion…

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Tumblr officially shut down “Tips,” an opt-in feature where creators could receive one-time payments from their followers.  As of today, the tipping icon has automatically disappeared from all posts and…

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Generative AI improvements are increasingly being made through data curation and collection — not architectural — improvements. Big Tech has an advantage.

AI training data has a price tag that only Big Tech can afford

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Jasper Health, a cancer care platform startup, laid off a substantial part of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned.

General Catalyst-backed Jasper Health lays off staff

Featured Article

Live Nation confirms Ticketmaster was hacked, says personal information stolen in data breach

Live Nation says its Ticketmaster subsidiary was hacked. A hacker claims to be selling 560 million customer records.

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Live Nation confirms Ticketmaster was hacked, says personal information stolen in data breach

Featured Article

Inside EV startup Fisker’s collapse: how the company crumbled under its founders’ whims

An autonomous pod. A solid-state battery-powered sports car. An electric pickup truck. A convertible grand tourer EV with up to 600 miles of range. A “fully connected mobility device” for young urban innovators to be built by Foxconn and priced under $30,000. The next Popemobile. Over the past eight years, famed vehicle designer Henrik Fisker…

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Inside EV startup Fisker’s collapse: how the company crumbled under its founders’ whims

Late Friday afternoon, a time window companies usually reserve for unflattering disclosures, AI startup Hugging Face said that its security team earlier this week detected “unauthorized access” to Spaces, Hugging…

Hugging Face says it detected ‘unauthorized access’ to its AI model hosting platform

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Hacked, leaked, exposed: Why you should never use stalkerware apps

Using stalkerware is creepy, unethical, potentially illegal, and puts your data and that of your loved ones in danger.

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The design brief was simple: each grind and dry cycle had to be completed before breakfast. Here’s how Mill made it happen.

Mill’s redesigned food waste bin really is faster and quieter than before

Google is embarrassed about its AI Overviews, too. After a deluge of dunks and memes over the past week, which cracked on the poor quality and outright misinformation that arose…

Google admits its AI Overviews need work, but we’re all helping it beta test

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. In…

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The product, which ZeroMark calls a “fire control system,” has two components: a small computer that has sensors, like lidar and electro-optical, and a motorized buttstock.

a16z-backed ZeroMark wants to give soldiers guns that don’t miss against drones

The RAW Dating App aims to shake up the dating scheme by shedding the fake, TikTok-ified, heavily filtered photos and replacing them with a more genuine, unvarnished experience. The app…

Pitch Deck Teardown: RAW Dating App’s $3M angel deck

Yes, we’re calling it “ThreadsDeck” now. At least that’s the tag many are using to describe the new user interface for Instagram’s X competitor, Threads, which resembles the column-based format…

‘ThreadsDeck’ arrived just in time for the Trump verdict

Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin confirmed on Friday that it had been the victim of a hack resulting in the theft of 4,502.9 bitcoin, or about $305 million.  According to…

Hackers steal $305M from DMM Bitcoin crypto exchange

This is not a drill! Today marks the final day to secure your early-bird tickets for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 at a significantly reduced rate. At midnight tonight, May 31, ticket…

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Instagram is testing a way for creators to experiment with reels without committing to having them displayed on their profiles, giving the social network a possible edge over TikTok and…

Instagram tests ‘trial reels’ that don’t display to a creator’s followers

U.S. federal regulators have requested more information from Zoox, Amazon’s self-driving unit, as part of an investigation into rear-end crash risks posed by unexpected braking. The National Highway Traffic Safety…

Feds tell Zoox to send more info about autonomous vehicles suddenly braking

You thought the hottest rap battle of the summer was between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. You were wrong. It’s between Canva and an enterprise CIO. At its Canva Create event…

Canva’s rap battle is part of a long legacy of Silicon Valley cringe

Voice cloning startup ElevenLabs introduced a new tool for users to generate sound effects through prompts today after announcing the project back in February.

ElevenLabs debuts AI-powered tool to generate sound effects

We caught up with Antler founder and CEO Magnus Grimeland about the startup scene in Asia, the current tech startup trends in the region and investment approaches during the rise…

VC firm Antler’s CEO says Asia presents ‘biggest opportunity’ in the world for growth

Temu is to face Europe’s strictest rules after being designated as a “very large online platform” under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Chinese e-commerce marketplace Temu faces stricter EU rules as a ‘very large online platform’

Meta has been banned from launching features on Facebook and Instagram that would have collected data on voters in Spain using the social networks ahead of next month’s European Elections.…

Spain bans Meta from launching election features on Facebook, Instagram over privacy fears

Stripe, the world’s most valuable fintech startup, said on Friday that it will temporarily move to an invite-only model for new account sign-ups in India, calling the move “a tough…

Stripe curbs its India ambitions over regulatory situation

The 2024 election is likely to be the first in which faked audio and video of candidates is a serious factor. As campaigns warm up, voters should be aware: voice…

Voice cloning of political figures is still easy as pie

When Alex Ewing was a kid growing up in Purcell, Oklahoma, he knew how close he was to home based on which billboards he could see out the car window.…

OneScreen.ai brings startup ads to billboards and NYC’s subway

SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket could take to the skies for the fourth time on June 5, with the primary objective of evaluating the second stage’s reusable heat shield as the…

SpaceX sent Starship to orbit — the next launch will try to bring it back

Eric Lefkofsky knows the public listing rodeo well and is about to enter it for a fourth time. The serial entrepreneur, whose net worth is estimated at nearly $4 billion,…

Billionaire Groupon founder Eric Lefkofsky is back with another IPO: AI health tech Tempus

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