Venture
Our venture capital news features interviews and analysis on all the VCs, the VC-backed startups, and the investment trends that founders, investors, students, academics – and anyone else interested in the way that tech is transforming the world – should be tracking.
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…
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A comprehensive list of 2024 tech layoffs
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…
What StepStone’s $3.3B venture secondaries fund tells us about LPs’ current appetite for venture
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,…
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GPTZero’s founders, still in their 20s, have a profitable AI detection startup, millions in the bank and a new $10M Series A
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.
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…
Foresite Capital raises $900M sixth fund for investing in life sciences companies
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…
Friends & Family Capital, a fund founded by ex-Palantir CFO and son of IVP’s founder, unveils third $118M fund
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…
Gorilla, a Belgian startup that helps energy providers crunch big data, raises $25M
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…
Diversity Spotlight is a feature on Crunchbase that lets companies add tags to their profiles to label themselves.
The VC queen of portfolio PR, Masha Bucher, has raised her largest fund yet: $150M
Five years ago, Day One Ventures had $11 million under management, and Bucher and her team have grown that to just over $450 million.
How Urvashi Barooah broke into venture after everyone told her she couldn’t
When Urvashi Barooah applied to MBA programs in 2015, she focused her applications around her dream of becoming a venture capitalist. She got rejected from every school, and was told…
After hits like Reddit and Scopely, Collaborative Fund easily raised a $125M fund to tackle climate, health and food
“We were motivated to fundraise because we think the ’24 vintage is going to be a good one,” founder Craig Shapiro said.
With €50 million to invest, Italian Founders Fund looks for entrepreneurs with global ambitions
While funding for Italian startups has been growing, the country still ranks eighth in Europe by VC investment, according to Dealroom. Newly created Italian Founders Fund (IFF) hopes to help…
Cat-sitting startup Meowtel clawed its way to profitability despite trouble raising from dog-focused VCs
Dogs are the most popular pet in the U.S.: 65.1 million households have one, according to the American Pet Products Association. But while cats are not far off, with 46.5…
Deal Dive: Human Native AI is building the marketplace for AI training licensing deals
AI systems and large language models (LLMs) need to be trained on massive amounts of data to be accurate but they shouldn’t train on data that they don’t have the…
Rippling bans former employees who work at competitors like Deel and Workday from its tender offer stock sale
Investor demand has been so strong for Rippling’s shares that it is letting former employees particpate in its tender offer. With one exception.
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In 2024, many Y Combinator startups only want tiny seed rounds — but there’s a catch
When Bowery Capital general partner Loren Straub started talking to a startup from the latest Y Combinator accelerator batch a few months ago, she thought it was strange that the company didn’t have a lead investor for the round it was raising. Even stranger, the founders didn’t seem to be…
Kleiner Perkins leads $14.4M seed round into Fizz, a credit-building debit card aimed at Gen Z college students
Carlo Kobe and Scott Smith believed so strongly in the need for a debit card product designed specifically for Gen Zers that they dropped out of Harvard and Cornell at…
A growing number of businesses are embracing data models — abstract models that organize elements of data and standardize how they relate to one another. But as the data analytics…
Eyebot raised $6M for AI-powered kiosks that provide 90-second vision exams without an on-site optometrist
Over half of Americans wear corrective glasses or contact lenses. While there isn’t a shortage of low-cost and luxury frames available online or in stores, consumers can only buy them…
Fearless Fund’s Arian Simone coming to Disrupt 2024
TechCrunch has kept readers informed regarding Fearless Fund’s courtroom battle to provide business grants to Black women. Today, we are happy to announce that Fearless Fund CEO and co-founder Arian…
Eko Health scores $41M to detect heart and lung disease earlier and more accurately
In 1816, French physician René Laennec invented an instrument that allowed doctors to listen to the heart and lungs. That device — a stethoscope — eventually evolved from a simple…
WndrCo officially gets into venture capital with fresh $460M across two funds
Jeffrey Katzenberg and Sujay Jaswa, along with three general partners, manage $1.5 billion in assets today through their Build, Venture and Seed strategies.
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DEI backlash: Stay up-to-date on the latest legal and corporate challenges
It’s clear that this year will be a turning point for DEI.
An appeals court rules that VC Fearless Fund cannot issue grants to Black women, but the fight continues
The court ruling said that Fearless Fund’s Strivers Grant likely violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bans the use of race in contracts.
The StrictlyVC roadtrip continues! Coming off of sold-out events in London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, we’re heading to Washington, D.C. for a cozy-vc-packed, evening at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre…
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Unicorn-rich VC Wesley Chan owes his success to a Craigslist job washing lab beakers
While all of Wesley Chan’s success has been well-documented over the years, his personal journey…not so much. Chan spoke to TechCrunch about the ways his life impacts how he invests in startups.
Unity co-founder David Helgason’s next act: Gaming the climate crisis
In an interview at his home near Reykjavík, the entrepreneur-turned-VC shared thoughts on his ventures and the journey that led him from Unity to climate tech, a homecoming of sorts.
VCs are selling shares of hot AI companies like Anthropic and xAI to small investors in a wild SPV market
VCs are clamoring to invest in hot AI companies, and willing to pay exorbitant share prices for coveted spots on their cap tables. Even so, most aren’t able to get…
Deal Dive: How (Re)vive grew 10x last year by helping retailers recycle and sell returned items
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…
