Fundraising | TechCrunch

MoradaUno wants to make it easier to rent apartments in Mexico

Rebecca Szkutak — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Renting in Latin America is restrictive. Most landlords require three months of rent as a deposit and a guarantor that owns property in the same city to co-sign the lease. Santiago Morales, the co-founder and CEO of proptech MoradaUno, said this dynamic makes 40% of prospective renters ineligible. His company wants to get more tenants […]

Research Grid raises $6.48M to automate clinical trial admin

Dominic-Madori Davis — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 00:01:00 +0000

Amber Hill spent 14 years as a medical researcher. She didn’t mind the work, but there was one thing she consistently hated: administrative tasks. “I think most people do, especially in research,” she told TechCrunch. She would rather be analyzing data or building relationships with patients, she said. “But I was spending so much time […]

How a box on a roof helped Transaera land $8.2 million in funding

Tim De Chant — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:00:40 +0000

The company has been toiling for seven years, developing a novel air conditioning technology and searching for a beachhead market.

DeepRoute raises $100M in push to beat Tesla’s FSD in China

Rebecca Bellan — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 15:10:00 +0000

DeepRoute.ai, a Shenzhen-based autonomous driving technology startup, raised $100 million from Great Wall Motor. The startup aims to get its automated driving systems into as many vehicles in China before Tesla takes off next year, according to a Reuters report. DeepRoute did not publicly disclose the name of its automaker backer, but reports in the […]

Coatue is raising $1B for AI bets

Marina Temkin — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:52:54 +0000

Coatue Management, a hedge fund that invested heavily in tech startups during the pandemic-infused boom, is raising $1 billion to back AI-focused companies, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The funding, which will top up the firm’s flagship fund, will be raised primarily from institutional investors. However, high-net-worth individuals with accounts at the brokerage Raymond James & […]

Datadog challenger Dash0 aims to dash observability bill shock

Anna Heim — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:46 +0000

The end of zero-interest rates has driven companies to look for savings wherever they can, but one area continues to be a major budget drain. Observability — collecting and understanding data and systems — typically remains an organization’s second-highest cloud expenditure, right after cloud provisioning itself. People have even gone so far as to talk […]

Founders should seek sector alignment when looking for a family office investor

Rebecca Szkutak — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Family offices invest a substantial amount of capital in startups each year. In the first half of 2023, 27% of overall startup deal value came from deals that included a family office investor, according to a recent report from PwC. Despite their prevalence in startup deals, family offices can be a mysterious class of investors […]

Wesley Chan on what he looks for as he’s shopping for potential unicorns

Matt Rosoff — Sun, 03 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Investor Wesley Chan has shown a knack for making very early investments into multi-billion-dollar unicorns, such as Plaid, Gusto, Flexport, and, most recently, Canva. Chan comes from an unconventional background — he grew up in an immigrant family and had only middling grades in high school. But he landed a job washing test tubes in […]

How national interest startups should be thinking about government contracts

Rebecca Bellan — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 12:00:00 +0000

National interest technology can show up in a lot of ways, like in data analysis and cybersecurity, as well as satellites and weapons. Many startups with dual-use applications are increasingly looking at the government as an attractive customer due to its wide range of use cases and the amount of federal dollars available. And while […]

The Chainsmokers want to bring a different kind of value add to B2B companies

Rebecca Szkutak — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 19:30:00 +0000

The potential value a celebrity investor can bring to a consumer company, beyond just writing a check, is obvious: marketing and promotion. But that value is less clear when it comes to backing B2B startups. Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, also known as the Chainsmokers, think their VC fund Mantis VC can bring a value […]

New funding rounds confirm that money attracts money

Anna Heim — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 19:05:00 +0000

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. Money attracts money, as the saying goes. This week seemed to confirm it, with a couple startups announcing new rounds of funding only months after their previous […]

Former Caribou founder launches Further, a fintech that’s focused on helping people buy homes

Rebecca Szkutak — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 13:15:50 +0000

Buying a home has always been complicated. You have to figure out how much money to put down and how that down payment will affect a monthly mortgage bill. Then there are the closing costs and fees. Kevin Bennett launched Further to try to help make the financial process easier to navigate — especially for first-time […]

How to build a company that can save the world and generate a profit

Tim De Chant — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 12:53:00 +0000

For startups that hope to save the world, or at least make it a better place, balancing impact with profit can be tricky.

BBG Ventures raises new $60M fund to support diverse founders

Dominic-Madori Davis — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 20:16:25 +0000

BBG Ventures raised a new $60 million fund to support founders from “diverse backgrounds,” including gender, race, age, and class, Business Insider reported. The firm is known for backing exclusively women founders, and this new fund is a slight departure from that focus but comes as funding to diverse founders continues to dip. Crunchbase found that […]

Female Founders Fund returns its Fund I

Dominic-Madori Davis — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 20:15:00 +0000

After 10 years, the Female Founders Fund has returned its $5.85 million Fund I, according to Fortune. The news makes FFF one of the few diverse-focused funds to fully return a fund in a move that may boost the image of investing in women founders across Silicon Valley. Any further investments and exits to come […]

MaC VC raised $150M Fund III

Dominic-Madori Davis — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 20:00:00 +0000

MaC VC just raised a $150 million Fund III, according to Fortune. The firm, which launched in 2019 and already has $600 million in assets under management, will now cut check sizes between $2 million and $3 million into seed-stage companies. Notable investments for the firm include Chef Robotics and Stoke Space. The firm is […]

Kalshi secures tens of millions in loans from VCs, eyes $50M+ round amid election betting boom, source says

Marina Temkin — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 18:07:55 +0000

Investors are rushing to throw millions at a hot startup called Kalshi as loans or even as unusual we’ll-figure-it-out later cash. Kalshi is an exchange that allows people to bet, as official commodity trading contracts, on the outcomes of cultural events, from election results to how long Taylor Swift’s latest album will top the charts. […]

Buddy.ai is using AI and gaming to help children learn English as a second language

Rebecca Szkutak — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 13:00:00 +0000

In 2014, Ivan Crewkov moved his family from Siberia to the U.S. as his startup, Cubic.AI, was preparing to launch a Kickstarter campaign for its smart speaker. A week before the campaign was supposed to go live, Amazon launched its Echo smart speaker, rendering Cubic.AI essentially dead in the water. “It was a disaster,” Crewkov […]

Modash is flipping the influencer marketing script by connecting brands with the long tail of creators

Anna Heim — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 17:58:29 +0000

Estonia-based startup Modash has raised a $12 million Series A led by henQ, a Dutch VC firm that prides itself in “funding the odd ones.” And what’s odd about Modash, according to CEO Avery Schrader, is that its team “has a really strong opinion in a space that nobody really has much faith in anymore.” […]

Equity Live: Bret Taylor’s $4.5 billion startup and Waymo’s $5.6 billion round

Theresa Loconsolo — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 16:41:29 +0000

The Equity crew was live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024! Hosts Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey and Margaux MacColl took over the Builders Stage to kick off day 2 of Disrupt with no shortage of conference highlights, startups deals and venture news to chew through. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Equity will be back with a special interview episode on […]