Hinge Health, a nine-year-old company that offers a digital solution to treat chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions, cut approximately 10% of its workforce on Thursday, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
The company said people who were laid off worked across various functions; according to employees posting on LinkedIn, some were engineers.
Before the layoffs, Hinge had more than 1,700 employees, according to a LinkedIn estimate.
The company has raised a total of $828 million, according to PitchBook data.
The company’s main competitor is General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures-backed Sword Health, which was last valued at $2 billion in November 2021.
DCVC wanted to raise $500M for its first climate fund, but the market had other plansDCVC’s target for its first climate-focused fund, DCVC Climate Select, has been all over the place and highlights the roller coaster venture fundraising conditions of the last few years, and how LPs aren’t as quick to back new strategies from established managers.
The Silicon Valley VC firm launched the fund in December 2022 with a $500 million target, according to a SEC filing.
This climate fund is targeting climate startups at the mid-stages where the firm thinks the climate startup ecosystem is currently underfunded, according to materials from a recent New Mexico State Investment Council meeting where the GP presented.
Tiger Global’s latest fund raised $2.2 billion of its $6 billion target.
In the first half of 2023, firms including Founders Fund, Insight Partners and TCV all slashed their fund targets.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has transferred formal control of the eponymously firm’s named corporate venture fund to Ian Cathaway, OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch.
The Open AI Startup Fund, launched in 2021, was initially set up with Altman as its named controller.
Cathaway joined OpenAI in 2021 and played a key role managing the Startup Fund, leading investments in Ambience Healthcare, Cursor, Harvey, and Speak.
Last year, the fund had $175 million in commitments, and now holds $325 million in gross net asset value, according to an SEC filing.
The Startup Fund has backed at least 16 other startups, according to PitchBook data.
The platform, formerly Twitter, is working on an addition to its Communities feature that would let X users create groups for X-rated material, according to app researchers.
pic.twitter.com/Sou18ze7Va — Nima Owji (@nima_owji) February 28, 2024Twitter introduced its Communities feature in 2021.
So, the platform’s more-lenient policy on adult content is critical for online sex workers to grow their businesses.
Adult creators are allowed to post explicit content on X, though they can’t monetize it on the platform.
Even though X seems to be working on this NSFW Communities feature, that doesn’t mean it’ll come to fruition.
Fisker temporarily lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments as it scaled up deliveries, leading to an internal audit that started in December and took months to complete, TechCrunch has learned.
The EV startup was ultimately able to track down a majority of those payments or request new ones from customers whose payment methods had expired.
Red flags raisedFisker has warned investors since last year about problems with its internal accounting practices.
Fisker’s poor internal procedures have created problems beyond keeping track of payments.
Fisker hired contractors in February to help resolve the title and registration problems, but the backlog was immense, according to the people.
New Summit Investments is raising a new $100 million impact fund, according to documents filed with the SEC.
This is the firm’s fifth fund and marks a sizable jump from the $40 million its previous fund, which closed back in 2022.
New Summit has supported marginalized fund managers by launching initiatives like its partnership with investment firm Gratitude Railroad to source and underwrite underrepresented fund managers.
New Summit Investments’ was founded in 2016 as an impact investment firm focusing on climate, health, and economic opportunities.
New Summit Investments’ first fund closed for $20 million in 2016, followed by $36 million in 2018, according to Pitchbook.
NFT fantasy sports startup Sorare lays off 13% of staff, as web3 gaming continues to sputter Sorare is not completely shuttering its New York office but is shifting more employees to ParisWeb3-enabled fantasy sports platform Sorare laid off 22 employees based in its New York office in February.
The company will backfill most of these laid-off roles in Paris, according to Julia, with plans to hire more than 20 roles in the next six months.
Sorare is not shutting down its New York office.
Sorare saw $200 million in user transaction volume in 2023, a source familiar with the situation said.
Web3 gaming startup Mythical Games raised nearly $300 million in venture money before holding three rounds of layoffs.
If Reddit prices too high out the gate, it loses out on potential buyer interest and could trade down from its IPO valuation instead of building momentum.
Reddit’s most recent primary round in 2021 raised $410 million at a $10 billion valuation from investors, including Fidelity, Quiet Capital and Montauk Ventures, among others.
The market has obviously changed since then, and going out at that $10 billion valuation wouldn’t be smart.
What happens nextThe $5 billion valuation that Reddit may pursue is not risk-free.
Reddit offering shares to its top users is likely a ploy to avoid the stock entering meme-trading territory, Martin said.
If accurate, this latest injection of capital would value Moonshot AI at $2.5 billion – the largest single funding round for Chinese LLM developers on public record.
Co-leading the round are e-commerce giant Alibaba and HongShan – the VC firm formerly known as Sequoia China, according to South China Morning Post.
Other in the round included Chinese “super app” Meituan and Xiaohongshu (sometimes called China’s answer to Instagram), according to Chinese tech blog LatePost.
Pink Floyd Fan turned AI trailblazerYang Zhilin had a long list of achievements to his credit even before starting Moonshot.
The total amount raised by China’s AI firms amounted to roughly $2 billion, 70% less than the year before.
Veho, a package delivery company, confirmed that it laid off 19% of its employee headcount, or about 65 jobs.
As first reported by The Information, these layoffs came after Veho grew revenue nearly 90% in 2023.
That was after announcing $125 million in Series A funding two months prior, the round that pushed Veho into unicorn territory.
At that time, Veho said it had 910 employees across corporate and warehouse teams and was looking to fill additional positions.
Veho remains optimistic, telling TechCrunch that its capital position “is very strong and we are building on our strong momentum and record peak season in 2023.”
