Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, focused on startup and venture capital news that matters.
Today we have a grip of startup stories, and a venture capital item that isn’t as bad of news as it seems at first blush.
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Here’s the rundown:
LACERA decreases venture capital allocation range, but experts say it doesn’t signal a trend Analysts say this is likely more of a one-off than a sign that LP interest in venture is waning.
The Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association (LACERA) voted to decrease its allocation range to venture capital at a March 13 meeting.
The board of investments voted to decrease its allocation range to venture capital and growth equity from between 15% and 30% of the pension system’s private equity portfolio, to between 5% and 25%.
LACERA’s venture portfolio is currently 10.8% of the PE portfolio.
“They aren’t going to cut their venture allocation.
Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov said on his channel today that the company secured $330 million in investment through bond sales last week.
“This bond offering was oversubscribed, and we were delighted to have global funds of the highest caliber with impeccable reputations as participants.
The maturity for the bonds is either 2026 or when Telegram goes public, whichever is earlier.
The chat app, which has more than 900 million users, issued bonds worth $210 million last year.
Earlier this month, the company announced that personal users can convert their accounts to business accounts by paying a subscription fee.
Raising capital sounds simple: You hand over shares, investors hand over cash, and everyone then gets back to work.
She’s coming to TechCrunch’s Early Stage event next month on April 25 to not only present on early-stage fundraising topics, but also to answer your questions.
Early Stage is one of our most popular events, so don’t delay — I’ll see you in April, pen in hand, listening to Whiting.
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Arjun Sethi speaks with the confidence of someone who knows more than other people, or else who knows that sounding highly confident can shape perception.
Namely, if Termina is so good, why are Sethi and Tribe giving other investment firms a way to better compete?
Relatedly, why should other investors trust Termina, which ingests its customers’ data to improve over time?
This may prove doubly true given Termina’s ties to Tribe Capital.
Among these is Alex Chee, who cofounded MessageMe with Sethi, joined him at Social Capital, and subsequently co-founded both Tribe and Termina with him.
Apple has added another AI startup to its acquisition list with Canada-based DarwinAI, which specializes in vision-based tech to observe components during manufacturing to improve efficiency, Bloomberg reported.
DarwinAI had raised over $15 million in funding across various rounds from investors including BDC Capital’s Deep Tech Venture Fund, Honeywell Ventures, Obvious Ventures, and Inovia Capital.
BDC Capital and Obvious Venture didn’t comment on the story at the time of writing.
As Bloomberg noted in its report, apart from helping with manufacturing efficiency, DarwinAI uses techniques to make AI models smaller and faster.
This could be useful for on-device generative AI features Apple hopes to introduce in iOS 18 this year.
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This week in space historyI don’t mean to be impolite, but this week in space history we’re revisiting…URANUS.
That’s right: On March 13, 1781, a German-born, British astronomer named Sir William Herschel noticed a faint object through his telescope.
He initially thought it might be a comet, but later correctly identified it as our solar system’s seventh planet.
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space.
You also can send a note to the whole TechCrunch crew at tips@techcrunch.com.
This week in space historyI don’t mean to be impolite, but this week in space history we’re revisiting…URANUS.
That’s right: On March 13, 1781, a German-born, British astronomer named Sir William Herschel noticed a faint object through his telescope.
He initially thought it might be a comet, but later correctly identified it as our solar system’s seventh planet.
The Artemis Fund, which invests in underrepresented founders, closed on its second fund with $36 million in capital commitments.
“We really wanted to make sure that our LPs aligned with our long-term goal of backing diverse founders,” Murakhovskaya told TechCrunch.
VC investment itself continues to be fairly stagnant in these areas, according to my colleague Dominic-Madori Davis, who crunched the numbers on venture capital funding to these demographics earlier this month.
Female founders and co-founders secured more capital overall in 2023 than they did in 2020, according to new Pitchbook research.
For Fund II, Artemis intends to continue leading and co-leading investments and will target around 20 new companies.
Baron Capital, an investor in Indian food delivery startup Swiggy, has increased the value of its stake in the Indian firm, implying a valuation of $12.16 billion, surpassing the $10.7 billion post-money valuation at which Swiggy secured funding in early 2022.
The valuation uptick at the end of December is a noteworthy development for Swiggy and, more broadly, the Indian startup ecosystem.
This is particularly significant given that Swiggy’s valuation had previously been marked down to a low of $5.5 billion.
Swiggy commands roughly 45% market share in the Indian food delivery sector and is “well positioned to benefit from structural growth in online food delivery in India,” Baron Capital wrote in a separate filing.
Swiggy, which is also a key player in the instant-grocery delivery space in India, is increasingly broadening its offerings.
