When it comes to news items that we love at TechCrunch, IPOs rank pretty darn high.
Another great newsy bit that comes along less frequently than we’d like is a startup buying another startup.
These deals are often very interesting as they either bring a gob of talent, or technology to an already growing company, potentially accelerating it.
So it was with joy that the Equity Podcast crew dug into Automattic buying Beeper for $125 million.
But certainly we are an ocean or two away from the heady days we saw back in 2021.
When it comes to funding, the fintech sector didn’t have a very good start to the year.
Fintech funding slid by 16% quarter-over-quarter during the three-month period, according to CB Insights’ Q1 2024 State of Venture Report.
But even more troubling than the double-digit dip was the fact that the $7.3 billion raised globally by fintech startups in the three-month period marked the lowest level the sector has seen since early 2017, according to the report.
During the three-month period, 904 investments were made into fintech startups.
Dollars raised and deal count is also down compared to the fourth quarter of 2023, when 786 fintech startups raised $8.7 billion.
OpenAI’s legal battle with The New York Times over data to train its AI models might still be brewing.
But OpenAI’s forging ahead on deals with other publishers, including some of France’s and Spain’s largest news publishers.
OpenAI on Wednesday announced that it signed contracts with Le Monde and Prisa Media to bring French and Spanish news content to OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot.
So, OpenAI’s revealed licensing deals with a handful of content providers at this point.
The Information reported in January that OpenAI was offering publishers between $1 million and $5 million a year to access archives to train its GenAI models.
The largest funding rounds raised by startups are becoming rarer and rarer.
The venture deceleration, and its late-stage glaciation, are not stopping the companies that want to reinvent energy from raising huge rounds.
Powering upNine-figure rounds are often called “megarounds” due to their massive heft.
Inside energy’s power surgeIn 2023, China dominated energy megarounds, with most of the money going to makers of solar panels and battery materials.
Fast forward to this year, and the picture in energy megarounds looks dramatically different.
Nvidia’s chief rivals in the AI chip space — AMD, Arm and Intel — have been investing aggressively in startups, too, looking to make up ground in markets inclusive of the especially frothy generative AI segment.
IntelOf Nvidia’s competitors, Intel far and away has the biggest startup investment operation thanks to Intel Capital, its long-running VC.
Curiously, AI startups — despite their strategic importance to the chip industry these days — make up a relatively small portion of Intel’s venture portfolio.
According to Crunchbase, Intel’s holdings in software, IT and enterprise SaaS companies far outnumber its AI startup holdings by deal volume.
AMDLike Intel and Arm, AMD invests in startups both directly and through a VC org, AMD Ventures.
A few years ago, setting up shop in Europe was the soup du jour for North American VCs.
North American VCs, understandably, want a piece of that market, but setting up a successful, long-term strategy in the region hasn’t proved easy.
The European startup market comes with nuances that make it a difficult one for North American investors.
It’s no wonder then that North American investors have struggled to find a secure footing as they try to straddle the Atlantic.
The American guys will enter anyway at the Series A or B.”Reason to keep tryingDespite all those challenges, though, North American firms are still trying to plant roots in the region.
In this edition, I’m going to look at Brex’s latest round of layoffs, the state of fintech investing in 2023 and more!
I may be taking some time off in coming weeks but never fear, TechCrunch Fintech isn’t going away.
While interest rates were low, the company saw a bump in business and VC money was easier to come by.
The move came after reports the company burned $17 million in cash each month during the fourth quarter and that it is trying to preserve runway.
Fintech investors injected $34.6 billion in startups across 2,055 deals in 2023, a –43.8% and –32.4% YoY drop, respectively, according to PitchBook data.
The following is a compilation of 12 “dos and don’ts” for how innovators should pitch and partner with a new class of technology venture investors who balance market realism with optimism in driving a vision with substance.
Early-stage venture capital requires a team effort to find product-market fit and accelerate revenue growth.
DON’T give upLike many activities in the startup world, success finds those who have grit, courage, persistence, durability, and adaptability.
Venture capital often finds nonconsensus and nonobvious deals, but the process may take hundreds of meetings before the first yes.
Almost every company is better serviced by not raising venture capital and instead relying on profitable growth and other sources of capital.
Isomorphic Labs, the London-based, drug discovery-focused spin-out of Google AI R&D division DeepMind, today announced that it’s entered into strategic partnerships with two pharmaceutical giants, Eli Lilly and Novartis, to apply AI to discover new medications to treat diseases.
Isomorphic will receive $45 million upfront from Eli Lilly and potentially up to $1.7 billion based on performance milestones, excluding royalties.
Researchers recently used AlphaFold to design and synthesize a potential drug to treat hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of primary liver cancer.
The latest version of AlphaFold can generate predictions for nearly all molecules in the Protein Data Bank, the world’s largest open access database of biological molecules, DeepMind announced in late October.
Already, Isomorphic is applying the new AlphaFold model, which it co-designed with DeepMind, to therapeutic drug design, helping to characterize different types of molecular structures important for treating disease.
Hopes that it would become easier for startups to raise capital in 2023 were left unmet as the year ended.
The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.
New data from business database PitchBook paints a modestly dim picture of venture capital investment activity in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Per PitchBook’s preliminary count, startups in the U.S. raised 2,879 rounds worth about $37.5 billion in the fourth quarter — the lowest quarterly deal value since Q3 2019, and the lowest deal count since Q4 2017.
Across stages, venture capital investment activity in the United States is flagging, and this extends past aggregate figures — for example, we saw less total capital invested in U.S. startups last year than in 2020.
