Ah, spring has sprung here in the Northeast United States, and it’s not only flowers that are blooming.
Today on Equity’s startup-focused Wednesday show, we dug into the Multiverse-Searchlight deal, which reminded us of the Wonderschool-Early Day transaction that we covered on the show a few weeks ago.
Startup Land is feeling quite busy and high-dollar again, and that’s a lot of fun!
We wrapped up the show with a cool discussion of this new venture capital fund that’s targeting growth-rounds in Africa.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
The United States Department of Commerce Monday proposed investing as much as $6.6 billion to fund a third Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) fab in Arizona.
The move represents a broader push to bring more manufacturing to the U.S., but unspoken in the fanfare around today’s announcement is the potential escalation of tensions with China.
TSMC Arizona — the subsidiary behind the proposed construction — has stated that it will build the facility before the end of the decade.
The United States and allies would be at a massive disadvantage should China seize control of Taiwan and its manufacturing capabilities.
For all the money the United States government continues to invest, Intel is simply playing catch-up to TSMC’s multiyear technological head start.
The main development out of the sixth TTC meeting appears to be a commitment from EU and US AI oversight bodies, the European AI Office and the US AI Safety Institute, to set up what’s couched as “a Dialogue”.
The aim is fostering a deeper collaboration between the AI institutions, with a particular focus on encouraging the sharing of scientific information among respective AI research ecosystems.
“Working groups jointly staffed by United States science agencies and European Commission departments and agencies have achieved substantial progress by defining critical milestones for deliverables in the areas of extreme weather, energy, emergency response, and reconstruction.
We are also making constructive progress in health and agriculture.”In addition, an overview document on the collaboration around AI for the public good was published Friday.
The joint statement refers to 2024 as “a Pivotal Year for Democratic Resilience”, on account of the number of elections being held around the world.
Bankrupt commercial EV startup Arrival has sold some of its assets, including advanced manufacturing equipment to Canoo, another struggling startup trying to build and sell electric vehicles.
Canoo said the purchased assets, packed into more than 20 container ships, will be sent to the company’s facility in Oklahoma.
The company previously acquired all of the new, and “like-new” assets owned by Arrival’s business unit in the United States.
Arrival announced in January that it planned to sell off assets and IP from its U.K. division after filing for bankruptcy protection in the U.K.
Arrival never produced any commercial vehicles at scale and its market valuation is now around $7.7 million.
TikTok users, however, are not taking the changing political winds — and their consequences — sitting down.
TechCrunch spoke with several TikTok users that are incensed about, and fighting back against the potential ban of TikTok.
But while the talk of a possible ban is getting all the press, what about the potential of TikTok simply being divested from its parent company, Bytedance?
That would resolve the United States’ government’s issues, right?
So, the bill may have two tracks in it for TikTok, but it could really just be a single-issue law in practice.
American health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group has confirmed a ransomware attack on its health tech subsidiary Change Healthcare, which continues to disrupt hospitals and pharmacies across the United States.
“Based on our ongoing investigation, there’s no indication that except for the Change Healthcare systems, Optum, UnitedHealthcare and UnitedHealth Group systems have been affected by this issue.”In a post on its dark web leak site on Wednesday, ALPHV/BlackCat took credit for the cyberattack at Change Healthcare.
Change Healthcare merged with U.S. healthcare provider Optum in 2022 as part of a $7.8 billion deal under UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurance provider in the United States.
Change Healthcare said it took much of its systems offline to expel the hackers from its systems.
Do you work at Change Healthcare, Optum or UnitedHealth and know more about the cyberattack?
Google is sunsetting the Google Pay app in the US later this yearGoogle has announced that Google Pay is shutting down in the United States in June, as the standalone app has largely been replaced by Google Wallet.
Users can continue to access the app’s most popular features right from Google Wallet, which Google says is used five times more than the Google Pay app in the United States.
After June 4, users will no longer be able to send, request or receive money through the U.S. version of the Google Pay app.
Users who used the Google Pay app to find offers and deals can still so do using the new deals destination on Google Search, the company says.
Google says millions of people in over 180 countries use Google Pay to check out when shopping on desktop, mobile and in store.
Fantuan, a Vancouver, Canada-based Asian food delivery company, announced it acquired Chowbus’ delivery business line.
In addition to restaurant delivery the company also works in the fresh grocery delivery and dine-in service segments.
After consolidating Chowbus’ delivery business, Fantuan plans to solidify its Asia-focused food delivery services across cities in the U.S.
Meanwhile, antitrust regulators in the European Union had similar cartel suspicions and raided two online food delivery companies in November.
And Indian food delivery company Swiggy went on a buying spree.
Ten of TuSimple’s autonomous big rigs are set to be auctioned off later this month, just a few weeks after the self-driving trucking startup that went public in 2021 announced it was exiting the U.S. market.
The trucks, along with a slew of research and development equipment and office supplies, will be sold off in two online auctions.
A spokesperson for the auction company confirmed 10 trucks will “initially” be sold.
The company went public in 2021 and was swiftly scrutinized by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States over its Chinese shareholders.
In December, the company said it would exit the U.S. altogether and laid off more than 150 workers as a result.
Just how backed up are the venture capital markets today?
That’s what a recent data analysis indicates is happening today in one critical venture capital market.
The value of the most mature startups in the United States that need to find an exit neared the $1 trillion mark through Q3 2023, according to a recent PitchBook analysis.
The figure underscores how weak the exit climate has been over the last two years and highlights the sheer mass of illiquid equity investments made into startups that call the United States home.
Still, the United States’ venture capital market is worth about half of the global whole, so when we discuss Yankee territory, we’re nevertheless talking about a huge portion of the startup market.
