What is worth $11 billion and wants to go to Mars to collect rocks?
NASA’s mission to Mars to collect rocks that was expected to cost $11 billion and take ages.
So, the U.S. space agency is throwing the doors open to get more input, and that means that startups are looking at an opportunity that is truly out of this world.
To close, the massive, gobsmackingly big $7.2 billion worth of new funds from a16z.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
HR startup Rippling is in discussions to raise at a $13.4B valuation, up from $11.25B The round could total $870M, including $670M worth of secondaryLate stage HRtech startup Rippling is raising new capital.
This will be Rippling’s Series F, and could raise its valuation to as high as $13.4 billion on a post-money basis, up from the $11.25 billion valuation it reached when it last raised capital in a $500 million Series E just a year ago.
Rippling had raised $1.2 billion total previous to this round.
Rippling competitor Gusto told TechCrunch that it reached $500 million in trailing revenue last year, along with cash flow positivity.
Earlier this year Deel, which focuses on payroll for teams that cross borders, said that it had reached $500 million worth of annual recurring revenue.
Tesla’s layoffs and executive departures took a bite out its share price this week.
The well-known electric vehicle company shed around 10% of its staff, impacting an estimated 14,000 staff or more.
It missed delivery estimates for the first quarter, has reportedly reduced hours for the production-line of its Cybertruck, and is seeing rivals in China stack market share with low-priced EVs.
Tesla, in other words, helped foster the global electric vehicle market, but is losing some of its primacy in that same market.
In human terms, for every dollar of car that Tesla sells, it generates far more company worth than its rivals.
Design firm Zypsy will do $100,000 worth of work for 1% equity for early-stage startupsZypsy, a design firm with a track record of helping early-stage startups, has launched a new and somewhat unique venture investment program.
Instead startups will pay by issuing Zypsy 1% equity of their companies via a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity).
Zypsy has already added five startups to the first cohort of the design capital program (alphabetical order):Pilot projects with over 25 startups for three yearsThe six-year-old design company has worked with more than 25 startups.
“They are ‘cash-based clients, not an ‘equity-based portfolios’ like five companies we mentioned in the first design capital program,” he said.
In 2023, Zypsy raised $3 million to establish Design Capital.
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Monday show, where we dig into the weekend and take a peek at the week that is to come.
Now that we are finally past Y Combinator’s demo day — though our Friday show is worth listening if you haven’t had a chance yet — we can dive into the latest news.
So, this morning on Equity Monday we got into the chance that the United States might pass a real data privacy law.
There’s movement to report, but we’re still very, very far from anything becoming law.
Such is the case with Anthropic and its latest research which demonstrates an interesting vulnerability in current LLM technology.
Of course given progress in open-source AI technology, you can spin up your own LLM locally and just ask it whatever you want, but for more consumer-grade stuff this is an issue worth pondering.
But the closer we get to more generalized AI intelligence, the more it should resemble a thinking entity, and not a computer that we can program, right?
If so, we might have a harder time nailing down edge cases to the point when that work becomes unfeasible?
Anyway, let’s talk about what Anthropic recently shared.
After a lengthy trial and conviction, we finally learned how long former crypto baron Sam Bankman-Fried will be behind bars: up to 25 years.
It’s a lengthy sentence, but one that given the scale of the crimes he was convicted of, doesn’t come as a shock.
For the crypto industry, it’s also the final page in a chapter that many may want firmly behind them.
After all, we’re out of the last crypto winter and are back in a period of rising token prices, growing trading volume, and hints of the prior excitement that web3 commanded during the last asset bubble.
Still, before we fully wrap up our coverage of SBF and his erstwhile empire, it’s worth taking one last trip down memory lane to cement in our minds how we wound up with a former venture and political darling not in the dock, but behind bars.
Watchworthy will now tell you which streaming services to cancel and which to keepTV recommendation app Watchworthy released two new features to give viewers access to more personalized recommendations, including a new recommendation category for streaming services and a collaborative watchlist to get movie suggestions for your entire friend group.
Watchworthy is best known for its “worthy” score, which tells you the likelihood that a TV show or movie is worth your time.
For instance, if you’re obsessed with home improvement shows, Watchworthy recommends Discovery+ as a top pick, listing it as 95-99% worthy.
As major streaming services continue increasing subscription costs, viewers are having a hard time deciding which subscription is worth investing in.
Watchworthy helps you discover over 200 streaming services, such as Netflix, Max, Disney+ Prime Video, Peacock, Paramount+, Apple TV+, and Hulu, among others.
This week, we look at Griffin Bank getting its license ahead of some heavy hitters, and we go inside Stripe’s annual letter, some funding rounds, and more!
The banking-as-a-service company managed to do something that even the region’s most valuable fintech company, Revolut, hasn’t been able to do yet — obtain a banking license.
Granted, as Mike Butcher writes, banking licenses are difficult to come by (Griffin’s took a year), but Revolut has talked about securing a banking license for the past three years.
Now that Griffin has a banking license, it offers a full-stack platform for fintech companies to offer banking, payments and wealth solutions via automated compliance and an integrated ledger.
In a new SEC filing, Reddit’s IPO involves around 22 million shares, priced between $31 and $34.
The movie later went on to win 7 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.
And this is why it’s so hard to find fulfillment in this current system.
“Which brings me back to AI,” Kwan continued, to a thunder of applause and cheers.
“So imagine what this technology will do within this current system, within this current incentive structure.
“I also want to say, we’re not saying ‘don’t use AI.’ I don’t believe in dogmas.
