Fundraising

The top VCs to judge the Startup Battlefield Final at Disrupt 2024

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is just a week away. Our beefed-up Startup Battlefield 200 is a major highlight. Two hundred companies have been hand-selected by the TechCrunch editorial staff to grace the expo hall, 20 of which will launch their company for the first time live on our stage. Nail-biting pitches live on the Disrupt Stage, […]

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African crypto startup Yellow Card raises $33M led by Blockchain Capital to scale its B2B pivot

Africa’s blockchain and crypto space is receiving a much-needed venture boost during a tough time for startups, some of which have retreated from specific markets or completely shut down due to issues like harsh regulatory environment, macros or downright mismanagement.  The boost involves Yellow Card, the U.S.-founded crypto platform launched in Nigeria in 2019, which

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​​Amazon jumps on nuclear power bandwagon by investing in X-Energy and promising small reactors

Amazon today became the latest big tech company to throw its weight behind nuclear power, joining Microsoft and Google, which both previously announced long-term promises to buy nuclear power from startups to power their data centers. The company revealed three deals, including an investment in startup X-Energy and two development agreements that aim to add

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Lightmatter’s $400M round has AI hyperscalers hyped for photonic datacenters

Photonic computing startup Lightmatter has raised $400 million to blow one of modern datacenters’ bottlenecks wide open. The company’s optical interconnect layer allows hundreds of GPUs to work synchronously, streamlining the costly and complex job of training and running AI models. The growth of AI and its correspondingly immense compute requirements have supercharged the datacenter

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Monogoto, an innovator in ‘connectivity as a service’, raises $27M

Connectivity and connected networks are part and parcel of how many devices and services operate today, thanks to innovations and expansions in mobile networks, on-device processing and the cloud. But behind the scenes, there remains a lot of fragmentation: different regions, technologies, tariffs and devices can spell a lot of work for enterprises or service providers

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European cyber insurance startup Stoïk secures $27 million

Cyber risk has become an increasingly important issue for small companies around the world. While many companies try to avoid and mitigate cyber risks, they rarely discuss transferring those risks to a third party. That’s why Stoïk is stepping in with a cyber insurance product specifically designed for small and medium-sized businesses. The French startup

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Aerleum plans to turn CO2 directly into fuel for cargo ships and, eventually, airplanes

It only took four phone calls for Sébastien Fiedorow to quit his job as a venture capitalist. The first one came from Marble, a startup studio based in Paris. They had a scientist looking for help founding a company that would remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere — what experts call direct air capture, or

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Khosla Ventures just backed OpenAI with $405M more, but not necessarily with its own capital

Khosla Ventures has raised $405 million for OpenAI, according to a regulatory filing. Based on the filing alone, Khosla’s stake in the ChatGPT maker appears to be at least 6% of the $6.6 billion round the company closed last week. But that doesn’t mean Khosla has put substantial or any capital into the round. The

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Fearless Fund has made a big deal since settling its controversial lawsuit

Fearless Fund has made a big move since it settled a lawsuit with the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER).  The firm announced on Thursday a seven-figure investment into the e-commerce platform Zimi, co-founded by Audrey Djiya and Peter Nsaka. Zimi offers inventory management, handling and storage, and border logistics specifically to help businesses in

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