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Oh, and welcome to Thursday! It was another busy day with lots of news. We have collected the cream of the crop for you. Ouch! And if you want to be part of Disrupt with your startup, don’t forget apply for Battlefield 200 startup!
On July 21st we have an incredible lineup for our TC Robotics event – and something is wrong with the marketing guys because they decided to make the event free. Get your ticket today in case they change their mind… Christine as well as Hadje
TechCrunch Top 3
- Up in the air tonight: Brian gives us an inside look at the new Apple MacBook Air M2. Let the pros and cons begin!
- Lost a couple of strips: Anita, Natasha M as well as Mary Ann united to fight news strip that he was the last to cut his internal estimate. For those who love: “What?” they explain that this means that the price of preferred shares being traded is determined by a third party, not by startups or venture capitalists. It is also interesting that this is a rarity for the company.
- Into the mirror: We enjoyed Dominique-MadoriA deep dive on TechCrunch+ into some predictions of what black VCs and founders can expect from the investment community in the second half of this year.
![The stock chart moves up and down]()
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Startups and VK
“We could take money from crypto funds, but take it harder from the gaming industry and believers,” said Raz Friedman, co-founder of UnCaged. Jacqueline in an interview regarding the company’s $24 million fundraising. “We are primarily a gaming company that uses and implements web3 into games, not a web3 focused company.”
“We envision You.com as a search platform that is open and allows others to use all of the search technologies we’ve built,” said Richard Socher. Kyle for his story about You raised $25 million. “Data transparency, user customization, generalization, privacy, and modern search are the foundation of our platform, and in the long term, we have surpassed Google by empowering the world to create new search experiences together.”
🎶 More, more, give me more (what a wonderful tune).
- And how do you feel about it, |*FNAME*|: The popularity of chatbot therapists continues to grow. Wysa raised $20 million to further expand its services, as Jagmeet reports.
- One star, would buy for a mortal enemyA: Customer reviews are a well-known and powerful way to influence customers. Okendo wants to turn your customers into customers using them Christine reports.
- AI caramba: AssemblyAI is expanding its AI-as-a-Service business as it raised $30 million in Series B round.reports Kyle.
- Is this seat taken?: The world is shifting to hybrid work, and offices are scrambling to figure out how to allocate office space to reflect this. Robin Raised $30 Million for their office booking software to help figure this out, Kyle reports.
- Are you lifting, bro?: Home fitness startup Tonal – last valued at $1.6 billion – lost over a third of its staff help it become a “self-sufficient and profitable business”, Natasha M reports.
Five Investors Explain Why Latin America Is Ready to Survive the Crypto Winter
Image credits: gece33 (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images
Even as the group of crypto companies continues their catastrophic collapse, investors backing DeFi startups in Latin America are “preparing for a recovery,” according to Anna Heim.
She interviewed five investors who have invested in companies in the region’s crypto and DeFi sector to learn more about how their spirit has changed since the start of winter and why consumer adoption is stronger in Latin America than in other markets:
- Matthias Nisenson, co-founder of DeFi Wonderland
- Christine Chang, Head of Corporate Development and Venture Business, Tribal
- Patricio Jutar, co-founder and general partner of Newtopia VC
- Claire Diaz-Ortiz, Chair, Startup Committee, VC3; scout, Kleiner Perkins
- Andy Areitio, General Partner of TheVentureCity
(TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can register here.)
Big Tech Inc.
Before diving into today’s important technical stories, we’d like to point out a few stories from late last night that continue to grab our attention for a second day.
The first Kirstenreport on the question of Top Tesla AI executive on the Autopilot team will return. We can now confirm that this is a negative result. For all those DoorDash Lovers there in the US, the intermediate lows are likely to increase in your area, Rebecca writes. Meanwhile, Sarah based on a report that TikTok has overtaken YouTube as a place where all children and teenagers spend their time. And Rebecca also told how Uber sued more than 550 women regarding allegations of sexual harassment by drivers.
Okay, now for the show. Our colleagues did such a good job on the second day that there is something to dig into. By now you already know that Twitter went down this morning for users around the world, Amanda reports. Alex was not laughing. During the chaos, Twitter started testing some new features. Amanda also wrote about what users are reminded of add alt text to photosbye Ivan described his new timeline custom test.
In financial news Kyle reports on Plaid adds read-only support for cryptocurrency exchanges. Finally, Manish covered the Indian Internet and Mobile Association, a technology advocacy group that decided to give up cryptocurrencies over regulatory uncertainty.
- So, do you want to play a game?: Non-gaming app revenues have surpassed games in the US Apple App Store for the first time, Sarah reports. Meanwhile, Lauren writes about New acquisition by Nintendo in the field of computer graphics animation and new loyalty program for PlayStation.
- connected: Panasonic embarks on $4 billion factory for the production of batteries for electric vehicles in Kansas that Jacqueline writes may be the largest in the world. Commercial Electric Vehicle Company making difficult financial and personnel decisionsif you understand what we mean in order to achieve our goal of producing vans, Kirsten reports. Kirsten also reports that the ink on Walmart deal with Canoo barely dry and Rebecca writes about one of the warnings – that doesn’t want Canoo to sell electric cars to Amazon.
- Brrrr, it’s cold in here: Another hit for the cryptocurrency, one of the biggest lenders in the sector, Celsius, declared bankruptdeclaring the need to stabilize their business. Manish has more.
- A trust that looks more like an antitrust trust: Natasha L has a couple of compelling stories today. one about Google faces new antitrust investigation in Italy due to a claim that the search engine giant may have “abused its dominant position by interfering with the data portability rights granted to individuals under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation”. another about how Amazon is negotiating with the EU try to settle an antitrust investigation regarding the use of seller data.
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