When a buy now, pay later strategy doesn’t pay off

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall Tuesday, December 05, 2023

ZestMoney, a buy now, pay later service, had a good run. It was once valued at $450 million and has some big-time investors, like Goldman Sachs, in its corner. However, in today's top story, Manish writes that new leadership, after an unsuccessful journey to find a buyer, plans to shut ZestMoney down. Get the scoop. Meanwhile, after Meta built some functionalities across Instagram and Facebook, Ivan reports that the social media giant decided to discontinue the cross-messaging feature between the two services. Here's what we know. And Annie covers Omniful's $5.85 million funding round that has the Middle East–based company coming out of stealth to digitize supply chain and e-commerce enablement. Read more. Image Credits: Jane0606 / Shutterstock

More top reads In more Meta news: Meta and IBM form an AI Alliance. Here's what that means. Speaking of AI, over on TechCrunch+, Alex writes that today's AI funding rush gives him all the feels of 2021 fintech investing. Read more. Master blaster: Fortnite expands its horizons this week with a Lego building game and a Rock Band successor. Game on. Breaker breaker one: Self-driving truck company TuSimple was flying, or should we say, driving, high in the U.S. Until it wasn't. Now it's leaving the country. Encrypted email no more: Used by only a few nerds, Facebook kills PGP-encrypted emails. Here's what happened. Link up: SoftBank takes a 51% stake in Cubic Telecom for $513 million to drive into the connected car world. Look, Mom, no wires. Toot toot, hey, beep beep: For iPhone users who really care about the color of text chain bubbles, Beeper reversed-engineered iMessage for Android users. Get the scoop. And thanks to Beeper, Darrell has a new favorite phone. Meet the OnePlus Open. When you need to find that next transmission: Egypt's Mtor nabs $2.8 million preseed for its online auto parts marketplace. Vroom. In the driver's seat: Foretellix raises $85 million to build and test scenarios for self-driving systems. Here's how. Carbon-friendly food: Carbon Maps, a French carbon accounting startup for the food industry, gets new backers. See what they do. Dumplings to your door: Vancouver's Fantuan raises $40 million to deliver real Chinese food to your doorstep. Knock knock. Heigh ho!: Mine digs up $30 million for its no-code approach to vetting data privacy. Read more. Even more for your Tuesday: Twilio might actually deserve activist investor attention (TC+) Rightbot, which is developing robots to unload freight, lands investment from Amazon Git platform AllSpice now curries favor with enterprises Vercel makes it easier to ship better code at scale Veteran life sciences firm RA Capital spins up 'planetary health' team to ride climate tech wave (TC+) Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

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On the pods Today on Found, we're talking to David Rogier, the CEO and founder of MasterClass, a streaming platform where you can learn from the world's experts on a variety of topics, from baking to screen writing to developing empathy. Before David launched MasterClass, he worked as a VC. Through his connections, he received a $500,000 seed round before he even had an idea for a company. That was nearly a decade ago, and today Dom, Becca and David talk about how he's built the company since. They also talked about: His intentional ideation and testing process. How MasterClass landed top talent right out the gate. Why he thinks of MasterClass as a creative-first company. Their unique approach to hiring and his values as a leader. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week. Listen here. Read More Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

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The latest string of layoffs may surprise you . . . or not

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall Monday, December 04, 2023

When the tech layoffs rain, sometimes it pours. In today's top story, Manish reports on the latest round of Spotify layoffs expected to impact about 1,500 jobs. The streaming service points to rising capital costs as the culprit. Also today, Romain writes that Twilio lays off another 5% of employees amid activist pressure, while Ivan covers lays off of Filmic employees. The company was acquired last year by creative app studio Bending Spoons. Over on TechCrunch+, Alex goes into why Spotify is laying off employees. It’s a matter of respect. Meanwhile, Manish reports that edtech startup Doubtnut was acquired by Allen Career Institute for $10 million. Why is this significant? Doubtnut was once offered a $150 million deal by Byju's. Get the scoop. And it's time to treat yo'self to something new for the kitchen. Amanda shares a list of the best kitchen gifts for techy chefs. Image Credits: Sergi Alexander / Stringer / Getty Images

More top reads It's in their DNA: 23andMe confirms that hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9 million users. This is an update to last Friday's story in which the genetic testing company, in an SEC filing, claimed hackers accessed a "significant number" of files about users' ancestry but were muddy on the details. A game of social media leapfrog: Fitness tracking app Strava gets in-app messaging to help you bypass WhatsApp. Let's run. Is there such a thing as a run on cars?: If so, you might want to head over to Tesla ASAP. The electric carmaker's cheapest vehicle is losing half its tax credit next year. See which one that is. Put that data right where I can see it: ArmorCode raises $40 million to consolidate security data in one place. Read more. Pulling at Threads: The number of Threads downloads returns to growth mode as X adds Walmart to its advertiser exodus list. Read how Threads is gaining traction. Trouble with a capital M: Meta faces a major legal challenge after media owners in Spain pursue a privacy breach lawsuit that could set Meta back $600 million in competition damages. Get the scoop. That's the ticket: TikTok expands its in-app Ticketmaster ticketing feature to users in 20 countries. Read more. You heard 'em: It seems like generative AI is everywhere these days. If only it were easier to adopt. AssemblyAI heard the call and is building easier-to-use AI speech models. All with $50 million in new funding. Graphite with a purpose: Up Catalyst draws a €4 million seed round to make battery graphite from carbon dioxide. Here's how. (TC+) It's all about the capture: The makers of the pro photography app Halide venture into video with Kino, due out this February. Learn more. What's in a word?: Well, if you're talking about AI, everything. Introducing the words of the year. Bits and baubles: Atomic Industries closes $17 million in seed funding to exascale America's industrial base. Read more. Weekend warriors you may have missed: GM and Toyota are shaping up to be the biggest losers in the EV transition (TC+) VC Office Hours: Unlocking the Farmers' Market with Black Farmer Fund (TC+) India's MoveInSync eyes $50-60M in fresh funding Robotics Q&A with Meta's Dhruv Batra Deal Dive: Betting on beauty fads is big business (TC+) Image Credits: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg / Getty Images

On the pods Equity covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what's making headlines early in the week. We’re talking through CoreWeave’s new $7 billion valuation, what’s happening in crypto, delays at Google’s AI project and Spotify cutting staff in light of economic conditions. Listen here. Read More Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

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Apple battles new security bugs with more security updates

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall Friday, December 01, 2023

In today's top story, Zack writes that Apple releases some new security updates for iOS, iPadOS and macOS to fix two zero-day bugs. We don't know yet who is actively exploiting these vulnerabilities. Get the scoop. Meanwhile, is this the end of Elon Musk? Darrell thinks so. He opines that so many things have happened lately with Musk — and not many of them good. The most recent being the launch of the Tesla Cybertruck, which was both over budget and probably overhyped. Could Musk's influence be waning? Find out. Also, Kirsten has everything you need to know about the Cybertruck. More Elon news below. And Connie was over in Finland this week for Slush, the yearly event for the European startup ecosystem. She interviewed Benchmark general partners who warned that in today's AI funding frenzy, "Don't be Microsoft." Image Credits: Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch

More top reads If you find that phone you want, you better get it: Smartphone sales are poised to rebound on AI gains, according to reports. Read more. Gift-giving galore: We are now in December, so shopping days before the holidays are passing us by quickly. Don't worry, here are some child-focused products from kid tech startups and a list of books that even authors are excited to gift. If you can't join 'em, beat 'em: Elon Musk told off advertisers deciding to leave X. Now he says the social media giant will chase small business ad dollars instead. He might also let X fail. Chasing AI: AWS re:Invent took place this week. After taking in the environment, Ron gives his perspective on AI amid the rise of large language models. In addition, he writes about how Amazon finds itself in the unusual position of playing catch-up in AI. (TC+) Speaking of Amazon: The company purchased three Falcon 9 launches from SpaceX to support deployment of its Project Kuiper mega-constellation. Stay tuned as this story develops. Nose for news: Capsule's new app combines AI and human editors to curate the news. Read more. Doggone good deal: Not every SPAC is a bad dog. Here's why Alex says Rover's $2.3 billion sale price makes good sense. (TC+) Wait a minute: Montana's ban on TikTok is now on hold. Here's why. Discover: Telegram spruces up its channels with new discovery and customization features. See what's new. Second time's the charm?: Meta faces more questions in Europe about child safety risks on Instagram. Read more. Get your game on: Microsoft is in talks with partners about launching an Xbox mobile store. Get the scoop. Even more for your Friday: Revenue-based financing heats up in the Middle East as Flow48 attracts $25M in funding Former SpaceX engineers build 'vegetarian rocket engine' to save the climate (TC+) Pitch Deck Teardown: Scalestack's $1M AI sales tech seed deck (TC+) What startup founders need to know about AI heading into 2024 (TC+) Bluesky rolls out automated moderation tools, plus user and moderation lists Image Credits: Gabby Jones / Bloomberg / Getty Images

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On the pods The Equity crew is kicking off the last month of 2023 with a look at the latest in startups and VC. This week, Webull nabbed Flink, Uber teamed up with London’s black cabs, and Rover dug up $2.3 billion. We also chatted through IPOs heating back up with Reddit and Shein, and why venture downturns are not death sentences. Listen here. Read More Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

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Newest Jobs from Crunchboard Cloud Engineer Lead at Itemize Corp. (Anywhere) Cloud Engineer at AAOS (Rosemont, IL, USA) Marketing Automation Specialist at Recognition Media (New York, NY, USA) Epic Business Intelligence Analyst (Product Owner) at Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic (Toppenish, WA, USA) Business Systems Supervisor at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (King of Prussia, PA, USA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $349 per month.

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