For Your Information Blog: 11/09/23

Monday, September 11, 2023

DNS misconfiguration took down Square, company finds 'no evidence' of cyberattack

Monday, September 11, 2023

In today's top story, now that Square is, well, square, it's time to take a look at just what happened to cause the outage last week. Get the scoop.

Next, KKR is doubling down on its investment into Reliance Retail, which bagged another $250 million in funding on a valuation of $100 billion. Find out where Reliance plans to use all that green.

And the European Union's regulatory framework is on full display in a new WhatsApp cross-platform messaging feature. Get a sneak peek.

Image Credits: Gearstd / Getty Images

More top reads

Find your way: Open Cosmos, a U.K. satellite startup focused on sustainability, raises $50 million so that satellites can share data with each other. Read more.

Get your Googliness on: Google has a new initiative aimed at supporting researchers and public policy solutions around AI with the debut of the Digital Futures Project. Learn more.

Security!: 0xPass raises $1.8 million from Balaji Srinivasan and others to build secure login systems for web3. Because crypto wallets won't secure themselves.

You can't take it with you: Common Trust grabs $2.6 million to give business owners employee-focused succession plans. Pass it on.

Direct listing: India plans to explore the London Stock Exchange for listing local firms. Ring-a-ding-ding.

One molecule at a time: That's Scala Biodesign's plan to more easily re-engineer proteins. And venture capitalists are here for it.

Seeing green: India's Kale Logistics raises $30 million in global expansion push. Read more.

Catching up to ChatGPT: AI app Character.ai is narrowing its gap on ChaptGPT in terms of monthly U.S. users. See where it stands.

Look up: Techstars selects 12 companies for its fall space accelerator. Like it was written in the stars.

This week in AI: The generative AI boom drives demand for custom chips. And other stories.

Apple Event 2023: This event starts tomorrow, so get your watch party ready. Also, here's what to expect and a look at how the shift to USB-C will affect the iPhone 15.

Weekend warriors you might have missed:

A program so nice, these founders did YC twice (TC+)

LexisNexis is embracing generative AI to ease legal writing and research (TC+)

New California law would force firms to report diversity metrics (TC+)

Image Credits: Open Cosmos

TC Opinion: Fintech faces its reckoning: It's only a matter of time until the house of cards collapses

“Over the past two years, central banks have hiked interest rates from their COVID-era lows to the highest levels for a generation. And now the business models that won consumers' affection look increasingly tenuous,” writes Navan EVP and GM of Expense Michael Sindicich.

“It's only a matter of time until the house of cards collapses.”

If you’d like to submit an opinion column to TechCrunch, please read our new editorial guidelines.

Image Credits: Wirestock / Getty Images

Instacart's IPO price range puts it close to decacorn status

After parsing Instacart’s S-1 filing, Alex Wilhelm estimates that the delivery platform will reach “a fully diluted market cap potential of between $8.6 billion and $9.3 billion” after its upcoming IPO.

“What we care more about is how rich — or not — its new valuation is compared to its recent financial performance,” he writes.

“Recall that in the wake of the pandemic bump to services like grocery delivery, Instacart managed to hold on to all its earned scale and has become comfortably profitable to boot.”

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Image Credits: SOPA Images / Getty Images

On the pods

Equity is kicking off the week with another look at the stock market and upcoming earnings. We then dove deep into Klaviyo and Instacart’s IPO price ranges, as well as Coinbase and India, shared satellites, and why the Apple event matters for startups.