Byju’s is back in the market, hat in hand

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Alex Wilhelm Tuesday, January 23, 2024

Good morning! We have a killer newsletter for you this morning: There are new venture funds on the market, vector databases are on fire, India's best-known unicorn is struggling, Apple is tweaking music economics for its own benefit, and much more. Enjoy! – Alex

Are you ready for an AI-assisted future? Sponsored by Workday We surveyed finance, IT, and HR leaders around the world about the future of artificial intelligence and machine learning in business. Get their perspectives and insights on key trends and themes surrounding AI. Read More

TechCrunch Top 3 Pural wants to bet €400M on Europe: Still busy making investments from its first fund (a €250 million vehicle), Plural has put together a much larger fund to back European startups. Investment in European startups has shown some resilience in recent quarters, but more capital is always welcome. Byju's is looking for capital at $2B valuation: For many startups, a $2 billion price tag would be a massive win. For the Indian edtech giant, once worth $22 billion, this is a sad admission of its struggles. Byju's has had a bunch of problems in recent years with the rapid decline of interest in edtech, board turnovers, criticism over its strategy, missed revenue targets and so much more. It's not all bad news for Africa: The global venture investment slowdown is taking the wind from the sails of many startup markets. Africa is one such region, and saw venture investment decline by around a third last year. There's good news in the data as well, though: Francophone countries saw more investment, and investors spread their money across more sectors. Image Credits: Plural

Don't miss these There's big money in relating unstructured data: I won't pretend to actually understand vector databases, even if Weviate CEO Bob van Luijt once tried to teach me. But investors seem to get the technology — or at least how useful it is for generative AI — because they just put $28 million into Qdrant. The large Series A comes after Zilliz, Pinecone, Weviate and other vector database companies raised big rounds themselves. AC Ventures raises $210M: The Jakarta, Indonesia–based venture firm just closed its fifth fund, bringing its total assets under management to more than $500 million. This is welcome news for Southeast Asian startups because investments in the region have dried up quickly. And, any time a new venture fund gets to work, a number of startups are going to raise new capital and keep building. TravelPerk raises $104M, SoftBank leads: Travel-focused startups are starting off 2024 strong. On the heels of South Korea's Myrealtrip raising a good $56 million last week, TravelPerk, a business travel management platform targeted at SMEs, has raised a nine-figure round. This looks to me like a trend is forming. This funding round also brings SoftBank's Vision 2 into the 2024 fundraising mix, meaning that we should expect some huge rounds to come. Apple wants more spatial audio from artists: Artists that offer spatial audio versions of their music may receive 10% more revenue from Apple Music as the service seeks to get more of the music world to support virtual surround sound. Larger per-stream royalties are welcome in the music industry due to the massive share of the market that streaming has captured in recent years. China says 'just kidding' on new gaming rules: After the market responded badly to Beijing's proposed gaming regulations and tanked the value of Chinese gaming companies, the country's taking a few steps back. Now, it seems the government has quietly pulled the proposed curbs on the industry from its official website. The country has been trying to regulate business while keeping economic activity strong, but it seems that its efforts contradict one another at times. And even more: The startup investment cycle seems to be running at full tilt. Since I started writing this newsletter for you this morning, a number of new transactions have dropped: Bluewhite raised $39 million for its agtech robot business; Albedo has raised $35 million to build near-Earth orbit satellites; and Bulk Exchange has raised $4.5 million to help construction companies buy and sell materials in bulk. It's getting busy out there! Image Credits: Qdrant -- Qdrant founders

Before you go Mr. Beast makes $263,000 from posting his video on X, kinda: After Elon Musk asked YouTuber Mr. Beast to put one of his videos on Twitter, the video maker initially demurred. Then he went ahead and uploaded a clip to the social service as a test. It did better than he expected, I think that it is fair to say, but the traction may also be due to some internal astroturfing by Musk and team. Call it a wash. Image Credits: Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images

Read more stories on TechCrunch.com

Newest Jobs from Crunchboard Information Technology (IT) Field Technician at Tekmanagement: Secure IT Solutions (Brookings, OR, USA) AV Meeting Support Technician at Air Line Pilots Association (Tysons, VA, USA) Business Systems Supervisor at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA, United States) AI Architect at Entertainment Partners (Tempe, Arizona, USA) Startups Program Lead - Sales Leader at Agency (New York, NY, USA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $349 per month.

View this email online in your browser Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Unsubscribe © 2024 Yahoo. All rights reserved. 110 5th St, San Francisco, CA 94103

Exxon lawsuit aims to stifle shareholders

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall Monday, January 22, 2024

Hello and welcome to TechCrunch PM, your afternoon dose of startups, venture capital and Big Tech. We'll discuss what happens when shareholders actually pay attention, developers don't develop, a big climate tech fund and X comes down with a bug. Let's go! — Christine Image Credits: Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Learn how to end streaming data ping-ponging with Wasm Sponsored by Redpanda Stream processing work includes mundane transformation tasks and can require ping-ponging data back and forth between storage and compute. Come learn how Wasm can simplify as well as boost the performance of real-time applications and data pipelines. Register Now

TechCrunch PM Top 3 Exxon throws a fit over shareholders exercising their rights: Over on TechCrunch+, Tim writes about two Exxon activist investors pushing for Exxon to reduce its vast carbon emissions. Simple enough, right? Well, over the weekend, the oil giant filed a lawsuit in federal court asking for permission to ignore them at its next annual meeting. So much for public companies being beholden to shareholders. Apple Vision Pro is coming, only without a lot of apps: Although consumer excitement for Apple's Vision Pro mixed reality headset may be high, there's only a tepid response from app developers. New App Store data shows only around 150 apps have been designed specifically so far. X bug labels some posts as 'sensitive media': X's relationship with advertisers has been . . . hot and cold at best — examples here and here. However, when you are trying to attract and retain advertisers, it helps when the system doesn't mark them as "sensitive media." Image Credits: Brian Heater

More top reads Disney wants you to get moving: Myriad laughs have been had watching people walk into walls or destroy televisions while operating VR headsets. To save your drywall, Disney has a solution that will keep you on your feet and moving, but stay in place. Day One wants you to share: Journal app Day One got a bit more social with a new "Shared Journals" feature, which is a private space where you can share life updates with up to 30 other people. Members of Shared Journals can leave comments and reactions on entries. Crypto snow seems to be melting away: Sure, there's been a string of good news lately on the cryptocurrency front, including the recent launch of spot bitcoin ETFs and the legal system being more crypto-positive. Over on TechCrunch+, we wonder if those recent wins are enough to resurrect venture interest. My, what a big climate tech fund you have: ArcTern, now flush with $355 million in capital commitments for a new climate tech fund, is looking for startups that can show quick returns. It's not interested in tech that can't scale. It's a good time to invest in early-stage edtech: Speaking of areas to invest in, AI has excited the world of edtech startups, and some have been heads down in the development phase. However, AI is not going to be enough — startups will need to get creative on the best ways to use it. That's why a handful of investors remain bullish on this sector. Head over to TechCrunch+. How to activate auto scroll on TikTok: TikTok has been experimenting with an auto-scrolling mechanic for months. Here's how it works. Here comes the sun: Japan's first lunar lander has officially powered down on the moon after its solar cells were unable to generate electricity. There's a chance things could change with the direction of the sun's rays. A comprehensive list of 2023 & 2024 tech layoffs: We continue to show you how and where layoffs are affecting the tech industry. In case you missed it: Voice cloning startup ElevenLabs lands $80M, achieves unicorn status LoanDepot says 16.6M customers had 'sensitive personal' information stolen in cyberattack Terraform Labs files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Hackers breached Microsoft to find out what Microsoft knows about them Image Credits: TikTok

On the pods Monday's Equity gives a rundown of news from the weekend and the week ahead: Crypto is not enjoying a post-ETF boom, Canva is big, and the Q4 2023 earnings cycle will kick off this week. Listen here. Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

Read more stories on TechCrunch.com

Newest Jobs from Crunchboard AV Meeting Support Technician at Air Line Pilots Association (Tysons, VA, USA) Business Systems Supervisor at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA, United States) AI Architect at Entertainment Partners (Tempe, Arizona, USA) Startups Program Lead - Sales Leader at Agency (New York, NY, USA) Network Administrator at Washington State Department of Natural Resources (Olympia, WA, USA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $349 per month.

View this email online in your browser Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Unsubscribe © 2024 Yahoo. All rights reserved. 110 5th St, San Francisco, CA 94103