When Michael Seibel lost his position at the startup incubator Y Combinator, he didn’t find out in typical tech industry fashion, which might entail an email calling him to a Zoom meeting where the bad news would be delivered. He did it to himself. Today Seibel is announcing that he’s stepping down as YC’s managing … Read more
Two of Blue Origin’s earliest employees, former president Rob Meyerson and chief architect Gary Lai, have started a company that seeks to extract helium-3 from the lunar surface, return it to Earth, and sell it for applications here. The company has been operating in stealth since its founding in 2022, but it emerged on Wednesday … Read more
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday episode, in which we dig into critical startup news to stay abreast of what founders and venture capitalists are working on. Today … Read more
Space One Co., a Japanese startup backed by Canon Inc., failed to send its first rocket to space, a major setback in efforts to join a booming market for commercial launches. The lightweight Kairos rocket exploded in flames just seconds after taking off around 11 a.m. Wednesday morning local time from Space Port Kii, about … Read more
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. This week, I explored what happened to one Norwegian hardware startup, whose cap table was sufficiently wonky that three different investors concluded that it was essentially … Read more
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our interview show, where we sit down with a guest, think about their work, and unpack the rest. This week, Mary Ann interviewed … Read more
The largest funding rounds raised by startups are becoming rarer and rarer. For upstart companies working on the future of energy, however, the market is surprisingly strong. The venture deceleration, and its late-stage glaciation, are not stopping the companies that want to reinvent energy from raising huge rounds. Given what we’re seeing around the world, … Read more
Derek Smith, the founder of Plug In South LA, grew up in southern Los Angeles and saw first-hand the frustration that stems from lack of economic development. That’s why he decided to come home in 2015, after spending the first part of his career in NYC, to start a startup incubator in his old neighborhood. … Read more
Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (formerly The Interchange)! Apologies for being out last week — a cold got the best of me, but I’m back and here to talk about the fact that shutting down startups is big business, Stripe’s new valuation, Klarna’s latest AI update and more. To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and … Read more
Rabbit co-founder and CEO Jesse Lyu isn’t afraid of death … the death of the company, at least. He told TechCrunch that the company is a startup whose fortunes may be swayed by the whims of multibillion-dollar rivals — but that’s no reason to give up and go home. Appearing onstage at StrictlyVC LA, Lyu … Read more