Andreessen Horowitz
Deal terms feel like dart boards these days
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. When Andreessen Horowitz unveiled its new early-stage…
Daily Crunch: Elon Musk unveils three-pronged strategy to fund his $43B Twitter purchase
Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.
a16z debuts new crypto research team led by Columbia, Stanford researchers
In the world of crypto, where vast amounts of investment are pouring into young and scrappy teams building uncharted technology, it’s increasingly the VC firms who are investing heavily in…
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Meet Morado, a two-month old Colombian marketplace for the beauty industry that just raised $5M
Morado, a two-month-old Colombian startup aiming to digitize beauty salons in Latin America, has raised $5 million in a pre-seed round from a bevy of global investors. Tiger Global Management and H20 Capital Innovation co-led the round, which also included participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), QED, Latitud and Village Global (which is backed by Jeff…
Practice your pitch today on TechCrunch Live with Deel and a16z
TechCrunch Live is back! After a short break (because we were at TechCrunch Early Stage), the weekly show resumes today, and we’re excited to announce a new segment. Called Pitch…
Decentralized identity startup Spruce wants to help users control their sign-in data
Signing into websites using your Google or Facebook account has become so commonplace that lots of people don’t think twice before doing it. Keeping control over one’s own identity on…
Daily Crunch: Since December 2021, Better.com has laid off nearly half of its workforce
Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.
So, why does a16z need its own Y Combinator? The better question appears to be: Why not?
Andreessen Horowitz unveils piloted program for early-stage entrepreneurs
For more than a year, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has quietly piloted its own take on an accelerator for early-stage entrepreneurs; today, its partners announced the program’s official debut. In exchange…
Deel’s timeline is impressive: Founded in 2018, entered YC and raised its seed round in 2019. In 2020, the company raised a Series A and Series B. In 2021, Deel…
What the Binance bailout of Axie Infinity means for crypto’s future
Why did Binance step in to rescue a startup it hadn’t put any money into previously? One obvious answer could lie in the fact that Axie’s success is seen as…
Axie Infinity creator raises $150M round to compensate victims of ~$625M Ronin hack
Vietnamese gaming studio Sky Mavis announced that it has raised $150 million in funding led by crypto exchange Binance to help reimburse users who lost funds during a ~$625 million…
The voracious rise of NFTs as an asset class has been a bubble that seemingly refuses to pop — at least for the time being — but NFT marketplaces are…
Founded by ex-dLocal and AstroPay execs, Datanomik is bringing open banking to LatAm
Cross-border payments platform dLocal is one of the most notable Latin American startups in recent history — the company became Uruguay’s first unicorn in 2020 and went public on the…
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Cross River Bank goes from tiny to mighty, with a $3B+ valuation and a crypto-first strategy
Financial technology startups raised $121.6 billion last year — up 153% year-over-year in terms of global VC deal value — and include a range of outfits, from payments companies to digital banks to corporate spend players. It’s not as typical for us to hear, though, about venture capitalists pouring millions of dollars into a traditional…
Axie Infinity’s Ronin network suffers ≈$625M exploit in largest DeFi hack to date
Crypto gaming giant Axie Infinity, which raised last year at a $3 billion valuation from a16z, was already having a catastrophic week. It just didn’t know about it until this…
The exclusive club of family offices just got one comma shorter. For the paltry sum of $350,000, or just over five times the median U.S. household income, individuals can invest…
Kyle Lui, long-time DCM partner, leaving to join Bling Capital as second GP
Lui’s move is the latest among high-profile fund managers.
a16z, NFX back Latitud’s effort to become ‘the operating system for every venture-backed company in LatAm’
Serial entrepreneur Brian Requarth learned his lesson the hard way. When he sold Brazilian online real estate marketplace VivaReal for $550 million several years ago, he had to pay more…
Flock Homes closes on $26M for landlords to exchange rentals for shares in a portfolio of homes
Historically, only institutions have been able to be part of REITs (real estate investment trust), which are made up of companies that own or finance income-producing real estate across a…
Bored Apes NFT startup Yuga Labs raises seed round at monster $4B valuation
Yuga Labs, maker of the multimillion dollar monkey JPEGs that plenty of NFT skeptics love to hate, just raised a $450 million round from Andreessen Horowitz at a $4 billion…
Following a16z departure, Katie Haun debuts Haun Ventures with $1.5B in capital to back crypto startups
Katie Haun, who co-led Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm before announcing her departure this past December, is ready to take the wraps off her new organization, which she’s calling Haun Ventures.…
Hex scores $52M Series B to grow data science collaboration platform
Hex has been moving briskly along its startup evolutionary path with its data science collaboration platform growing at a rapid pace, so much so the company attracted the attention of…
Paradigm and a16z back Ethereum scaling startup Optimism at $1.65B valuation
Throughout the most recent crypto bull run, plenty of new crypto users have interacted with the Ethereum network for the first time and have been surprised to find sluggish, expensive…
Payrails emerges from stealth with $6.4M led by a16z to build the OS for payments
Payments — taking and paying out money — remains a fragmented and complex area for merchants, marketplaces and others that do business with multiple parties online. As it grows —…
Luno launches investment arm to back over 200 fintech and crypto/web3 startups yearly
Luno, a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG), today announced that it is launching Luno Expeditions, an early-stage investment arm to back fintech and crypto/web3 startups globally. The fund will leverage…
Startup banking service Mercury jumps into debt lending to take on Silicon Valley Bank
Mercury, a well-funded, three-year-old startup that offers a host of banking services to startups, is today rolling out a new offering for its customers: venture debt. The idea is to…
Rutter is building a universal e-commerce API for reading and writing data so that tech customers can integrate with commerce platforms and access financial data points.
Ex-Meta employees raise $200M from a16z, Tiger, Multicoin to realize Facebook’s crypto dreams
Facebook’s audacious attempt at creating a crypto payments network met an unceremonious end earlier this year when Silvergate Capital acquired the Diem technology assets for $182 million. The deal showcased how…
Chris Dixon, Marc Andreessen back $30M fund exclusively investing in NFT art
The world of NFTs is never dull — as long as the money never stops. While investors continue to pour billions into the sector, albeit at a slowing pace, more…
