Fintech leader cuts internal valuation by 28%

To get an overview of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3:00 PM PDT, subscribe here.

Oh hello, and welcome to Thursday! It has been another intense day with lots of news happening. We’ve picked the cream for you. Oh! And if you want to be a part of Disrupt with your startup, don’t forget to apply for the Startup Battlefield 200!

On July 21st, we have an incredible line-up for our TC Robotics event – and something is wrong with the people who work in marketing, because they decided to make the event free. Get your ticket today in case they change their mind… — Christine and Shark

TechCrunch Top 3

• In the air tonight: Brian gives us an insight into the new Apple MacBook Air M2. Let the pluses and minuses begin!

• Lose a few stripes: Anita, Natasha M and Mary Ann teamed up to deal with Stripe’s news that it is the latest to cut its internal valuation. For those who are like “What?” they explain that this means that the pricing of preferred stock being sold is chosen by a third party versus startups or venture capital investors. Also interesting is that this is unusual for a company to do.

• Into the glass: We enjoyed Dominic Madorihis deep dive on TechCrunch+ into some predictions about what Black VCs and founders can expect from the investment community in the second half of this year.

  

  Image credit: Yuichiro Chino/Getty Images

Startups and VCs

“We could have taken money from crypto funds, but it’s stronger to take it from the gaming industry and believers,” said Raz Friedman, co-founder of UnCaged, Jacquelyn in an interview regarding the company’s $24 million fundraising. “We are primarily a game company that uses and brings web3 into games, rather than being a web3-first company.”

“We envision You.com to be a search platform that is open and allows others to build on top of all the search technology we’ve created,” said Richard Socher Kyle for his story on You’s $25 million fundraising. “Data transparency, user personalization, summarization, privacy and state-of-the-art search are the foundations of our platform, and we beat Google in the long run by empowering the world to build the next search experience together.”

The story continues

🎶 More, more, give me more (what a wonderful melody).

• And how does that make you feel, |*FNAME*|: Therapist chatbots continue to grow in popularity, and Wysa raised $20 million to further expand its services, as Jagmeet reports.

• A star, would buy for mortal enemy: Customer reviews are a well-known and powerful way to influence customers. Okendo wants to turn your customers into buyers by leveraging them, Christine reports.

• AI caramba: AssemblyAI expands its AI-as-a-service business, as it raises $30 million in a Series B round, reports Kyle.

• Is this seat occupied?: The world is moving to hybrid working, and offices are scratching their heads to figure out how to allocate office space to reflect it. Robin raised $30 million for the office reservation software to find out, Kyle reports.

• Do you actually lift weights: At-home fitness startup Tonal — last valued at $1.6 billion — shed over a third of its employees to help it become a “sustainable and profitable business.” Natasha M reports.

Five investors explain why Latin America is ready to make it through the crypto winter

Image credit: night33 (opens in new window) / Getty Images

Even as a group of crypto companies continue their catastrophic collapse, “investors backing DeFi startups in Latin America are positioning themselves for a rebound,” reports Anna Heim.

She surveyed five investors who have staked companies in the region’s crypto and DeFi sectors to learn more about how their ethos has changed since winter began and why consumer adoption in LatAm is stronger than other markets:

• Matias Nisenson, co-founder, DeFi Wonderland

• Christine Chang, Head of Corporate Development and Ventures, Tribal

• Patricio Jutard, Co-Founder and General Partner, Newtopia VC

• Claire Diaz-Ortiz, Commencement Committee Chair, VC3; scout, Kleiner Perkins

• Andy Areitio, General Partner, TheVentureCity

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, helping founders and startup teams get ahead. You can register here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Before we dive into today’s big tech stories, we wanted to point out a few stories from late yesterday that have continued to grab our attention for another day.

The first is Kirstenits report answering the question of whether Tesla’s top AI chief for the Autopilot vision team will return. We can now confirm that it is negative. For all the DoorDash lovers out there in the US, the subtotal minimum will likely increase in your area, Rebecca write. Meanwhile, Sarah is leaning into a report that TikTok has overtaken YouTube as the place where all the kids and teens spend their time. And Rebecca also covered how Uber is being sued by over 550 women over allegations of sexual assault by drivers.

Alright, now on with the show. Our colleagues did so well for another day that there is a lot to dig into. By now you already know that Twitter went down this morning for users around the world, Amanda reports. Alex was not amused. During the chaos, Twitter began testing some new features. Amanda also wrote about users being reminded to add alt text descriptions for images, while Ivan described their new custom timeline test.

In financial news, Kyle reports on Plaid adding read-only support for cryptocurrency exchanges. Finally, Manish covered the Internet and Mobile Association of India, a technology advocacy group that decided to drop cryptocurrency due to regulatory uncertainty.

• So you want to play a game?: Revenue from non-game apps beat games in the US Apple App Store for the first time, Sarah reports. Meanwhile, Lauren writes about Nintendo’s new acquisition in the CG animation space and Sony’s new PlayStation loyalty program.

• Plugged in: Panasonic embarks on a $4 billion electric vehicle battery plant in Kansas Jaclyn printer may be the largest in the world. Commercial electric vehicle company Arrival is making some tough financial and workforce decisions, if you know what we mean, to meet its van product goal, Kirsten reports. Kirsten also reports that the ink on Walmart’s deal with Canoo is barely dry, and Rebecca writes about one of the warnings – that it does not want Canoo to sell electric cars to Amazon.

• Brrrr, it’s cold in here: In another hit for cryptocurrency, one of the sector’s largest lenders, Celsius, filed for bankruptcy, citing the need to stabilize its business. Manish have more.

• Trust, more like antitrust: Natasha L have a couple of compelling stories today. One concerns Google facing a new antitrust investigation in Italy over an allegation that the search engine giant may have “abused a dominant position by obstructing data portability rights granted to individuals under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.” The second is about how Amazon is in talks with the EU to try to settle its antitrust investigation into its use of merchant data.