Brett Adcock is the founder of Figure, an AI robotics company building a general-purpose humanoid robot. Previously, he founded Archer Aviation, an urban air mobility company that went public at $2.7B and Vettery, a machine learning-based talent marketplace that was acquired for $110M. Yesterday, the U.S. experienced its second-largest bank failure in history. In the…
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. Writer’s note: We’re breaking from our usual formatting this week because there was a once-in-a-generation collapse of one of the biggest banks in the country.…
Nearly two-dozen YC-backed Indian startups have over $1 million stuck in accounts with Silicon Valley Bank and over four dozen more have over $250,000 tied with the lender, according to chats and result of a survey among the startups seen by TechCrunch, illustrating how the sudden collapse of the California-headquartered bank, which served as lifeblood for…
Yesterday at around noon in Los Angeles, investor Mark Suster of the venture firm Upfront Ventures began urging “calm” on Twitter. Silicon Valley Bank had bungled its messaging on Wednesday around an effort to strengthen its balance sheet, and startup founders were beginning to fear that their deposits at the tech-friendly, 40-year-old institution were at…
Like all of its peers in the tech industry, Microsoft has a carbon pollution problem. The software giant’s emissions are on the rise, in spite of a pledge from the company to be carbon negative by 2030. This ticking clock explains Microsoft’s latest deal to address its environmental toll: It’s turning to Running Tide to…
No one can predict the follow-on effects of a moment like this. We are in uncharted territory. I write this twice-weekly newsletter on a tight deadline, so when I saw a press release that started with “Silicon Valley Bank, Santa Clara, California, was closed today,” I realized I might need to pivot. To protect SVB’s…
Gowalla co-founder and CEO Josh Williams is heading to the annual SXSW music, technology and arts festival in Austin, Texas this year to do something he’s already done – launch a location-based social networking app. One with the same name and core concept as the original, too. Gowalla made its debut in 2009 in Austin…
In a way, fruit flies are just like us. They have eyes, legs, nervous systems, and they love fruit. Unlike us, however, they only have a few thousand neurons in their brains, which means scientists can map not just all the cells but all the connections between them — producing for the first time a…
In a way, fruit flies are just like us. They have eyes, legs, nervous systems, and they love fruit. Unlike us, however, they only have a few thousand neurons in their brains, which means scientists can map not just all the cells but all the connections between them — producing for the first time a…
Welcome to our 40th Pitch Deck Teardown! Goodness, time flies. Of those 40, just three were angel rounds, so today, we’ll take apart the angel deck of MiO Marketplace, a platform for media publishers and buyers. The company raised $550,000 at a $3.6 million pre-money valuation. Breakdown of the pitch deck teardowns to date. Image…
