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receive to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you ca n’t miss from the reality of inauguration . Sign uphereto get it in your inbox every Friday .
New year , new opportunities , and now that 2023 is well and truly in our rearview mirror , the startup winter is behind us , yes ? Well . . . it seems as if thing are on the mend , but we ’re not quite out of the woods yet . There ’s been a flurry of new layoffs announced over the retiring little while , as startups are attempt to wrestle themselves out from under the consummate reality of balance sheets and P&Ls stare at each other severely from across the chasm .
TechCrunch former Stage 2024is amount to Boston on April 25 . Get help and not hype from head father , investor , entrepreneurs and startup expert sharing hard - won info that every founder needs to know . Save $ 300 on Founder or Investor passesif you bribe beforeJanuary 26 at 11:59 p.m. PST .
Most interesting startup stories this week
It ’s been a 10 since Aileen Lee coined the term “ unicorn ” in a TechCrunch clause to discover a inauguration valued at more than $ 1 billion . This week , she came back and took a deep dive into the unicorn of today . In “ Welcome back to the Unicorn Club , 10 long time subsequently , ” Lee offers a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of the Unicorn Club . Her piece excogitate on the dramatic growth in the issue of unicorn , the displacement in their sector focal point , and the changing speculation capital landscape over the past tenner . The number of unicorn arise 14x . More than three - quarters of them are B2B startups . And we ’re likely to lose a bunch of them before they change state into “ real ” issue , mostly because a deal of this value is mesh up in companies that are worth million of dollars on newspaper only .
Some more affair that caught my curious optic :
uracil frontin ’ bro : MrBeast made over $ 263,000 in ad revenue from post his latest picture on X , butthe YouTube icon says he thinks this issue is “ a bit of a frontage . ”
Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI
Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI
What ’s up , Durl?:The assumption of theRabbit R1 is that it does most , if not all , of what your smartphone can do , but it uses AI to accomplish all the tasks in response to natural spoken communication inquiry . And Darrell ( pronounced “ Durl ” by people who wish well to draw his ire ) screw it , as you ’ll notice from his article .
Crashtocurrency : Singapore - based Terraform Labs ( TFL ) , the company behind digital assets TerraUSD ( UST ) and Luna , filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcyin Delaware fall out the crash of its cryptocurrencies in 2022 .
Most interesting fundraises this week
Is it startup winter ? Who know , but that does n’t stop a bunch of really interesting startups from raising absolutelybucketsof cash .
Hello ? Is this thing on?:There ’s a great deal of money in voice cloning . ElevenLabs , a startup developing AI - powered tools to create and edit synthetic vocalisation , announced that itclosed an $ 80 million Series B roundco - top by big investors , justmonths after it raised its $ 19 million Series A.
Now it can afford business enterprise stratum : TravelPerk , a business change of location direction platform direct at SMEs , hasraised $ 104 millionin a funding round top by SoftBank .
Vectoring in on success : Qdrant , the troupe behind the eponymic candid source vector database , hasraised $ 28 million in a Series A circle of fundingled by Spark Capital .
This week’s big trend: The Return of the Layoffs
If you ’ve checker out the TechCrunch roundup of all the tech layoffs over the past yr and a mo , you ’ve probably do to a similar finish as we have : thing have been pretty cutting for a while . We check Hope that things were getting a lilliputian good , but this calendar week has been . . . a lot .
Just from the last week . . .
gain the brakes : Vroom is shut down its on-line used car marketplace , put off 800employees , or 90 % of its men .
Credit declined : Expense direction startup Brex , which was valued at $ 12.3 billion two eld ago , laid off 282 people , or about 20 % of its staff .
Game over : Riot Games islaying off about 530 employees , which represents 11 % of its workforce , the Tencent - possess company harbinger on Monday .
deliverance lag : Amerindic intellectual nourishment delivery startupSwiggy is cutting about 400 jobs , or nearly 7 % of its workforce .
Everyone loves a Daylist : ButSpotify let its Maker go last month . < sad fanfare >
large companies are n’t spared : It ’s not strictly startups — a few of the bigguns are place off employee too , includingAmazon , TikTok , Microsoft / ActivisionandGoogle .
Other unmissable TechCrunch stories . . .
Every week , there ’s always a few fib I want to share with you but that somehow do n’t fit into the categories above . It ’d be a shame if you miss ’em , so here ’s a random grab traveling bag of goodies for ya :
Where do you think you ’re going?:One thing you’re able to say about VR is that it ’s inspiring a sight of creative solutions to unlike issue around the technical school . Movement is a major one , of course , andDisney thinks it hasjustthe thing .
agitate tight , tug hard : Unlike most every other lithium - ion battery interpersonal chemistry , TAQ is an organic chemical compound — not the free - range hippy character , but the kind made primarily of carbon . Lamborghini just license the MIT - evolve technical school .
Keep on truckin’:The ousted founder of bankrupt EV inauguration Lordstown Motors haslaunched a new fellowship call in LandX Motorsthat conspicuously display the same electric pickup truck he once promised would beat Tesla , Ford and General Motors to market . Better lately than never ? prison term will tell , but so far , we have many questions and not a quite a little of answer .
