The most interesting startup stories of the week
As the end of 0% rates of interest continues to loom, SoftBank-backed Norwegian online supermarket delivery startup Oda has confirmed 150 job cuts and is refocusing on Norway and Sweden, where it hopes to achieve profitability next 12 months .
Laying people off is never excellent news, but Oda co-founder Jon Kåre Stene, now a partner at VC firm Skyfall Ventures, hopes it “could spark the birth of some new startups in the Norwegian tech scene or strengthen companies already on the go.” There are already several startup factories in Europe – Skype, for example – and now it might be Norway’s turn.
Hardware is Hard, Episode 234: We already knew that Humane’s Ai Pin launch didn’t go easily. Now the startup is urging customers to stop using the charging case attributable to concerns about battery fires. According to Humane, this is “out of an abundance of caution” and based on a single criticism, but is unlikely to assist this case.
Reinventing the walkie-talkie: The two co-founders of French startup Ten Ten have not been sleeping much recently, as their original social media app has gone viral with 1 million downloads in their home country and 6 million worldwide.
Sued, fined and evicted: AI mortgage startup LoanSnap is not doing well. Thanks to supporters like Reid Hoffman, Richard Branson and the Chainsmokers, employees are deeply concerned about the company’s future as worries proceed to mount.
Fall from a height: The inside story of Fisker’s downfall is fascinating, and TechCrunch has it. Sean O’Kane worked on it for weeks, and the result is a tale of hubris, power struggles, and repeated failures to determine the basic processes that are the backbone of every automotive manufacturer.
We’ll dance again: Firefly co-founder and CTO Joseph “Sefi” Genis was among the a whole lot murdered by Hamas on October 7. Now the Israeli startup is developing dynamically.
The most interesting collections this week
Solutions by Text (SBT), a company that enables you to pay bills and apply for loans via text messaging, has raised $110 million in funding. However, as TechCrunch’s Mary Ann Azevedo noted, “this is not your typical startup capital raise.” The company has been launched since its inception in 2008–2021.
Another difference between SBT and the average startup is that it is EBITDA positive and heading towards full profitability this 12 months, in response to CEO David Baxter, who took the helm in 2021.
Founded by brothers Danny and Mike Cantrell, the company turned around under Baxter’s leadership.
“We have really transformed our company from a founder-owned, family-owned lifestyle company sending about 20 million messages a month to about 150-200 million messages a month,” Baxter told TechCrunch.
- Live by the sword: Sword Health, an AI-powered virtual physiotherapy startup, raised a $30 million seed funding round and a $130 million secondary funding round, bringing its valuation to $3 billion. This represents an increase of fifty% in comparison with the November 2021 Series D valuation.
- Electric vehicle design in 18 months: Swiss startup Neural Concept has raised $27 million to chop electric vehicle development time to 18 months, a strong selling point as Europe and America seek to lower electric vehicle production costs to compete with China.
- We can discover why: GetWhy, a consumer research technology company that uses artificial intelligence to assist firms conduct market research and draw conclusions from video interviews, has raised $34.5 million from California VC firm PeakSpan Capital and others.
- Where is your head: Austrian startup Storyblok has raised $80 million so as to add more artificial intelligence to its “headless” content management system (CMS) for non-technical people.
Other stories you’ll be able to’t miss on TechCrunch…
After hearing about Ticketmaster’s antitrust lawsuit, some of us began wondering if it could offer hope to ticketing startups.
And now Ticketmaster’s owner, Live Nation, confirms that Ticketmaster has been hacked. If your personal information has been caught in a hack, it isn’t great. But if this is one other step towards finding alternatives, perhaps there is some consolation.
More top stories:
- Take a walk: SAP will spend as much as $1.5 billion in money to amass WalkMe, a “digital adoption” platform provider.
- Large nest egg: Private equity firm Bridgepoint has struck a $650 million deal to purchase a majority stake in LumApps, a French “intranet super app,” which could spur further acquisitions.
- Found in reports: We knew that Salesforce bought Spiff in February. Now we know how much it paid the management company in sales commissions: $419 million, including $374 million in money.
- 11 figures: Spanish start-ups reached a combined value of €100 billion last 12 months as the tech scene matures. Nevertheless, of total value value USD 191 billionthe Cambridge ecosystem alone is almost twice that of Spain’s.