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Over a year after grabbing $4 million in pre-seed funding, Chile-based Kredito, a business lending startup, is back with another $6 million in new funding.

The company launched to the public in 2021 and partners with financial institutions to help small businesses with their spend management, access digital unsecured loans, open a bank account and obtain a business credit card.

When we profiled Kredito last year, Sebastian Robles, co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that business credit didn’t automatically come with an account, leaving business owners to use personal credit cards.

“Everyone wants to sell online, so e-commerce capabilities are key,” he told TechCrunch recently. “Most of our customers are moving online, but what’s happened is that banks are more restricted with their products, making it harder for the unbanked or the underbanked to access decent financial services or sometimes even a bank account.”

Instead, Kredito takes on that risk by using a proprietary algorithm and alternative data to evaluate credit risk more inclusively than traditional banks, and in real time, Robles said. It also created products with few requirements so that it could reduce the cost of acquisition and gather data from customers on how best to help them access financial products. For example, the account and corporate card can be used by anyone, while the loan product is accessible to those who qualify and share data with Kredito, Robles said.

Including the new equity funding round — Robles is still finalizing a debt round — the company has raised $11.5 million in equity and debt so far. The new capital came from a group of angel investors and family offices, including Cornershop by Uber founders, Oskar Hjertonsson and Daniel Undurraga, and various partners from real estate developer Patio.

Robles wasn’t necessarily planning to go after new capital this soon, but said Kredito was growing faster than expected. He has run the company very lean, but needed to add to the small team to meet growth.

The company has about 100,000 accounts and approximately 5,000 active users and is seeing 90% revenue growth month over month, he said. It is focused on maintaining that growth throughout the next year as it continues to open thousands of new accounts each month.

Robles intends to use the new capital to expand into new countries and consolidate its growth in Chile. Exporting Kredito’s product — making sure what it does in Chile it can do in other countries — will be key, he said. As such, the company will work first on its underwriting by accessing data in multiple countries and replicating its strategies.

“Internationalization is the main focus,” he added. “We have a lot of work to do. We have made a lot of progress in the underwriting and the loans, and now we have to do the same with other products. Locally, we will focus on growth. We already have product market fit and a lot of traction, and now we want to grow more.”

Kredito banks $6M as the LatAm business lender eyes international expansion by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

Amazon has quietly rolled out Prime Gaming, its subscription service that offers access to a number of titles, to its members in India weeks after it started testing the service in the South Asian market.

The gaming service, complimentary to Amazon Prime and Video subscribers, offers users access to a range of mobile, PC and Mac games as well as in-game loot at no additional cost. Each month, the e-commerce group adds a number of new titles to the service.

At the time of writing, some of the free games and their loot boxes available to users in India include League of Legends, DeathLoop, Quake, COD Season 1, EA Madden 23, FIFA 23, Apex Legends, Destiny 2, and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.

Prime Gaming makes Amazon Prime subscription, which costs just $18 a year in India, even more enticing for a certain demographic in the South Asian market. It can also have some “fascinating long-term impact” for PC gaming ecosystem in India, said Rishi Alwani, a long-time industry analyst and communications manager at Pune-headquartered gaming upstart SuperGaming

“It would expose Indian PC gamers with Prime subscriptions to a variety of content they would not necessarily have gravitated towards. By and large, the Indian PC games space is value-driven permeated by either big budget ‘safe’ AAA fare like GTA 5 or free-to-play shooters like Valorant. Prime Gaming brings in a varied, curated selection of genres and titles that many may have not even considered to pick up and play otherwise such as Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons,” he told TechCrunch in a text.

“Throw in in-game content for popular titles like Modern Warfare 2 and Apex Legends and it’s pretty obvious that Amazon India’s at that phase where it is looking at gaming to retain its burgeoning Prime subscriber base.”

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Amazon quietly launches Prime Gaming in India by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Twitter launched “Blue for Business” last week alongside relaunching Twitter Blue. At that time, the social network had assigned a gold checkmark to businesses. Now it’s offering some more details.

With Blue for Business, Twitter is also providing an additional badge — refer to our checkmark and badges guide — that helps organizations identify brands and people associated with it.

Twitter’s product manager Esther Crawford said the social media platform is launching a pilot program for Blue for Business with select businesses. The company plans to expand this to more organizations next year, Crawford said.

Those with Blue for Business will also get a small badge next to their profile display name, establishing to others that they work with the said organization. For instance, you can see a square Twitter badge next to Crawford’s display name.

Brands, media houses and others now have a square profile picture, instead of the round one, making another clearer distinction. But it’s not clear if the square profile picture is a part of the Blue for Business package.

Twitter has yet to share details about how much it will charge for Blue for Business and what other perks it may entail, but asserted that “a company can link any number of their affiliated individuals, businesses and brands to their account.”

The company said that organizations, media houses, and sports teams can use this feature to link the accounts of their employees, journalists, and players.

“By creating this connection, we’re making it possible for businesses to create networks within their own organizations–on Twitter. Businesses can affiliate their leadership, brands, support handles, employees or teams. Journalists, sports team players, or movie characters can all be affiliated,” Twitter said in a blog post.

While identifying associated brands and employees is a good feature for companies, they would want many more benefits out of this plan.

Twitter has had a rollercoaster of the last 48 hours. The company rolled out a terrible policy banning links and handles to other social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Mastadon, and even link-in-bio tools Linktree, and lnk.bio. After facing backlash over that, Twitter swiftly deleted tweets and the policy page detailing the announcement. On the other hand, Twitter chief Elon Musk put out a poll asking people if he should step down as CEO — and 57% of people voted in favor of that.

Twitter Blue for Business now allows companies to identify their employees by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Viva Republica, an operator of South Korean finance super appToss, has finalized a $405 million Series G funding and it says it is now valued at 9.1 trillion won ( $7 billion), up from 8.5 trillion won in June 2021, when it raised $410 million in pre-Series F funding at a $7.4 billion (8.5 trillion won) valuation. (South Korea’s currency has depreciated against the dollar this year.)

The company’s recent funding caught our attention, including that it signals the company is doing comparatively well amid a gloomy macroeconomic outlook. Indeed, unlike global fintech companies, includingKlarna,Stripe, andCheckout.com, which have seen their valuations cut fairly dramatically in 2022, Viva Republica boosted its valuation again.

Viva Republica was also on a bit of a hiring spree in October, in stark contrast to many global tech companies, includingfintech startups, that have been conducting major layoffs this year. The Seoul-based company had about 1,900 employees as of August.

Fintech-focused investor Tonic Private Equity led the Series G round along with returning backers, including Korea Development Bank (KDB), Altos Ventures, Goodwater Capital, Greyhound Capital, Aspex Management, Bond Capital, and DUMAC. Korea Investment & Securities participated in the latest funding as well. The fintech company said it had completed its first and second close of Series G, approximately $226 million (295.8 billion won) and $175.8 million (229.3 billion won), respectively, in the third quarter of 2022, and the third close of the new funding in November.

Chief operating officer of Viva Republica Hyunwoo Seo told TechCrunch “profitability” is key now and is as significant as growth, particularly in these extremely tough market conditions. (Profitability would also go a long in enabling the company — which is eyeing a potential initial public offering in the near term — to do so successfully.)

Toward that end, Toss plans to use the proceeds of its newest fundraise to invest in its products, including digital lending and online payment service for individuals and local merchants.

The new capital will help also Toss accelerate growth for the challenger bank Toss Bank— launched last year by Viva Republica —and a Robinhood-like retail investment app,Toss Securities, which both look to turn a profit next year, according to Seo.

The company says Toss Securities began a turnaround in the 3Q22. Besides, the registered users of Toss Bank have quintupled to 5 million from 1.1 million since its December 2021 launch.

When asked about its listing plan, Seo declined to comment on its exact IPO schedule, but per previous media outlets, Viva Republica aims to go public in the next four years after increasing its revenue by 2025.

Founded by dentist-turned-entrepreneur Seung-gun Lee, CEO of Viva Republica, the company started as a money-transfer app, Toss, in 2015. Tossjoined the unicorn club with its $80 million financing at a valuation of $ 1.2 billion in 2018.

It has since become a finance super app by adding more features like banking, P2P lending, mobile-basedstock trading and investing, insurance, credit scoring service, and more. Most recently, Toss launched a buy now pay later (BNPL) service in March, which it says has amassed more than 1 million registered users. South Korea’s BNLP Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) is projected to grow by about $36.6 billion by 2028, up from $5.6 billion in 2021, as fintech and e-commerce firms use BNPL as one of their marketing tools.

In fact, Viva Republica claims it has the largest market share with its fintech super app in the country in terms of monthly active users (MAUs), with 24 million registered users for Toss and 14 MAUs as of August this year.

Viva Republica continues to push ahead with its acquisitions. The startup launched Toss Payments, which enables local merchants to accept digital payment, two years ago by acquiring a payment gateway business from LG’s mobile network company LG U+. (Toss Payments’ monthly trading volume surpassed $ 2.7 billion in November.) Toss also took over Merchant Korea, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), in July this year, planning to offer wireless communication services to consumers in 2023. The latest acquisition comes roughly eight months after it acquired a 60% stake in VCNC, an operator of the Korean ride-hailing platform Tada, wholly owned by car-sharing platform SoCar, in October 2021 to make a foray into the mobility market.

Regarding its international growth strategy, Viva Republica could make equity investments in global companies, including Southeast Asia, following entering Vietnam in 2019. But, it is more likely to focus on the domestic business, for the time being, Seo noted.

Viva Republica with Toss Securities, Toss Payments and Toss Insurance is expected to post about 1 trillion won ($ 767 million) in revenue next year, according to the company.

South Korean financial super app Toss closes $405M Series G as valuation rises 7% by Kate Park originally published on TechCrunch

Autonomous trucking technology company TuSimple plans to cut a chunk of its workforce, potentially as early as this week, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited “people familiar with the matter.”

While the Journal reported layoffs could affect at least half of TuSimple’s workforce, TechCrunch’s own source familiar with the matter said that number is not correct, but wouldn’t say more. It might be closer to 15%, according to online forums, some of which have speculated there’s been a game of telephone happening here (e.g. 15 sounds like 50).

Talks of layoffs at TuSimple have been ongoing for weeks, particularly following the end of TuSimple’s deal with Navistar to co-develop purpose-built autonomous semi trucks. TuSimple has rescinded offers it gave to interns to join the company, and posts on LinkedIn and Blind have mentioned “huge layoffs.”

While the number of employees to be let go is still unknown — TuSimple currently has about 1,430 full-time employees globally — it’s not surprising to see yet another tech company downsize as a result of macroeconomic headwinds and internal dramas.

TuSimple has suffered a couple of executive shakeups this year. CEO Cheng Lu, who was asked to step down into an advisory role in March, took over again last month. His predecessor and TuSimple’s founder Xiaodi Hou was fired following an internal probe that showed certain employees having ties and sharing confidential information with Hydron, a China-backed hydrogen-powered trucking company. The company is still facing multiple federal investigations related to its relationship with Hydron.

TuSimple’s stock price has also plummeted this year, dropping 95.63% from January, and the company has dealt with loss of investor confidence following the crash of one of its trucks in April. As a company building frontier technology, TuSimple has struggled to generate nearly enough revenue to cover its cash burn. In the third quarter, TuSimple reported $113 million in losses on a revenue of $2.7 million — revenue which came from hauling freight for shippers in trucks that had a human safety operator behind the wheel.

“Like every technology and self-driving company, we are closely examining our spending and how to align that with our strategy,” Lu told TechCrunch.

WSJ reported that TuSimple plans to scale back its work building self-driving systems and testing autonomous trucks on public roads in Arizona and Texas, a claim that Lu denied to TechCrunch. The teams involved in TuSimple’s operations in Tucson and self-driving software algorithms would be cut down as a result, the sources told the Journal.

Some of the imminent layoffs might come from the teams responsible for co-building trucks with Navistar. However, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that TuSimple is planning on replacing Navistar with a new OEM partner.

Sources told WSJ they expect layoffs to begin Tuesday, and that TuSimple told employees offices would be closed down Tuesday and Wednesday.

Canary in the coal mine

Interns whose offers to join the company were rescinded, as well as current TuSimple employees, have mentioned layoffs occurring at the company on LinkedIn and Blind.

“Affected by today’s TuSimple massive layoffs, my return offer as a Research Engineer was rescinded,” posted one former intern earlier this month who worked at TuSimple from June to September.

In response to a query on Blind by a person who recently interviewed at the company, one TuSimple employee commented on December 5 saying: “We’re going through huge layoffs right now. Stock is at an all time low. No clear path to making money.” The same person also said that staff morale “is pretty low.”

That sentiment is mirrored by other comments on TuSimple’s Blind profile. The latest company review, dated December 6, is titled “never trust this company.” The employee, a software applications engineer, said that a pro of working for TuSimple is the company “provide[s] you with a hallucination that [it] may succeed.” Cons were listed as toxic culture, horrible CEO, no profitable product and massive layoffs on the way.

While Blind posts are anonymous, the company told TechCrunch its community is made up of verified professionals. No one is allowed to post unless they are verified as a current employee of a given workplace using their work email.

Layoffs are coming for self-driving truck company TuSimple by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch