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Helloooo, Crunchers! The heavy goods train of tech news keeps on rollin’ down (and sometimes off) the tracks.

Apropos tracks, we’ve been a little besotted with this absolutely magnificent music video of Ren this week. It’s full of surprises and powerful bits — give yourself a 9-minute break and give it a listen! — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

More layoffs: Sequoia-backed GoMechanic is the latest to make sweeping layoffs after funding didn’t materialize in time, Manish reports. The India-based auto services company is cutting 70% of its workforce. But wait, there’s more: GoMechanic’s founders misstated financials to investors with GoMechanic co-founder Amit Bhasin saying the startup made “grave errors in judgment as we followed growth at all costs, particularly in regard to financial reporting, which we deeply regret.”
Can your robot do this?: In Boston Dynamics’ latest Atlas video, we see its robot running, jumping and now grabbing and throwing things via the use of hands. Matt shares more.
If you’ve never seen a car that looks like its name, you have now: Romain has your look at Kate, a new French carmaker developing tiny cars for your everyday use, from driving to work to driving on the beach. They remind us of a really fast golf cart only cuter.

Startups and VC

In a press conference on Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it has arrested Anatoly Legkodymov, founder of crypto exchange Bitzlato, for allegedly processing over $700 million of illicit funds, Amanda reports. “Overnight, the Department worked with key partners here and abroad to disrupt Bitzlato, the China-based money-laundering engine that fueled a high-tech axis of cryptocrime, and to arrest its founder, Russian national Anatoly Legkodymov,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco.

There’s a bunch more stuff happening in the world of startups today:

Well oil’ll say: Kirsten reports that Shell snaps up EV charging operator Volta for $169 million.
It’s not like we could remember our passwords anyway: Open source password management company Bitwarden acquires Passwordless.dev to help companies authenticate users without passwords, Paul reports.
PayPal Ventures buys now, hopes it will pay back later: Buy now, pay later company Tabby raises $58 million at a $660 million valuation as PayPal Ventures deploys its first investment into the GCC, Tage reports.
BainFund: Kate reports that the P2P lending platform PeopleFund raises $20 millionin a Series C extension round led by Bain Capital.
Ta-daaa! Money for you: Amanda reports that Goldenset launches out of stealth to make equity investments in creators.

Dear Sophie: What are some fast options for hiring someone on an expiring grace period?

Dear Sophie,

I’m a co-founder of a very early-stage startup. My co-founder and I are considering bringing on a third co-founder, who was recently laid off. She is currently in the United States on an H-1B with a grace period that will expire soon.

What are the fastest, least risky immigration options that we should consider? What’s going on with potential increases to USCIS filing fees?

— Careful Co-founder

Three more from the TC+ team:

Losing the horn: VCs think majority of unicorns aren’t worth $1 billion anymore, by Becca.
Leaning into that midday energy: Noon Energy brings Mars tech down to Earth with carbon-oxygen battery system, Tim writes.
Let’s spreadsheet this out, shall we: Anna puts numbers on the global venture slowdown.

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Big Tech Inc.

The layoffs just keep coming in Tech World. The latest is Microsoft, which announced 10,000 job cuts, reports Paul. The company has already made some layoffs last year, but this latest one accounts for a sizable chunk of its workforce — 5%. CEO Satya Nadella echoed other tech companies making layoffs recently in saying that the company accelerated its growth as customers grew, but when that slowed down, Microsoft had to do the same.

Cybersecurity company Sophos is making a similar move, laying off 450 employees globally, or about 10% of its employees, Jagmeet reports.

Meanwhile, in happier news, Apple has a brand-new HomePod with better sound and “smarts,” Darrell writes. And now that you know this, Brian has some thoughts on the newly returned smart speaker.

Here’s five more for you:

Get the skinny on OpenAI: Connie’s conversation last week with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman continues to yield all sorts of juicy details, this time about the company’s deal with Microsoft. Altman confirmed that was not an exclusive pact, she writes.
This message brought to you by…: TikTok now has a “state-controlled media” label in 40 more countries to show “whose ‘editorial output or decision-making process’ is subject to influence by a government,” Sarah writes.
If you’re feeling Blue: Twitter now offers an annual Blue subscription for those hardcore users, Ivan reports.
A tribute: Brian gives a final salute to Google Stadia, which shut down today.
Another go at it: For the second time in six months, Mailchimp says it was hacked. Zack has more on what happened this time.

Daily Crunch: GoMechanic lays off 70% after investors discover ‘founders knowingly misstated facts’ by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

In a heartwarming callback to the absurdly low-stakes controversies of the Obama era, the State Department is making extremely small waves by officially retiring the old workhorse Times New Roman font from official communications. It will be succeeded by Calibri, a font best known now for being publicly retired in 2021.

Really though, there is no furore (let alone furor) about this, since if anyone cares enough about fonts to say anything, they probably are so tired of TNR by now that their only complaint would be “what took so long?” But it’s funny that it’s in the news at all.

The Washington Post learned of the change from a leaked cable sent by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken — not quite the operational security I’d hoped for from them, but we would have found out soon enough. The reason for the change is accessibility and readability: a sans serif font (that is, without the little bits on the ends of letters) is considered by many to be easier to read at smaller sizes on digital devices, especially for those with vision impairments.

It’s a laudable goal, even if it isn’t quite that simple: a more readable font is a good idea, but accessibility needs to be built into processes from the ground up, not as a layer on top. Still, small steps count too.

Funnily enough, the State Department is taking the same step Microsoft did way back in 2007, when it itself replaced Times New Roman with the then-new Calibri as the default font for documents. The reasoning was largely the same: serif was more readable and people weren’t printing as much.

But that was a long time ago, and Calibri is now on its way out for various reasons, perhaps for its distastefully attenuated terminators. It’s not like it’s going to be purged from the Earth or anything like that — “not the default” isn’t a death sentence — but it’s definitely a bit strange to pick it as your “new,” highly official font given the circumstances.

It’s understandable that the federal government would generally prefer a product that’s been proven over many years of use. I don’t really expect them to switch to Roboto, or Source Sans, or even my preferred font out of the Microsoft replacements, Bierstadt. Although this one based on gerrymandered districts might have been appropriate:

It’s just that there’s actually a font made for this purpose: Noto. The collaboration between mega-foundry Monotype and Google is a totally free sans-serif font that was built from the ground up to accommodate all languages, symbols, and ordinary typography needs. It’s great for any government application that might need to be printed in several languages, but even more so for the wide-ranging State Department. But perhaps they have their reasons for preferring a Microsoft default to a comparatively exotic Google typeface. “Keep It Simple, State.”

Design fluency is not really a federal strength, but they seem to be improving — better than many state governments, I must say, which often have agency and official pages that look straight out of 2007 themselves. In this case swapping to a more suitable font, even if it’s aged and uncool, is a good move and perhaps the trickle that precedes a flood of good, thoughtful design — of which accessibility is a part and a consequence, not just a component.

Font furore as State Dept retires Times New Roman for retiring Calibri by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

Federal regulators from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found that three Amazon warehouse facilities had violated legislation designed to require employers to provide safe working environments. Investigations found that Amazon workers are at high risk for back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), especially in warehouse environments that prioritize speed over safety.

“While Amazon has developed impressive systems to make sure its customers’ orders are shipped efficiently and quickly, the company has failed to show the same level of commitment to protecting the safety and well-being of its workers,” said Doug Parker, an assistant secretary at OSHA.

Amazon must pay a $60,269 fine for the violations at warehouses in Deltona, Florida, Waukegan, Illinois and New Windsor, New York. As part of the same investigation, OSHA found in December that six Amazon warehouse facilities had failed to record and report worker injuries and illnesses. There are three similar, ongoing investigations at Amazon facilities in Colorado, Idaho and New York.

OSHA’s findings show an ongoing pattern of employee injuries, including stuck-by injuries while handling objects over 50 pounds. An example report from July reads, “crushing/smashing; face; furniture (61 lbs).” Another reads, “strain/sprain; lower leg; fitness equipment (148 lbs.)” The Florida warehouse was also cited for being too hot, which can potentially cause heat-related illness.

Amazon has onsite clinics called Amcare for employees who may suffer injuries on the job, but OSHA claims that these facilities can be prohibitive to workers receiving adequate medical care. Amazon employees told investigators that the Amcare clinic in Deltona, Florida required injured workers to wait three weeks after an injury before they could be referred to a physician. OSHA also found that if an employee suffered head trauma and dizziness, they were not immediately referred to a physician.

A spokesperson from Amazon told TechCrunch that the company denies OSHA’s claims.

“We take the safety and health of our employees very seriously, and we strongly disagree with these allegations and intend to appeal,” Kelly Nantel, an Amazon spokesperson, said in a statement. “We’ve cooperated fully, and the government’s allegations don’t reflect the reality of safety at our sites. Over the last several months we’ve demonstrated the extent to which we work every day to mitigate risk and protect our people, and our publicly available data show we’ve reduced injury rates nearly 15% between 2019 and 2021.”

Amazon said that the federal government does not offer specific ergonomics guidance to employers, so the company has invested in engineering innovations that can reduce the need for workers to bend, twist and reach in ways that can cause injury. Warehouse workers also take part in stretching groups called “huddles.”

“The vast majority of our employees tell us they feel our workplace is safe,” Nantel said. “We look forward to sharing more during our appeal about the numerous safety innovations, process improvements, and investments we’re making to further reduce injuries. We know there will always be ways for us to improve even further, and we will — we’ll never stop working to be safer for our employees.”

Federal regulators have found trouble in Amazon’s warehouses for years, where workers typically work physically-demanding shifts of ten hours with minimal breaks. According to data from the Washington State Department of Labor, the rate of strains and sprains per 10,000 employees are four times higher at Amazon than they are at other warehouses. And in 2019, OSHA found the same issue with Amcare facilities that it’s reporting now: Amcare staff are treating employees onsite, rather than referring them to other doctors when necessary.

Amazon fined by regulators for unsafe warehouse work conditions by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

Founded by Ece Kural and Furkan Bayraktar,Scrintal is a visual note-taking and collaboration tool. The Sweden-based company’s product combines visual canvases with documentation to help professionals and teams go from idea to presentable work on the same screen — think Miro meets Notion meets a slew of other tools companies use to keep their knowledge in one place and their projects pointed more or less in the right direction.

The company today told TechCrunch it closed a €1 million round (around $1 million in today’s exchange rate) led by Spintop Ventures, and joined by existing investor Icebreaker VC.

“We’re creating a new category in work tools; a visual knowledge base. Our company was born out of the real-life struggle we experienced ourselves. When I was finishing my PhD at Stockholm University I realized I needed a more visual way of working,” says Ece Kural, co-founder and CEO of Scrintal.

The company told TechCrunch it will use the funding for launching the app, along with accelerating commercialization and product development. The company says it has more than 40,000 interested folks on its waitlist.

The image at the top of this story is from Scrintal’s pitch deck, which it used to raise the €1 million round. Stay tuned for our Pitch Deck Teardown of the company’s full deck coming later this week. For founders who want to submit their own pitch deck to the Pitch Deck Teardown series, here’s how!

Scrintal raises $1 million for its visual collaboration tool by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

Ditching HomePod was a strange choice. At the time, Apple told us, “HomePod mini has been a hit since its debut last fall, offering customers amazing sound, an intelligent assistant, and smart home control all for just $99. We are focusing our efforts on HomePod mini.”

While the smart home hasn’t panned out precisely the way Apple or its competition hoped (just ask Amazon), the company never took its eye off that ball. HomeKit — and all it entails — is still a central piece of the company’s strategy, and getting Siri, the Home app, etc. into the home is still an important goal — another key branch of the ecosystem play.

This morning, however, it became clear that the HomePod wasn’t dead. It was just resting. Biding its time. Given that it took nearly two years for that triumphant return — and Apple completely cleared out stock of the old speaker in the meantime — this is apparently a “back by popular demand” situation. The fact of the matter is, however, a good hub is still an essential piece of the smart home puzzle.

Amazon, for example, may have been hemorrhaging money with its Echo play, but that doesn’t mean that getting those devices in the home is a key component of a long-tail strategy (the problem, ultimately, is the question of just how long a tail the people in charge of the money are willing to put up with). HomePod mini, while it has its place, is probably not going to fill that central smart home hub role for everyone. Nor, frankly, does it serve as a great replacement for a home speaker or TV surround sound. Sure, I said the thing has “remarkably big sound” in my review, but that’s relative to its size.

The other important factor in all of this is Matter. The new smart home standard frankly blows the doors wide open for Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung and the rest. Prior to its stage-one rollout late last year, the world of smart home standards was one of warring kingdoms, with companies duking it out to get their respective “Works With” logos on the back of boxes. Matter is effectively one standard to rule them all. If it works with one, it will work with all.

You can read an interview I did with a Matter exec at CES over here.

A thing that gets lost in all of this is how effective these devices can be in serving as a kind of catch-all platform for so many different home functionalities, from more complex smart home routines to doubling as an intercom. It also couples with existing features like Find My, so you can check in on a loved one who’s shared their location with you. New features include a temperature and humidity sensor, as well as the ability to detect and alert you when a smoke or fire alarm is going off — a nice little workaround for those who haven’t upgraded to a smart device like the kind Nest makes. It doesn’t include alerts for things like broken glass, however, which feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.

The real value proposition is, however, the same as ever. Unlike most of the competition, HomePod is a speaker first, smart home hub second. That’s not a knock on its smart home bona fides, mind — it’s an acknowledgement that the product is sound-first in a way that few other products in this category are. It was always a gamble in a category that’s been largely defined by ultra cheap, loss-leading devices. Apple knew it was limiting its potential userbase right out of the gate with a $349 price tag for the original. The new product is $50 cheaper, in spite of its advances, but that’s still a far cry from Google and Amazon, which have quite literally been giving away entry-level smart speakers at various points.

I spent some time with the new HomePod (technically “The All New HomePod,” by Apple’s official naming convention) early today. And I can attest to the fact that it sounds really great. The isolation is terrific. The treble is clear. The bass is powerful, without being overwhelming. As a long-time Google Home Max owner, I considered a potential move over (though the move away from Spotify is another question entirely).

The system audio calibrates its EQ based on its location in a room. It utilizes the on-board accelerometer to recognize when it’s been lifted, and then takes about 20 or so seconds to adjust accordingly. That means, in theory, that you’ll get great sound regardless of whether it’s sitting against a wall or in the middle of a room (these are all the sorts of things I’ll feel confident saying once I’m able to bring a review unit home).

Spatial Audio is an interesting feature here. I’ve mostly regarded it as a way to recreate a fixed point music source using headphones through head tracking. Here it means a more dynamic way of separating stereo channels.

Stereo pairing is, once again, a big thing. The footprint is exactly the same as the last one. It’s a big size as far as smart speakers go, but once again, the sound is even bigger. Get two of these things and your home speaker needs are pretty much taken care of. I’m not going to suggest that they’re replacement for truly high-end speakers for the true audiophile set, but as far as normal listeners go, I think most folks will be more than satisfied with a couple of these, be it as standalone speakers or flanking your TV.

I didn’t have the opportunity to A/B test against an older HomePod yet. I’m curious how easy it is to hear the difference in real time. Given how many of the updates here can arrive in the form of software updates, it would be an interesting test.

It’s worth pointing out, however, that the new device is not backward compatible with the last generation when it comes to this feature. It’s presumably a hardware limitation. Though, while I understand why this would be an issue with an uneven match like the HomePod mini, this is frankly a big bummer for those who invested in the previous generation. Even if it’s not a perfect experience, the option would beat starting over from scratch again.

The power cable is detachable for easier movement. There’s still no aux-in port here, which is, again, a bummer. It would be great to, say, plug in a turntable, but Apple’s really all in on a wireless music streaming experience here.

I’m excited to spend more time with the system soon. The system arrives February 3. More soon.

Some initial thoughts on Apple’s resurrected HomePod by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

Last year, U.S. startups with all-women teams received 1.9% (or around $4.5 billion) out of around the $238.3 billion in venture capital allocated, according to the latest PitchBook data.

That percentage is a notable drop from the 2.4% all-women teams raised in 2021. The decline was expected, given the economic climate of last year: the bear, the bust, the winter. In fact, aside from 2016, the last time all-women-led startups raised such a low percentage of funds was in 2012, another period of funding decline caused by economic uncertainty and an election.

Fitting, almost. And naturally, the percentage of funds raised increases when an “all-women team” turns into having “at least one women founder,” signifying the importance of always keeping a man in the room. The augmentation is quite noticeable, too: All-women teams raised 1.9% of VC funds last year, a percentage that skyrocketed to 17.2% when the team was mixed-gender. This trend has remained consistent for at least a decade.

“When the economy tanks, discrimination feels justified,” Ruth Foxe Blader, a partner at Anthemis Group, told TechCrunch. “Managers double-down on what they perceive as ‘safe’ and ‘boring.’ Investing in women is still perceived as high-risk. LPs need to look beyond manager diversity and into their investment portfolios if we want to change this industry; 1.9% is deplorable.”

There is good news, however.

Women-founded startups raised 1.9% of all VC funds in 2022, a drop from 2021 by Dominic-Madori Davis originally published on TechCrunch

Predicting spending is a tricky business, especially in a period of economic uncertainty. Perhaps that’s why both IDC and Gartner have cut their fall predictions in the new year with Gartner now predicting modest 2.2% growth for 2023 with IDC a bit more optimistic at 4.4%.

In the fall, Gartner was predicting a far more robust 5.1% and IDC was looking at between 5% and 6%. Both companies look at a combination of business and consumer spending in their numbers.

Gartner says it’s the consumer side of the ledger that’s become a drag on their predictions, while the firm expects enterprise buyers to increase expenditures in the coming year.

“While inflation is devastating consumer markets, contributing to layoffs at B2C companies, enterprises continue to increase spending on digital business initiatives despite the world economic slowdown,” Gartner analyst John-David Lovelock said in a statement.

When we spoke to IDC analyst Rick Villars for an article on 2023 spending, he left some wiggle room in his prediction:

“Spending on core IT infrastructure, business software, professional services to implement and operate the systems — even if the economy stays flat, we expect to see continued healthy growth in the 5% to 6% range in aggregate for those spaces. It would take a more severe economic downturn from what we’re seeing for that to change,” Villars told TechCrunch.

Perhaps the squeeze on consumer spending is the source of the problem, although the Adobe Digital Price Index found prices for electronics, which include items like phones and PCs, were down over 12% for the year (with prices increasing 1.9% in December). But that was more than offset by groceries, which were up 13.5% year over year, a number more likely to have a much bigger impact on consumers overall.

Gasoline prices (which Adobe doesn’t measure) dropped 2% in December (per CNBC), but fuel oil was up a whopping 41%. The bottom line is that consumers probably aren’t feeling confident right now when it comes to buying new technology if basics are costing them so much more than the prior year.

The numbers bear this out as PC sales were down for the fourth straight quarter. That translated into a 28% drop for Q4 2022, numbers so low that Gartner reported it was the biggest single quarter drop since the firm has been tracking this data in the mid-1990s

Phone sales were similarly dismal with sales the lowest in a decade. Numbers were off 17% in Q4 2022, down 11% for the year.

While consumers are clearly cutting back, enterprises are less likely to cut their spending as tech can help blunt the impact of an economic downturn, something Villars told us in the December article on IT spending:

“The main thing we’re hearing from CIOs is that technology is part of solving the business challenges that a recession brings. And if the focus is on just cutting technology investments, they’re not actually helping the company get through the recession or through these disruptions.”

Certainly, enterprises won’t be cutting back on cybersecurity as new data from Canalys shows. The firm is predicting that security spending will increase 13% in 2023.

Consumers will probably continue to think twice about buying electronics in the first part of the year if food and fuel prices don’t come down, and that will have a big impact on the numbers overall, but as these firms predict, business spending continues to look much brighter as companies see tech as a critical budget item.

Analysts cut 2023 techs spending predictions as consumers hold back by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

PureTerra, a venture firm that aims to fund “disruptive water technologies,” is pumping millions into Membrion so the Seattle startup can mass-produce its wastewater treatment tech.

Membrion claims its ceramic membranes can filter out problematic heavy metals (not the genre, but toxic stuff like lead, arsenic and lithium) for around a twelfth of the cost of evaporative processes. Founder and CEO Greg Newbloom tells TechCrunch that he “wouldn’t recommend drinking the water we purify,” but the executive said the end result “can definitely be reused within an industrial facility,” without having to truck it off-site for treatment.

Membrion says its membranes can treat wastewater across a variety of industries, including fossil fuels, semiconductors, automotive and food and beverage production. “When we talk about ‘harsh wastewater,’ we mean wastewater that will literally burn your hand due to the pH and oxidizers present,” explained Newbloom. “These types of wastewaters cannot be treated with existing desalination membrane technology,” he added, so facilities today are stuck with “environmentally damaging alternatives,” such as boiling wastewater and using “single-use materials” to filter out harmful metals and salts.

The startup is in the process of raising its Series B amid climate-driven droughts. Heck, much of the West is abnormally dry or worse, even after record-setting storms that’ve hammered California in recent weeks.

Membrion says it’s secured $7 million so far, with a target of $10 million. PureTerra Ventures led the round, while investors such as Safar Partners, GiantLeap Capital and Freeflow also chipped in, per a press release.

“I anticipate that we’ll hit our [fundraising] goal within the next couple of months given the interest we have,” Newbloom told TechCrunch.

Wastewater recycler Membrion makes light work of removing heavy metals by Harri Weber originally published on TechCrunch

Ethereum’s shift from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) in September 2022 increased interest in staking across a number of parties — including institutions.

The success of the Merge propelled Ethereum from “a smart contract platform lagging behind” into “something that was doing things right,” Diogo Mónica, co-founder and president of Anchorage Digital, a crypto bank last valued over $3 billion, said to TechCrunch. “Interest from investors grew and the appetite changed dramatically.”

And it’s true: Institutional interest in ETH staking increased after the Merge, Matt Hougan, CIO at Bitwise Asset Management, said to TechCrunch.

“All of a sudden, by holding Ethereum, you went from holding a bet on smart contract platform to holding a bet that holds yield,” Mónica said.

Staking is a way of earning rewards for holding a certain token (in this instance, ETH) for a certain amount of time. In return for staking, people are paid out yield or additional rewards in exchange for holding their coins to secure the network.

In a way, it’s like having cash in your wallet or parking your cash in a bank CD, Hougan said. “You lock your money up in the CD and the bank pays you interest. In this example, you lock your ETH up in a staking pool and earn interest.”

Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake draws increasing institutional interest by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

Sequoia Capital, a storied venture capital firm, announced today that it has raised $195 million for its fifth, dedicated seed fund. The vehicle will be used to back founders across the United States and Europe, as well as follow-on funding rounds for companies spinning out of the firm’s accelerator program, Arc.

The new fund comes alongside an expansion of Arc, Sequoia’s internal program that invests between $500,000 and $1 million into rising founders across the world. While the growing program is now advertised to have two cohorts in America and one in Europe, Latin American companies are welcome to apply as well. TechCrunch reached out to Sequoia for further comment and will update this piece accordingly.

The capital comes as the pre-seed and seed world, already a growing part of the startup ecosystem, becomes even more attractive to investors who want to steer clear of the turbulence of the later-stage market. AngelList data, released today, tells part of the story, noting that average seed-stage valuations hit $24 million last year, a decline of 13.9% compared with 2021. Median pre-seed valuations held consistent quarter over quarter, while later-stages, such as Series B, fell by nearly a third.

Jess Lee, a Sequoia partner and All Raise co-founder, said on Twitter that the firm will be looking at all verticals for potential outlier founders, but specifically called out artificial intelligence and consumer social as two areas she’s investing in.

In a blog post announcing the seed fund, other partners similarly hinted at areas of interest. Alfred Lin pointed to augmented reality and virtual reality as the makings of the “next consumer platform to drive wide-scale innovation,” while Shaun Maguire said that “hardware will always have my heart.”

Roelof Botha, the recently-appointed global head of Sequoia, kept it simple: he said in the post that he’s looking for founders who are taking advantage of a more disciplined market, and the decreasing cost of automation, artificial intelligence, and even genetic sequencing.

Sequoia, like many firms, has seen its portfolio humbled during the downturn, which may impact how partners are handling due diligence and sourcing in the year ahead. Just this past week, Sequoia-backed company GoMechanic cut 70% jobs, with its founder admitting in a LinkedIn post that the outfit made “grave errors in judgment as we followed growth at all costs.”

Other Sequoia portfolio companies with sizable cuts include Bounce, Ola, and well, FTX. Indeed, Sequoia’s $200 million investment in FTX has brought fair criticism to the firm’s decision-making track record.

Lin, who TechCrunch’s Connie Loizos interviewed last week at her StrictlyVC event, said the experience hasn’t soured Sequoia’s interest in crypto. Though he said that just 10% of Sequoia’s crypto fund has been deployed one year after it was launched, he added that Sequoia remains “long-term optimistic” about crypto.

Sequoia injects $195 million into an ever-eager seed environment by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch