TechCrunch+

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart no longer owns a stake in payments firm PhonePe. The two said on Friday that they have completed a full ownership separation of PhonePe and shareholders in the Singapore entities of both firms have purchased shares directly in PhonePe’s India entity.

The move comes as PhonePe, which was acquired by Flipkart in 2016, moves its entire base to India. The payments startup is in talks to raise as much as $1.5 billion at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion and use some of the proceedings to buy back some shares, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Walmart continues to be the majority shareholder of both the firms.

“The Flipkart Group has developed many successful entrepreneurs and seen impactful businesses started by former employees. We are proud to see PhonePe grow and thrive as a successful organization in its own right,” said Kalyan Krishnamurthy, chief executive of Flipkart Group, in a statement.

“We are confident PhonePe will continue to scale and achieve its vision of providing financial inclusion to millions of Indians. Flipkart stays committed to its purpose to empower every Indian’s dream by delivering value through innovation in technology and commerce while helping small businesses connect to pan-India markets.”

Flipkart doesn’t plan to re-enter the consumer payments market, according to another source familiar with the matter. PhonePe announced its intention to become a separate entity in late 2020.

The separation will have some impact on Flipkart’s valuation. PhonePe, which leads the mobile payments market in India, was valued at $5.5 billion in a funding round it unveiled in late 2020. In July, Flipkart Group raised $3.6 billion at a valuation of $37.6 billion.

“Flipkart and PhonePe are proud, homegrown Indian brands with a user base upwards of 400 million each. We are looking forward to the next phase of our growth as we invest in new businesses – like insurance, wealth management and lending, while also enabling the next wave of growth for UPI payments in India. This will help propel our vision to provide billions of Indians with financial inclusion,” said Sameer Nigam (pictured above), founder and chief executive of PhonePe, in a statement.

PhonePe is the top payments app on the nation’s homegrown UPI app, commanding over 40% of the market share. India announced earlier this month that it won’t enforce a check on the market share for players operating on the homegrown payments network until December 31, 2024 in a surprising extension to the deadline that analysts said is a major a win for the market leaders PhonePe and Google Pay.

Flipkart and PhonePe complete separation by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

A brand-new law (awaiting only the president’s signature) will let the Federal Communications Commission directly regulate rates in the notoriously predatory prison calling industry. Under the threat of having to provide a solid product for a reasonable price, companies may opt to call it a day and open up the market to a more compassionate and forward-thinking generation of providers.

Prison calling systems depend on the state and the prison system, and generally have run the gamut from good enough to shockingly bad. With a literally captive customer base, companies had no real reason to innovate, and financial models involving kickbacks to the prisons and states incentivized income at all costs.

Inmates are routinely charged extortionate rates for simple services like phone calls and video calls (an upsell), and have even had visitation rights rescinded, leaving paid calls the only option. Needless to say, this particular financial burden falls disproportionately on people of color and those with low incomes, and it’s a billion-dollar industry.

It’s been this way for a long time, and former FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn spent years trying to change it. When I talked with her in 2017, before she left the agency, she called inmate calling “the clearest, most glaring type of market failure I’ve ever seen as a regulator.” It was an issue she spent years working on, but she gave a lot of credit to Martha Wright-Reed, a grandmother who had organized and represented the fight to bring reform to the system right up until she died.

And it is after Martha Wright-Reed that the bill today is named. It’s a simple bill, imbuing the FCC with the power “to ensure just and reasonable charges for telephone and advanced communications services in correctional and detention facilities.” It does this with some minor but significant changes to the Communications Act of 1934, which (among other things) established the FCC and is regularly updated for this purpose. (The bill passed the House and Senate and will almost certainly be signed by President Biden soon, when the festivities relating to the spending bill, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit, and the holiday address pass.)

“The FCC has for years moved aggressively to address this terrible problem, but we have been limited in the extent to which we can address rates for calls made within a state’s borders,” said FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement. “Today, thanks to the leadership of Senators Duckworth, Portman and their bipartisan coalition, the FCC will be granted the authority to close this glaring, painful, and detrimental loophole in our phones rate rules for incarcerated people.” (She also thanked Wright-Reed, as well as Clyburn.)

Free Press has collected a number of other comments from interested parties, all lauding the legislation for curbing “carceral profiteering” and generally benefiting inmates rather than continuing to treat them like a source of labor or easy cash.

While it’s great that costs will go down as soon as the FCC can put together and pass a rule on the matter, the effect will probably be greater than just savings.

Most companies in place today will all but certainly face vastly reduced revenues along with increased scrutiny as the FCC requires reports and takes any other measures it decides are necessary to enforce the new rules. It would not be surprising at all if plenty of these companies just get out while the gettin’s good.

The introduction of regulation into a space like this, dominated for years by legacy providers, may well cause a changing of the guard — something we’ve seen advance notice of with some states embracing new models like Ameelio’s. The startup began as a way to mail postcards to inmates for free, but soon they had built a modern digital video calling infrastructure that’s far cheaper and easier to operate than the legacy ones.

Now operating in three states, Ameelio’s service can also serve as the basis for activities like education and legal advocacy in prison facilities, since the cost is so much lower and access is easier. (As indeed the founders discovered, and went on to found Emerge Career.)

A bunch of shady companies in a hurry to leave means a market opportunity as states scramble to find providers — no doubt Ameelio will be looking to fill some of those gaps, but the next few years will probably see other companies stepping in to take part as well.

The prison system we have is in dire need of reformation in general, but that will happen piece by piece, as we see happening here.

The FCC can finally hammer predatory prison phone call companies, thanks to just-passed bill by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Well, the weather outside is…entirely dependent on where you are, we suppose. For the purposes of this newsletter, let’s imagine sunshine, some pristine beaches, a lovely gentle cooling breeze, and some piña coladas, because if we’re going to make up some fictional weather, we may as well make it lovely, right? — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

Surprised, but also not surprised: FTX co-founder Gary Wang and Alameda’s Caroline Ellison plead guilty to criminal charges, Darrell writes.
$eeing i$ believing: Twitter is now sourcing stock and cryptocurrency prices from TradingView and automatically displaying them in search results. Ivan shows you how to get them to appear in your next tweet.
Another Okta breach: Okta confirmed that it’s responding to another major security incident after a hacker accessed its source code following a breach of its GitHub repositories, Carly reports.

Startups and VC

Text-to-image AI exploded this year as technical advances greatly enhanced the fidelity of art that AI systems could create. As controversial as systems like Stable Diffusion and OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 are, platforms such as DeviantArt and Canva have adopted them to power creative tools, personalize branding and even ideate new products, writes Kyleas he takes you on a tour through a brief history of diffusion, the tech at the heart of modern image-generating AI.

Speaking of AI, Amanda reports that Unstable Diffusion, a group trying to monetize AI porn generation, raised more than $56,000 on Kickstarter from 867 backers. Then, as Kickstarter changed its thinking about what kind of AI-based projects it will allow, the crowdfunding platform shut down Unstable Diffusion’s campaign.

And in only partially AI news:

Putting Austin under the loupe: Mary Ann reports how a fatal police shooting of a startup founder puts Austin’s diversity problem in the spotlight.
Scooping up a slice of Exyn: Reliance buys a 23% stake in U.S.-based AI firm Exyn, Manish reports.
Curbing your enthusiasm: Rebecca writes that Automotus raises $9 million to scale automated curb management tech.
Pumping the brakes: The other day we reported that self-driving truck company TuSimple was contemplating layoffs. Today, Rebecca is back with the sad news that it’s happening: TuSimple is laying off 25% of its workforce.

Avoid 3 common sales mistakes startups make during a downturn

Analysts estimate that IT spending will increase in 2023, but tell that to SaaS sales teams who are trying to close contracts with customers who’ve been instructed to slash spending.

“What every company needs now is efficient sales,” says Anand Shah, CEO and co-founder of Databook.

In a TC+ guest post, he explains why reactive moves like increasing sales quotas or raising prices are wrongheaded moves that won’t move the needle.

“Make real changes to meet your buyers’ needs. Use the macroeconomic backdrop to make the necessary sales productivity improvements.”

Three more from the TC+ team:

Really milking it: The future of milk is … milk? by Christine.
The weather outside is frightful: Holiday shipping is easier this year, but the tech is still lagging, by Ryan Petersen.
Still blasting off: Investor interest in SpaceX appears immune to Musk’s meddling, by Becca.

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.

Having that ad blocker box pop up when you try to open a new website is annoying, but Zack says we should find the good in it — heck, even the FBI says you should use an ad blocker, he writes. Why? Apparently, “cybercriminals are buying ads to impersonate legitimate brands, like cryptocurrency exchanges” and they are so good that it’s hard to tell it’s not the real thing. Stay safe, everyone!

What do we want? News! When do we want it? Now!:

Now, isn’t that sporting: Aisha has a pair of streaming stories in case you need any last-minute gift ideas for the sports lovers in your life. The first is that YouTube secured NFL Sunday Ticket and the second is that Netflix is branching out into fitness content.
More from that bird company: Amanda catches us up on the latest with Twitter. Unfortunately, there were more layoffs, this time in public policy and engineering. And now the company brings us a new feature we didn’t know we wanted. That probably rarely checked views analytics is now front and center so you can see how many people view your tweets.
Inside the action studio: Warning, this story has spoilers. Lauren reports on VFX studio Perception and its technology that made the visual effects for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”
It’s all about the ride: Vianova uses APIs to gather data from shared mobility companies and cities to help make these services better. Romain has more.
Adventure is out there!: Aria details seven predictions for the space industry in 2023.

Daily Crunch: 2 former SBF associates plead guilty to fraud and are cooperating with US federal prosecutors by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

Password manager giant LastPass has confirmed that cybercriminals stole its customers’ encrypted password vaults, which store its customers’ passwords and other secrets, in a data breach earlier this year.

In an updated blog post on its disclosure, LastPass CEO Karim Toubba said the intruders took a copy of a backup of customer vault data by using cloud storage keys stolen from a LastPass employee. The cache of customer password vaults is stored in a “proprietary binary format” that contains both unencrypted and encrypted vault data, but technical and security details of this proprietary format weren’t specified. The unencrypted data includes vault-stored web addresses, but LastPass does not say more or in what context. It’s not clear how recent the stolen backups are.

LastPass said customers’ password vaults are encrypted and can only be unlocked with the customers’ master password, which is only known to the customer. But the company warned that the cybercriminals behind the intrusion “may attempt to use brute force to guess your master password and decrypt the copies of vault data they took.”

Toubba said that the cybercriminals also took vast reams of customer data, including names, email addresses, phone numbers and some billing information.

Password managers are overwhelmingly a good thing to use for storing your passwords, which should all be long, complex and unique to each site or service. But security incidents like this are a reminder that not all password managers are created equal and can be attacked, or compromised, in different ways. Given that everyone’s threat model is different, no one person will have the same requirements as the other.

In a rare shituation (not a typo) like this — which we spelled out in our parsing of LastPass’s data breach notice — if a bad actor has access to customers’ encrypted password vaults, “all they would need is a victim’s master password.” An exposed or compromised password vault is only as strong as the encryption — and the password — used to scramble it.

The best thing you can do as a LastPass customer is to change your current LastPass master password to a new and unique password (or passphrase) that is written down and kept in a safe place. This means that your current LastPass vault is secured.

If you think that your LastPass password vault could be compromised — such as if your master password is weak or you’ve used it elsewhere — you should begin changing the passwords stored in your LastPass vault. Start with the most critical accounts, such as your email accounts, your cell phone plan account, your bank accounts and your social media accounts, and work your way down the priority list.

The good news is that any account protected with two-factor authentication will make it far more difficult for an attacker to access your accounts without that second factor, such as a phone pop-up or a texted or emailed code. That’s why it’s important to secure those second-factor accounts first, like your email accounts and cell phone plan accounts.

LastPass says hackers stole customers’ password vaults by Zack Whittaker originally published on TechCrunch

Tesla started out the month of December by offering Model 3 and Model Y buyers in the U.S. a $3,750 credit if they have their vehicle delivered in December 2022. Now with a week left in the month, the electric vehicle maker has upped that discount to $7,500, according to the company’s website.

After the news of the discount and other offers designed to increase sales in the fourth quarter, Tesla’s stock dropped another 9% and is trading at $125.12 at market close on Wednesday.

It seems Tesla is getting a little too thirsty for end-of-year sales and it’s giving investors the ick.

Tesla’s stock has already taken massive hits this week as investors wring their hands over CEO Elon Musk’s political rhetoric on and micromanaging of Twitter, his selling of Tesla stock to fund Twitter initiatives and concerns over vehicle sales in China — Tesla’s biggest market — taking a dip as the country abandons COVID-19 restrictions.

Along with the discount, Tesla has also tacked on offers of 10,000 Supercharging miles free and a “Holiday Software Release” that includes “wireless multiplayer gaming and access to tens of thousands of titles in the Steam game library,” a programmable light show that syncs with other Teslas and “Dog Mode,” which helps people keep an eye on dogs they’ve left in the vehicle.

The automaker is also offering credits in Canada and Mexico, and in October cut the price of cars in China.

The doubling of an already out-of-character discount is likely in response to the U.S. Treasury Department this week delaying EV tax credit rules around sourcing of critical materials to March 2023. Per the Inflation Reduction Act, by January 1, automakers would only have been eligible for the full $7,500 credit if they build their vehicles in North America and source critical materials from North America or free trade agreement countries — so not China, where most of those materials come from today. The delay means that many automakers, Tesla included, will now qualify for the full credit at the start of the year, which may cause buyers to put off purchases until 2023.

Tesla is running up against its own guidance this year, which projected a 50% growth in production and deliveries for 2022. That would mean 1,404,333 deliveries for the year, so Tesla has to hit 495,760 deliveries in Q4 to achieve that. In the third quarter, Tesla sold 343,830 units.

Investors are taking the discounts on Tesla’s already most popular and lower-priced vehicles as a sign that there’s less demand for the vehicles.

After the bell Wednesday, investment banking firm Canaccord Genuity cut its price target for Tesla from $304 to $275, citing “cosmically bad” public sentiment and a “distraught” shareholder base. The firm still says Tesla is a buy, though.

Tesla’s $7,500 discount feels desperate, and it’s giving investors the ick by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

Happy holidays from the Ghost of Actuator Past. I’m writing you from the beginning of the month and hopefully not checking my work email or Slack as you’re reading this. I’ll be back in action next week (hopefully the bags under my eyes will have subsided slightly), but until then, I’ve got one more great interview for you. This week I leave you in the very accomplished hands of Ken Goldberg, who dons the dual hats of U.C. Berkeley robotics professor and chief scientist at Ambi Robotics.

Q&A with Ken Goldberg

TC: What was the biggest robotics story of 2022?

KG: For me, three major robotics developments in 2022 stand out:

The surprising progress of large language models (e.g., GPT-3) and associated text-to-image generation (e.g., Dall-E) is spurring excitement in the robotics community about how these can be applied to robotics, by completing robot-relevant prompts. An exciting paper from Brian Ichter and colleagues at Google AI was presented at the 2022 Conference on Robot Learning on December 14–18.
Elon Musk reframing Tesla as a robotics company, with their associated research initiative into humanoid robots. I doubt they will build a useful humanoid robot for $20K in 2 years, but Tesla has great expertise in sensors/motors, robot use cases in its own factories, and awareness of costs and mass production that is a strong vote of confidence in the field.
The widespread adoption of robots in warehouses to meet increasing demand for e-commerce was not diminished by the return to stores or inflation. Companies such as Ambi Robotics have installed 70+ AI-powered robotic sorting systems across the U.S., demonstrating the viability of deep learning to enhance worker productivity.

What are your biggest robotics predictions for 2023?

I believe we’ll see robots-as-a-service (RaaS) models that make robots available to a much wider segment of industry (e.g., Model T Ford financing that opened up car-buying to the middle class).

How profound of an impact has the pandemic had on robotics?

The pandemic dramatically increased adoption of teleconferencing and also telerobots in hospitals and nursing homes to prevent virus transmission. But the biggest impact was on e-commerce, which grew at 5x the previous pace.

How much of an impact has the macroeconomic environment had on robotics investing?

Venture capital is far harder to obtain than it was in December 2021, but funds are continuing to make investments in robotics companies with growing demand like Locus and Ambi.

What underaddressed category deserves more focus from robotics startups and investors?

Robotics-as-a-service (RaaS) shifts the cost from capital expenditure to operating expenditure, so it is very attractive and practical for industry.

How will automation impact the workforce of the future?

As Diego Kuonen noted: “It’s not about replacing the human with a robot. It’s about taking the robot out of the human.” Robots cannot replace most of the dextrous and nonrepetitive aspects of work. Robots won’t replace people; they will increase worker productivity.

Are home robotics finally having their moment?

Designing a cost-effective home robot to do more than cleaning floors is extremely challenging. Aging demographics will increase demand for this but it will take more time.

What more can/should the U.S. do to foster innovation in the category?

Fortunately, National Science Foundation budgets were increased this year; the NSF provides critical support for graduate students and increases much needed diversity.

Notes on robotics research by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

Founders and investors alike are bracing for a tough 2023 as the economy shows few signs of improving. But there are a lot of questions up in the air: Will the truckload of dry powder VCs have make its way to the market? Are there going to be more layoffs if the pressure on valuations persists? What’s in store for AI?

We can answer some questions, though: Some trends are bound to stay, like interest in artificial intelligence, and crypto will continue to be under scrutiny, even as the market looks to the future. There are other aspects of the venture world that will probably not change, like the lack of funding for minority and women founders.

To find out how minority investors are planning for 2023, we spoke with three active Black investors. For Xfund’s vice president, Jadyn Bryden, the creator economy is one hot spot worth watching in the coming months. “I’m expecting to see continued movement in the creator economy as more people venture out to build their own brands and rely on new tools for content creation and monetization,” she said.

Alexis Alston, principal at Lightship Capital, feels the future will be favorable for companies that build tech to help others do business and cut costs: “As fast-growing tech darlings begin to cut back on overhead expenses, I think we will see a strong shift toward companies relying more on sales optimization and content creation tools as a substitute for previously heavily redundant teams.”

But the investors were pessimistic about capital allocation to Black founders improving next year.

Richard Kerby, general partner at Equal Ventures, is hopeful that more diverse founders would get funding next year, but doesn’t expect a huge change. “I think a lot of the narrative that many investors put out there about investing in more Black founders was mostly just talk and not a lot of substance or actual dollars flowing to Black founders.”

We spoke with:

Alexis Alston, principal, Lightship Capital
Richard Kerby, general partner, Equal Ventures
Jadyn Bryden, vice president, Xfund

Alexis Alston, principal, Lightship Capital

Which sectors will you continue to keep an eye on, and which trends do you expect to take off next year? Why?

I’ve always been interested in the increasingly expanding applications of AI, including generative AI, natural language processing and deep learning. I’m looking forward to seeing how AI can contribute to scaling previously human-led areas of business, such as sales, social media, marketing and content development.

As fast-growing tech darlings begin to cut back on overhead expenses, I think we will see a strong shift toward companies relying more on sales optimization and content creation tools as a substitute for previously heavily redundant teams.

What is the most pressing political issue you are keeping tabs on, and what impact does it have on you as an investor? Would you back a startup that addresses any of these issues?

There is a deep undertone that is reverberating right now around the expectations of or the lack of political oversight for more nascent tech and financial products. Around everything from crowdfunding to crypto, there is a deep lack of oversight that is only now beginning to cause a ripple effect for many of our institutional and consumer investors.

As an investor, the lack of oversight has led to ultra-heightened valuations and unrealistic expectations of exit potential within these nascent markets. Ultimately, the everyday angel investor (who tends to be more representative of the general population than institutional investors) gets the short end of the stick every time.

Given that the percentage of venture capital going to Black founders has rarely exceeded 1%, do you feel next year will be any different? Why or why not?

I am not confident that next year will be any different. If anything, I am very concerned that the number will drop in 2023 as institutional funds either tighten their purse strings or begin to seek criteria for founders that often exclude Black founders.

3 Black investors talk about what they’re looking for in 2023 by Dominic-Madori Davis originally published on TechCrunch

Welcome back to Chain Reaction.

And happy holidays!

’Tis the season to be jolly and check your crypto portfolio before buying a few more holiday gifts for your family and friends. It’s also ’tis season for more FTX charges and SBF’s extradition…

More has unfolded in the FTX collapse as its co-founder and former CTO Gary Wang and the former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison have pleaded guilty to charges in regards to their roles in the crypto exchange’s demise, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Wednesday. Both Wang and Ellison are cooperating with the investigation, Williams added.

And in similar news, nine days after being arrested in the Bahamas on a handful of criminal charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is heading back to the United States to face them.

Bankman-Fried got his own plane back to the U.S. and is expected to be arraigned in the Federal District Court in Manhattan. Where he’ll be held in the states is to be determined, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be as lavish as his $40 million place in the Bahamas — but hey, who’s he to complain?

Meanwhile, things are getting shaken up in the NFT world as Yuga Labs, creator of blue-chip NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club, named Activision Blizzard COO Daniel Alegre as its new CEO. The current CEO, Nicole Muniz, will stay on as a strategic advisor.

If someone forwarded you this message, you can subscribe on TechCrunch’s newsletter page.

this week in web3

Here are some of the biggest crypto stories TechCrunch has covered this week.

Binance.US to buy Voyager Digital’s assets for $1 billion

It’s been a long year for Voyager Digital. After filing for bankruptcy, the crypto lender thought it would be able to return some funds to its customers by selling its assets to FTX. As you know, things haven’t been going well at FTX either. That’s why Binance.US is stepping in today and offering to buy Voyager Digital’s assets for $1.022 billion.

Magic Eden exec sees NFT gaming like the ‘early days of mobile gaming’ (TC+)

Blockchain games have grown exponentially over the past year as a new and innovative alternative to the traditional gaming world. While the two areas have been widely separated, some market players see an integrated future. In the past, big gaming companies became hyperfocused on the mobile gaming space and began acquiring smaller games to compete, Chris Akhavan, chief gaming officer at NFT marketplace Magic Eden, said to TechCrunch. “We think that the same journey is going to happen in web3,” Akhavan added.

India central bank chief warns crypto will cause the next financial crisis if permitted to grow

The Indian central bank’s governor said on Wednesday that it’s not at war with crypto, but warned that private cryptocurrencies will cause the next financial crisis unless its usage is prohibited. RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das told a room packed with banking executives and lawmakers that crypto has a huge inherent risk to the macroeconomic stability of the nation. “After the development of the last one year, including the latest episode surrounding FTX, I don’t think we need to say anything more. Time has proven that crypto is worth what it’s worth today.”

Starbucks’ NFT program may drive more digital collectible integrations with big brands (TC+)

As the world continues to become more digital, the demands and needs of consumers are changing — and NFTs might be a big part of the future for brands looking to shake up their rewards programs, Adam Brotman, co-CEO and co-founder of Forum3, said to TechCrunch. “We’re hearing from a lot of other brands, whether they have a loyalty program or not, that what all big brands are contending with right now is that the consumer is changing,” Brotman, who is also the former chief digital officer of Starbucks, said. “It’s not just Gen Z or millennials, but the consumer in general has become more hyperdigitalized and more appreciative of digital goods.”

Audit firm Mazars ceases proof-of-reserves work for Binance and others

Global audit firm Mazars has deleted the website that hosted proofs-of-reserves work for cryptocurrency exchanges. The company told Bloomberg that it is suspending its work with crypto companies on proofs-of-reserves reports going forward. Clients of the audit firm include Crypto.com and Kucoin. But the most prominent client was Binance.

the latest pod

Chain Reaction’s first season ended earlier this month and we’ll be bringing new content back in the New Year.

Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the latest episodes, and please leave us a review if you like what you hear!

follow the money

Crypto trading firm Amber raises $300 millionas it seeks protection for FTX-hit customers
Revel raises $7.8 millionto become the Instagram and Robinhood of NFT platforms
Foundation raises $7 millionto return ‘sovereignty’ to a chaotic crypto world
Bitcoin development firm Layer 2 Labs raises $3 million in a seed round
Arrakis Finance raises $4 million for its decentralized market making infrastructure

This list was compiled with information from Messari as well as TechCrunch’s own reporting.

‘Tis the season for more FTX charges by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

Despite already cutting thousands of employees, the layoffs at Twitter continue. According to posts on Twitter and LinkedIn from a former public policy employee, Twitter cut half of its public policy team. TechCrunch asked both the former employee and Twitter for comment but could not immediately confirm the exact magnitude of these cuts.

Twitter also laid off some engineers in infrastructure via email on Friday. Across all of Twitter, it’s estimated that about 75% of employees have either chosen to leave or have been laid off since Elon Musk took ownership of the company in October.

Theodora Skedas, the public policy employee who posted that she was laid off, said that she was responsible for managing the Trust and Safety Council, which was dissolved last week.

The group,formed in 2016, weighed in on content moderation and human rights-related issues such as the removal of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM), suicide prevention and online safety. Skedas also worked to develop policies around CSAM and mental health issues.

The Trust and Safety Council was shut down days after three key members left and published an open letter.

“We are announcing our resignation from Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council because it is clear from research evidence that, contrary to claims by Elon Musk, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline,” the letter said.

Made up of around 100 independent researchers and activists, the remaining council members received a notice that the group would be dissolved because it no longer seemed like the best system for Twitter to get external insight.

Musk has said that addressing the issue of CSAM is “priority #1,” but he has not yet taken action to follow through on that commitment. He also previously told a panel of civil rights leaders that he would refrain from reinstating banned users until there was a transparent process to do so, but he broke that promise.

Twitter lays off employees in public policy, engineering by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

We’ve seen attempts at gathering all cards (credit, debit, loyalty, etc.) in one before, but Card Blanch claims to have a fresh take on the concept and closed just shy of half a mil worth of angel investments with a very elegant deck. The company gets a few parts of the slide deck right that we rarely see done well, so that’s wonderfully refreshing. Let’s dive right in!

We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own, here’s how you can do that.

Slides in this deck

Card Blanch’s deck consists of just 12 slides, and the team tells us that it is exactly as pitched without redactions.

Cover slide
Problem slide
Market size slide
Solution slide
Product slide
“How it works” slide
Competition slide
Revenue model slide
Market opportunity slide
“Next steps” — the ask slide
“Your whole wallet in one card” — value prop slide
“Complete spending analytic in one place”— summary slide

Three things to love

The graphic designers over at Card Blanch deserve a raise; this is one of the best-designed decks I’ve seen in a hot minute. Let’s take a peek at the highlights:

Well, that’s a big enough market

I don’t think anyone was going to argue against the number of cards in circulation and use in the U.S., and perhaps I’d have liked to have seen more of a “what’s the market we are going after?” type of approach, but as far as market-size slides go, this is hard to argue with.

Store cards, loyalty cards, credit cards — they all have different advantages (otherwise, the average American wouldn’t be carrying six cards with them all the time). I love how this slide presents the data simply and cleanly. And the “text flows behind the person” design is a very nice touch indeed.

If your market is huge and obvious, you can get away with a market slide like this. One thing, however: This is probably a very mature and rather plateaued market. I doubt there’s a lot more growth to be had in this industry. That means that to really stand out, you have to offer an enormous customer benefit. Can Card Blanch pull that off?

Awesome “ask” slide

OK, so this is not a complete slam dunk as an “ask” slide, but at least it has a specific amount of money that’s being raised, and it has a number of goals that will be delivered in the next stretch of the company’s existence.

I wish the slide used SMART — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based — goals. This list is great, but none of the milestones are specifically measurable (product development will never be finalized; go-to-market will never be complete; “aggressive” doesn’t mean anything without numbers attached, etc.) or has specific deadlines attached. Still — it’s rare that I see slides that are even this good, so I figured I’d celebrate it nonetheless.

So easy to understand

What Card Blanch really masters is telling its story through design mockups. The full story of how the product works — paying with the right card in the right place to maximize card benefits — fits into four elegant screenshots. (Slide 12 includes the rest.)

It’s a really good storytelling device because the founders can give a voice-over of how it all works. Or will work?

That’s a quirk about this pitch deck: Nowhere in the deck is it stated how much of this is actually built and how much is mock-ups and good ideas. That’s not uncommon in pre-seed/angel stage pitch decks, to be clear, but in a world where investors are trying to ascertain how much risk is in the startup, including an update about what has been done so far would be helpful.

In the rest of this teardown, we’ll take a look at three things Card Blanch could have improved or done differently, along with its full pitch deck!

Pitch Deck Teardown: Card Blanch’s $460K deck for its angel round by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch