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Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Monday, August 2, 2021. What a day. Square kicked off this week’s information cycle with a megadeal, Google popped up with new {hardware}, and there are new VC funds aplenty. It’s busy, however earlier than we get began, there’s a particular summer time version of Extra Crunch Live this week that’s 100% pitch-off. It’s on Wednesday, so be there or be sq.. — Alex
The TechCrunch Top 3
- Google pursues customized silicon: Alphabet’s Google subsidiary is moving into the customized silicon sport, TechCrunch studies. Akin to what Apple did with its A and M chips, Google hopes that its Tensor SoC (system on a chip) “will differentiate itself in a crowded smartphone field,” Brian Heater writes. For extra on Google’s new {hardware}, head right here.
- Square buys Afterpay: U.S. fintech big Square is shopping for the Australian purchase now, pay later firm Afterpay for $29 billion in inventory. TechCrunch dug into the deal’s numbers, however the gist is that Afterpay brings retailers, world customers and a brand new fintech product to Square. The deal isn’t low cost, but it surely does make sense.
- Cloud infra spend accelerates: Want to know why buyers are so scorching and bothered by the tech trade nowadays? In half as a result of demand simply retains accelerating. TechCrunch coated new information right now indicating that the cloud infra market — which underpins so very many providers that buyers and corporates rely on alike — noticed spending develop 39% in Q2 2021 in comparison with the year-ago quarter. The whole for the second quarter? $42 billion.
Startups/VC
- Reese Witherspoon’s media firm sells for $900M: This just isn’t our common startup fare, however when a media firm sells for practically $1 billion, we’ve to concentrate. Per TechCrunch, the corporate, Hello Sunshine, made content material for main streaming companies. What’s bizarre is who purchased it. A “yet-unnamed new media firm run by former Disney execs,” TechCrunch writes. Mysterious.
- Afterpay investor bullish on Afterpay: TechCrunch printed an op-ed by Dana Stalder, an investor at Matrix Partners and self-described “only institutional venture investor” in Afterpay. Their take? That Square + Afterpay might be higher as a sum than the mere addition of their elements. We’ll see.
- Nektar.ai needs to consolidate B2B gross sales information: Selling software program isn’t any simple sport, and there are myriad instruments that each SDR and AE is anticipated to make use of. Nektar needs to be the central assortment level and mind for all that information, and it simply raised $6 million to develop its operation. Frankly, the salesops market is massive, and I’m stunned we don’t hear about much more firms pursuing comparable traces of labor.
- Investors again startups making B2B funds easier: Sticking to the B2B world, Yadoo has raised a $20 million spherical to energy business-to-business funds. In brief, whereas Venmoing your buddy beer cash is as simple as ingesting mentioned beer, it’s not the identical with companies. Yadoo is without doubt one of the startups trying to take the issue on, on this case from the startup’s Mexico City HQ.
And now, some enterprise capital information:
- Element Ventures raises $130M: It’s an indication of the instances that I’m not in any respect stunned {that a} B2B-focused fintech enterprise capital agency simply raised 9 figures. Of course that’s a sufficiently big downside area to deploy that quantity of capital. And of course there are sufficient startups that match its parameters to fill its e book with offers. Element will spend money on 15 firms every year, specializing in offers in Europe, the U.S. and Asia.
- More cash for LatAm: Newtopia is a brand new fund centered on Latin America that simply put collectively a recent $50 million fund. It will spend money on pre-seed firms ($100,000 checks) and bigger rounds ($250,000 to $1 million) in startups scaling towards their Series A. Early-stage investing is its personal beast, so it’s good that the burgeoning…
