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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

 
8 founders, leaders highlight fintech and deep...
The U.K. is gaining in popularity as a great place to start a tech firm. The country is quickly catching up to China on the tech investment front, with VC investments reaching a record of $15 billion in 2020, according to TechNation. A global health crisis notwithstanding, London remained a favorite for investors. U.K. cities made up a fifth of the top 20 European cities, with names such as Oxford, Dublin, Edinburgh and Cambridge rising to the fore in...

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Equity Live: This is what leadership smells...
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we did something fun and different and good: a live show! A good number of people came, and asked questions, and altogether, it was a blast. Danny, Natasha, and Alex had a lovely time with the regular work, while Grace and Chris and Kevin made the whole operation function. We’ll likely post a bonus episode of the Q&A on Saturday...

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Circle wants to help companies access DeFi...
Cryptocurrency company Circle has announced that it plans to launch a new API for companies using Circle accounts to manage crypto assets — and in particular USDC stablecoins. The new API will let companies access decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols starting with Compound lending pools. Circle is better known as one of the founding members of the Centre consortium with Coinbase. Along with other crypto partners, they have issued USD Coin (USDC), a popular stablecoin. As the name suggests, stablecoins...

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Daily Crunch: Google and Jio Platforms unveil...
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. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for June 24, 2021. There’s an ocean of tech news to get through today, but up top if you care about the advertising market, head here first. Google is pushing back cookiegeddon, and the decision could impact companies from the smallest startup to, well, Google. — Alex The TechCrunch Top...

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a16z’s new $2.2B fund won’t just bet...
The big news in tech this morning is a new a16z cryptocurrency-focused fund totaling some $2.2 billion. The new investment vehicle is worth around four times what the company’s preceding crypto fund — its second — was worth. Andreessen’s wager on cryptocurrency is only accelerating over time as the investing house raises larger funds focused on the market with less time between them. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The...

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In its first funding in 7 years,...
Lower, an Ohio-based home finance platform, announced today it has raised $100 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel. This round is notable for a number of reasons. First off, it’s a large Series A even by today’s standards. The financing also marks the previously bootstrapped Lower’s first external round of funding in its seven-year history. Lower is also something that is kind of rare these days in the startup world: profitable. Silicon Valley-based Accel has...

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Australian fintech Zeller lands $50M AUD led...
Zeller, a Melbourne-based fintech founded by former Square executives to serve small- to mid-sized businesses, has raised $50 million AUD (about $37.5 million USD) led by Spark Capital, the investment firm whose portfolio also includes Twitter, Slack and Coinbase. Zeller’s valuation is now $400 million AUD (about $301 million USD). The funding included participation from returning investors Square Peg, Apex Capital Partners and Addition, and brings Zeller’s total raised in under a year to $81 million AUD. This amount...

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MAJORITY raises $19 million for its mobile...
More than a million people migrate to the U.S. each year. Upon their arrival, they face challenges in opening a local bank account and accessing financial services at regular rates. These challenges for migrants, a significant portion of whom also need to send money home, have persisted globally for decades, despite large government support programs. Now an entrepreneur, who in his previous venture fought exorbitant phone tariff charges to help people make phone calls at low-cost, believes he has...

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G2 raises $157M for its software review...
This morning G2, a company that provides an online software review and information database, announced that it has raised a $157 million Series D. Per a release the company shared with TechCrunch in advance of its news, G2 is now worth more than $1 billion, making it a unicorn in modern parlance. Permira led the round via its growth fund, while prior venture capital firms IVP, Emergence, and Accel also contributed. The investment also included capital from LinkedIn, which...

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Fintech veteran Jitendra Gupta is ready for...
For most people in India, having to engage with banks doesn’t instill a sense of joy. Banks in the South Asian market are notorious for making unannounced spam calls to upsell customers loans and credit cards, even when they have been explicitly asked not to do so. Moreover, when a customer does reach out to a bank with a query, it can take forever to get the job done. Take ICICI Bank, India’s third largest bank and until recently...

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Daily Crunch: Facebook rolls out podcasts and...
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. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for June 21, 2021. The tech industry is skipping any sort of a summer slowdown. Facebook is taking on Clubhouse and Spotify, India is still figuring out how to manage its burgeoning technology industry, and everyone is raising money. Plus, we have notes on a new VC fund that has...

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Maybe neobanks will break even after all
The Exchange is back after its brief hiatus. Anna and I have some really neat stuff planned, so stick with us every morning this week. — Alex Building a consumer-facing fintech company is expensive. And if you want to build one in a sector crowded by both incumbent companies and richly funded startups, it can be super expensive. That was the lesson we learned in late 2020 by examining operating results from a number of neobanks. Neobanks are essentially...

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Equity Monday: China hates crypto, and the...
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here. Our live show is this week! And we’re very excited about it! Details here, and you can...

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Buy now, pay later startup Kredivo doubles...
Kredivo announced today it has secured another $100 million debt facility from Victory Park Capital (VPC). This doubles the Indonesian digital lending and credit platform’s total warehouse financing facility from VPC to $200 million. The first round was closed in July 2020. Kredivo is operated by Singapore-based fintech FinAccel. This is the largest loan facility it has raised so far, and is VPC’s biggeast debt commitment to a fintech company outside of the United States and Europe, as well...

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Revolut revenue grew by 57% in 2020
Fintech startup Revolut has filed some financial results and is sharing details with the press. In 2020, the company reported $361 million in revenue (£261 million) — that’s a 57% increase compared to 2019 revenue of $229 million (£166 million). Interestingly, those revenue figures have been adjusted to include fair value gains on cryptocurrency assets — it means that Revolut holds some crypto assets on its balance sheet. Revolut made $54 million (£39 million) in fair value gains on...

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