Author: Editor-in-Chief

U.K. fintech Revolut has hit yet another roadblock to its longstanding mission of becoming a real bank in its home country: Its full banking license is on hold because the country’s central bank is concerned over whether the startup can maintain its risk management controls in the face of its blazing fast international expansion. The Bank of England wants Revolut to commit to building its risk management stack to match its international growth before the regulator can approve a full banking license, while the Prudential Regulation Authority is investigating the fintech’s controls in the U.K. and internationally, according to the…

Security researchers have discovered that as many as half of all geostationary satellites in Earth’s orbit are carrying unencrypted sensitive consumer, corporate, and military information, making this data wide open to eavesdropping. The researchers at UC San Diego and the University of Maryland spent $800 on an off-the-shelf satellite receiver and pointed it at the sky for three years. They found reams of unencrypted data beaming to and from space, including people’s private voice calls and text messages, and consumer internet traffic from in-flight Wi-Fi services. The unencrypted data also included communications between critical infrastructure systems, such as energy…

The thousands of small trucking companies that help move goods around the United States have a fairly old-school way of doing things, according to Paul Singer. He would know — he left his product manager job at Uber Freight to start a company called FleetWorks, which he believes will modernize things. Created during Y Combinator’s Summer 2023 batch, FleetWorks has been developing a marketplace that leverages artificial intelligence to make faster matches between carrier companies and goods that need to be moved, freeing up more time for workers on both sides of the transaction. Singer and co-founder Quang Tran, who…

Water quality is the most important thing for aquaculture farms to monitor to ensure their livestock remain healthy. While there are existing ways to monitor water quality — sensors and water testing kits — they are too expensive for many farmers in regions like Southeast Asia. Aquawise wants to offer aquaculture farmers in Southeast Asia a better way to monitor their water quality by using AI and existing satellites — no hardware purchases required. Bangkok-based Aquawise takes satellite images of fish and shrimp farms and feeds them into its physics-based AI model that monitors the water for things like temperature,…

Farewell, V2: SpaceX on Monday night sent Starship’s current configuration on one last test flight, in a mission that the company says hit all its key goals, moving the program into its next phase. The nearly 400-foot-tall rocket lifted off from Starbase, Texas at 6:23 PM local time. The Super Heavy booster, reused from a March test, tried a new landing-burn profile, reigniting 13 engines before throttling down to five, and finally three for the final hover before completing a planned soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico roughly seven minutes after liftoff. Meanwhile, Starship’s upper stage deployed eight mock…

Finnish health tech company Oura has raised $900 million in fresh funding led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, with participation from new investor ICONIQ and contributions from Whale Rock and Atreides. The company said today that this funding will value it at “approximately $11 billion,” more than double the valuation it received for its last round in December. Bloomberg previously reported that Oura was closing new funding at $11 billion valuation. “This new funding is a testament to the strength of Oura business and the trust millions of members place in us every day. We’re proud to be building…

Airbound, an Indian drone startup, has raised $8.65 million in seed funding led by Physical Intelligence co-founder Lachy Groom, as it begins a drone-delivery pilot with a private hospital and works toward one-cent delivery using its ultra-light, blended-wing-body aircraft. The seed round includes participation from Humba Ventures and Airbound’s existing investor Lightspeed Venture Partners, as well as senior leaders at Tesla, SpaceX, and Anduril. Founded in 2020 by Naman Pushp — who was 15 at the time and is now 20 — Airbound has developed an aircraft using a tail-sitter design (where the drone sits vertically and launches upright like…

Goldman Sachs has agreed to acquire Industry Ventures, a 25-year-old, San Francisco-based investment firm with $7 billion in assets under management, CNBC was first to report on Monday. The deal underscores the growing importance of secondary markets and buyouts as traditional venture exits remain sluggish. The investment bank is paying $665 million in cash and equity, with up to $300 million more tied to the firm’s performance through 2030, according to a release from Goldman. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of next year, and all 45 Industry Ventures employees are expected to join Goldman.…

Grindr’s majority owners are scrambling to take the LGBTQ+ dating app private after a stock decline triggered a personal financial crisis, according to a report from Semafor. The owners in question are Raymond Zage, a former hedge fund manager and U.S. expat now based in Singapore, and James Lu, a Chinese-American entrepreneur and former Amazon and Baidu exec. Together they led the 2020 acquisition of Grindr from Chinese ownership for over $600 million, then took the app public in 2022 through a blank-check merger. Reportedly, Zage and Lu, who together control more than 60% of Grindr, pledged nearly all their…

Get ready for one of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025’s most electrifying moments — literally. Chris Barman, CEO of Slate Auto, is rolling one of her company’s brand-new electric trucks onto the Disrupt Stage before anyone else in the world sees it on the road. Be in the room for this live EV unveiling on the main stage. Save up to $624this week when you register before October 17. Bringing a team? Save an additional 15% to 30% on group passes. How Slate is reinventing the commercial EV market — live onstage Barman will give attendees an insider’s look at how Slate…