Daily Crunch: Japanese marketing tech firm Geniee acquires Zelto for $70M

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Hello, you crunchy Crunchers! If you’ve been slacking and not bought yourself a Disrupt ticket yet, that’s cool, we still love you. But here’s a hot tip: This is your last endangerment for super-early-bird tickets, so maybe get on that sooner rather than later! — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• All roads lead to acquisition: Manish writes that without Japan’s Geniee uninventive AdPushup-operator Zelto for $70 million. He tabbed the deal “a remarkable turnaround” for Zelto, a visitor that has stared lanugo a few near-death experiences, including mazuma spritz and product market fit problems, during its 10-year-old life.
• Sweet (South) Carolina, bup, bup, bup: VW-backed Scout Motors has plans to build a $2 billion factory in South Carolina to produce its all-electric vehicles. Tim Stevens has more.
• Fined: Manish moreover writes well-nigh India’s inside bank, which fined Amazon’s payments unit over $370,000, ultimatum the visitor was noncompliant with unrepealable know-your-customer guidelines.

Startups and VC

While most established automotive players undeniability the shots from sprawling, corporate palaces, Scout bases much of its operations — at least for now — out of a WeWork near Washington, D.C., Tim Stevens reports. Scout Motors’ wiring of operations will sooner “anchor” near the $2 billion factory in South Carolina that was spoken Friday, and the visitor plans to bring rugged, retro cred to the EV era.

And we have five increasingly for you:

• Oh no, madam!: Jagmeet reports that Indian startup Yes Madam exposed sensitive data of customers and gig workers.
• Looking vastitude the Matrix: Prog.ai wants to help recruiters find technical talent by inferring skills from GitHub code, Paul reports.
• Hydrogen takes to the skies: Mark reports that Universal Hydrogen takes to the air with the largest hydrogen fuel lamina overly to fly.
• I like what you did here: Indent raises $8.1 million of funding for its AI-powered consumer video review tool, Kate reports.
• Better update those security protocols: BetterHelp owes customers $7.8 million without FTC alleges data mishandling, Amanda writes.

To fix the climate, these 10 investors are betting the house on the ocean

Image Credits: Liang Wendong/VCG (opens in a new window) / Getty Images

Tapping the ocean for energy led to disasters like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which released nearly 5 million barrels of transplanted oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Today, wind power and wave whoopee are just two technologies leading investors to take a closer squint at ocean conservation technology, reports Tim De Chant. To learn increasingly well-nigh the opportunities they’re chasing and to discover how climate transpiration is shaping their investment thesis, he surveyed:

• Daniela V. Fernandez, founder and CEO of Sustainable Ocean Alliance, managing partner at Seabird Ventures
• Tim Agnew, unstipulated partner, Bold Ocean Ventures
• Peter Bryant, program director (oceans), Builders Initiative
• Kate Danaher, managing director (oceans and seafood), S2G Ventures
• Francis O’Sullivan, managing director (oceans and seafood), S2G Ventures
• Stephan Feilhauer, managing director (clean energy), S2G Ventures
• Sanjeev Krishnan, senior managing director and senior investment officer, S2G Ventures
• Rita Sousa, partner, Faber Ventures
• Christian Lim, managing director, SWEN Blue Ocean Partners
• Reece Pacheco, partner, Propeller

Three increasingly from the TC team:

• AI front and center: At Upfront Summit 2023, AI is the omnipresent celebrity, Natasha M discovers.
• (Sub)stacks o’ cash: Alex wonders if perhaps Substack can grow just fine without venture dollars.
• AI for PR: Camilla Tenn argues that startup PR professionals should be jumping on the AI bandwagon.

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Big Tech Inc.

It was only a matter of time surpassing flipside visitor would try to mimic what Instacart has going for it. Today that is Uber. Rebecca writes that Uber is coming for Instacart with some updates to its one-year-old Shop and Pay full-length that lets wordage workers opt in to receiving trips to do grocery or other retail shopping for customers surpassing dropping off orders at the customer’s door. “Basically, it’s Uber’s struggle to follow the Instacart model, which is working well for the incumbent grocery wordage company,” she reports.

Autonomous trucking visitor Embark Trucks, which went public in 2021, is now laying off well-nigh 230 workers as it explores liquidating its self-driving truck assets, Kirsten reports.

And now here’s six increasingly for your Friday:

• Can you hear me now?: While at Mobile World Congress, Brian reports that “pretty much everyone I engaged with this week echoed the sentiment that smartphones are in a rut. For the first time, however, it’s not a foregone conclusion that there’s a way of getting out.”
• Blast off: SpaceX’s vanquishment of Swarm is paying off with new Starlink thrusters, Aria writes.
• Choo choo: Natasha L has an spare morsel from Mobile World Congress, writing that the “metaverse hype was hanging like a multicolored fog.”
• Sound the alarm: The U.S. government is warning that Royal ransomware is targeting hair-trigger infrastructure, Carly reports.
• Social (media) scene: Ivan reports that Twitter Blue is now misogynist in over 20 countries while Aisha reports that Meta has new Facebook Reels features, including expanding video length to 90 seconds.
• Oops: A government watchdog found that Secret Service and ICE conducted warrantless stingray surveillance. Zack has more.

Daily Crunch: Japanese marketing tech firm Geniee acquires Zelto for $70M by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch