Encryption your data. Digital Lock. Hacker attack and data breach. Big data with encrypted computer code. Safe your data. Cyber internet security and privacy concept. Database storage 3d illustration

Evolve hack fallout continues, fintech M&A heats up and Plaid talks enterprise push

by with No Comment Tech

Encryption your data. Digital Lock. Hacker attack and data breach. Big data with encrypted computer code. Safe your data. Cyber internet security and privacy concept. Database storage 3d illustration

Image Credits: JuSun / Getty Images

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at the Evolve Bank hack, three notable acquisitions, Plaid’s enterprise customer growth and more.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here.

The big story

On June 26, Evolve Bank & Trust, a financial institution that’s popular with fintech startups, announced that it had been victim of a cyberattack and data breach that could have affected its partner companies as well. The incident, according to the company, involved “the data and personal information of some Evolve retail bank customers and financial technology partners’ customers” such as Affirm, Mercury, Bilt, Alloy and Stripe. On June 29, fintech company Wise announced that some of its customers’ personal data may have been stolen in the data breach.

Also last week, Thread Bank — a popular partner to BaaS startups such as Unit — got hit with enforcement action from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Analysis of the week

This past week was an active one for fintech M&A. Just seven months after announcing a $6 million seed funding round, data intelligence startup Hyperplane announced it had been acquired by Brazil’s Nubank. The company’s main focus is to allow banks to train their own models to power tools across their risk, collections and marketing departments. Meanwhile, Chime also announced plans to acquire Salt Labs “for as much as $173 million.” TechCrunch covered Salt Labs’ $10 million raise in March of 2023 here. And Robinhood is adding more AI features for investors with its acquisition of AI-powered research platform Pluto Capital.

Dollars and cents

Payabli, which builds the infrastructure that allows companies — specifically software companies — to embed and facilitate payments through APIs, raised $20 million in a Series A funding.

Another company in the space is Rainforest, which also raised $20 million in its own Series A funding round, less than one year after its seed financing. Rainforest embeds payment processing into other software platforms. 

Belgium’s Chift, which lets SaaS companies integrate with dozens of financial tools with a unified API, raised a $2.5 million seed round.

Armed with $8 million in seed funding, Egyptian banking-as-a-service startup Connect Money is out to tap its popularity to explore emerging business opportunities out of African markets.

As a foreigner, navigating health insurance systems can often be difficult. German startup Feather thinks it has a solution and raised €6 million to help some of the 40-plus million expats working and living in Europe.

What else we’re writing

Plaid’s expansion into being a multi-product company has led to it starting to see real traction beyond traditional fintech customers. President Jen Taylor told me exclusively just how many enterprise customers the company has now, detailing how growth in that segment is starting to outpace the rest of its business. 

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart has quietly started rolling out its own payments app, dubbed Super.money, as it broadens its fintech ambitions more than a year and half after separating from PhonePe. The Walmart-owned firm’s new app, now live in beta on Play Store, allows users to make mobile payments via UPI, an interoperable network that is the most popular way Indians transact online.

High-interest headlines

Citi sees AI displacing more bank jobs than any other sector

Goldman Sachs deploys its first generative AI tool across the firm

Billionaire Steve Cohen’s Point72 Ventures lays off fintech team in pivot towards AI

Pay for new stuff by trading in your old stuff right at checkout

Prudence, Profits, and Growth (global fintech report co-authored by BCG and QED Investors)

Only up from Here: 2024’s State of Fintech and the Hero’s Journey (from Bain Capital Ventures partner Matt Harris)

Want to reach out with a tip? Email me at [email protected] or send me a message on Signal at 408.204.3036. You can also send a note to the whole TechCrunch crew at [email protected]. For more secure communications, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and links to encrypted messaging apps.

M&A activity heats up with Wiz, Graphcore, etc.

by with No Comment Tech

Waves of sheets of paper that mimic fire

Image Credits: Getty Images

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. 

Most interesting startup stories from the week

Shortly after Google parent Alphabet reportedly abandoned its ambitions to purchase online marketing software company HubSpot, the tech giant decided to pursue another big acquisition. This time, Google is in advanced discussions to pay $23 billion for Wiz, a cloud security startup with astronomically fast revenue growth. Wiz, a mere four-year-old business, has already achieved $500 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), TechCrunch learned exclusively this week.

Google’s offer is more than Wiz’s last valuation of $12 billion, but will this rocket ship agree to sell itself now and forgo its IPO dreams? A person close to the company told us that there’s a 50% chance the deal won’t happen. 

SoftBank eyeing AI: The Japanese giant has purchased Graphcore, a U.K.-based AI chipmaker once considered to be an Nvidia rival, for an undisclosed amount. While Graphcore’s processors’ popularity is nowhere near Nvidia’s, SoftBank hopes that the chipmaker will play a big role in its pursuit of AI riches.

Another deal for Deel: Payroll provider Deel is on an M&A streak. After buying two other companies this year, this week it scooped up Hofy, a startup that delivers and manages equipment for remote office workers. We understand that Deel paid over $100 million for Hofy, which raised $30.2 million from VCs.

Head-shaking sale: In 2018, investors touted HeadSpin as “one of the fastest-scaling software companies” ever. By 2020, it was valued at $1.1 billion. Then the startup’s founder pleaded guilty to overstating HeadSpin’s revenue and went to prison for fraud. HeadSpin was recently bought by private equity firm PartnerOne for a mere $28 million, TechCrunched has learned, while most former employees received nothing for their options.

Most interesting fundraises this week

Looking for a job is hard, but it can be especially difficult for people with disabilities. That’s why disability activist Keely Cat-Wells created Making Space, a talent acquisition platform for disabled workers. But finding investors for her startups wasn’t easy.

One prospective investor even advised Cat-Wells to find a male, non-disabled co-founder. She ignored that suggestion and grabbed a $2 million pre-seed round from Utah-based VC Beta Boom.

Search for AI: Google helps humans search the internet. AI platforms need to search the internet, too, but at a much larger scale. Exa, which raised $17 million from Lightspeed, Nvidia and YC, does just that.

Consecutive rounds: Back-to-back raises all but disappeared for non-AI startups post-2021 boom. But could Coast, which describes itself as “a financial services platform for the future of transportation,” bring the trend back? It just raised a $40 million Series B from ICONIQ Growth just four months after announcing a $25 million venture round.

AI talent: After six years of operating as a bootstrapped business, Tribe AI raised $3.2 million to help companies hire contractors who can implement AI strategies.  

Most interesting VC and fund news this week

While new fund news was sparse this week, VCs certainly stayed in the limelight.

a16z co-founders for Trump: Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz recorded a nearly two-hour podcast in which they explained why they are switching political parties. The pair admitted that they are single-issue voters and that the issue centers on the interest of startups (and potentially their own pocketbooks). In short, they say the Biden administration wants to overregulate AI, won’t provide clarity on crypto and is proposing a tax on unrealized capital gains that they can’t stomach. They think Trump will be more favorable for startups.   

VC at RNC: David Sacks, a Craft Ventures founder and an All-In podcast co-host, gave a speech at the Republican National Convention. Sacks may be a well-known figure in Silicon Valley, but his name recognition among average Republicans remains low, wrote TechCrunch reporter Margaux MacColl, who was at the RNC. “The applause was tepid throughout his speech.”

Menlo plus Anthropic fund: Menlo Ventures was one of the biggest investors in Anthropic’s Series D. This week the VC firm teamed up with the the LLM maker on a $100 million fund for backing pre-seed, seed and Series A AI startups.

Last but not least

AI fundraising is on a tear, but did you know that this year the number of AI companies that raised $100 million rounds or higher already stands at 28? We expect this list to keep growing in the coming months.

Evolve hack fallout continues, fintech M&A heats up and Plaid talks enterprise push

by with No Comment Tech

Encryption your data. Digital Lock. Hacker attack and data breach. Big data with encrypted computer code. Safe your data. Cyber internet security and privacy concept. Database storage 3d illustration

Image Credits: JuSun / Getty Images

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at the Evolve Bank hack, three notable acquisitions, Plaid’s enterprise customer growth and more.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here.

The big story

On June 26, Evolve Bank & Trust, a financial institution that’s popular with fintech startups, announced that it had been victim of a cyberattack and data breach that could have affected its partner companies as well. The incident, according to the company, involved “the data and personal information of some Evolve retail bank customers and financial technology partners’ customers” such as Affirm, Mercury, Bilt, Alloy and Stripe. On June 29, fintech company Wise announced that some of its customers’ personal data may have been stolen in the data breach.

Also last week, Thread Bank — a popular partner to BaaS startups such as Unit — got hit with enforcement action from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Analysis of the week

This past week was an active one for fintech M&A. Just seven months after announcing a $6 million seed funding round, data intelligence startup Hyperplane announced it had been acquired by Brazil’s Nubank. The company’s main focus is to allow banks to train their own models to power tools across their risk, collections and marketing departments. Meanwhile, Chime also announced plans to acquire Salt Labs “for as much as $173 million.” TechCrunch covered Salt Labs’ $10 million raise in March of 2023 here. And Robinhood is adding more AI features for investors with its acquisition of AI-powered research platform Pluto Capital.

Dollars and cents

Payabli, which builds the infrastructure that allows companies — specifically software companies — to embed and facilitate payments through APIs, raised $20 million in a Series A funding.

Another company in the space is Rainforest, which also raised $20 million in its own Series A funding round, less than one year after its seed financing. Rainforest embeds payment processing into other software platforms. 

Belgium’s Chift, which lets SaaS companies integrate with dozens of financial tools with a unified API, raised a $2.5 million seed round.

Armed with $8 million in seed funding, Egyptian banking-as-a-service startup Connect Money is out to tap its popularity to explore emerging business opportunities out of African markets.

As a foreigner, navigating health insurance systems can often be difficult. German startup Feather thinks it has a solution and raised €6 million to help some of the 40-plus million expats working and living in Europe.

What else we’re writing

Plaid’s expansion into being a multi-product company has led to it starting to see real traction beyond traditional fintech customers. President Jen Taylor told me exclusively just how many enterprise customers the company has now, detailing how growth in that segment is starting to outpace the rest of its business. 

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart has quietly started rolling out its own payments app, dubbed Super.money, as it broadens its fintech ambitions more than a year and half after separating from PhonePe. The Walmart-owned firm’s new app, now live in beta on Play Store, allows users to make mobile payments via UPI, an interoperable network that is the most popular way Indians transact online.

High-interest headlines

Citi sees AI displacing more bank jobs than any other sector

Goldman Sachs deploys its first generative AI tool across the firm

Billionaire Steve Cohen’s Point72 Ventures lays off fintech team in pivot towards AI

Pay for new stuff by trading in your old stuff right at checkout

Prudence, Profits, and Growth (global fintech report co-authored by BCG and QED Investors)

Only up from Here: 2024’s State of Fintech and the Hero’s Journey (from Bain Capital Ventures partner Matt Harris)

Want to reach out with a tip? Email me at [email protected] or send me a message on Signal at 408.204.3036. You can also send a note to the whole TechCrunch crew at [email protected]. For more secure communications, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and links to encrypted messaging apps.

M&A activity heats up with Wiz, Graphcore, etc.

by with No Comment Tech

Waves of sheets of paper that mimic fire

Image Credits: Getty Images

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. 

Most interesting startup stories from the week

Shortly after Google parent Alphabet reportedly abandoned its ambitions to purchase online marketing software company HubSpot, the tech giant decided to pursue another big acquisition. This time, Google is in advanced discussions to pay $23 billion for Wiz, a cloud security startup with astronomically fast revenue growth. Wiz, a mere four-year-old business, has already achieved $500 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), TechCrunch learned exclusively this week.

Google’s offer is more than Wiz’s last valuation of $12 billion, but will this rocket ship agree to sell itself now and forgo its IPO dreams? A person close to the company told us that there’s a 50% chance the deal won’t happen. 

SoftBank eyeing AI: The Japanese giant has purchased Graphcore, a U.K.-based AI chipmaker once considered to be an Nvidia rival, for an undisclosed amount. While Graphcore’s processors’ popularity is nowhere near Nvidia’s, SoftBank hopes that the chipmaker will play a big role in its pursuit of AI riches.

Another deal for Deel: Payroll provider Deel is on an M&A streak. After buying two other companies this year, this week it scooped up Hofy, a startup that delivers and manages equipment for remote office workers. We understand that Deel paid over $100 million for Hofy, which raised $30.2 million from VCs.

Head-shaking sale: In 2018, investors touted HeadSpin as “one of the fastest-scaling software companies” ever. By 2020, it was valued at $1.1 billion. Then the startup’s founder pleaded guilty to overstating HeadSpin’s revenue and went to prison for fraud. HeadSpin was recently bought by private equity firm PartnerOne for a mere $28 million, TechCrunched has learned, while most former employees received nothing for their options.

Most interesting fundraises this week

Looking for a job is hard, but it can be especially difficult for people with disabilities. That’s why disability activist Keely Cat-Wells created Making Space, a talent acquisition platform for disabled workers. But finding investors for her startups wasn’t easy.

One prospective investor even advised Cat-Wells to find a male, non-disabled co-founder. She ignored that suggestion and grabbed a $2 million pre-seed round from Utah-based VC Beta Boom.

Search for AI: Google helps humans search the internet. AI platforms need to search the internet, too, but at a much larger scale. Exa, which raised $17 million from Lightspeed, Nvidia and YC, does just that.

Consecutive rounds: Back-to-back raises all but disappeared for non-AI startups post-2021 boom. But could Coast, which describes itself as “a financial services platform for the future of transportation,” bring the trend back? It just raised a $40 million Series B from ICONIQ Growth just four months after announcing a $25 million venture round.

AI talent: After six years of operating as a bootstrapped business, Tribe AI raised $3.2 million to help companies hire contractors who can implement AI strategies.  

Most interesting VC and fund news this week

While new fund news was sparse this week, VCs certainly stayed in the limelight.

a16z co-founders for Trump: Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz recorded a nearly two-hour podcast in which they explained why they are switching political parties. The pair admitted that they are single-issue voters and that the issue centers on the interest of startups (and potentially their own pocketbooks). In short, they say the Biden administration wants to overregulate AI, won’t provide clarity on crypto and is proposing a tax on unrealized capital gains that they can’t stomach. They think Trump will be more favorable for startups.   

VC at RNC: David Sacks, a Craft Ventures founder and an All-In podcast co-host, gave a speech at the Republican National Convention. Sacks may be a well-known figure in Silicon Valley, but his name recognition among average Republicans remains low, wrote TechCrunch reporter Margaux MacColl, who was at the RNC. “The applause was tepid throughout his speech.”

Menlo plus Anthropic fund: Menlo Ventures was one of the biggest investors in Anthropic’s Series D. This week the VC firm teamed up with the the LLM maker on a $100 million fund for backing pre-seed, seed and Series A AI startups.

Last but not least

AI fundraising is on a tear, but did you know that this year the number of AI companies that raised $100 million rounds or higher already stands at 28? We expect this list to keep growing in the coming months.

Encryption your data. Digital Lock. Hacker attack and data breach. Big data with encrypted computer code. Safe your data. Cyber internet security and privacy concept. Database storage 3d illustration

Evolve hack fallout continues, fintech M&A heats up and Plaid talks enterprise push

by with No Comment Tech

Encryption your data. Digital Lock. Hacker attack and data breach. Big data with encrypted computer code. Safe your data. Cyber internet security and privacy concept. Database storage 3d illustration

Image Credits: JuSun / Getty Images

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at the Evolve Bank hack, three notable acquisitions, Plaid’s enterprise customer growth and more.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here.

The big story

On June 26, Evolve Bank & Trust, a financial institution that’s popular with fintech startups, announced that it had been victim of a cyberattack and data breach that could have affected its partner companies as well. The incident, according to the company, involved “the data and personal information of some Evolve retail bank customers and financial technology partners’ customers” such as Affirm, Mercury, Bilt, Alloy and Stripe. On June 29, fintech company Wise announced that some of its customers’ personal data may have been stolen in the data breach.

Also last week, Thread Bank — a popular partner to BaaS startups such as Unit — got hit with enforcement action from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Analysis of the week

This past week was an active one for fintech M&A. Just seven months after announcing a $6 million seed funding round, data intelligence startup Hyperplane announced it had been acquired by Brazil’s Nubank. The company’s main focus is to allow banks to train their own models to power tools across their risk, collections and marketing departments. Meanwhile, Chime also announced plans to acquire Salt Labs “for as much as $173 million.” TechCrunch covered Salt Labs’ $10 million raise in March of 2023 here. And Robinhood is adding more AI features for investors with its acquisition of AI-powered research platform Pluto Capital.

Dollars and cents

Payabli, which builds the infrastructure that allows companies — specifically software companies — to embed and facilitate payments through APIs, raised $20 million in a Series A funding.

Another company in the space is Rainforest, which also raised $20 million in its own Series A funding round, less than one year after its seed financing. Rainforest embeds payment processing into other software platforms. 

Belgium’s Chift, which lets SaaS companies integrate with dozens of financial tools with a unified API, raised a $2.5 million seed round.

Armed with $8 million in seed funding, Egyptian banking-as-a-service startup Connect Money is out to tap its popularity to explore emerging business opportunities out of African markets.

As a foreigner, navigating health insurance systems can often be difficult. German startup Feather thinks it has a solution and raised €6 million to help some of the 40-plus million expats working and living in Europe.

What else we’re writing

Plaid’s expansion into being a multi-product company has led to it starting to see real traction beyond traditional fintech customers. President Jen Taylor told me exclusively just how many enterprise customers the company has now, detailing how growth in that segment is starting to outpace the rest of its business. 

Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart has quietly started rolling out its own payments app, dubbed Super.money, as it broadens its fintech ambitions more than a year and half after separating from PhonePe. The Walmart-owned firm’s new app, now live in beta on Play Store, allows users to make mobile payments via UPI, an interoperable network that is the most popular way Indians transact online.

High-interest headlines

Citi sees AI displacing more bank jobs than any other sector

Goldman Sachs deploys its first generative AI tool across the firm

Billionaire Steve Cohen’s Point72 Ventures lays off fintech team in pivot towards AI

Pay for new stuff by trading in your old stuff right at checkout

Prudence, Profits, and Growth (global fintech report co-authored by BCG and QED Investors)

Only up from Here: 2024’s State of Fintech and the Hero’s Journey (from Bain Capital Ventures partner Matt Harris)

Want to reach out with a tip? Email me at [email protected] or send me a message on Signal at 408.204.3036. You can also send a note to the whole TechCrunch crew at [email protected]. For more secure communications, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and links to encrypted messaging apps.

Haiper splash screen

Competition in AI video generation heats up as DeepMind alums unveil Haiper

by with No Comment Tech

Haiper splash screen

Image Credits: Haiper

AI-powered video generation is a hot market on the back of OpenAI’s releasing the Sora model last month. Two DeepMind alums, Yishu Miao and Ziyu Wang, have publicly released their video-generation tool Haiper with its own AI model underneath.

Miao, who was previously working at TikTok in the Global Trust & Safety team, and Wang, who has worked as a research scientist for both DeepMind and Google, started working on the company in 2021 and formally incorporated it in 2022.

The pair has expertise in machine learning and started working on the problem of 3D reconstruction using neural networks. After training on video data, Miao mentioned to TechCrunch on a call that they found out that video generation was a more fascinating problem than 3D reconstruction. That’s why Haiper ended up focusing on video generation roughly six months ago.

Haiper has raised $13.8 million in a seed round led by Octopus Ventures with participation from 5Y Capital. Before that, angels like Phil Blunsom and Nando de Freitas helped the company raise a $5.4 million pre-seed round in April 2022.

Video-generation service

Users can go to Haiper’s site and start generating videos for free by typing in text prompts. However, there are certain limitations. You can only generate a two-second HD video and slightly lower-quality video of up to four seconds.

Haiper's consumer facing website.
Image Credits: Haiper

The site also has features like animating your image and repainting your video in a different style. Plus, the company is working to introduce capabilities like the ability to extend a video.

Miao said that the company aims to keep these features free in order to build a community. He noted that it is “too early” in the startup’s journey to think about building a subscription product around video generation. However, it has collaborated with companies like JD.com to explore commercial use cases.

We used one of the original Sora prompts to generate a sample video: “Several giant wooly mammoths approach treading through a snowy meadow, their long wooly fur lightly blows in the wind as they walk, snow-covered trees and dramatic snow-capped mountains in the distance, mid-afternoon light with wispy clouds and a sun high in the distance creates a warm glow, the low camera view is stunning capturing the large furry mammal with beautiful photography, depth of field.”

Building a core video model

While Haiper is currently focusing on its consumer-facing website, it wants to build a core video-generation model that could be offered to others. The company hasn’t made public any details about the model.

Miao said that it has privately reached out to a bunch of developers to try its closed API. He expects that developer feedback is very important with the company iterating on the model rapidly. Haiper has also thought about open sourcing its models down the line to let people explore different use cases.

The CEO believes that currently, it’s important to solve the uncanny valley problem — a phenomenon that evokes eerie feelings when people see AI-generated human-like figures — in video generation.

“We are not working in solving problems in content and style area, but we are trying work on fundamental issues like how AI-generated humans look while walking or snow falling,” he said.

The company currently has around 20 employees and is actively hiring for multiple roles across engineering and marketing.

Competition ahead

OpenAI’s recently released Sora is probably the most popular competitor for Haiper at the moment. However, there are other players like Google and Nvidia-backed Runway, which has raised more than $230 million in funding. Google and Meta also have their own video-generation models. Last year, Stability AI announced Stable Diffusion Video model in research preview.

Rebecca Hunt, a partner at Octopus Ventures, believes that in the next three years, Haiper will have to build a strong video-generation model to achieve differentiation in this market.

“There are realistically only a handful of people positioned to achieve this; this is one of the reasons we wanted to back the Haiper team. Once the models get to a point that transcends the uncanny valley and reflects the real world and all its physics there will be a period where the applications are infinite,” she told TechCrunch over email.

While investors are looking to invest in AI-powered video-generation startups, they also think the technology still has a lot of room for improvement.

“It feels like AI video is at GPT-2 level. We’ve made big strides in the last year, but there’s still a way to go before everyday consumers are using these products on a daily basis. When will the ‘ChatGPT moment’ arrive for video?” a16z’s Justine Moore wrote last year.

The article previously stated Geoffrey Hinton as an angel investor. While Hinton has worked with the startup’s founders prior to the company’s inception, is not involved as an investor.