Daily Crunch
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 chance for super-early-bird tickets, so maybe get on that sooner rather than later!
All roads lead to acquisition: Manish writes that after Japan’s Geniee acquired AdPushup-operator Zelto for $70 million.
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He called the deal “a remarkable turnaround” for Zelto, a company that has stared down a few near-death experiences, including cash flow 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.
Fined: Manish also writes about India’s central bank, which fined Amazon’s payments unit over $370,000, claiming the company was noncompliant with certain know-your-customer guidelines.
Startups and VC
While most established automotive players call 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.
Today, wind power and wave action are just two technologies leading investors to take a closer look at ocean conservation technology, reports Tim De Chant.
To fix the climate, these 10 investors are betting the house on the ocean
To learn more about the opportunities they’re chasing and to discover how climate change is shaping their investment thesis, he surveyed. TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack.
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Big Tech Inc.
It was only a matter of time before another company would try to mimic what Instacart has going for it.
Rebecca writes that Uber is coming for Instacart with some updates to its one-year-old Shop and Pay feature that lets delivery workers opt in to receiving trips to do grocery or other retail shopping for customers before dropping off orders at the customer’s door.
“Basically, it’s Uber’s attempt to follow the Instacart model, which is working well for the incumbent grocery delivery company,” she reports.
Autonomous trucking company Embark Trucks, which went public in 2021, is now laying off about 230 workers as it explores liquidating its self-driving truck assets, Kirsten reports.