AI versus SaaS, EV charging, and a new $250M fund

Equity

TechCrunch

Entrepreneurship, Business News, News, Business, Technology

4.2 • 372 Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Here’s what we got into this morning: Vertice raises $25M: The bet here is that companies are willing to pay to have another company, Vertice in this case, to help them find savings in their existing software and cloud spend. Electra snags $330M: Charging EVs is big business, and Electra is wagering that building out its own charging network will pay dividends for a long time into the future. Build a Rocket Boy collects $110M: This is a big round for a company with unlaunched gaming titles. That said, it must have a few super-cool things cooking to raise that kinda of cash in today’s market. We also looked at rounds from Onera, Weavix, Long Story Short, and Xyte. There’s a lot going on! Thomvest raises new fund: Another day, another new fund, that’s the $250 million Thomvest story. We closed with what could be good news for African startups. And with that, we’ll see you back here bright and early on Friday! For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website. Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more! Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:17.0	Hello and welcome back to Equity, the Tech Runch Podcast, where we unpacked the numbers and the nuance behind the headlines. Today is January 17, 2024, and this is Alex.
0:22.0	Welcome to our Wednesday show show where we dig into the critical startup
0:25.8	and venture capital stories from the week thus far. As a reminder this is our new format so comments and feedback please to equity pod at techwrench.com if you want.
0:36.7	And if you were a big fan of the interviews we used to do every Wednesday,
0:41.1	don't worry.
0:41.9	We're still doing them just on a bit more of an ad hoc
0:44.7	basis, but we have a couple in the can and a couple more coming that you are going to love.
0:49.7	All right, on the show this morning we have a bevy of funding rounds including very interesting transactions
0:55.4	from Vertis, Electra, and Fancy, and then to close out we have a new fund investing in FinTech and
1:01.5	Cybersecurity and what's going on in one of the most interesting
1:05.2	venture capital markets in the world.
1:09.7	First on the dock this morning, Verdes raises $25 million for AI-based tools to help companies
1:16.4	tackle the software spend.
1:18.5	That's the Tech Runge headline.
1:19.8	What does it mean?
1:20.8	Well, Verdes is a startup that is building tools to help its customers track and
1:25.2	understand their software spend. It provides analytics into how their employees are using
1:30.3	that software and even provides notes on compliance. The idea here is that it
1:35.7	wants to help you save money so Verdes will also help its customers control
1:39.9	their cloud computing spend itself.
1:42.6	Why is this cool?
1:44.3	Well, it uses AI and other advanced tech
	...

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