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Fintech Plaid Completes Tender Offer At $8B Valuation

Fintech infrastructure company Plaid revealed on Thursday that it has completed a new fundraise to provide liquidity to employees at a valuation of $8 billion.
A VC and some big-name programmers are trying to solve open source’s funding problem, permanently
A group of well-known open source programmers and a VC have launched the Open Source Endowment. They hope this new method will provide funding for good.
2 days left: Lock in the best discounts for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Register now to secure discounts of up to $680 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass. Offer ends tomorrow, February 27, at 11:59 p.m. PT.
Exhibit in Boston’s startup ecosystem at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026
On June 9, over 1,000 founders, investors, and decision-makers will gather for TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026. This isn’t just foot traffic. It’s a full day of concentrated deal flow.
How This GV Investor Looks For The Next Stripe And Other ‘Compounding’ Startups In Fintech And AI

Crunchbase News recently spoke with GV partner Elena Sakach to find out more about her investment thesis, her thoughts on what defines winning fintech and AI companies, how AI is affecting traditional software businesses
Anthropic acquires computer-use AI startup Vercept after Meta poached one of its founders
Seattle-based Vercept developed complex agentic tools, including a computer-use agent that could complete tasks inside applications like a person with a laptop would.
Welcome to the post-hype crypto market
Crypto is creeping back into the startup conversation, but at ETHDenver last week, the buzz was as much about Washington as it was about tokens. Policy shifts are rippling through the market as Tether and stablecoins fac
Is crypto growing up? Tether risk, Stripe’s stablecoin play, and the GENIUS Act explained
Crypto is creeping back into the startup conversation, but at ETH Denver last week, the buzz was as much about Washington as it was about tokens. Policy shifts are rippling through the market as Tether and stablecoins fa
Have hard-won scaling lessons to share? Take the stage at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026
Apply to speak at TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026 by April 17 for a chance to lead a roundtable or breakout session for 1,000 founders and investors. If you’ve built, backed, or operated inside high-growth startups, your
3 days left: Save up to $680 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ticket
Just 3 days left to save up to $680 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ticket. Offer ends on Friday, February 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Don't miss unparalleled, curated networking and valuable insights from 250+ tech leaders, an
Y Combinator grad and AI insurance brokerage Harper raises $47M
Harper is an AI-native insurance brokerage that just raised a $45 million combined Series A and seed, after being a member of YC's Winter 2025 cohort.
IPOs Are Holding Up In 2026, But SaaS Debuts Aren’t Happening

While the first couple months of the year brought a steady stream of market entries from companies in sectors such as construction tech, space tech and biotech, new offerings from SaaS companies, long an IPO market stapl
More startups are hitting $10M ARR in 3 months than ever before
AI has brought the startup world the rise of companies that instantly hit multimillion-dollar ARR. Stripe revealed some data that shows how common this has become.
The Crunchbase Tech Layoffs Tracker

Over 127,000 workers at U.S.-based tech companies were laid off in mass job cuts in 2025, per a Crunchbase News tally, and the layoffs have continued into 2026. See the latest companies to cut roles.
Fintech Giant Stripe’s Valuation Soars to $159B In Latest Secondary Stock Sale

Payments infrastructure giant Stripe announced Tuesday that it has inked deals with investors to provide liquidity to current and former employees through a tender offer at a $159 billion valuation.
Stripe’s valuation soars 74% to $159 billion
Stripe has conducted another tender offer, where employees sell shares. Investors include Thrive Capital, Coatue, a16z, and Stripe itself.
Final 4 days to save up to $680 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass
Just 4 days left before savings of up to $680 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass end on February 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Register to save at one of the most anticipated tech events of the year.
Beyond Secondaries: Turbine Wants To Unlock Liquidity For Venture LPs

The founders of Turbine's goal is to provide venture capital and private equity firms with early liquidity options for their investors. To learn more about the firm's business model and efforts, we posed some questions t
With AI, investor loyalty is (almost) dead: At least a dozen OpenAI VCs now also back Anthropic
While some dual investors are understandable, others were more shocking, and signal the disregard of a longstanding ethical conflict-of-interest rule.
5 days left to lock in the lowest TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ticket rates
Five days to save up to $680 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ticket. These lowest rates of the year disappear on February 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT.
5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed: Plant-Based Clothing Dyes, A Shoebox-Picking Robot, And Power Generated On The Moon

A host of interesting, under-the-radar recently funded startups caught our attention in the past month: one that’s developing nuclear-waste generated electricity on the moon, and another that aims to use AI to extract bu
Bill Gurley says that right now, the worst thing you can do for your career is play it safe
"The number one thing is to get out of your head this ideal that gets passed around in the self-help world: 'go get a mentor,' and everyone runs out and cold calls someone that's ridiculously too high and unachievable, a
Quantonation’s double-sized second fund shows quantum still has believers
Quantonation Ventures, a venture firm investing in quantum and physics-based startups, has closed its oversubscribed second fund at €220 million, or approximately $260 million. That’s more than twice the size of its inau
6 days left to lock in the lowest TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 rates
Super Early Bird pricing for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ends February 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT. That means you have just 6 days left to secure up to $680 of ticket savings.
7 days until ticket prices rise for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
Lowest ticket prices to TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 end February 27. Up to $680 off individual passes and up to 30% off group passes. Register before they go up to join 10,000 founders, tech operators, and VCs.
InScope nabs $14.5M to solve the pain of financial reporting
The startup, founded by accountants who worked at Flexport, Miro, Hopin and Thrive Global, automates the difficulties of prepping financial statements.
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: World Labs Leads Another AI-Heavy Lineup

This week’s largest U.S. funding rounds once again featured an AI-heavy cohort, along with sizable financings around fintech and energy tech. By far the largest deal was a $1 billion financing for World Labs, developer o
AI Seed Trends: More Multimedia, Backend Automation, Agentic Security, And Yes, Robots

Investors poured over $9 billion into global AI-focused seed rounds over the past six months, per Crunchbase data. Areas they favored include cybersecurity, multimedia AI, robotics and desk work automation.
Exclusive: Ownwell Lands $30M To Help Homeowners Lower Their Property Tax Bills

Ownwell, an AI-powered startup that appeals property taxes on behalf of homeowners, has secured $50 million in financing, including $30 million in equity and $20 million in debt, the company tells Crunchbase News exclusi
Adding Canada Back to Our List of Accepted Countries of Incorporation
After hearing feedback from Canadian founders in our network, we are adding Canada back to our list of accepted countries of incorporation.
Congratulations to EquipmentShare on Going Public

Today, EquipmentShare (YC W15) goes public. From Missouri to 373 locations nationwide, they've built the operating system construction has been missing—built by contractors, for contractors. Congrats to Jabbok, Willy, an
Railway secures $100 million to challenge AWS with AI-native cloud infrastructure

Railway , a San Francisco-based cloud platform that has quietly amassed two million developers without spending a dollar on marketing, announced Thursday that it raised $100 million in a Series B funding round, as surgin
Claude Code costs up to $200 a month. Goose does the same thing for free.

The artificial intelligence coding revolution comes with a catch: it's expensive. Claude Code , Anthropic's terminal-based AI agent that can write, debug, and deploy code autonomously, has captured the imagination of sof
Announcing the YC AI Stack

We've partnered with nearly two dozen companies to offer students who attend YC events a suite of over $25,000 in free credits for AI devtools.
Listen Labs raises $69M after viral billboard hiring stunt to scale AI customer interviews

Alfred Wahlforss was running out of options. His startup, Listen Labs , needed to hire over 100 engineers, but competing against Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million offers seemed impossible. So he spent $5,000 — a fifth of hi
Salesforce rolls out new Slackbot AI agent as it battles Microsoft and Google in workplace AI

Salesforce on Tuesday launched an entirely rebuilt version of Slackbot , the company's workplace assistant, transforming it from a simple notification tool into what executives describe as a fully powered AI agent capabl
Anthropic launches Cowork, a Claude Desktop agent that works in your files — no coding required

Anthropic released Cowork on Monday, a new AI agent capability that extends the power of its wildly successful Claude Code tool to non-technical users — and according to company insiders, the team built the entire featur
Nous Research's NousCoder-14B is an open-source coding model landing right in the Claude Code moment

Nous Research , the open-source artificial intelligence startup backed by crypto venture firm Paradigm , released a new competitive programming model on Monday that it says matches or exceeds several larger proprietary s
The creator of Claude Code just revealed his workflow, and developers are losing their minds

When the creator of the world's most advanced coding agent speaks, Silicon Valley doesn't just listen — it takes notes. For the past week, the engineering community has been dissecting a thread on X from Boris Cherny , t
2026 Demo Day Dates

We’re excited to share the Demo Day dates for 2026 so founders, investors, and our broader community can plan ahead.
Meesho Goes Public

Meesho goes public today. From S16 to IPO, they’ve built one of India’s largest e-commerce platforms—empowering millions of small merchants to grow their businesses. Congrats to Vidit and Sanjeev on a decade of relentles
Congratulations to Groww

Today, Groww, India's leading digital investing platform, goes public. Tens of millions use Groww to invest simply and confidently in stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs. As YC's first company to list in India, we couldn't be
BillionToOne Goes Public — The Startup That Made Genetic Testing Universal

Today, BillionToOne goes public, becoming YC's fourth publicly traded biotech company. More importantly, they have built one of the most important genetic tests in the U.S. Today, 1 in 11 babies born in the US are tested
Meet YC's Newest Visiting Partners

We're excited to announce that nine exceptional founders are joining us as Visiting Partners at YC: Matt Riley, Harshita Arora, Grey Baker, Christopher Golda, Raphael Schaad, Christina Gilbert, Francois Chaubard, Vivian
YC x Coinbase RFS: Build Onchain

We are entering the era of Fintech 3.0. Regulatory clarity, growing consumer adoption, and low-cost chains have paved the way for a golden age of building in crypto — and at YC, Base, and Coinbase, we want to fund builde
Ankit Gupta Joins YC as General Partner, Bringing Deep ML Expertise

We’re thrilled to announce that Ankit Gupta is joining YC as our newest General Partner. Ankit has already worked with dozens of YC founders as a visiting partner in recent batches. He has a rare blend of deep machine le
Dalton Caldwell’s Move to Partner Emeritus
After 12+ years, 25 batches, and working with more than a thousand startups, Dalton Caldwell is transitioning to Partner Emeritus at YC. Dalton joined YC in 2011 and has contributed in a number of roles over the years, m
Welcoming Jon Xu and Andrew Miklas as YC’s Newest General Partners

Over the last few batches, visiting partners Jon Xu and Andrew Miklas have become two of the most trusted voices in the YC community. They were both founders in YC’s Summer 2010 batch, and now, 15 years and two industry-
Tyler Bosmeny built Clever into a $500M company–now he’s helping YC founders do the same as General Partner

We’re thrilled to welcome Tyler Bosmeny back to YC, this time as a General Partner.
Michael Seibel's Legacy Continues at YC: Transition to Partner Emeritus
If you’ve been around YC, you know Michael Seibel has been a huge part of it for over a decade. He’s done it all - YC Founder (w07, w12), Group Partner, and Managing Director/CEO of the YC accelerator. Along the way, he’
East Coast College Tour 2025

YC is going on a college tour! We're visiting Harvard, Yale, MIT, Columbia, Cornell, and Cornell Tech. If you're a current student at any of those schools and interested in startups, we'd love to meet you.