Deals
Chime IPO: The Neobank That Prints Money Without Being a Bank
Chime filed to go public with an S-1 that’s equal parts alphabet soup and fintech fever dream.
AI
Salesforce Buys Informatica to Build an AI That Actually Knows What It’s Talking About
Salesforce just spent $8B to make its AI agents slightly less clueless — with Informatica’s help.
Snark Bytes
Snark Bytes: eToro Lists on Nasdaq: Now You Too Can Buy the Hype and Hold the Bag
eToro is officially IPO-ing at $52 per share, because clearly the market was missing one more way for retail investors to feel clever before being humbled.
Launch
Yamaha Launches $50M Music Innovation Fund, Because What’s a 137-Year-Old Piano Company Without a VC Arm?
Yamaha’s gone full Silicon Valley with a shiny new $50M music tech VC fund. Because why just make pianos when you can make portfolio companies?
Deals
Elon Announces Acquisition of X by xAI on X, Breaking the Space-Time Continuity
A snarky take on Elon Musk’s latest bid to collapse the universe into a recursive branding singularity of X.
Deals
TechCrunch Got Acquired Again, So We Did a Pitch Deck Teardown Of Their Press Release
Pour one out for the Disrupt-branded hoodies and whatever shred of independence TechCrunch still had left in the Yahoo basement. The tech media institution just got scooped up by yet another private equity firm.