Category: Crypto
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Fintech Plaid raises $575M at a $6.1B valuation, says it will not go public in 2025
Plaid, which connects bank accounts to financial applications, has sold about $575 million worth of common stock at a $6.1 billion post-money valuation, the fintech company confirmed to TechCrunch. The valuation is about less than half of the $13.4 billion that San Francisco-based Plaid was valued at when it raised a $425 million Series D…
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Truecaller now has over 450M monthly active users
Caller ID app Truecaller said on Thursday that it crossed the 450 million user mark earlier this week. The company said that it added 50 million users in the past 10 months and 15.5 million users since the beginning of 2025. India is the company’s biggest user base, so it wasn’t surprising to see Truecaller…
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Y Combinator neobank Djamo raises $17M with 1M users across Francophone Africa
Djamo is one of several digital banking startups targeting Africa’s underbanked. But unlike many that focus on large markets like Nigeria, Egypt, or South Africa, Djamo has carved out a niche in Francophone West Africa, specifically the Ivory Coast and, more recently, Senegal. It now serves over one million customers across both countries. The Y…
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Stablecoin issuer Circle takes another stab at a public listing
Circle, the issuer of USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, filed to go public on Tuesday. The company, which makes money from interest earned on its reserve assets, reported that its 2024 revenue and reserve income was $1.68 billion, up from $1.45 billion the year prior. Circle’s 2024 net income was $156 million,…
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Space solar startup Aetherflux raises $50M to launch first space demo in 2026
Aetherflux, the space solar startup founded by Baiju Bhatt, the billionaire co-founder of Robinhood, has raised $50 million in a Series A round as it works to launch its first low Earth orbit demonstration in 2026. The San Carlos, California-based startup, which came out of stealth last October, aims to eventually launch a constellation of…
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You might be following Second Lady Usha Vance on Instagram now
Starting Wednesday, Meta says it will begin combining the Instagram accounts of the Second Lady of the United States, Usha Vance, and the former Second Gentleman of the United States, Doug Emhoff. As a result, the 1.2 million people who were previously following the Instagram account of Kamala Harris’s husband, @secondgentleman46archive (recently archived by the…
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Epic Games CEO calls Apple and Google ‘gangster-style’ businesses in need of competition
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose company makes Fortnite and tools for other developers, including Unreal Engine, called out Apple and Google as “gangster-style businesses” engaged in illegal practices while speaking at a Y Combinator event on Wednesday. The executive also emphasized how the big tech companies’ practices directly affected his own business by scaring…
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OpenAI’s o3 model might be costlier to run than originally estimated
When OpenAI unveiled its o3 “reasoning” AI model in December, the company partnered with the creators of ARC-AGI, a benchmark designed to test highly capable AI, to showcase o3’s capabilities. Months later, the results have been revised, and they now look slightly less impressive than they did initially. Last week, the Arc Prize Foundation, which…
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OpenAI seeks to convene group to advise its nonprofit goals
As it prepares to transition from a nonprofit corporation to a for-profit, OpenAI says it’s convening a group of experts to “help OpenAI’s philanthropy understand the most urgent and intractable problems nonprofits face today.” This group, which OpenAI says will incorporate feedback from “leaders and communities” in health, science, education, and public services, particularly within…
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The affidavit of a Rippling employee caught spying for Deel reads like a movie
Rippling released the affidavit of the its employee who admitted he was spying for Deel. Rippling released the affidavit of the its employee who admitted he was spying for Deel.