Tag: Exclusive

Apple Pay finally launches in India after years on the sidelines

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Apple began rolling out Apple Pay in India on Tuesday, as TechCrunch first reported. Its first banking partner is Axis Bank, the country’s third-largest private-sector lender. The move brings the company’s payments service to the world’s most populous country after years of delays in a market dominated by the state-backed United Payments Interface (UPI).

The initial rollout is limited. Apple Pay supports eligible Axis Bank cards on Visa and Mastercard, but not India’s homegrown RuPay network. Acceptance will also be restricted to merchants and payment terminals that have been enabled for the service.

Unlike India’s ubiquitous Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system, which lets consumers make instant bank-to-bank payments without relying on cards, Apple Pay is card-based and requires individual issuers and payment infrastructure providers to integrate with the service. This makes a broad rollout more complex. Apple’s commercial terms have also emerged as a sticking point with some of India’s largest banks, the people said.

Apple is seeking a fee of about 20 basis points (0.2%) on transactions, according to the people, a significant bite out of the roughly 40 to 50 basis points (0.4% to 0.5%) of margin in the payments layer. The fee structure is broadly consistent with Apple Pay’s commercial model in other markets, the people said. HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and SBI Card are not supporting Apple Pay at launch as negotiations over commercial terms continue, one of the people told TechCrunch.

Apple, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and SBI Card did not respond to requests for comment on the launch. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Apple was preparing to launch Apple Pay in India in October, starting with Axis Bank credit cards.

Apple Pay has entered a payments market that looks markedly different from the U.S. and other card-heavy economies. India’s digital payments boom has been driven largely by UPI, the state-backed system that lets consumers move money directly between bank accounts.

UPI handles the bulk of digital payments in India, where scanning a QR code to pay directly from a bank account has become commonplace. Apple Pay, by contrast, initially addresses a much smaller card payments market.

Nevertheless, Apple Pay could appeal to India’s growing base of iPhone users, who tend to be more affluent and are more likely to use premium credit cards. Those customers could make the service hard for banks to ignore, despite UPI’s dominance.

Even if Apple Pay remains a niche service, the economics could still make India meaningful for Apple. The transaction fee the iPhone maker would charge would give it another way to monetize its growing base of iPhone users in the country, the people said.

At launch, eligible Axis Bank customers can add their credit cards to Apple’s Wallet app and use Apple Pay for online purchases as well as contactless payments at supported terminals, the people said.

An Apple Pay transaction could work at a terminal operated by an independent payments provider that has enabled the service but fail at another terminal whose acquiring bank has not, one of the people said. That could make acceptance uneven during the initial rollout, even for customers with supported cards.

The launch adds another piece to Apple’s growing business in India, where it has been expanding iPhone sales, local manufacturing, and its retail footprint. Apple accounted for 28% of India’s smartphone market by value in 2025, up from 23% a year earlier, per an earlier report by Counterpoint Research.

India already accounts for about a quarter of global iPhone production, and that share could rise to 30% to 35% over the next five years, Indian English daily Business Standard reported last month, citing an Indian government official.

Update: This story, originally published Tuesday morning, has been updated to reflect that the launch is now underway.

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Truecaller takes its scam intelligence to the open web as it looks beyond caller ID

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After more than a decade building a caller ID business serving over 500 million users, Truecaller is now taking the scam intelligence it gathered along the way to the open web, with no app or sign-in required.

The Swedish company on Sunday launched Scam Checker, a new web and Android service that lets users paste in a suspicious phone number, link, or message to find out if it’s fraudulent. To work, the service surfaces related reports from Truecaller’s community, ScamFeed. However, more detailed information about a phone number, including the name associated with it, remains available only through Truecaller’s existing service, which requires a sign-in.

The free-to-access tool will initially be available in India and is set to expand to Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and Southeast Asia, the company said.

In addition to serving as lead generation for its app, the community reports can give Truecaller a better view of the scams circulating at a given time. This could also help the company with its fraud and risk products sold to enterprises through Truecaller for Business, although Jhunjhunwala said Scam Checker itself is aimed at consumers.

To work, Truecaller’s Scam Checker checks the link the user submits, expanding shortened URLs and following redirects to the final destination. It then checks these against its proprietary risk database and other fraud signals. Users can also paste a suspicious message, allowing the service to pick out a phone number or link and surface related reports from the Truecaller community.

Truecaller Scam Checker
Truecaller’s scam checkerImage Credits:Truecaller

The launch comes as scams have grown well beyond phone calls to text messages, messaging apps, and web links. In a 2025 GSMA survey of Indian adults (PDF), 46% of those who reported being scammed said they were approached through messaging apps, while 37% via SMS and 32% through voice calls.

Truecaller estimates that people make about 14 million web searches a month to check suspicious links and phone numbers, based on its analysis of search volumes and traffic to existing verification services. That behavior helped shape Scam Checker, CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala told TechCrunch.

“When you need it, you’re usually somewhere else. The link shows up on WhatsApp. Your mum gets a message about a traffic fine. A friend forwards you a screenshot and asks, ‘Is this real?’” Jhunjhunwala said. “What people do in that moment is search.”

Truecaller’s community is becoming a crucial piece of its scam-detection effort. The company told TechCrunch that about 20,000 scam reports are live on ScamFeed, its crowdsourced feed where users can post and discuss scams, in India, with around 1,300 new reports added each week. Between September 14 and 20, the company also said it evaluated 12.9 billion messages globally and flagged 20.3 million as fraudulent.

In the near future, Truecaller says it plans to broaden the types of scams Scam Checker can detect and add screenshot uploads for further analysis.

The company’s push beyond caller ID comes as its core business faces new pressures in India, its largest market with more than 350 million users. Telecom operators are rolling out the federal government-backed Calling Name Presentation service, while Apple and Google have added their own caller identification and spam-protection features. Last week, India’s telecom regulator also ordered caller-ID apps to share user-submitted spam reports with telecom operators, a move Truecaller criticized as a “one-way exchange.”

As a result, Truecaller’s focus is evolving beyond caller ID.

“Caller ID was the first problem we solved, and it’s still how most people find us,” he said. “But scams moved to a more multi-channel approach with links and messages, and increasingly to voice and video. Our protection has to follow the scammer.”

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OpenAI bets on families as ChatGPT goes deeper into households

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More than three years after ChatGPT’s launch brought generative AI into the mainstream, OpenAI is broadening its focus beyond individual users to families.

OpenAI is hiring a dedicated product manager in San Francisco to build experiences for families, caregivers, and older adults across its products. The role calls for experience building products for parents and families, and other trust-sensitive consumer experiences, according to the job posting.

The hiring comes as ChatGPT’s audience continues to broaden beyond younger users. According to Sensor Tower estimates shared exclusively with TechCrunch, the share of ChatGPT users aged 35 and older globally rose to 31% in Q2 from 26% a year earlier, while the share of users aged 18 to 24 fell to 29% from 34%. In the U.S., nearly one in four smartphone users who are parents used ChatGPT during the quarter, up from 16% a year earlier, the firm estimates.

OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment about the job posting.

A dedicated product role focused on families signals that OpenAI is beginning to think about its products less as tools for individual productivity and more as technology designed for households, said Ben Bajarin, chief executive of technology consultancy Creative Strategies.

“This is similar to the path Google, Apple, and Meta eventually followed as their platforms became embedded in everyday life, but AI raises the stakes because the assistant is not just mediating content or devices,” he told TechCrunch.

That shift also brings new trust and safety challenges. Stephen Balkam, chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute, said the hiring reflects both the maturation of OpenAI and a growing recognition that AI products used by children and teenagers require different safeguards than those designed for adults.

“I see this as safety by redesign,” Balkam told TechCrunch. “You take the initial product or service that was released… not really with kids in mind… so this is a much-needed reaction and response.”

The comments come as new research published this week by the Family Online Safety Institute found that parents are underestimating how often their children use generative AI. While 27% of U.S. parents said their child had used generative AI in the past week, 38% of children reported doing so themselves, according to the survey of more than 4,000 families in the United States and Australia.

Balkam told TechCrunch that AI companies should build products differently for younger users, with stronger content controls, age-appropriate experiences, parental oversight, and reminders to inform users that they are interacting with an AI — and not a human.

Image Credits:Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch

The hiring also comes amid growing scrutiny of how AI companies protect younger users. OpenAI has faced multiple lawsuits from parents alleging that ChatGPT contributed to harm suffered by their children, including in cases involving suicide.

In response to some of those concerns, OpenAI has introduced a series of safety measures over the past year, including parental controls for teen accounts, routing sensitive conversations to reasoning models designed to better handle signs of distress, and, more recently, an optional “Trusted Contact” feature that can alert a family member or caregiver in cases of potential self-harm.

AI companies, Balkam said, have an opportunity to avoid the mistakes made by social media platforms, which for years treated children much like adults before adding stronger safeguards amid mounting public pressure and regulatory scrutiny.

The hiring also aligns with OpenAI’s broader efforts around families. In a recent workshop organized with the San Antonio Spurs Community Impact organization and the Positive Coaching Alliance, the company said it aimed to explore AI’s role in learning, coaching, and youth engagement.

That said, the demographic shift is not unique to ChatGPT, though OpenAI’s audience is changing in some distinct ways.

Sensor Tower estimates that users aged 25 to 34 account for 40% of the global app audiences for Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini, matching ChatGPT, compared with 33% for Microsoft’s Copilot. Copilot, however, skews older, with 20% of its users aged 45 and above, compared with 14% for Claude, 12% for Gemini, and 11% for ChatGPT.

While ChatGPT remains relatively underpenetrated among older users, it is adding them faster than its rivals. The share of users aged 45 and above rose three percentage points year-over-year in the second quarter, compared with a two-point increase for Copilot and declines for Claude and Gemini, according to Sensor Tower.

Among U.S. smartphone users who are parents, Gemini had the widest reach at 32% in Q2, followed by ChatGPT at 24%, Claude at 4%, and Copilot at 2%.

For Bajarin, OpenAI’s decision to hire a product manager focused on families signals where consumer AI is headed. As AI becomes a technology shared across generations, he expects companies to roll out family plans, child and teen profiles, caregiver tools, shared household memory, AI tutoring, and stronger safety controls.

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Venice AI becomes a unicorn with $65M Series A as its privacy-first AI platform takes off

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Concerns over the impact of AI chatbots on mental health, personal safety, harassment, and disinformation have forced AI developers to implement safeguards to better control how and what their AI models are allowed to respond or do.

But concerns and worries can’t erode demand. AI offers a lot of promise, and people don’t want a faceless tech company to restrict their access to that potential. And if they can preserve their privacy while they use AI models however they want, why not?

Venice AI, which offers access to more than 200 AI models while allowing users to retain their privacy, is raking it in thanks to that demand. Just two years in, the company already has more than 850,000 unique visitors to its website, and serves more than 3 million active users and an average of 1.7 million API calls per day.

The startup hosts “uncensored,” open-source models on its own data centers, and routes queries to closed-source models, such as those by OpenAI or Anthropic. All user input is encrypted and unencrypted client-side, and routed through an external proxy before it is processed and returned, with no data stored on Venice’s own systems. It also provides end-to-end encryption on some models, though you have to pay for a subscription to get that feature.

The company is already profitable, with annualized run-rate revenues of over $70 million, its CEO Erik Voorhees (pictured above, in the center) told TechCrunch during an exclusive interview.

Understandably, investors have flocked to get a piece of that traction. Venice AI on Wednesday said it had raised a $65 million Series A at a $1 billion valuation, its first external fundraise. The round was led by crypto-focused venture firm Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, North Island Ventures, and others.

The overlap between Voorhees, Venice’s focus on privacy, and its new crypto investors is hard to miss, especially given the CEO’s background and past work. An early bitcoin advocate, Voorhees has founded a few crypto companies, including bitcoin gambling site Satoshi Dice and cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift, and has long advocated in favor of preserving users’ privacy.

In fact, when a Wall Street Journal investigation accused ShapeShift, which initially didn’t require its users to identify themselves, of processing millions of suspect funds, Voorhees reportedly said: “I don’t think people should have their identity recorded to catch an occasional criminal.”

He struck a similar note when asked how Venice AI thinks about offering access to AI models in light of recent cases of AI psychosis and resulting harm, saying his team treats their service as a “neutral tool or a neutral platform.”

“This is the same principle that you have in Bitcoin, where Bitcoin, as a neutral protocol, works the same way for all people,” he said. “I think it’s actually quite dangerous from a safety perspective, for the world to enter this next phase and have everyone be constantly watched. To me that is actually much more dangerous than any particular person asking a controversial question or something that might be considered bad.”

There’s a considerable focus on giving users agency, too. Users can freely choose from AI models that can generate text, images, audio, and video — all of which vary in their performance, quality, and the amount of censorship applied. The website prominently features several AI “characters” that you can customize and chat with, and the company proudly states it offers an “uncensored” experience.

“We’re optimizing for freedom and actually respecting users as adults, which is, I think, rare these days,” Voorhees said.

The founder said Venice also works on some open models’ system prompts to instruct them to answer more openly, though it doesn’t add any restrictions to the models.

Unsurprisingly, there are two crypto tokens associated with the effort. Venice launched a token called “VVV” in early January, in a bid to attract users, Voorhees said, and in August last year added another, called “DIEM.” Users can buy VVV and then stake it to mint DIEM, which generates $1 worth of AI credits per day that you can spend on Venice. However, Voorhees said only about 8% of the company’s users pay with crypto.

The founder credited the company’s growth to the good performance of the crypto tokens, though he said the strongest driver was getting close to feature parity with ChatGPT. “When we launched, we were very far away from what ChatGPT could do, but people would use us because it was private. And today, we’re very close to what ChatGPT can do […] so as we’ve closed that gap, it’s become an increasingly compelling alternative,” he said.

Looking forward, Venice AI wants to use the fresh cash to start buying GPUs and building its own data centers so it can stop leasing GPUs and increase its gross margins.

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Telegram ban in India sparks a rush to VPNs, rival apps

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As India cut off access to messaging app Telegram for a week over concerns about exam-related fraud, users turned to virtual private networks (VPNs) and alternative messaging apps in unusually large numbers.

App intelligence firm Appfigures told TechCrunch that Tuesday, the day India announced the Telegram restriction, marked the biggest day for VPN app downloads in the country since at least the start of 2025. Downloads of major VPN apps rose 49% from a recent daily average of 139,000 to 208,000, the firm said.

Proton VPN and Turbo VPN recorded some of the largest increases. Downloads of Proton VPN on Apple’s App Store in India jumped 113%, while Turbo VPN downloads rose 85%. On Google Play, downloads of Proton VPN climbed 64% and Turbo VPN downloads increased 35%. NordVPN’s App Store downloads increased 41%, while ExpressVPN downloads on Google Play rose 31%.

The surge also pushed several VPN services up India’s app-store charts. Proton VPN climbed from 18th to 5th in Apple’s Utilities rankings between June 16 and June 18, while its Google Play ranking rose from 8th to 2nd in the Tools category, according to Appfigures.

The spike in VPN demand followed India’s decision to temporarily restrict Telegram until June 22 over concerns that fraudsters were using the platform to target candidates ahead of a re-test for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (Undergraduate), the country’s largest entrance examination by applicant volume. The Indian government said the measure was needed to prevent the spread of fake exam papers and related scams. Telegram has challenged the order in the Delhi High Court, arguing that authorities should target specific content rather than block the entire platform.

The response extended beyond app-store download data. Proton said daily registrations from India rose 120% above baseline levels on Wednesday, after hourly registrations had already spiked 150% on Tuesday evening following the Telegram restriction. The company described the increase as “extremely noteworthy” given its existing scale in the country.

Canadian VPN service provider Windscribe reported a similar trend. The company told TechCrunch that signups from India peaked roughly 100% above baseline levels, while first-time downloads of its iOS app in the country rose about 89%.

“The spike in India follows the same general trend we see in areas that ban specific apps, introduce age bans or verification requirements, or otherwise restrict internet access,” Rebecca Rosenberg, growth operations manager at Windscribe, said.

Image Credits:Windscribe

The trend was not limited to a handful of VPN providers. Sensor Tower told TechCrunch that downloads across the VPN app category in India rose 10% day-over-day on June 17, reversing a decline seen over the previous two weeks.

Users also appeared to be exploring alternatives to Telegram. Appfigures said downloads of Signal in India rose 72% on Apple’s App Store and 322% on Google Play following the restriction, while Viber’s App Store downloads increased 216%.

Telegram-linked messaging app iMe recorded one of the sharpest jumps. Its Google Play downloads rose from a recent daily average of about 827 to 50,900 on June 16, Appfigures said.

Yet the restriction did not immediately translate into lower Telegram usage. Sensor Tower said Telegram’s daily active users in India rose 17% on the day the measure was announced — the app’s largest day-over-day increase in the country since a widespread outage of Meta’s services in 2021.

Other data points also suggest heightened efforts to access Telegram following the restriction.

Cloudflare Radar Lead Lai Yi Ohlsen told TechCrunch that DNS requests for Telegram domains in India increased sharply over the two days after the measure was announced. The company cautioned that higher DNS traffic does not necessarily indicate successful access to the platform, and could reflect users repeatedly attempting to reach Telegram after it was blocked.

Image Credits:Cloudflare

Telegram pointed to its efforts to cooperate with authorities during hearings in the Delhi High Court this week. Its lawyers said the company had removed channels identified by authorities and questioned the need for a platform-wide restriction affecting what Telegram says are over 150 million users in India.

Government lawyers defended the measure as a temporary, event-linked response tied to the NEET re-test. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that a permanent ban could raise proportionality concerns but argued the current restriction had a “logical nexus” to the objective being pursued.

After hearing arguments from Telegram and the government on Thursday, the Delhi High Court reserved its order and is expected to deliver its verdict on Friday.

The debate echoes questions raised elsewhere when governments restrict access to major online platforms. Sensor Tower said VPN downloads in the U.S. rose more than 40% week-over-week when TikTok was briefly removed from U.S. app stores in 2025, while Windscribe said it has observed similar patterns following restrictions in countries including Iran and Russia.

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SolarSquare in talks to raise up to $60M as India’s rooftop solar market draws major VC interest

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SolarSquare, an Indian rooftop solar startup that helps households and housing societies adopt solar power, is in advanced talks to raise fresh capital after securing India’s largest solar venture investment in December 2024, TechCrunch has learned.

B Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners are set to co-lead the Series C round, which could value SolarSquare at between $450 million and $500 million and bring in $55 million to $60 million in new investment, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. That would represent more than a doubling of SolarSquare’s valuation in roughly 18 months — a sign of how rapidly investor conviction is building around India’s residential solar market.

Lightspeed Venture Partners previously led SolarSquare’s $40 million Series B round at around a $200 million post-money valuation in December 2024. This time, according to a source, it’s investing through its growth fund, which has backed names such as Razorpay — India’s leading digital payments platform — and Zepto, the fast-delivery startup.

Existing investor Elevation Capital is also expected to participate in the deal, which is currently in advanced stages and is expected to close next month. The terms could still change as the financing has not yet been finalized. SolarSquare has raised $61.1 million in equity financing to date, per the startup data platform Tracxn.

India has set a target of achieving 500 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030, with solar expected to contribute more than half of that total. The country became the world’s third-largest solar power producer in 2025, trailing only China and the U.S. Its cumulative installed solar capacity has surged from about 3 GW in 2014 to more than 150 GW in 2026, aided partly by government incentives and subsidy schemes aimed at accelerating rooftop solar adoption.

Mumbai-headquartered SolarSquare, founded in 2015, is positioning itself as a full-stack residential solar platform in a market that remains highly fragmented, dominated by small local installers and dealer networks tied to component manufacturers such as Tata Power, Waaree Energies, Luminous Power Technologies, and Exide Industries. The startup designs, installs, and maintains rooftop solar systems for homes, housing societies (the apartment complexes and gated communities common across urban India), and enterprises, and has installed more than 150 megawatts of solar capacity with a presence across 29 cities in nine states, per its website.

SolarSquare has powered nearly 50,000 homes and around 400 housing societies, according to a source. The startup has also deployed rooftop solar systems for large enterprises including Swiggy, Zepto, and iD Fresh Food.

Residential customers and housing societies now account for a majority of SolarSquare’s business, according to people familiar with the startup’s operations, as the startup has increasingly scaled back lower-margin industrial rooftop solar projects in recent years.

The startup has crossed an annualized revenue run rate of more than ₹10 billion (around $104 million) across homes and housing societies combined, according to a source familiar with the matter. It also aims to reach 200 megawatts in its residential solar portfolio this year, the source added.

SolarSquare declined to comment. B Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Elevation Capital did not respond to requests for comment.

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AI voice startup Vapi hits $500M valuation after winning Amazon Ring over 40 rivals

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Amazon Ring, facing a surge in customer-support calls during last year’s holiday season, evaluated more than 40 AI voice vendors before choosing startup Vapi to handle its inbound phone traffic. Today, Ring routes 100% of its inbound calls through Vapi’s platform.

That deployment helped Vapi raise a $50 million Series B led by Peak XV Partners at a valuation of around $500 million after investment, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Ring turned to Vapi in mid-Q4 last year, when it was weighing whether to expand call-center capacity, rely more heavily on traditional automated phone systems, or deploy AI agents that could respond more naturally to customers, Vapi Chief Executive Jordan Dearsley (pictured above, left) told TechCrunch. Dearsley believes Ring chose Vapi because if offered Ring engineers granular control over how the AI agents behaved in live customer interactions.

Jason Mitura, vice president of software development at Amazon Ring, said Ring’s customer satisfaction scores improved after deploying Vapi’s platform and that the company’s teams were able to tune the AI agent experience without depending on engineering. “A lot of AI tools promise great outcomes — Vapi has delivered on them,” he said.

Founded by Dearsley and his University of Waterloo classmate Nikhil Gupta (pictured above, right), Vapi grew out of an AI therapist Dearsley built in 2023 for conversations during his daily walks. The pair, who had gone through Y Combinator with productivity startup Superpowered, found that while few people wanted the therapy product itself, startups were increasingly interested in the low-latency voice infrastructure underneath it. This led them to pivot to Vapi and launch the platform publicly in 2024.

Vapi provides tools for companies to build, deploy, and manage voice agents across customer support, lead qualification, appointment scheduling, and outbound sales.

Image Credits:Vapi

The startup says it has now handled more than 1 billion calls through its platform, with usage accelerating as enterprises move more customer interactions onto AI systems. Vapi, Dearsley said, currently processes between 1 million and 5 million calls a day, with enterprise customers accounting for the bulk of that volume.

In addition to Amazon Ring, Vapi’s enterprise customers include Kavak, Instawork, New York Life, UnityAI, Cherry, and Intuit. The startup also operates a self-serve developer platform that has been used by more than 1 million developers.

“Because we started from self-serve and had such a wide developer footprint, we were already battle-tested at significant scale before we signed our first major enterprise customer,” Dearsley said.

Other investors participating in the Series B round included Microsoft’s M12, Kleiner Perkins, and Bessemer Venture Partners, bringing Vapi’s total funding to $72 million. The startup is currently at an annual recurring revenue run rate in the “healthy” eight figures, an investor source told TechCrunch.

Vapi is part of a growing wave of AI voice startups that includes Sierra, Decagon, PolyAI, Bland, Retell, and ElevenLabs, as companies race to build systems capable of handling customer conversations with minimal human involvement. Dearsley said Vapi differentiates itself by focusing less on pre-packaged applications and more on the infrastructure and orchestration layer behind voice agents, particularly for enterprises that want greater control over reliability, compliance, and model behavior.

The startup currently has around 100 employees and plans to use the new funding to expand its engineering, infrastructure, and go-to-market teams.

“The golden problem is taking this indeterminate beast that is a model and taming it,” Dearsley said. “If you can do that, then you can provide value to the world.”

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How one venture firm is investing in an increasingly fragmented world

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The world today is riven by cultural differences, political divisions, and geopolitical disputes — a challenging environment for any investor hunting for startups that can grow large enough to deliver venture-scale returns.

Kompas VC has developed a regionally sensitive strategy to help it navigate, and invest in, this fragmented world. And it’s putting fresh capital towards this approach with a new €160 million fund ($187.5 million), the firm told TechCrunch.

“We see the world really falling into three main spheres of economic activity, of political activity — the U.S., Europe, and China,” Sebastian Peck, partner at Kompas VC, told TechCrunch. “We certainly see today that these three domains follow very, very different trajectories.”

Kompas has staked its reputation on backing startups that tackle core industrial competitiveness challenges, from manufacturing and supply chains to critical infrastructure and sustainability. Those themes haven’t disappeared, but different regions emphasize them to varying degrees.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm around these themes back in 2021,” Peck said. “In 2026, we’re in a very, very different paradigm. It’s all about AI, it’s all about fast growth, very explosive growth. A lot of big topics that we partially play to but also are not really part of what we stand for.”

“Our focus is in the physical world, anything around producing physical goods,” he added, saying that Kompas focuses on startups working on decarbonization, productivity, and risk management. “We’ve found our niche.”

Three people standing on a stone stairway.
Kompas VC partners, from left: Talia Rafaeli, Andreas Winter-Extra, and Sebastian PeckImage Credits:Kompas VC /

That niche turns out to be pretty broad. Reshoring is en vogue in nearly every market, and depending on the startup, those markets typically have more than enough scale for a firm like Kompas.

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Though dwarfed by some venture funds these days, Kompas’s newly raised second fund should give it ample opportunity to lead early stage rounds with checks ranging from €3 million to €5 million. 

As a European fund, Kompas has access to a range of founders and startups in the region. But it must weigh how global fragmentation might limit the potential for some to deliver venture returns. Peck cites prefab housing as an example. The approach is widely used in Scandinavian countries, but it isn’t as common in Germany or the rest of Europe, let alone the United States.

“It feels like such an intuitive solution. It’s a product that is effectively an industrial product. It should be highly scalable,” he said. Ultimately, the reason it doesn’t resonate outside Scandinavia has more to do with “cultural conditioning” than the technology itself, he said. “In that industry, if the U.S. isn’t the market you can go to, you need to look very, very carefully at whether there’s a large enough addressable market.”

The fragmentation extends beyond housing. For example, in Europe, sustainability is still broadly attractive, in contrast to the U.S., where the theme doesn’t have the cachet it did several years ago. 

Still, a lot can change quickly, Peck acknowledges. “We are investing over 10-, 15-year horizons. That’s a few legislative periods to bridge, and sometimes things swing in unexpected directions.”

The shifting landscape poses a challenge, but also an opportunity for a smaller investor like Kompas. “I think there’s a great space for highly focused, highly specialized, smaller funds like ours to be the first check-in and bring sweep up certain themes and certain founders,” Peck said. 

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Redwood Materials lays off 10% in restructuring to chase energy storage business

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Redwood Materials has laid off around 135 employees, or roughly 10% of its workforce, as it restructures to better accommodate its growing energy storage business, TechCrunch has learned.

The cuts come just five months after Redwood cut 5% of its workforce, and three months after it closed a $425 million funding round that boosted the battery recycling company’s valuation to north of $6 billion, as TechCrunch previously reported.

It’s been a difficult time in the battery industry lately. Earlier this month, battery recycler Ascend Elements filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing “insurmountable” financial challenges. Some battery-makers have also restructured or gone out of business as the automotive industry in the U.S. has backed away from its most optimistic and ambitious plans to transition to electric vehicles.

But Redwood Materials founder and CEO JB Straubel told employees that this new round of cuts is not a sign that the company is heading down the same path.

“Redwood today is the strongest it’s ever been,” Straubel wrote in an email to the workers who weren’t laid off, according to a copy viewed by TechCrunch. “The materials business is well on its way to profitability and has an exciting roadmap ahead.”

Straubel noted that Redwood “continue[s] to dominate the US battery recycling market” but also touted the company’s “great momentum” in its new energy storage business. Redwood has recently announced deals with Crusoe AI and, most recently, electric automaker Rivian to provide recycled batteries that can be used to power those companies’ facilities. The company declined to comment beyond the contents of Straubel’s email.

In his message, Straubel wrote that “parts of the company have expanded faster than needed to support the direction” of Redwood. As a result, he said Redwood is making cuts across multiple divisions, including the engineering and operations organizations, according to an employee who was granted anonymity to discuss the layoffs.

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“We are confident that we can deliver on our critical projects with a smaller team that is more focused,” he wrote. “We have successfully adapted to changes in the market that have bankrupted many of our competitors.”

Straubel went on to write that he is “more excited than ever with our path ahead as we build the most integrated and cost-effective critical materials and energy storage business in the world.”

“This is a self-sustaining business and will continue to make this company more valuable over time. We have the team and the technology to do what no other company can,” he wrote.

Workers who were laid off were told by Redwood’s chief HR officer that the layoffs were made “to sharpen our focus, our work and the size of our teams to support the direction Redwood is going in the future,” according to a copy of her email, which was viewed by TechCrunch.

Employees who were laid off are receiving severance and paid health benefits, according to Straubel’s email, as well as “career transition assistance.”

“I am grateful to the approximately 135 employees who we say goodbye to today — they’ve all contributed to building Redwood,” he wrote.

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Cracks are starting to form on fusion energy’s funding boom

Posted on by faz_business


It happens in every emerging industry: founders and investors push toward a common goal, until the money starts to roll in and that shared vision begins to diverge.

Cracks are emerging in the fusion power world, which I saw firsthand at The Economist’s Fusion Fest in London last week. It didn’t dampen the overall buoyant mood, lifted by fusion startups’ fundraising haul of $1.6 billion in the last 12 months. But people had differing opinions on two key questions: When should fusion startups go public? And are side businesses a distraction?

Going public was at the top of everyone’s minds. In the last four months, TAE Technologies and General Fusion have announced plans to merge with publicly traded companies. Both stand to receive hundreds of millions of dollars to keep their R&D efforts alive, and investors, some of whom have kept the faith for 20 years, finally see an opportunity to cash out.

Not everyone is in agreement. Most of those who I spoke to were worried these companies were going public far too early and that they hadn’t achieved key milestones that many view as vital in judging the progress of a fusion company.

First, a recap: TAE announced its merger with Trump Media & Technology Group in December. Though the deal isn’t yet completed, the fusion side of the business has already received $200 million of a potential $300 million in cash from the deal, giving it some runway to continue planning its power plant. (The remainder will reportedly land in its bank account once it files the S-4 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.)

General Fusion said in January that it would go public via a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company. The deal could net the company $335 million and value the combined entity at $1 billion. 

Both companies could use the cash.

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Before the merger announcement, General Fusion was struggling to raise funds, and around this time last year it laid off 25% of its staff as CEO Greg Twinney posted a public letter pleading for investment. It received a brief reprieve in August when investors threw it a $22 million lifeline, but that sort of money doesn’t last long in the fusion world, where equipment, experiments, and employees don’t come cheap.

TAE’s position wasn’t quite as dire, but it still required some funds. Pre-merger, the company raised nearly $2 billion, which sounds like a lot, but keep in mind the company is nearly 30 years old. What’s more, its valuation pre-merger was $2 billion, according to PitchBook. Investors were breaking even at best.

Neither company has hit scientific breakeven, a key milestone that shows a reactor design has power plant potential. Many observers doubt they’ll hit that mark before other privately held startups do. One executive told me, if they were in those shoes, they’re not sure how they would fill time on quarterly earnings calls if the companies didn’t hit scientific breakeven soon.

If TAE or General Fusion doesn’t deliver results, several people feared the public markets would sour on the entire fusion industry.

Now, not all may be lost. TAE has already started marketing other products, including power electronics and radiation therapy for cancer. That could give the company some near-term revenue to placate shareholders. General Fusion, though, hasn’t revealed any such plans.

And therein lies another divide: fusion companies remain split on whether they should pursue revenue now or wait until they have a working power plant.

Some companies are embracing the opportunity to make money along the way. Not a bad strategy! Fusion is a long game, so why not improve your odds? Both Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Tokamak Energy have said they’ll be selling magnets. TAE and Shine Technologies are both in nuclear medicine.

Other startups are worried that side hustles could become a distraction. Inertia Enterprises, for example, told me that they’re laser-focused on their power plant. That jibes with what another investor told me months ago: — they were worried that fusion startups could get distracted by profitable, but tangential businesses and fall off the lead. 

There wasn’t consensus on the right time to go public either. I heard a few proposed milestones. Some believe startups should first reach that scientific breakeven milestone, in which a fusion reaction generates more energy than it needs to ignite. No startup has achieved that yet. The other possibilities are facility breakeven — when the reactor makes more energy than the entire site needs to operate — and commercial viability — when a reactor makes enough electrons to sell a meaningful amount to the grid.

We may have an answer to that question sooner than later. Commonwealth Fusion Systems expects it will hit scientific breakeven sometime next year, and some think the company might use that as an opportunity to go public.