Daily Crunch: Stripe, stripped: Fintech leader slashes internal valuation by 28%

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Welcome to Thursday. There has been a lot of news today. The cream of the crop has been selected for you. Oh, that's right. Don't forget to apply to the startup battlefield 200 if you want to be part of the disrupt.

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The TechCrunch Top 3

• In the Air tonight: Brian gives us an inside look at the new Apple MacBook Air M2. Let the pluses and minuses commence!
• Losing a couple of stripes: Anita, Natasha M and Mary Ann teamed up to tackle Stripe’s news that it is the latest to cut its internal valuation. For those who are like, “What?” they explain that this means the pricing of preferred shares sold is chosen by a third party versus startups or venture capital investors. Also interesting is that this is uncommon for a company to do.
• Into the looking glass: We enjoyed Dominic-Madori’s deep dive on TechCrunch+ into some predictions of what Black VCs and founders can expect from the investment community in the second half of this year.

  

  The image was created by Yuichiro Chino.

Startups and VC

UnCaged could have taken money from the game industry, but it was better to take it from the believers, according to the company's co- founder. Rather than being a web3-first company, we are a gaming company that uses and brings web3 into games.

Richard Socher told Kyle that You.com will become a search platform that is open and allows others to build on top of all of the search technology that they have created. The foundation of our platform is data transparency, user customization, summarization, privacy and state-of-the-art search.

What an amazing song, "more, more, give me more"

• And how does that make you feel, |*FNAME*|: Therapist chatbots are continuing to rise in popularity, and Wysa raised $20 million to further expand its services, as Jagmeet reports.
• One star, would buy for mortal enemy: Customer reviews are a well-known and powerful way to influence shoppers. Okendo wants to turn your shoppers into buyers by leveraging them, Christine reports.
• AI caramba: AssemblyAI is expanding its AI-as-a-service business, as it raised $30 million in a Series B round, reports Kyle.
• Is this seat taken?: The world is shifting into hybrid work, and offices are scratching their heads to figure out how to allocate office space to reflect that. Robin raised $30 million for its office reservation software to help figure that out, Kyle reports.
• Do you even lift, bro: At-home fitness startup Tonal — last valued at $1.6 billion — shed over a third of its staff to help it become a “self-sustaining and profitable business,” Natasha M reports.

​​Five investors explain why Latin America is poised to weather the crypto winter

The image is called gece33 and it opens in a new window.

According to Anna Heim, investors who back Defi in Latin America are positioning themselves for a rebound.

She asked the investors how their ethos has changed since winter began and why consumer adoption in LatAm is stronger than other markets.

• Matias Nisenson, co-founder, DeFi Wonderland
• Christine Chang, head of corporate development and ventures, Tribal
• Patricio Jutard, co-founder and general partner, Newtopia VC
• Claire Diaz-Ortiz, startups committee chair, VC3; scout, Kleiner Perkins
• Andy Areitio, general partner, TheVentureCity

5 investors explain why Latin America is poised to weather the crypto winter

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Big Tech Inc.

Before diving into today's big tech stories, we want to point out a few stories from yesterday that have captured our attention.

The first report is about whether the top artificial intelligence executive for the company would return. That is a negative. Rebecca wrote that the subtotal minimums are likely to increase in your area. Sarah is leaning into a report that says that TikTok is the place where kids and teens are spending their time. In addition, Rebecca covered how many women are suing the ride-sharing company for sexual assaults by drivers.

Alright, now on with the show! Our colleagues did a great job for a second day. You already know that the world's largest social network went down this morning. Alex didn't like it. Some new features were being tested by the social network. The users were reminded to add alt text descriptions for photos, while Ivan described the new custom timelines test.

Kyle reports on the addition of read-only support for cryptocurrencies. The Internet and Mobile Association of India decided to drop cryptocurrencies due to regulatory uncertainty.

• So you want to play a game?: Non-game app revenue beat out games in the U.S. Apple App Store for the first time, Sarah reports. Meanwhile, Lauren writes about Nintendo’s new acquisition in the CG animation space and Sony’s new loyalty program for PlayStation.
• Plugged in: Panasonic is embarking on a $4 billion electric vehicle battery plant in Kansas that Jaclyn writes could be the largest in the world. Commercial EV company Arrival is making some tough financial and workforce decisions, if you know what we mean, to meet its van product target, Kirsten reports. Kirsten also reports that the ink on Walmart’s deal with Canoo is barely dry, and Rebecca writes about one of the caveats — that it doesn’t want Canoo selling EVs to Amazon.
• Brrrr, it’s cold in here: In another hit for cryptocurrency, one of the sector’s biggest lenders, Celsius, filed for bankruptcy, claiming the need to stabilize its business. Manish has more.
• Trust, more like antitrust: Natasha L has a pair of compelling stories today. One is about Google facing some new antitrust investigation in Italy over a claim that the search engine giant may have “abused a dominant position by hindering data portability rights which are afforded to individuals under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.” The other is about how Amazon is in talks with the EU to try and settle its antitrust investigation regarding use of merchant data.