Welcome to TechCrunch AM! This morning, we're looking at the drama between Deel and Rippling, Google's $32 billion Wiz acquisition, and which fintechs are hiring in 2025. We've also got wildfire detection satellites, a food e-commerce startup, a social wellness app for the middle-aged, Solana's poor-taste ad, Nerdio's $500M round, and an app that makes you literally touch grass. Let's go! — Rebecca | | | Image Credits: Kimberly White/Getty Images | 1. The price is right: Last summer, cloud security startup Wiz walked away from a $23 billion acquisition offer from Google parent Alphabet. Looks like Wiz just needed some extra incentive: today the deal was done for a record $32 billion in cash. Read More 2. Deny, deny, deny: HR company Deel denies all legal wrongdoing in what is becoming a very spicy battle in Startup Land. Rival Rippling has brought a lawsuit against Deel, alleging that it seeded a spy at its company. Deel is charged with racketeering, misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, and more. Read More 3. Hiring PSA: Fintech had a rough 2024. But even though funding has slowed down, some companies continue to grow and expand their teams. TC's Mary Ann Azevedo has done the good work of collecting, if not all, a huge chunk of fintechs that are hiring in 2025. Read More | | | 🔥 Stop, drop, and roll: Welcome to the new age of wildfire detection and monitoring, led by satellite constellations. Google-backed FireSat successfully got its constellation into orbit this weekend, promising to image the Earth's surface every 20 minutes. Read More ✈️ Lift off: Will your next airport pickup in San Francisco be in a Waymo? The robotaxi company got the greenlight to start mapping roadways at SFO, the first step towards unlocking a potentially lucrative use case. Read More 🌽 Ignoring the noise: Trump's tariff hikes have resulted in slashed growth forecasts, but food e-commerce startup GrubMarket is either immune or leveraging the chaos. The startup just raised $50 million on a higher valuation of $3.5 billion. Read More ✍️ In our soft era: Exist started as a social wellness app for Gen Z, but it was middle-aged users who took to its pitch to build meaningful communities through social journaling. Read More ☁️ Cloud management: Nerdio, which helps companies deploy and manage Microsoft cloud technologies, has secured customers like PayPal, Sony, and Comcast. Now, it's raised its largest-ever round of $500 million, putting it firmly in unicorn territory. Read More | | | 🧐 Limits of brute force: The former director of the Chips Program Office wrote an opinion piece for The Financial Times saying that Trump's decision to repeal the program puts the U.S. at national security risk. And tariffs alone won't revitalize domestic chip manufacturing. Read More 🤝 You got a deal: AI coding assistant developer Cognition AI has raised hundreds of millions at a near-$4 billion valuation, per Bloomberg. The round is reportedly led by the Joe Lonsdale-backed VC firm, 8VC. Read More 🙈 Swing and a miss: Solana's recent ad to promote an upcoming conference has backfired after users accused the crypto platform of being tone-deaf and insensitive to gender issues, reports The Block. The ad clearly makes a dig at the "woke mind virus" and positions Solana and crypto bros as the "rational thinkers" and "beacon[s] of innovation." Read More | | | Image Credits: Sara Monika / Getty Images | | | 🏞️ The irony: Spending too much time on your phone and not enough in the present moment? There's an app for that. This one locks you out of your device until you literally go touch some grass. Read More | | | Featured jobs from CrunchBoard | | | Has this been forwarded to you? Click here to subscribe to this newsletter. | | | Update your preferences here at any time | | Copyright © 2024 TechCrunch, All rights reserved.Yahoo Inc. 680 Folsom Street,San Francisco,CA | | | | |
