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Rapyd , the fintech-as-a-service startup that provides APIs to enable payments, card issuing, digital wallet and other financial services to companies like Uber and Ikea, is taking a significant step forward in its growth with a big acquisition: it is paying $610 million to acquire a giant piece of PayU — the payments group of internet giant Prosus that focuses on emerging markets. While full financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, Arik Shtilman, Rapyd’s CEO and co-founder, told TechCrunch that his company is “in [the] final stages of closing a new financing round of $700 million,” which points to how the deal will be financed. He also confirmed that Prosus does not become a shareholder with this acquisition. Rapyd is currently valued at $8.75 billion and has raised more than $806 million, with its current investors including the likes of Fidelity, Dragoneer, General Catalyst and Target Global, as well fintech giant Stripe. PayU’s operations span some 50 countries, an...

Rapyd , the fintech-as-a-service startup that provides APIs to enable payments, card issuing, digital wallet and other financial services to companies like Uber and Ikea, is taking a significant step forward in its growth with a big acquisition: it is paying $610 million to acquire a giant piece of PayU — the payments group of internet giant Prosus that focuses on emerging markets. While full financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed, Arik Shtilman, Rapyd’s CEO and co-founder, told TechCrunch that his company is “in [the] final stages of closing a new financing round of $700 million,” which points to how the deal will be financed. He also confirmed that Prosus does not become a shareholder with this acquisition. PayU’s operations span some 50 countries, and Prosus is not selling all of these: it is selling what it calls the “Global Payment Organisation” (GPO) and will continue to hold on to PayU’s operations in India, Turkey and Southeast Asia, arguably the three biggest r...

Remedial Health , a Nigerian startup digitizing pharmacies and bringing efficiency to the pharmaceutical value chain, has raised $12 million Series A equity-debt funding, to scale operations in the West African country. Fintech VC firm QED Investors co-led the round, banking on embedded financial opportunities like payments, and lending in the pharmaceutical sector. This is QED’s third investment in Africa after its involvement in the Moniepoint (formerly TeamApt ), and Flapkap deals last year. Ventures Platform, also co-led the round, which saw the participation of existing investors like Y Combinator, Tencent and Gaingels. Pharmacies and hospitals use Remedial Health’s platform to order pharmaceutical products sourced from reliable and trusted manufacturers and verified distributors. This helps to stem erratic prices, and the supply of fake and substandard products that are behind thousands of preventable deaths in Nigeria, and Africa at large. It also ensures a proper handling of...

Remedial Health , a Nigerian startup digitizing pharmacies and bringing efficiency to the pharmaceutical value chain, has raised $12 million Series A equity-debt funding, to scale operations in the West African country. Fintech VC firm QED Investors co-led the round, banking on embedded financial opportunities like payments, and lending in the pharmaceutical sector. This is QED’s third investment in Africa after its involvement in the Moniepoint (formerly TeamApt ), and Flapkap deals last year. Ventures Platform, also co-led the round, which saw the participation of existing investors like Y Combinator, Tencent and Gaingels. Pharmacies and hospitals use Remedial Health’s platform to order pharmaceutical products sourced from reliable and trusted manufacturers and verified distributors. This helps to stem erratic prices, and the supply of fake and substandard products that are behind thousands of preventable deaths in Nigeria, and Africa at large. It also ensures a proper handling of...

When Google had its unpleasant realization that it had been complacently spinning its wheels on a form of fake AI for a decade, chances are it started re-aligning itself that day. And it sounds like Assistant itself is now getting a generative facelift, according to an internal email reported by Axios . The email says that the Assistant team leads “see a huge opportunity to explore what a supercharged Assistant, powered by the latest LLM [large language model] technology, would look like,” and describe some organizational changes to achieve that. Of course, you don’t make sweeping changes to a successful division just because you want to see what something looks like . It feels more like they have already seen what it looks like as other companies have demonstrated it publicly, and they are in a hurry to catch up. At any rate the change in “vision” will unfold over the months to come. Although there are numerous examples of LLMs powering chatbots and assistants, the technology has ...

Hello and welcome back to Max Q! In this issue: Solving artificial gravity with gravityLab News from Atomos Space and more But first…  The Aerospace Corporation and TechCrunch are joining forces to host a pitch competition to find the strongest startups using AI/Machine Learning to work with satellite data streams. Finalists will get the rare opportunity to pitch in front of our judges on the Space Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 and exhibit their AI/ML startup at Disrupt 2023 this September. Apply today! Startups, apply to the Space Domain Awareness Challenge Pitch-off at TC Disrupt 2023 gravityLab wants to tackle the artificial gravity problem Living without gravity spells disaster for the human body. Even a few weeks in microgravity can lead to issues with circulation and vision; over the longer term, the complications compound even further. The heart begins to degenerate and atrophy. Bones turn thin and brittle. But what about Martian gravity, which is around 0...

When Google had its unpleasant realization that it had been complacently spinning its wheels on a form of fake AI for a decade, chances are it started re-aligning itself that day. And it sounds like Assistant itself is now getting a generative facelift, according to an internal email reported by Axios . The email says that the Assistant team leads “see a huge opportunity to explore what a supercharged Assistant, powered by the latest LLM [large language model] technology, would look like,” and describe some organizational changes to achieve that. Of course, you don’t make sweeping changes to a successful division just because you want to see what something looks like . It feels more like they have already seen what it looks like as other companies have demonstrated it publicly, and they are in a hurry to catch up. At any rate the change in “vision” will unfold over the months to come. Although there are numerous examples of LLMs powering chatbots and assistants, the technology has ...

Hello and welcome back to Max Q! In this issue: Solving artificial gravity with gravityLab News from Atomos Space and more But first…  The Aerospace Corporation and TechCrunch are joining forces to host a pitch competition to find the strongest startups using AI/Machine Learning to work with satellite data streams. Finalists will get the rare opportunity to pitch in front of our judges on the Space Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 and exhibit their AI/ML startup at Disrupt 2023 this September. Apply today! Startups, apply to the Space Domain Awareness Challenge Pitch-off at TC Disrupt 2023 gravityLab wants to tackle the artificial gravity problem Living without gravity spells disaster for the human body. Even a few weeks in microgravity can lead to issues with circulation and vision; over the longer term, the complications compound even further. The heart begins to degenerate and atrophy. Bones turn thin and brittle. But what about Martian gravity, which is around 0...

Walmart paid $1.4 billion to buy out Tiger Global’s remaining holding of Flipkart shares as the retail giant further expands its stake in the Indian e-commerce startup. The transaction took place in recent days and Tiger Global, which has cashed most of its Flipkart shares earlier, overall made a return of $3.5 billion on an investment of $1.2 billion, the New York-headquartered hedge fund told investors, according to a person familiar with the matter. Wall Street Journal first reported on the deal. Flipkart is the only Indian startup in which Tiger Global had invested more than $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The U.S. investment giant has poured over $6 billion on Indian startups altogether. The secondary Flipkart shares sale valued the Bengaluru-headquartered at $35 billion. Flipkart was valued at $37.6 billion in a funding round in 2021, but has since internally cut its worth by about $5 billion following the split of payments startup PhonePe . Walm...

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here —  just click The Station — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free.  Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. Hey frens! I’m back from vacation and who-wee — a lot happened this week from automaker earnings and the Tesla range inflation drama to Waymo tapping the brakes on self-driving and Cruise expanding to yet another city. One other note, you can find me on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast , a place where I will show up on a semi-regular basis, including this episode that came out Friday! Onward! Want to reach out with a tip, comment or complaint? Email Kirsten at kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com . Reminder that you can drop us a note at  tips@techcrunch.com .  If you prefer to remain anonymous ,  click here to contact us , whi...

Automakers appear to have had an awakening last week: Electric vehicles are the future, and if they want to continue selling cars, they have to think beyond the car. I’m not talking about subscriptions, though; I’m talking about charging. For years, major auto manufacturers were happy to leave the infrastructure to someone else. Tesla was the lone exception, building a globe-spanning network of speedy and reliable chargers that have placated range-anxious car shoppers who have bought the company’s EVs in droves. Other automakers, though, failed to connect the EV charging experience with EV sales. Perhaps it’s because infrastructure is unfamiliar territory. Or maybe they actually weren’t that interested in selling EVs. Whatever the case, automakers’ recent come-to-Jesus moment culminated in an announcement last week that seven of the largest would be forming a joint venture to build a massive charging network across North America. Consisting of no fewer than 30,000 charge points off...

Automakers appear to have had an awakening last week: Electric vehicles are the future, and if they want to continue selling cars, they have to think beyond the car. I’m not talking about subscriptions, though; I’m talking about charging. For years, major auto manufacturers were happy to leave the infrastructure to someone else. Tesla was the lone exception, building a globe-spanning network of speedy and reliable chargers that have placated range-anxious car shoppers who have bought the company’s EVs in droves. Other automakers, though, failed to connect the EV charging experience with EV sales. Perhaps it’s because infrastructure is unfamiliar territory. Or maybe they actually weren’t that interested in selling EVs. Whatever the case, automakers’ recent come-to-Jesus moment culminated in an announcement last week that seven of the largest would be forming a joint venture to build a massive charging network across North America. Consisting of no fewer than 30,000 charge points off...

In this week’s edition of The Interchange, we get into M&As in the fintech space as AngelList nabbed a startup and Uplift got bought for less than it raised in venture funding. We get into those deals and much more. Want to receive this in your inbox every Sunday? Sign up here . Shopify’s credit bet, Jeeves’ update and AngelList’s second buy Last week, Shopify announced a new offering — Shopify Credit, a business credit card designed exclusively for its merchants. The new product marked Shopify ’s first pay-in-full business credit card, said Shopify president Harley Finkelstein. It is powered by Stripe and issued by Celtic Bank, “and accepted everywhere Visa is,” he added. My editor and I were intrigued by the fact that Shopify insisted it would charge no fees — no late fees, no foreign transaction fees, and no interest. But upon further digging into the fine print, as fellow fintech enthusiast Sar Haribhakti tweeted about, it turns out that Shopify is also describing the new o...

In this week’s edition of The Interchange, we get into M&As in the fintech space as AngelList nabbed a startup and Uplift got bought for less than it raised in venture funding. We get into those deals and much more. Want to receive this in your inbox every Sunday? Sign up here . Shopify’s credit bet, Jeeves’ update and AngelList’s second buy Last week, Shopify announced a new offering — Shopify Credit, a business credit card designed exclusively for its merchants. The new product marked Shopify ’s first pay-in-full business credit card, said Shopify president Harley Finkelstein. It is powered by Stripe and issued by Celtic Bank, “and accepted everywhere Visa is,” he added. My editor and I were intrigued by the fact that Shopify insisted it would charge no fees — no late fees, no foreign transaction fees, and no interest. But upon further digging into the fine print, as fellow fintech enthusiast Sar Haribhakti tweeted about, it turns out that Shopify is also describing the new o...