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Suborbital space tourism finally arrives | FCC prepares to run public C-band auction | The big four in the U.S. launch industry — United Launch Alliance, SpaceX, Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman — hope to be one of two providers that will receive five-year contracts later this year to launch national security payloads starting in 2022. | China’s launch rate stays high | The International Space Station is the largest ever crewed object in space.

 
Here’s what your BNPL startup could be...
It’s a two-Exchange Tuesday, everyone. First up, we’re talking fintech valuations. Next up, we’re digging into Atlanta. Last week’s news that PayPal intends to buy Japanese startup Paidy marked the second major acquisition of a buy now, pay later (BNPL) company this year. PayPal’s news followed an even larger deal by Square for the Australian BNPL company Afterpay. The multibillion-dollar exits provided hard market proof that what BNPL startups are building has value beyond simple operating results; major fintech...

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Indonesian fintech Xendit is now a unicorn,...
There’s a new entrant in Southeast Asia’s growing list of unicorns. Jakarta-based Xendit, best known for its digital payment infrastructure but also focused on other financial products, announced today it has raised $150 million in Series C funding, bumping its valuation to $1 billion. The round was led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from returning investors Accel, Amasia and Goat Capital, the venture firm co-founded by former Y Combinator partner Justin Kan (in 2015, Xendit became the first...

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QED Investors closes on $1.05B across two...
QED Investors announced the closing of two new funds totaling $1.05 billion, capital that it will be using to back early-stage startups, as well as growth rounds for later-stage companies. Specifically, today QED is announcing a $550 million early-stage fund and a $500 million growth-stage fund, both of which are aimed at backing fintech companies primarily in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Latin America and Southeast Asia. The fund was oversubscribed, according to QED co-founder and managing partner Nigel...

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Toast looks toward $18B valuation in upcoming...
As if the Boston startup market needed additional momentum, it appears restaurant software startup Toast will dramatically bolster its valuation in its upcoming IPO. For a city perhaps best known internationally for its hard tech and biotech efforts, to see Toast not only rebound from its early-pandemic layoffs to a public debut, but to target a valuation closer to $20 billion than $10 billion, is a coup. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on...

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Only one week until TechCrunch Disrupt 2021...
One. More. Week. Just seven days until more than 10,000 people around the world storm the internet to attend TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 on September 21-23. We’re talking three event- and programming-packed days focused on anything — and everything — related to early-stage tech startups. You’ll hear from iconic founders, unicorn makers, boundary-benders — all of it served up with a gigantic side of DIY tips, actionable advice, encouragement and inspiration. And, because Disrupt is highly interactive, you’ll have plenty...

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Egyptian startup Capiter raises $33M to expand...
Funding startups that help manufacturers and sellers distribute products and merchants access them on a single platform keeps increasing across Africa. Today, Cairo-based B2B e-commerce startup Capiter continues that trend by raising a $33 million Series A round. The investment was co-led by Quona Capital and MSA Capital. Other participating investors include Savola, Shorooq Partners, Foundation Ventures, Accion Venture Lab, and Derayah Ventures. Capiter was launched in July 2020 by Mahmoud Nouh and Ahmed Nouh. Speaking with TechCrunch, CEO...

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The Station: Apple car shakeup, how Sept....
The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Hi readers: Welcome to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. Twenty years and one week ago, I was riding the monorail system at the Newark airport and pointed to the twin skyscrapers looming in the...

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What minority founders must consider before entering...
Sesie Bonsi Contributor Sesie Bonsi is the founder and CEO of Bleu, a financial technology platform focused on enabling touchless payment experiences. Funding for Black entrepreneurs in the U.S. hit nearly $1.8 billion in the first half of 2021 — a fourfold increase from the previous year. But most venture-backed startups are “still overwhelmingly white, male, Ivy-League-educated and based in Silicon Valley,” according to a study conducted by RateMyInvestor and Diversity VC. With venture investors committing to funding Black...

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Epic trial forces App Store changes, Android...
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. And in the U.S., app usage surged ahead of the time spent watching live TV. Currently, the average American watches 3.7 hours of live TV per...

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BNPL everywhere
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by what the weekday Exchange column digs into, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here.  Hello everyone – Anna here, covering for Alex who’s enjoying some well-deserved but soon-ending vacation time. The Exchange also went on pause for the week, but the news didn’t stop, so strap on! The buy now, pay later space has been...

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Is India’s BNPL 2.0 set to disrupt...
Anubhav Jain Contributor Anubhav Jain is co-founder and CEO of Rupifi, India’s first embedded lending fintech. He has more than a decade of experience in credit risk, analytics, customer management and portfolio development. Both as a term and as a financial product, “buy now, pay later” has become mainstream in the past few years. BNPL has evolved to assume various forms today, from small-ticket offerings by fintechs on consumer checkout platforms and marketplaces, to closed-loop products offered on marketplaces...

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Iceland’s Crowberry Capital launches $90M seed and...
Crowberry Capital, operating in Reykjavik and Copenhagen, has launched Crowberry II: a $90 million seed and early-stage fund aimed at startups in the Nordic region. A second close — bringing in an additional $40 million — is planned for July 2022. The EIF (European Investment Fund) is the lead LP on the fund, after putting in €20 million from the EU’s “InnovFin Equity” program. This is InnovFin Equity’s first VC fund in Iceland. Other investors include Icelandic Pension funds,...

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BNPL is not a winner-takes-all game
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Natasha and Mary Ann took over this week’s show with Chris and Grace, which meant that our overdeveloped senses of curiosity filled up the script just fine (even on a somewhat short week). Unintentionally, today’s episode was built around a theme of inclusion – from auto-insurance to women’s health, and from payments to knowledge. But here are some more specifics on what we...

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MaxRewards banks $3M to reveal best payment...
When Anik Khan graduated from college, his first job was working on credit cards and business expenses at Accenture. There, he found that someone could bring in a couple of thousand dollars just by having the right credit cards and following the rewards and promotions. It was back in 2017 when he and David Gao got the idea for his company MaxRewards, a digital wallet app that manages credit cards and automatically activates benefits like rewards, cashback offers and...

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Apple Music is using Shazam to solve...
Apple Music announced today that it’s created a process to properly identify and compensate all of the individual creators involved in making a DJ mix. Using technology from the audio-recognition app Shazam, which Apple acquired in 2018 for $400 million, Apple Music is working with major and independent labels to devise a fair way to divide streaming royalties among DJs, labels, and artists who appear in the mixes. This is intended to help DJ mixes retain long-term monetary value...

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