Techcrunch blog!: Zepto, now valued at $1.4B, is India’s first company to get its horn this year

Friday, August 25, 2023

Today's top story is about a venture-backed startup that has quietly bought up over 80 mom-and-pop shops. And not to sell them, either. Find out what Teamshares plans to do with them all.

Meanwhile, India-based instant grocery delivery startup Zepto bagged $200 million in fresh funding to boost it over the $1 billion valuation mark. Thus making it India's first 2023 unicorn. Read more about it.

Next, Instacart filed it’s long-awaited S-1 filing to go public. We share five things you need to know. (TC+)

And quiet quitting is coming to social media in the European Union. A new law enables social media users to decline the option of having personalized content feeds based on relevance. That's not all.

Image Credits: Zepto

More top reads

Someone didn't study: Find out how Byju's ended up exposing sensitive student data, including loan details. Read more.

MOVEit by the numbers: Speaking of hacks, MOVEit turned out to be the biggest one of them all this year, and we break down how.

It's all about marketing yourself: Selling real estate is all about getting your face out there so buyers and sellers want to work with you. Enter Luxury Presence, which raised $19.2 million to build marketing tools for Realtors. Now go make a name for yourself.

Narrowing it down: Joby Aviation is choosing between Ohio or North Carolina for a new air taxi factory. Maybe you can help.

There's no one in the driver's seat: Polestar 4 will feature Mobileye's hands-off, eyes-off driving tech. Get the scoop.

Trying to make some sense of it all: From the Podcast Movement conference come two YouTube stories. One is that it put out a new video in hopes of better explaining its short-form video platform for creators. See for yourself. The other discusses new plans for podcasters and music lovers. For your reading pleasure.

Too many bad apples ruined the bushel: Dropbox is getting rid of its unlimited storage options, placing the blame on crypto miners and resellers for taking advantage. Read more.

$12,626: That's about how much each of the 3,500 Tesla investors stand to get from an SEC settlement, minus the lawyer fees, of course. Where it began, where it ended.

Take some more news into your weekend:

Qase raises $7.2M to help companies manage their software tests

OnlyFans' profitability proves the creator economy boom was real enough (TC+)

Pitch Deck Teardown: BusRight's $7M Series A deck (TC+)

Orbital Composites lands new government contracts to advance in-space manufacturing

Former president Trump returns to Twitter, now X, with his mugshot

Image Credits: Indranil Aditya/Bloomberg / Getty Images

Grab your pass to TC Disrupt 2023

Join 10,000 startup leaders in San Francisco at TechCrunch Disrupt, taking place September 19–21. Last-minute passes are still available. Save 15% with code DC. Register now!

From today's "pod" files

Not gonna lie, I enjoy writing about how poop tells us things about our bodies, and I have written about it . . . a lot. On today's Equity, it was Alex's, Mary Ann's and Kirsten's turn to discuss how the list of TechCrunch Battlefield 200 companies features a lot of startups focused on excrement. That and how Nvidia's earnings were a blowout, Better.com's SPAC listing was crappy and Cruise had an accident.

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin

Making AI trustworthy: Can we overcome black-box hallucinations?

Characters in cartoons might imagine giant hot dogs when they’re hungry, but a large language model (LLM) can hallucinate for a variety of reasons, such as poor data quality or an unclear prompt.

Major AI platforms “infer and extrapolate based on what they believe to be the most likely answer, not actual data,” according to Dr. Mike Capps, CEO and co-founder of Diveplane.

Instance-based learning, on the other hand, compares training data points “against each other to gain insight into the dataset and the predictions,” says Capps. “In other words, IBL ‘shows its work.'”

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code "DC" for a 15% discount on an annual subscription.