Ordinary Chaos

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  • The biggest data breaches in 2024: 1 billion stolen records and rising

    The biggest data breaches in 2024: 1 billion stolen records and rising

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    We’re almost at the end of 2024, a year that will go down as having seen some of the biggest, most damaging data breaches in recent history. And just when you think that some of these hacks can’t get any worse, they do.

    From huge stores of customers’ personal information getting scraped, stolen and posted online, to reams of medical data covering most people in the United States getting stolen, the worst data breaches of 2024 have surpassed the 1 billion stolen records and rising. These breaches not only affect the individuals whose data was irretrievably exposed, but also embolden the criminals who profit from their malicious cyberattacks.

    Travel with us to the not-so-distant past to look at how some of the biggest security incidents of 2024 went down, their impact and, in some cases, how they could have been stopped. 

    AT&T’s data breaches affect “nearly all” of its customers, and many more non-customers

    For AT&T, 2024 has been a very bad year for data security. The telecoms giant confirmed not one, but two separate data breaches just months apart.

    In July, AT&T said cybercriminals had stolen a cache of data that contained phone numbers and call records of “nearly all” of its customers, or around 110 million people, over a six-month period in 2022 and in some cases longer. The data wasn’t stolen directly from AT&T’s systems, but from an account it had with data giant Snowflake (more on that later).

    Although the stolen AT&T data isn’t public (and one report suggests AT&T paid a ransom for the hackers to delete the stolen data) and the data itself does not contain the contents of calls or text messages, the “metadata” still reveals who called who and when, and in some cases the data can be used to infer approximate locations. Worse, the data includes phone numbers of non-customers who were called by AT&T customers during that time. That data becoming public could be dangerous for higher-risk individuals, such as domestic abuse survivors.

    That was AT&T’s second data breach this year. Earlier in March, a data breach broker dumped online a full cache of 73 million customer records to a known cybercrime forum for anyone to see, some three years after a much smaller sample was teased online.

    The published data included customers’ personal information, including names, phone numbers and postal addresses, with some customers confirming their data was accurate. 

    But it wasn’t until a security researcher discovered that the exposed data contained encrypted passcodes used for accessing a customer’s AT&T account that the telecoms giant took action. The security researcher told TechCrunch at the time that the encrypted passcodes could be easily unscrambled, putting some 7.6 million existing AT&T customer accounts at risk of hijacks. AT&T force-reset its customers’ account passcodes after TechCrunch alerted the company to the researcher’s findings. 

    One big mystery remains: AT&T still doesn’t know how the data leaked or where it came from. 

    Change Healthcare hackers stole medical data on “substantial proportion” of people in America

    In 2022, the U.S. Justice Department sued health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group to block its attempted acquisition of health tech giant Change Healthcare, fearing that the deal would give the healthcare conglomerate broad access to about “half of all Americans’ health insurance claims” each year. The bid to block the deal ultimately failed. Then, two years later, something far worse happened: Change Healthcare was hacked by a prolific ransomware gang; its almighty banks of sensitive health data were stolen because one of the company’s critical systems was not protected with multi-factor authentication.

    The lengthy downtime caused by the cyberattack dragged on for weeks, causing widespread outages at hospitals, pharmacies and healthcare practices across the United States. But the aftermath of the data breach has yet to be fully realized, though the consequences for those affected are likely to be irreversible. UnitedHealth says the stolen data — which it paid the hackers to obtain a copy — includes the personal, medical and billing information on a “substantial proportion” of people in the United States. 

    UnitedHealth has yet to attach a number to how many individuals were affected by the breach. The health giant’s chief executive, Andrew Witty, told lawmakers that the breach may affect around one-third of Americans, and potentially more. For now, it’s a question of just how many hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. are affected. 

    Synnovis ransomware attack sparked widespread outages at hospitals across London 

    A June cyberattack on U.K. pathology lab Synnovis — a blood and tissue testing lab for hospitals and health services across the U.K. capital — caused ongoing widespread disruption to patient services for weeks. The local National Health Service trusts that rely on the lab postponed thousands of operations and procedures following the hack, prompting the declaration of a critical incident across the U.K. health sector.

    A Russia-based ransomware gang was blamed for the cyberattack, which saw the theft of data related to some 300 million patient interactions dating back a “significant number” of years. Much like the data breach at Change Healthcare, the ramifications for those affected are likely to be significant and life-lasting. 

    Some of the data was already published online in an effort to extort the lab into paying a ransom. Synnovis reportedly refused to pay the hackers’ $50 million ransom, preventing the gang from profiting from the hack but leaving the U.K. government scrambling for a plan in case the hackers posted millions of health records online. 

    One of the NHS trusts that runs five hospitals across London affected by the outages reportedly failed to meet the data security standards as required by the U.K. health service in the years that ran up to the June cyberattack on Synnovis.

    Ticketmaster had an alleged 560 million records stolen in the Snowflake hack

    A series of data thefts from cloud data giant Snowflake quickly snowballed into one of the biggest breaches of the year, thanks to the vast amounts of data stolen from its corporate customers. 

    Cybercriminals swiped hundreds of millions of customer data from some of the world’s biggest companies — including an alleged 560 million records from Ticketmaster, 79 million records from Advance Auto Parts and some 30 million records from TEG — by using stolen credentials of data engineers with access to their employer’s Snowflake environments. For its part, Snowflake does not require (or enforce) its customers to use the security feature, which protects against intrusions that rely on stolen or reused passwords. 

    Incident response firm Mandiant said around 165 Snowflake customers had data stolen from their accounts, in some cases a “significant volume of customer data.” Only a handful of the 165 companies have so far confirmed their environments were compromised, which also includes tens of thousands of employee records from Neiman Marcus and Santander Bank, and millions of records of students at Los Angeles Unified School District. Expect many Snowflake customers to come forward. 

    (Dis)honorable mentions

    Cencora notifies over a million and counting that it lost their data:

    U.S. pharma giant Cencora disclosed a February data breach involving the compromise of patients’ health data, information that Cencora obtained through its partnerships with drug makers. Cencora has steadfastly refused to say how many people are affected, but a count by TechCrunch shows well over a million people have been notified so far. Cencora says it’s served more than 18 million patients to date. 

    MediSecure data breach affects half of Australia:

    Close to 13 million people in Australia — roughly half of the country’s population — had personal and health data stolen in a ransomware attack on prescriptions provider MediSecure in April. MediSecure, which distributed prescriptions for most Australians until late 2023, declared insolvency soon after the mass theft of customer data.

    Kaiser shared health data on millions of patients with advertisers:

    U.S. health insurance giant Kaiser disclosed a data breach in April after inadvertently sharing the private health information of 13.4 million patients, specifically website search terms about diagnoses and medications, with tech companies and advertisers. Kaiser said it used their tracking code for website analytics. The health insurance provider disclosed the incident in the wake of several  other telehealth startups, like Cerebral, Monument and Tempest, admitting they too shared data with advertisers.

    USPS shared postal address with tech giants, too:

    And then it was the turn of the U.S. Postal Service caught sharing postal addresses of logged-in users with advertisers like Meta, LinkedIn and Snap, using a similar tracking code provided by the companies. USPS removed the tracking code from its website after TechCrunch notified the postal service in July of the improper data sharing, but the agency wouldn’t say how many individuals had data collected. USPS has over 62 million Informed Delivery users as of March 2024.

    Evolve Bank data breach affected fintech and startup customers:

    A ransomware attack targeting Evolve Bank saw the personal information of more than 7.6 million people stolen by cybercriminals in July. Evolve is a banking-as-a-service giant serving mostly fintech companies and startups, like Affirm and Mercury. As a result, many of the individuals notified of the data breach had never heard of Evolve Bank, let alone have a relationship with the firm, prior to its cyberattack.

    National Public Data goes broke after millions of SSNs stolen

    The company behind the data broker National Public Data filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in October, months after a massive data breach exposed some three billion records affecting around 270 million individuals, according to various analyses by security researchers. The data broker allowed its paying customers access to its vast databases of names, dates of birth, email and postal addresses, phone numbers, and Social Security numbers (even if not all of the data was accurate). The company said it had to file for bankruptcy as it can no longer generate the revenue to address the deluge of class-action lawsuits and mounting liability from state and federal regulators.

    First published on June 28 and updated on October 14.

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  • ‘Where we are today in biology AI is similar to GPT in 2020’: An interview with the CEO of Africa’s biggest AI startup

    ‘Where we are today in biology AI is similar to GPT in 2020’: An interview with the CEO of Africa’s biggest AI startup

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    In January last year, German biotech company BioNTech acquired African AI startup Instadeep for over $550 million, a deal finalized in July of the same year. Instadeep, whose exit is currently the largest from Africa, has been operating under the German pharma umbrella for just over a year. Now is a good time to look at how it has fared since the acquisition.

    Instadeep uses advanced machine learning techniques to bring AI into enterprise applications. Its products range from GPU-accelerated insights to self-learning decision-making systems. Before last year’s acquisition, the Tunis-born and Paris, London-headquartered enterprise AI startup raised over $108 million from several global investors, including Google, Deutsche Bahn, and BioNTech. These three strategics were also among the startup’s biggest partners and clients. 

    Notably, the decade-old startup collaborated with BioNTech to develop an early warning system that could detect high-risk COVID-19 variants months ahead of time during the pandemic. Instadeep worked with Google DeepMind to create an early detection system for desert locust outbreaks in Africa. It also collaborated on a moonshot project to automate railway scheduling for Deutsche Bahn, the largest rail operator in Europe.

    While these partnerships show various applications for Instadeep’s solutions, its acquirer had a clear use case: using AI to develop therapeutics and vaccines for various cancers and infectious diseases — something it is now doubling down on under its new owner.

    Fifteen months on from completion of the BioNTech acquisition, co-founder and CEO Karim Beguir told TechCrunch in an interview that Instadeep has made significant progress on that front, even as the AI company — which continues to operate independently — still delivers solutions to clients outside biotech.

    “We’re strategically aligned with BioNTech on the objectives to be pursued in biology and bio AI capabilities,” the Instadeep chief said. “But we also have room to maneuver and continue to be a force in AI in Africa and in general while continuing to develop technologies that push the frontier of innovation in other verticals like industrial optimization.” 

    Increasing capabilities within biotech 

    Beguir notes that Instadeep’s objective in the past year since its acquisition has been to deploy AI at every step in BioNTech’s pipeline to improve existing processes. 

    He shares an example in histology, which involves tissue analysis and the visual task of labeling different tissues, such as identifying tumor cells or healthy cells. According to him, experts at BioNTech traditionally performed this work manually. However, Instadeep’s tech has helped accelerate the process by deploying visual AI and segmentation systems, speeding up this labeling tissues workflow by 5x.

    Another is the completion of its RiboMab project, which involves mRNA-encoded antibodies that have now become a part of BioNTech’s toolkit as an immunotherapy company to fight cancer and other diseases. InstaDeep introduced this project on its DeepChain platform, which designs proteins and analyzes biological data, during their first collaboration in 2020.

    Biotech involves a wealth of sensitive healthcare data. Collecting and analyzing them is one thing. Keeping them safe is another. Just ask 23andMe, once heralded as a disruptor in the biotech space before it became victim to a massive breach that exposed the data of nearly 7 million people, half of its customer base. 

    Interestingly, BioNTech is no stranger to such events. In 2020, hackers illegally accessed documents related to its COVID-19 vaccine, developed with Pfizer, by attacking the European Medicines Agency (EMA), Europe’s medicines regulator, which assesses medicines and vaccines. While Pfizer and BioNTech confirmed that their systems and trial data remained secure, the incident highlights how vulnerable organizations, even regulatory ones, can be to cyberattacks.

    As any CEO would say, Beguir tells me that Instadeep and BioNTech are highly cautious with healthcare data, especially as the partnership is currently using AI to increase data assets, allowing them to identify precise protein sequences and potentially unlock new targets for cancer and other immunotherapy use cases. 

    But there’s a segmentation in what data both companies use. BioNTech handles personal, real-life patient data, and Instadeep typically develops models and trains them on publicly available data. This is how, for example, it trained its Nucleotide Transformer, a series of models in AI genomics, which today is the most downloaded and popular AI genomics model in the world. [Thanks in part to this open-source deal.]

    “Instadeep developed and trained the nucleotide model on public data,” Beguir notes. “However, when we wanted to deploy the model on specific use cases and real-life patient data, we did this at the BioNTech level, with all the privacy guarantees that come from its position as one of the leading players in biopharma operating under strict regulations and following rigorous quality protocols.

    Developing new technologies within BioNTech and outside of biotech

    When asked what the next milestones are for Instadeep within BioNTech, Beguir mentions the startup’s “latest breakthrough”: Bayesian flow networks (BFN), a new generative AI model for proteins that significantly outperforms autoregressive and diffusion models, according to the company. BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin, in a statement, describes it as a “state-of-the-art technology.”

    According to Beguir, the model produces the most natural-looking and best-behaved protein proteins in the market by allowing systems to search for specific properties on an antibody’s heavy chain, including chemical characteristics, hydrophobicity, or sequence length. Such models are crucial for understanding complex protein functions and engineering novel therapeutic proteins.

    “We’re excited about the potential of AI innovations like ours to identify real use cases, collaborate closely with BioNTech, and build products that will be tested in labs and clinics, ultimately saving patients’ lives,” said Beguir. “If you consider where we are today in biology and AI, it’s similar to where we were with natural language processing in 2020 with GPT-3. Systems were starting to work, and their capabilities were impressive, but there was still room for improvement.”

    Instadeep launched the new AI model last week alongside a new near-exascale supercomputer, which, according to the companies, places the partnership in the top 100 of compute and infrastructure and the top 20 of H100 GPU clusters globally.

    Both developments highlight where Instadeep, under BioNTech, deploys AI in several life science use cases. On the other hand, it independently handles its other business line, which involves AI and deep reinforcement learning for industrial optimization.

    One example is its 12-year-long ongoing project to automate railway planning and dispatching for Deutsche Bahn, one of its long-time partners and Europe’s largest rail operator. Similarly, the Tunis- and London-based AI company has bolstered efforts to develop other industrial optimization use cases, such as collaborating with Fraport in Germany to optimize complex airport operations with AI. 

    “In general, we also see the potential of AI agents as very compelling for the future. We think industrial optimization and agentic-based systems, working hand in hand with human colleagues, will revolutionize industrial efficiency. So this is also another area we’ve been at for many years and one where we are continuing to invest,” noted Beguir.

    Meanwhile, Instadeep, earlier this month, launched the pro version of its DeepPCB (Deep Printed Circuit Board) product, a hardware or printed circuit board design entirely assisted with autonomous AI powered by reinforcement learning, in San Francisco. Beguir says the company’s competitors are smaller AI startups in specific areas it operates, such as Riyadh-based Intelmatix.

    The Instadeep chief takes pride in his company’s work on solving more complex use cases of AI – for example, Gen AI for DNA or proteomics or agentic workflows for combinatorial optimization – and steering away from simple ones like Gen AI for NLP. He claims that, besides BioNTech’s acquisition, this ingenuity plays a considerable part in driving inbound interest from customers in the U.S., where the AI company now has two offices, and also across Europe: Berlin, Paris, and the U.K., in particular.  

    Even though BioNTech spent $500 million on Instadeep to boost its biotech capabilities, it keeps the AI company operationally independent for reasons like this, while funding its activities to serve customers beyond the biotech industry.”

    “Because we contribute value by being leaders in AI, and AI skills can be improved across multiple sectors,” answered Beguir when asked why BioNTech still allows the AI company to work on non-biotech projects. “It’s the same tech stack, so time working on AI outside biotech is not time lost at all. BioNTech also deploys InstaDeep on tasks outside biotech R&D, such as in operations optimization.”

    Beguir explains that while InstaDeep wasn’t forced to sell, it was the shared vision and successful projects with BioNTech since 2019, long before the acquisition, that convinced the AI company to move forward with the deal. He believes the trust built over years of collaboration is why InstaDeep will remain independent under BioNTech. The key for InstaDeep now is to keep up its momentum, maintain high-quality results, and continue innovating for as long as possible.”

    Since the acquisition, InstaDeep has grown to over 400 employees worldwide. This includes its team in Africa, based in a new office in Kigali, which is leading the company’s geospatial intelligence work.

    Initially an on-the-ground effort in partnership with Google to detect locust breeding grounds in Africa, Instadeep now uses past label data and satellite imaging to infer with high quality and an 80-85% accuracy where the locust bridging grounds will be in the next 30 days. Beguir says InstaGeo, the company’s framework that uses multispectral satellite imaging from NASA or the European Space Agency (ESA), is open-source and available for other companies to develop scalable solutions across the continent.

    “This is a real example of how AI technology and capability is having an impact. Rather than collecting samples on the ground or depending on ground infrastructure, we can deliver those insights via satellites at scale and notify multiple governments and actors to tackle a growing challenge to food security, especially given the continent’s climate issues.”

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  • The 13 biggest take-private PE acquisitions so far this year in tech

    The 13 biggest take-private PE acquisitions so far this year in tech

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    The private equity realm has been pretty active so far in 2024, serving as a powerful “alternative” source of liquidity for technology startups and scale-ups in search of an exit. Just this month, TechCrunch reported that EQT had picked up a majority stake in cybersecurity firm Acronis at a valuation of around $4 billion, following in the footsteps of another exit, in which EQT snapped up enterprise middleware company WSO2 for $600 million.

    However, private equity has also been busy in the public markets, with some big deals going down to transform underperforming companies with strong growth prospects. According to PitchBook, there were 136 take-private deals led by private equity firms in 2023, up 15% on the previous year. New data provided to TechCrunch by PitchBook indicates that so far in 2024, there have been 97 such deals, meaning we’re roughly on course to match last year’s figure (give or take) if the current trajectory holds.

    Of the take-private deals that have closed so far in 2024, 46 belong to the technology sector. TechCrunch has filtered through these transactions to identify deals specifically focused on product-centric companies (rather than IT consultancies or services firms), and pulled out all the acquisitions valued at $1 billion or more.

    We’ve included transactions that have either already closed in 2024 or are set to close in 2024; this includes deals first announced last year.

    Adevinta: $13 billion

    Adevinta chair Orla Noonan and CEO Rolv Erik Ryssdal, with executive management, opening trading on April 10, 2019
    Adevinta chair Orla Noonan and CEO Rolv Erik Ryssdal, with executive management, opening trading on April 10, 2019.Image Credits:Adevinta (opens in a new window)

    Norwegian media group Schibsted spun out classifieds platform Adevinta as a stand-alone business in 2019. With existing online marketplaces in France, Spain, Brazil, and the U.K., Adevinta went on to acquire eBay’s classifieds business for $9.2 billion in 2020.

    During the original spinout in 2019, Schibsted listed Adevinta on the Oslo Stock Exchange at a $6 billion valuation. In late 2023, news emerged that private equity firms Permira and Blackstone were leading a consortium to take Adevinta private in a deal worth 141 billion Norwegian crowns ($13 billion). That deal finally closed in May.

    Smartsheet: $8.4 billion

    Traders work below monitors displaying Smartsheet.com Inc. signage during its 2018 IPO
    Traders work below monitors displaying Smartsheet.com Inc. signage during its 2018 IPOImage Credits:Nagle/Bloomberg / Getty Images

    Six years after filing to go public, enterprise software company Smartsheet is now in the midst of being taken private, after Vista Equity Partners and Blackstone partnered to offer shareholders a chunky $8.4 billion cash.

    The Bellevue, Washington-based company hit a mid-pandemic market value of more than $10 billion, well over its opening day IPO valuation of $1.5 billion. After a rough couple of years where it dropped to below $4 billion, the company has been on the ascendency for much of 2024, rising above the $7 billion mark before the two private equity firms swooped in with their bid — representing a 41% premium over its 90-day average price.

    The acquisition is expected to conclude by the end of Smartsheet’s fiscal year-end, which is January 31, 2025. However, the agreement includes a 45-day “go shop” period that expires in early November, so technically Smartsheet is able to pursue alternative suitors for now, and terminate the existing agreement with Vista and Blackstone if it finds a better deal.

    Squarespace: $6.9 billion

    Squarespace IPO (2021)
    Squarespace IPO (2021).Image Credits:NYSE (opens in a new window)

    U.K.-based private equity firm Permira announced plans to acquire website builder Squarespace in May, in an all-cash deal valued at $6.9 billion.

    Squarespace filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021, shortly after raising $300 million at a $10 billion valuation. The company went on to reach a market cap high of $8 billion in mid-2021, but its stock went into free fall, dropping to a low of $2 billion in 2022. The company was already on the rebound this year, with its market cap soaring past $5 billion off the back of strong earnings, sparking Permira into action.

    The proposed take-private deal is expected to close in Q4 2024.

    Nuvei: $6.3 billion

    Nuvei's opening day on the Nasdaq in 2021
    Nuvei’s opening day on the Nasdaq in 2021.Image Credits:Nasdaq (opens in a new window)

    Canadian fintech Nuvei, which provides companies with a range of services spanning payments processing, risk management, currency conversion, and more, entered into an agreement in April to be taken private by Advent International in a deal worth $6.3 billion.

    The Ryan Reynolds-backed company originally filed to go public in 2020 on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), followed by the Nasdaq in the U.S. a year later. The company hit a peak valuation of more than $24 billion in 2021 before hitting a low of $2.6 billion in October, 2023.

    The deal is expected to close in late 2024 or early 2025 at the latest.

    PowerSchool: $5.6 billion

    Hardeep Gulati, chief executive officer of PowerSchool, center right, rings the opening bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) during the company's initial public offering (IPO) in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, July 28, 2021.
    Hardeep Gulati, chief executive officer of PowerSchool, center right, rings the opening bell during the company’s IPO in 2021. Image Credits:Michael Nagle/Bloomberg / Getty Images

    K-12 education software provider PowerSchool is in the middle of being taken private by Bain Capital, in a transaction that values the Folsom, California-based company at $5.6 billion.

    PowerSchool was originally acquired by Apple in 2001 for $62 million in an all-stock deal, with Apple selling PowerSchool to Pearson five years later. Pearson then sold it on to Vista Equity Partners in 2015, with Onex Partners joining as investor three years later.

    PowerSchool went public in 2021, with the NYSE listing giving the company an initial valuation of around $3.5 billion. It later surged to $5.5 billion in late 2021, before falling to $1.8 billion within a year and then hovering at around the $3.5 billion mark for the past couple of years.

    The take-private transaction is expected to conclude in the second half of 2024.

    Darktrace: $5.3 billion

    Darktrace on the London Stock Exchange
    Darktrace on the London Stock Exchange.Image Credits:London Stock Exchange (opens in a new window)

    U.K. cybersecurity giant Darktrace is set to go private in a $5.3 billion deal spearheaded by an entity called Luke Bidco Ltd., formed by private equity giant Thoma Bravo.

    Founded in 2013, Darktrace raised some $230 million in VC funding and reached a private valuation of $1.65 billion, before going public on the London Stock Exchange in 2021 with an opening-day valuation of $2.4 billion. The full valuation based on Thoma Bravo’s offer amounts to $5.4 billion on a fully diluted basis, with the corresponding enterprise value sitting at $4.99 billion.

    The deal is expected to close by the end of 2024.

    Instructure: $4.8 billion

    Instructure's opening day listing on the NYSE (2021)
    Instructure’s opening day listing on the NYSE (2021).Image Credits:NYSE (opens in a new window)

    Educational technology company Instructure first went public in 2015, but it was taken private by Thoma Bravo in a $2 billion transaction four years later.

    In 2021, the private equity giant spun Instructure out once more as a public company on the NYSE, but its valuation generally hovered around the $3.5 billion mark. But KKR swooped in with a $4.8 billion bid in July, with plans to take the company private once more.

    The deal is expected to close in late 2024.

    Alteryx: $4.4 billion

    Alteryx NYSE IPO on March 24, 2017.
    Alteryx NYSE IPO on March 24, 2017.Image Credits:Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    Data analytics software provider Alteryx was taken private in a $4.4 billion deal.

    Alteryx went public on the NYSE in 2017, with its shares soaring past the $12 billion mark in the intervening years. However, its market cap had been in free fall since 2021, hitting a low of $2 billion before Clearlake Capital Group and Insight Partners came in with their offer last December.

    The take-private transaction closed in March this year.

    EngageSmart: $4 billion

    EngageSmart
    EngageSmart.Image Credits:EngageSmart

    First announced in October 2023, Vista Equity Partners bid $4 billion to take customer engagement software provider EngageSmart private in a deal valued at $4 billion. EngageSmart went public on the NYSE in 2021, with its market cap hovering around the $2 billion to $3 billion mark until Vista Equity Partners tabled its $4 billion offer.

    The transaction closed in January, with the EngageSmart brand now in the process of being discontinued and replaced by two separate companies: InvoiceCloud and SimplePractice.

    Rover: $2.3 billion

    The front lobby of Rover.com in Seattle, Washington.
    The front lobby of Rover.com in Seattle.Image Credits:John Moore/Getty Images

    Pet-sitting marketplace Rover went public on the Nasdaq via a SPAC in 2021. At the tail end of 2023, Blackstone announced its intentions to acquire the company for $2.3 billion.

    That all-cash transaction finally closed in February, with Rover now a private company once more.

    Everbridge: $1.8 billion

    Everbridge goes public in 2016
    Everbridge goes public in 2016.Image Credits:Everbridge (opens in a new window)

    Thoma Bravo first announced its intentions to acquire Everbridge, a critical event management software company, for $1.5 billion in early February. Following further negotiations, Thoma Bravo bumped that price up to $1.8 billion.

    Founded in 2002, Everbridge went public on the Nasdaq in 2016, with its shares peaking at $6.4 billion in 2021 before falling below the $1 billion mark ahead of Thoma Bravo entering the the mix.

    The transaction closed in July.

    Kahoot: $1.7 billion

    Kahoot on the Oslo Børs
    Kahoot on the Oslo Børs.Image Credits:Kahoot (opens in a new window)

    Way back in July 2023, a consortium of buyers led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management announced it was acquiring gamified e-learning platform Kahoot in a deal worth $1.7 billion.

    The announcement came a little over two years after Kahoot went public on the Oslo Stock Exchange, with the sale price representing a 53.1% premium on the last trading day before its investors’ specific shareholdings were publicly disclosed in May.

    The transaction finally closed in January this year, with Kahoot delisting from the Oslo Børs stock exchange.

    Model N: $1.25 billion

    Model N goes public in 2013
    Model N goes public in 2013.Image Credits:NYSE (opens in a new window)

    Model N, a platform that helps companies automate decisions related to pricing, incentives and compliance, went private in a $1.25 billion deal spearheaded by Vista Equity Partners.

    Founded in 1999, Model N went public on the NYSE in 2013, though its valuation rarely ventured further north than $1.5 billion — a figure that fell to below $1 billion in the six months leading to Vista Equity Partners stepping into the fray.

    The transaction concluded in June 2024, with Model N now a private company.



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  • Biggest drone display in history puts high-def 3D screens in the sky

    Biggest drone display in history puts high-def 3D screens in the sky

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    October 1 is China’s National Day – and the high-tech metropolis of Shenzhen celebrated with an eye-popping spectacle: a record-smashing swarm display of 10,197 drones in concert, showing just how far this next-gen entertainment technology has come.

    Shenzhen, of course, is the heart of China’s high-tech sector, and home to a number of drone manufacturers, notably including DJI. So the city has been treated to some terrific 3D aerial displays in the past – indeed, just four days ago, the Guinness World Records YouTube channel posted a video celebrating the record that’s just been superseded.

    In the video below, you can see that previous 7,598-drone swarm, co-ordinated through a single laptop, creating three-dimensional aerial images in a range of colors, back at the start of September. Amusingly, it used more than twice as many drones as the record-holder before it, but held its record for less than a month.

    Incredible Drone Display is World’s Biggest Ever – Guinness World Records

    But it seems a month is a long time in this game, because the National Day display over Shenzhen Bay Park feels like a step-change in the development of this remarkable swarm tech.

    Check out the new record-breaking show, complete with rudimentary motion graphics, soaring rainbow birds, thunderbolts crashing down from heaven, a wild 3D drone mothership, complete with screens on the sides, and a stunning 3D representation of the city of Shenzhen itself.

    Shenzhen Celebrates Chinese National Day with Mesmerizing Drone-Performing Light Show

    Actual coordinated motion of the drones themselves in flight still seems quite slow, but with more than 10,000 aerial pixels in play, some of the most interesting moments happen when the swarm simply treats the sky as a big screen, achieving the impression of motion simply by turning drones on and off, or changing their color as if they’re static pixels.

    And while the ‘resolution’ of this flying screen seems fairly unimpressive in the official video above, perhaps the overall effect is better represented in the video below, shot by an onlooker from a distance.

    China, of course, is where fireworks were invented – around 1,200 years ago, according the the Smithsonian Science Education Center. The country has also comprehensively dominated the multicopter drone space over the last decade, with daylight second, and is home to most, if not all of the biggest volume drone manufacturing facilities on Earth, so it’s no surprise that China is leading the charge in pushing co-ordinated drone swarm display technology forward.

    And as the X caption above suggests, this stuff isn’t just for dropping jaws in extraordinary entertainment displays like this. Small, cheap, agile UAVs like these have proven themselves indispensable in today’s warfare, and co-ordinated swarms of thousands of these little critters, controlled by onboard and remote swarm AIs, darting about at over 120 mph (200 km/h) like racing quads, are going to cause problems.

    But those are problems for another day; these displays are becoming truly stunning, and they’ll doubtless continue to evolve into the greatest mass public entertainment technology we’ve ever seen. Awesome stuff.

    Source: CCTV Video News Agency



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  • The EU’s 10 biggest antitrust actions on tech

    The EU’s 10 biggest antitrust actions on tech

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    The U.S. innovates and the EU regulates, or so certain transatlantic punters love to harp. We’re not going to get embroiled in that noise here, but two things are clear: The bloc’s Single Market has its own particular set of rules, and quite a lot of U.S. tech giants have run afoul of European Union competition regulations over the past several decades. Make of that what you will.

    Earlier this month, as she reveled in nailing a couple of major antitrust case appeals against Apple and Google, the EU’s outgoing competition chief, Margrethe Vestager, jokingly referred to Big Tech as some of her best customers. Ouch.

    We’ve compiled a list of 10 of the biggest EU antitrust actions targeting tech to give a snapshot of the most high-profile — if not always consequential — competition skirmishes between Brussels and industry heavy hitters over the past several decades of digital development. The list is ordered based on the size of the fine or liability involved.

    While it’s fair to say the EU’s antitrust tech enforcement outcomes have varied, one lasting legacy is that some of these major cases served as inspiration for the bloc’s Digital Markets Act: A flagship market contestability reform that could see major tech players hit harder and faster in the coming years. It’s finally Big Tech’s time to buckle up.

    Ireland’s tax breaks for Apple

    No one enjoys paying their taxes, even less a demand for unpaid back taxes. But by September 2018, Apple had just finished handing the EU an eye-watering €13.1 billion (then worth $15.3 billion) after the bloc successfully sued one of its member states, Ireland, over illegal tax breaks granted to Apple between 1991 and 2014.

    The State Aid case, which falls broadly under the bloc’s competition rules, went back and forth through EU appeal courts. But in September 2024, the Court of Justice affirmed the original August 2016 Commission finding of unlawful State Aid.

    With the top court weighing in with a final ruling (not a referral back to a lower court), Apple’s legal options to continue challenging the decision are all but exhausted, and the billions in underpaid taxes sitting in an EU escrow account look set to finally pour into Ireland’s coffers.

    Google’s Android restrictions on OEMs

    Micromanaging the software that mobile device makers could bundle with its operating system, Android — to get its own wares in front of Android users regardless of the hardware they picked — got Google into costly hot water in the EU in recent years. Around $5 billion worth of antitrust heat, in fact. The 2018 Commission decision sanctioning it for abusing a dominant position was, and still is, a record-breaking penalty for this category of competition abuse.

    The original EU €4.34 billion fine on Google was revised down slightly, to €4.125 billion, in a September 2022 appeal decision by the General Court. However, the judges largely upheld the original Commission decision, rejecting Google’s bid to overturn the enforcement.

    Back in June 2017, Google was hit with another (at the time) record-breaking €2.42 billion penalty for abusing a dominant position — this one in relation to how it operated its product comparison service, Google Shopping (previously branded Google Product Search and, before that, the pun-tastic Froogle).

    The bloc found that Google had not only unfairly favored its own (eponymous) shopping comparison service in organic search results, a market the tech giant has almost entirely sewn up in Europe, but had also actively demoted rival comparison services. The multi-billion-euro fine ensued — worth around $2.73 billion at the time it was announced — and was subsequently affirmed in a September 2024 decision by the EU’s top court.

    Apple’s anti-steering on iOS music streaming

    The EU branched into a competition theory of harm that accused Apple of consumer exploitation, rather than exclusionary conduct, in this long-running enforcement against Apple’s conduct in the music streaming market on iOS.

    The bloc’s competition division changed tack a few times, as it investigated iOS developer complaints against the App Store operator. But in March 2024 it ended up hitting Apple with a €1.84 billion fine (around $2 billion) for banning developers from telling iPhone users about cheaper deals available outside Apple’s store. The vast majority of the financial sanction — a full €1.8 billion — was applied on top of the EU’s standard damages calculation, which the bloc said it hoped would act as a deterrent. (Without it, the fine would have been a mere €40 million — or a “parking ticket” level penalty for Big Tech.)

    Google’s AdSense restrictions

    Yet another billion+ antitrust penalty hit Google for abuse of dominance in March 2019, when the bloc sanctioned the company over its search ad brokering business. The Commission found it had used restrictive clauses in contracts with customers between 2006 and 2016 in a bid to squeeze out rival ad brokers. A penalty of €1.49 billion (or around $1.7 billion) was duly imposed.

    However, in September 2024, despite upholding the majority of the Commission’s findings, the EU’s General Court annulled the AdSense decision in its entirety over errors in how the Commission assessed the duration of Google’s contracts. It remains to be seen whether the EU will appeal.

    The Commission still has another (open) case probing Google’s adtech stack more broadly, which could also make the AdSense case look like small beer. Margrethe Vestager warned last year that if the suspected violations are confirmed, a structural separation (i.e., breaking up Google) may be the only viable remedy.

    PC monitor and TV parts price-fixing cartel

    In 2012, the EU handed down a total of €1.47 billion in fines in a cartels case related to the sale of components used in the manufacture of computer monitors and TVs. A raft of electronics giants were caught up in the enforcement over price-fixing of cathode ray tubes (CRT) between 1996 and 2006. The components were used in computer monitors and TVs in the pre-flatscreen era, and the Commission found that hardware makers had colluded to fix prices. Fines were handed down to seven electronics giants that were involved in either one or two CRT cartels, including LG, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, and Toshiba.

    Chipmaker Intel’s exclusionary practices

    Going further back in time, we arrive in May 2009, at what was then a record €1.06 billion antitrust penalty for chipmaker Intel after the EU found that the U.S. giant had abused a dominant position to exclude rival AMD. Intel had been paying computer manufacturers and retailers to postpone, cancel, or otherwise avoid using or selling AMD’s products, and the EU found these exclusionary practices breached competition rules.

    The chipmaker appealed the EU’s enforcement with some success over the following decade of legal arguments. In 2017, the Court of Justice set aside an earlier ruling by a lower court and referred the case back to the General Court, which went on to annul part of the Commission’s decision, while allowing that some of Intel’s practices had been unlawful.

    The Court quashed the original fine in its entirety, owing to uncertainty over the penalty calculation, but last year the EU reimposed a fine of €376.36 million on Intel — for the “naked restrictions” that the Court had upheld. Appeals still rumble on, so where this enforcement finally ends up remains to be seen.

    Qualcomm’s deal with Apple for mobile chips

    In early 2018, it was mobile chipmaker Qualcomm’s turn to be hit with a beefy EU antitrust penalty: €997 million (or around $1.23 billion at the time). The sanction was for abuse of a dominant position between 2011 and 2016. The enforcement focused on Qualcomm’s relationship with Apple, and the EU decided it had shut rival chipmakers out of the market for supplying LTE baseband chipsets by paying Apple to exclusively use its chips for iPhones and iPads.  

    However, Qualcomm appealed the decision, and in June 2022 the EU General Court ruled in its favor, rejecting the Commission’s analysis and also finding some procedural faults with its case. The EU later confirmed it would not appeal the judgment, so this is one sizable antitrust penalty that didn’t make it beyond the headlines.

    The bloc has had better luck in a separate (longer-running) antitrust procedure against the chipmaker: In September 2024, the General Court largely upheld a Commission penalty on Qualcomm of just under $270 million in a case related to predatory pricing.

    Microsoft’s anti-competitive licensing practices

    We have to wind back the clock all the way to March 2004 to arrive at the EU giving Microsoft a spanking for abusing a dominant position with its Windows operating system. The then-record €497 million penalty (around $794 million) would be worth closer to €762 million (or ~$1.3 billion) today, factoring in Eurozone inflation (per this tool).

    The original complaint sparking the investigation into Microsoft’s licensing and royalties practices dated all the way back to 1993. The EU’s enforcement on Microsoft was upheld on appeal. As well as handing down a fine, the bloc ordered various remedies, including interoperability requirements, and a second, larger penalty of €899 million was handed down on Microsoft in February 2008 for noncompliance. A 2012 decision by the EU’s General Court upheld the noncompliance penalty but reduced the level of the noncompliance fine slightly to €860 million.

    Luxembourg’s tax deal with Amazon

    In an October 2017 State Aid case, the EU argued that Luxembourg, the member state where e-commerce giant Amazon has its regional base, had granted the company “undue tax benefits” between May 2006 and June 2014. The Commission found that Amazon’s corporate structure in the country had allowed it to pay four times less tax than other companies based there — a tax break the EU calculated was worth around €250 million. (The EU does not issue fines for State Aid cases but requires any unlawfully uncollected taxes to be recouped.)

    But while the Commission took issue with Luxembourg’s method of calculating Amazon’s taxable profits in the country, unlike in the aforementioned Ireland-Apple State Aid case, its arguments did not prevail in court: In a final ruling late last year, the EU’s top court struck down the Commission decision, finding that the EU had not established that the Luxembourg tax ruling was illegal State Aid. The upshot? Amazon was off the hook.

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  • ‘We Live in Time’ review: Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in the biggest cinema disappointment of the year

    ‘We Live in Time’ review: Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in the biggest cinema disappointment of the year

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    On paper, We Live in Time seems thoughtfully formulated to be the perfect tearjerker for today. John Crowley, the celebrated helmer of the stunning Saoirse Ronan romance Brooklyn, teams with heralded actors/internet darlings Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield in a weepy romance of wooing and tragic loss. And yet, while peppered with sex scenes and adoring close-ups, this is not a hot or even sweaty embrace of lust and love, but a soggy handshake of a film that underwhelms despite its star power.  

    It’s shocking how We Live in Time had the pieces that should’ve been the stuff of Oscar acclaim and audience adoration. But despite bringing together two of the hottest young actors currently working, Crowley’s movie is astonishingly middling, set apart from forgettable fare only by a time-skipping device that feels inexplicable at best and frustrating at worst. 

    We Live in Time‘s plotting gimmick does not work. 

    We Live in Time begins with a couple already so well established that they have a cozy morning routine. Ambitious chef Almut (Pugh) goes on a long picturesque run through a lovely forest, foraging ingredients along the way to use in her next culinary experiment. She returns home to a gorgeous cottage and gets to work in her pretty kitchen, while her loving husband Tobias (Garfield) is still sleeping comfortably in their bed.

    No sooner is their bliss established over a breakfast in bed than the movie leaps back to before they met, when he was just a sad sack on the brink of divorce with his first wife. There’s thrilling chemistry following a literal car crash of a meet-cute, with Pugh’s signature charm sparking against Garfield’s unflappable wholesomeness. Other moments, like their much memed ride on a merry-go-round, are winsome. But they are tossed into this film with little regard to pacing or theme or any kind of apparent logic.

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    Horrible ‘We Live in Time’ horse becomes instant meme

    Despite the flashes back and forward, their story is straightforward, the stuff of weepy beach reads. They fall in love while she is building her first restaurant, and he is dealing with the end of his first marriage. They nearly break up realizing they have different expectations around children. But they will overcome these issues, as they will her first battle with cancer and its brutal chemo treatments. The main plot of the film takes place once they’ve had their daughter and are faced with the recurrence of the cancer, more aggressive than before. The question becomes, will Almut endure another round of body-wilting chemo that may not even save her life? Or will she reject treatment to make the most of the time she has left?

    The second cancer battle alone could have made an interesting movie. But because this screenplay aims to loop back-and-forth to show the breath of their entire relationship,We Live in Time feels more like postcards of a relationship than a portrait that is fleshed out or remotely captivating. There’s so little sense of cohesion from sequence to sequence, it’s hard to get emotionally invested in these characters, even if you’re someone who has been a fan of the actors, as I am.  

    Mashable Top Stories

    Florence Pugh shines. Andrew Garfield is stranded. 

    This is the kind of role that seems perfect for Florence Pugh, as it is a woman who is dealing with conflicting emotions that demand she smile and frown with equal passion. Almut loves her husband and her child, but also wants to be more than just “someone’s dying mum.” So when an opportunity to compete in a high-level cooking competition arises, she can’t bring herself to turn it down, even if it means pushing her body to its limits and spending less time at home. 

    Again, this could’ve made a compelling story on its own. But We Live in Time aims to create some sort of balance by also following Tobias, who has much less to do. Where Almut is established as having desires outside of her marriage, her husband exists solely to mope when she disappoints him. He’s just Ken, an accessory to hang on her like an anchor. Which is wild because Tobias’s arguments in the film — for honesty in their marriage and for attempting a new round of chemo — are valid, yet undermined by a plotting that treats him as a clingy obstacle to Almut’s professional dreams. 

    While Garfield delivers a soulful performance with big watery eyes, the scattered structure of the film gives him little to build on. Tobias is so thinly realized that the audience is left to fill in the gaps, perhaps with prior appreciation for Garfield or a general affection for Nicholas Sparks–style romances where the besotted lovers are doomed to be separated by death. In either case, the film on its own is frustratingly fractured. 

    Crowley fails to elevate a lackluster script. 

    To be clear, We Live in Time is not the worst movie of the year. That’d be the repulsive and abysmal relaunch of The Crow. It’s not the biggest bomb of the year, which looks to be Eli Roth’s messy adaptation of Borderlands. It’s not even a movie arguably enhanced by some sort of scandal, like Pugh’s Don’t Worry Darling or 2024’s other recent weepy It Ends With Us. In fact, We Live in Time will likely be bolstered by the incredible chemistry its stars are sharing on red carpets and cheeky promotional interviews. But on its own, this movie is far less than the sum of its parts. 

    The cancer story could have been enough to sustain it. Perhaps with flashbacks to bolster our understanding not only of this couples’ love but also the hardships they’ve traversed before. It could have been a delicately balanced story from both perspectives, exploring how sometimes even the choice of life or death is achingly complicated. But Crowley’s execution of Nick Payne’s woe-infested scribblings of a screenplay manages neither. The time jumps feel like artless novelty, attempting to distract from how threadbare this story actually is — particularly Almut’s first round of cancer, which makes up three short scenes.

    While Pugh and Garfield give their all to Almut and Tobias, the chaotic smattering of scenes provides no build in emotional tension. In fact, jumping from the couple already together to not having met undercuts scenes of nervous flirtation with inevitability. It’s like for everything that might work in this film, there’s something else that works against it. Sequences like their first conversation in a hospital hallway and a birth sequence wildly alive with energy offer moments of hope that Crowley and company will cut their way through the messy plot device of time-skipping to hook into something unshakably profound. 

    But in the end, We Live in Time is profoundly mediocre, lacking the verve, sexiness, and raw human emotion we’ve come to expect from Pugh and Garfield. 

    We Live in Time was reviewed out of its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. The movie will open in theaters in the U.S. on Oct. 11. 



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  • AI Has Helped Shein Become Fast Fashion’s Biggest Polluter

    AI Has Helped Shein Become Fast Fashion’s Biggest Polluter

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    This story originally appeared in Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    In 2023, the fast-fashion giant Shein was everywhere. Crisscrossing the globe, airplanes ferried small packages of its ultra-cheap clothing from thousands of suppliers to tens of millions of customer mailboxes in 150 countries. Influencers’ “#sheinhaul” videos advertised the company’s trendy styles on social media, garnering billions of views.

    At every step, data was created, collected, and analyzed. To manage all this information, the fast fashion industry has begun embracing emerging AI technologies. Shein uses proprietary machine-learning applications — essentially, pattern-identification algorithms — to measure customer preferences in real time and predict demand, which it then services with an ultra-fast supply chain.

    As AI makes the business of churning out affordable, on-trend clothing faster than ever, Shein is among the brands under increasing pressure to become more sustainable, too. The company has pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050.

    But climate advocates and researchers say the company’s lightning-fast manufacturing practices and online-only business model are inherently emissions-heavy — and that the use of AI software to catalyze these operations could be cranking up its emissions. Those concerns were amplified by Shein’s third annual sustainability report, released late last month, which showed the company nearly doubled its carbon dioxide emissions between 2022 and 2023.

    “AI enables fast fashion to become the ultra-fast fashion industry, Shein and Temu being the fore-leaders of this,” said Sage Lenier, the executive director of Sustainable and Just Future, a climate nonprofit. “They quite literally could not exist without AI.” (Temu is a rapidly rising ecommerce titan, with a marketplace of goods that rival Shein’s in variety, price, and sales.)

    In the 12 years since Shein was founded, it has become known for its uniquely prolific manufacturing, which reportedly generated over $30 billion of revenue for the company in 2023. Although estimates vary, a new Shein design may take as little as 10 days to become a garment, and up to 10,000 items are added to the site each day. The company reportedly offers as many as 600,000 items for sale at any given time with an average price tag of roughly $10. (Shein declined to confirm or deny these reported numbers.) One market analysis found that 44 percent of Gen Zers in the United States buy at least one item from Shein every month.

    That scale translates into massive environmental impacts. According to the company’s sustainability report, Shein emitted 16.7 million total metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2023 — more than what four coal power plants spew out in a year. The company has also come under fire for textile waste, high levels of microplastic pollution, and exploitative labor practices. According to the report, polyester — a synthetic textile known for shedding microplastics into the environment — makes up 76 percent of its total fabrics, and only 6 percent of that polyester is recycled.

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  • Heart disease is the world’s biggest killer — this Cambridge Uni spinout is using AI to find new treatments

    Heart disease is the world’s biggest killer — this Cambridge Uni spinout is using AI to find new treatments

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    While artificial intelligence (AI) promises to transform all manner of industries, the biggest game-changing breakthroughs in this new era of data-infused machine intelligence arguably lies in the field of drug discovery. By analyzing vast amounts of biological data, AI can help researchers predict how different chemical compounds will interact with specific targets in the body, accelerating the discovery of promising drug candidates.

    It’s against this backdrop that Cambridge University spinout CardiaTec is striving to tackle cardiovascular diseases (CVD). To bolster its efforts, the company today said it has raised $6.5 million in a seed round of funding.

    CVDs are the preeminent cause of death globally, resulting in 17.9 million deaths each year, according to The World Health Organization (WHO). At the top of the list is ischaemic heart disease (coronary heart disease), responsible for 13% of the world’s total deaths.

    Founded in 2021, CardiaTec is the handiwork of biotech and bioengineering graduates Raphael Peralta (CEO) and Thelma Zablocki (COO). They’re supported by their third co-founder and CTO, Namshik Han, a lecturer in AI drug discovery at the University of Cambridge, where Peralta and Zablocki studied for an MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise. Han, who has a background in machine learning, computational biology, cancer genomics, and cancer epigenomics, is also head of AI at the university’s Milner Therapeutics Institute, which forges close ties with industry, including pharmaceutical companies.

    “He (Han) is an academic who sits on the border with industry, so he understands that translational perspective,” Peralta told TechCrunch in an interview. “We came together with the opportunity to use Namshik’s work, but within the cardiovascular space.”

    CardiaTec is tackling the crux of the problem: The average expense of progressing a drug candidate from discovery through launch is around $2.2 billion, and that cost is driven substantively by the fact that 90% of potential candidates fail in the process, according to Deloitte. CardiaTec is setting out to “decode” the biology of CVDs.

    To do this, the company has struck partnerships with 65 hospitals across the U.K. and the U.S., which are providing human heart tissue as part of the company’s broader data collection efforts, which will help it build what it calls the “largest human heart tissue-multi-omics dataset,” spanning a broad gamut of biological information from across molecular biology. By doing this, CardiaTec hopes to identify novel, targeted therapeutics.

    “Historically, it’s been very difficult to access human tissue, especially those of deceased people because of matters related to consent, ethics, and logistics,” Peralta said. “Now the infrastructure in hospitals is much more embedded, and we can actually begin to get access to these human tissues and generate data.”

    In the context of cardiovascular disease, this means that CardiaTec can compare healthy artery tissue with that of an artery where plaque buildup has led to a heart attack, and generate the data its computational models need further downstream. Such computational approaches, involving a vast amount of different “multi-omics” data types, are capable of aggregating and analyzing data at a scale humans simply can’t match.

    “We can now look not just in genetics, but we can look at genetics, epigenetics, gene expression, protein function, all in a single model,” Peralta said. “So we have a much more in depth understanding of the mechanisms that are driving disease.”

    CardiaTec co-founder and CEO Raphael Peralta
    CardiaTec co-founder and CEO Raphael Peralta
    Image Credits: CardiaTec (opens in a new window)

    Heart of the problem

    While drugs made with help from AI have yet to make it to market, the early promise has created a wave of excitement and a swathe of startups have raised bucketloads of cash in the process. In the past few months alone, we’ve seen the likes of Xaira emerge from stealth with $1 billion in funding, while Sam Altman-backed Formation Bio raised $372 million. In the U.K., meanwhile, Healx has nabbed $47 million to identify new drugs for rare diseases.

    Heavily VC-backed pharmaceutical startup Insilico Medicine recently claimed a world’s first when it announced that it had identified a new drug candidate for a rare lung disease called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. AI played a pivotal role not only in designing the drug’s chemical structure, but in figuring out which part of a cell it should be targeting. The drug was initially tested in animals, and is currently in “Phase II” trials in the U.S. and China, where it’s hoped it will generate the evidence needed to establish its efficacy in treating humans.

    Elsewhere, AI is being used to help discover everything from new antibiotics for tackling superbugs, to drugs for treating obsessive compulsive order (OCD).

    Citing data from peer-reviewed journal Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Peralta said one of CardiaTec’s main differentiators is that its focus lies squarely on cardiovascular disease, which only 3% of active AI-first companies are targeting.

    “The majority of companies who are applying AI in therapeutic discovery are in oncology, followed by central nervous systems and neurogenic diseases, respiratory and infectious diseases, and then way at the bottom of the list is cardiovascular diseases,” Peralta said. “Cardiovascular disease is the world’s leading global cause of death — not a lot of people know that, but there’s a big unmet need that hasn’t been captured in pharma.”

    CardiaTec had previously raised $1.8 million in pre-seed funding, and with this fresh $6.5 million in cash, the company is well-financed to extend its proprietary data gathering efforts, wet lab validation of its therapeutic targets model, and bolster its eight-person team in Cambridge. The next step is to start identifying and testing actual drug candidates, which — in the grand scheme of drug R&D — is likely to be several years away.

    CardiaTec’s seed round was led by Montage Ventures, with participation from Continuum Health Ventures, Laidlaw Ventures, Apex Ventures, and a number of angel investors.

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  • From InstaDeep to Paystack: Here are Africa’s biggest startup exits and how much they raised

    From InstaDeep to Paystack: Here are Africa’s biggest startup exits and how much they raised

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    Startups globally have faced challenges over the last couple of years when trying to exit, due to factors like a frozen IPO market and reduced attractiveness to buyers. In addition, large mergers-and-acquisitions (M&A) deals have faced heightened regulatory scrutiny, particularly involving Big Tech or multi-billion-dollar conglomerates.

    Notably, a decline in venture investment within any startup ecosystem can often be linked to a lack of exit volume and value. In Africa, for instance, the number of M&A exits peaked at 44 in 2021, when the continent attracted nearly $6 billion in venture capital. However, in 2022, the number of exits dropped to 29, alongside a decrease in venture capital investment to over $3 billion.

    Despite these challenges, local investors remain optimistic, saying that M&A activity will eventually pick up as founders and investors seek liquidity in an increasingly tough market.

    “We will continue to see few exits (IPOs) in 2024, given that many companies scaled down growth to adjust to the reduction in capital availability. But we will likely see more consolidations and M&A activity as undercapitalized companies seek to benefit from the value they have created on a larger platform,” TLcom Capital partner Andreata Muforo told TechCrunch in an interview last year. 

    Yet, the debate continues over whether the African tech ecosystem has lived up to expectations or underperformed regarding exit outcomes (M&As and IPOs) relative to the venture capital invested: over $20 billion. One perspective argues that the number of exits doesn’t justify the capital infusion, while another emphasizes that even a few landmark exits are commendable given the ecosystem’s relative youth.

    Expensya stands as one of Africa’s landmark exit stories, demonstrating the potential for significant returns even within a young and emerging tech ecosystem. Having raised slightly over $20 million, the Tunis- and Paris-based expense management startup was acquired by the private equity firm Medius, resulting in a cash-out of $10 million for its employees. The exit was valued at 1.5 times its last reported valuation of $83 million, according to PitchBook.

    This acquisition is particularly significant in the context of the African tech ecosystem, where the terms of M&A deals are often shrouded in secrecy. The lack of transparency around these transactions makes it challenging to gauge the true performance of the continent’s tech sector. However, when details are disclosed or found out, as in the case of Expensya, they provide valuable insights that help inform valuation and pricing strategies, allowing stakeholders to better align their expectations.

    As we continue to monitor the growth of Africa’s tech ecosystem, it’s essential to highlight and analyze the biggest disclosed acquisitions. These landmark exits, often disclosed, offer a clearer understanding of the continent’s progress and potential in delivering value through M&A activity.

    InstaDeep

    Founded by Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim in 2014, enterprise AI startup InstaDeep uses advanced machine learning techniques to bring AI to applications within an enterprise environment. The Tunis- and Paris-based startup raised over $108 million from investors, including BioNTech, Alpha Intelligence Capital, Endeavor Catalyst and Google.

    • Acquirer: BioNTech (2023)
    • Exit: €500 million ($550 million) in cash and stock.

    Sendwave

    Drew Durbin and Lincoln Quirk founded Sendwave in 2014 to offer money transfer services from countries in North America and Europe to those in emerging markets: Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The YC-backed Sendwave raised over $15 million from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Serena Ventures, and Partech. 

    • Acquirer: Zepz (2020)
    • Exit: $500 million in cash and stock. 

    MainOne

    MainOne is a data center and connectivity solutions provider serving clients from technology enterprises to cloud service providers across West Africa, particularly Nigeria, Ghana, and Ivory Coast. Founded by Funke Opeke in 2010, the Lagos-based Equinix subsidiary raised over $200 million in equity and debt before its acquisition. 

    DPO Group

    Eran Feinstein founded the payment gateway DPO Group in 2006. The Nairobi and Cape Town-based fintech provides payment services to thousands of merchants across multiple African countries. It raised over $15 million from Apis Partners and other investors.

    • Acquirer: Network International (2020)
    • Exit: $291 million in cash and stock ($228.6 million cash).

    Paystack

    Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi launched Lagos-based Paystack in 2015 as a payment processing platform for African merchants to accept online payments via debit card and direct bank transfer. The YC-backed startup — arguably the first from the continent to graduate from the accelerator — raised over $12 million from Stripe, Visa, Tencent and Ingressive Capital.

    Acquirer: Stripe (2020)

    Exit: $200 million+ cash-and-stock.

    Expensya

    Expensya, founded by Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani, provides smart payment card solutions to automate spend management for businesses across Europe. The Tunis-based software company raised $25 million from Bpifrance, ISAI and Silicon Badia. 

    • Acquirer: Medius (2023)
    • Exit: ~$120 million+ cash and stock, per sources.

    Fundamo

    The Cape Town-based Fundamo was a platform that delivered mobile financial services, including person-to-person payments, airtime top-up, bill payment, and branchless banking services, to unbanked and underbanked consumers. The fintech, founded by Hannes van Rensburg in 2000, raised $5 million from South African investors, including Knife Capital. 

    PaySpace

    Bruce, Clyde, Warren Clark and George Karageorgiades founded Johannesburg-based PaySpace in 2007 as a cloud-based payroll and HR platform to streamline payroll runs and backup procedures. The bootstrapped startup raised undisclosed venture for the first time last year from local payments solutions provider Netcash before its acquisition. 

    • Acquirer: Deel (2024)
    • Exit: ~$100 million+ cash and stock.

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  • The 12 biggest take-private PE acquisitions so far this year in tech

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    The private equity realm has been pretty active so far in 2024, serving as a powerful “alternative” source of liquidity for technology startups and scale-ups in search of an exit. Just this month, TechCrunch reported that EQT had picked up a majority stake in cybersecurity firm Acronis at a valuation of around $4 billion, following in the footsteps of another exit, in which EQT snapped up enterprise middleware company WSO2 for $600 million.

    However, private equity has also been busy in the public markets, with some big deals going down to transform underperforming companies with strong growth prospects. According to PitchBook, there were 136 take-private deals led by private equity firms in 2023, up 15% on the previous year. New data provided to TechCrunch by PitchBook indicates that so far in 2024, there have been 97 such deals, meaning we’re roughly on course to match last year’s figure (give or take) if the current trajectory holds.

    Of the take-private deals that have closed so far in 2024, 46 belong to the technology sector. TechCrunch has filtered through these transactions to identify deals specifically focused on product-centric companies (rather than IT consultancies or services firms), and pulled out all the acquisitions valued at $1 billion or more.

    We’ve included transactions that have either already closed in 2024 or are set to close in 2024; this includes deals first announced last year.

    Adevinta: $13 billion

    Adevinta chair Orla Noonan and CEO Rolv Erik Ryssdal, with executive management, opening trading on April 10, 2019
    Adevinta chair Orla Noonan and CEO Rolv Erik Ryssdal, with executive management, opening trading on April 10, 2019.
    Image Credits: Adevinta (opens in a new window)

    Norwegian media group Schibsted spun out classifieds platform Adevinta as a stand-alone business in 2019. With existing online marketplaces in France, Spain, Brazil, and the U.K., Adevinta went on to acquire eBay’s classifieds business for $9.2 billion in 2020.

    During the original spinout in 2019, Schibsted listed Adevinta on the Oslo Stock Exchange at a $6 billion valuation. In late 2023, news emerged that private equity firms Permira and Blackstone were leading a consortium to take Adevinta private in a deal worth 141 billion Norwegian crowns ($13 billion). That deal finally closed in May.

    Squarespace: $6.9 billion

    Squarespace IPO (2021)
    Squarespace IPO (2021).
    Image Credits: NYSE (opens in a new window)

    U.K.-based private equity firm Permira announced plans to acquire website builder Squarespace in May, in an all-cash deal valued at $6.9 billion.

    Squarespace filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021, shortly after raising $300 million at a $10 billion valuation. The company went on to reach a market cap high of $8 billion in mid-2021, but its stock went into free fall, dropping to a low of $2 billion in 2022. The company was already on the rebound this year, with its market cap soaring past $5 billion off the back of strong earnings, sparking Permira into action.

    The proposed take-private deal is expected to close in Q4 2024.

    Nuvei: $6.3 billion

    Nuvei's opening day on the Nasdaq in 2021
    Nuvei’s opening day on the Nasdaq in 2021.
    Image Credits: Nasdaq (opens in a new window)

    Canadian fintech Nuvei, which provides companies with a range of services spanning payments processing, risk management, currency conversion, and more, entered into an agreement in April to be taken private by Advent International in a deal worth $6.3 billion.

    The Ryan Reynolds-backed company originally filed to go public in 2020 on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), followed by the Nasdaq in the U.S. a year later. The company hit a peak valuation of more than $24 billion in 2021 before hitting a low of $2.6 billion in October, 2023.

    The deal is expected to close in late 2024 or early 2025 at the latest.

    PowerSchool: $5.6 billion

    Hardeep Gulati, chief executive officer of PowerSchool, center right, rings the opening bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) during the company's initial public offering (IPO) in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, July 28, 2021.
    Hardeep Gulati, chief executive officer of PowerSchool, center right, rings the opening bell during the company’s IPO in 2021.
    Image Credits: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg / Getty Images

    K-12 education software provider PowerSchool is in the middle of being taken private by Bain Capital, in a transaction that values the Folsom, California-based company at $5.6 billion.

    PowerSchool was originally acquired by Apple in 2001 for $62 million in an all-stock deal, with Apple selling PowerSchool to Pearson five years later. Pearson then sold it on to Vista Equity Partners in 2015, with Onex Partners joining as investor three years later.

    PowerSchool went public in 2021, with the NYSE listing giving the company an initial valuation of around $3.5 billion. It later surged to $5.5 billion in late 2021, before falling to $1.8 billion within a year and then hovering at around the $3.5 billion mark for the past couple of years.

    The take-private transaction is expected to conclude in the second half of 2024.

    Darktrace: $5.3 billion

    Darktrace on the London Stock Exchange
    Darktrace on the London Stock Exchange.
    Image Credits: London Stock Exchange (opens in a new window)

    U.K. cybersecurity giant Darktrace is set to go private in a $5.3 billion deal spearheaded by an entity called Luke Bidco Ltd., formed by private equity giant Thoma Bravo.

    Founded in 2013, Darktrace raised some $230 million in VC funding and reached a private valuation of $1.65 billion, before going public on the London Stock Exchange in 2021 with an opening-day valuation of $2.4 billion. The full valuation based on Thoma Bravo’s offer amounts to $5.4 billion on a fully diluted basis, with the corresponding enterprise value sitting at $4.99 billion.

    The deal is expected to close by the end of 2024.

    Instructure: $4.8 billion

    Instructure's opening day listing on the NYSE (2021)
    Instructure’s opening day listing on the NYSE (2021).
    Image Credits: NYSE (opens in a new window)

    Educational technology company Instructure first went public in 2015, but it was taken private by Thoma Bravo in a $2 billion transaction four years later.

    In 2021, the private equity giant spun Instructure out once more as a public company on the NYSE, but its valuation generally hovered around the $3.5 billion mark. But KKR swooped in with a $4.8 billion bid in July, with plans to take the company private once more.

    The deal is expected to close in late 2024.

    Alteryx: $4.4 billion

    Alteryx NYSE IPO on March 24, 2017.
    Alteryx NYSE IPO on March 24, 2017.
    Image Credits: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    Data analytics software provider Alteryx was taken private in a $4.4 billion deal.

    Alteryx went public on the NYSE in 2017, with its shares soaring past the $12 billion mark in the intervening years. However, its market cap had been in free fall since 2021, hitting a low of $2 billion before Clearlake Capital Group and Insight Partners came in with their offer last December.

    The take-private transaction closed in March this year.

    EngageSmart: $4 billion

    EngageSmart
    EngageSmart.
    Image Credits: EngageSmart

    First announced in October 2023, Vista Equity Partners bid $4 billion to take customer engagement software provider EngageSmart private in a deal valued at $4 billion. EngageSmart went public on the NYSE in 2021, with its market cap hovering around the $2 billion to $3 billion mark until Vista Equity Partners tabled its $4 billion offer.

    The transaction closed in January, with the EngageSmart brand now in the process of being discontinued and replaced by two separate companies: InvoiceCloud and SimplePractice.

    Rover: $2.3 billion

    The front lobby of Rover.com in Seattle, Washington.
    The front lobby of Rover.com in Seattle.
    Image Credits: John Moore/Getty Images

    Pet-sitting marketplace Rover went public on the Nasdaq via a SPAC in 2021. At the tail end of 2023, Blackstone announced its intentions to acquire the company for $2.3 billion.

    That all-cash transaction finally closed in February, with Rover now a private company once more.

    Everbridge: $1.8 billion

    Everbridge goes public in 2016
    Everbridge goes public in 2016.
    Image Credits: Everbridge (opens in a new window)

    Thoma Bravo first announced its intentions to acquire Everbridge, a critical event management software company, for $1.5 billion in early February. Following further negotiations, Thoma Bravo bumped that price up to $1.8 billion.

    Founded in 2002, Everbridge went public on the Nasdaq in 2016, with its shares peaking at $6.4 billion in 2021 before falling below the $1 billion mark ahead of Thoma Bravo entering the the mix.

    The transaction closed in July.

    Kahoot: $1.7 billion

    Kahoot on the Oslo Børs
    Kahoot on the Oslo Børs.
    Image Credits: Kahoot (opens in a new window)

    Way back in July 2023, a consortium of buyers led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management announced it was acquiring gamified e-learning platform Kahoot in a deal worth $1.7 billion.

    The announcement came a little over two years after Kahoot went public on the Oslo Stock Exchange, with the sale price representing a 53.1% premium on the last trading day before its investors’ specific shareholdings were publicly disclosed in May.

    The transaction finally closed in January this year, with Kahoot delisting from the Oslo Børs stock exchange.

    Model N: $1.25 billion

    Model N goes public in 2013
    Model N goes public in 2013.
    Image Credits: NYSE (opens in a new window)

    Model N, a platform that helps companies automate decisions related to pricing, incentives and compliance, went private in a $1.25 billion deal spearheaded by Vista Equity Partners.

    Founded in 1999, Model N went public on the NYSE in 2013, though its valuation rarely ventured further north than $1.5 billion — a figure that fell to below $1 billion in the six months leading to Vista Equity Partners stepping into the fray.

    The transaction concluded in June 2024, with Model N now a private company.



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