Daily Crunch - Second-day trading surge launches Robinhood stock into meme territory

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for August 4, 2021. It’s been hectic: Robinhood’s stock lost its mind. Facebook made another chunk of the internet mad. And a new unicorn wants to go public? It’s been a great day for tech news.

But before we get on with it, we’re excited to announce that TechCrunch is launching another newsletter! This Week in Apps by Sarah Perez launches this Saturday morning, August 7, and is the place to go for all of your app news goodness. Be sure to sign up here. — Alex

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Robinhood’s stock does insane things: Robinhood users were involved in the GameStop and AMC trading frenzies earlier this year. So perhaps it was inevitable that Robinhood’s own stock would get caught in a similar updraft. That’s what happened today, with shares of the newly public fintech company soaring far, far above its IPO price. So much for the Robinhood public offering being underwhelming!
• Human Interest is now a unicorn, wants to go public: With a fresh $100 million round constructed of bricks of cash from both TPG and SoftBank, Human Interest’s SMB 401(k) service is now worth $1 billion. Per our own Mary Ann, it’s “targeting a traditional IPO sometime in 2023, with execs saying the target is to have ‘$200 million+ in run-rate revenue before going public.’” More of this sort of clear planning, please.
• Neobanks’ improving economics could hint at future IPOs: Checking in on the recent financial performance of a few neobanks, TechCrunch discovers quite a lot to like in the numbers. There are some laggards, but the huge, global venture capital bet on the fintech banking model appears to be set to pay off.

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Startups/VC

• Denver’s Reserve Trust reloads for business payments: It takes a bit of explaining, but moving money around the world is hard without a partner bank. Reserve Trust wants to help companies move their funds directly, sans banking partners. And it just raised $30.5 million to do so. The issues of accepting and moving money online are huge problem spaces, evidence of which you can see in this section of Daily Crunch most days, it feels.
• ispace is going to the moon: Japanese space tech company ispace has raised a fresh $46 million Series C to help it undertake a number of lunar missions in the coming years. Three missions in three years, it turns out. The new capital is to support its second and third launches which should come — take off? — in 2023 and 2024.
• FullStory raises $103M to make digital UIs suck less: By tracking where users click in confusion, anger or frustration, FullStory wants to help companies improve their various digital interfaces. If you hate how some apps are built (and who doesn’t), FullStory could be good news. The Atlanta-based company is now worth $1.8 billion.
• More money to buy up e-commerce brands: The global push to raise capital, buy e-commerce brands and unify them under a single aegis is a huge area of venture capital investment. Today’s round is Suma Brands, which now has $150 million to execute acquisitions. The new capital is mostly debt, it turns out.
• tabby raises $50M Series B for Middle Eastern BNPL work: We have a new buy now, pay later round for you today. This time it’s tabby, which is based in Dubai and has a focus on its local region. Global Founders Capital and STV led the funding round, which also included a host of other venture capital firms like Mubadala Investment Capital and Raed Ventures.
• Work-Bench closes $100M new fund: New York-based Work-Bench has raised a new fund to invest in enterprise SaaS companies. In a world of megafunds and billion-dollar deals, the firm is staying smaller than it probably could have grown. (It also dropped some research on the New York tech scene that I’m chewing on.)
• Rounding out our startup coverage, if you are a startup and want to learn more about the world of PR, we had a few comms pros on the Equity podcast this week. Tune in here.

What Square’s acquisition of Afterpay means for startups

In his first column since returning to TechCrunch, reporter Ryan Lawler considered the potential ripples Square’s purchase of Afterpay may send across the pond of buy now, pay later startups.

For commentary and perspective, he interviewed:

• Dan Rosen, founder and general partner, Commerce Ventures
• Jake Gibson, founding partner, Better Tomorrow Ventures
• TX Zhuo, partner, Fika Ventures
• Matthew Harris, partner, Bain Capital Ventures

The investors he spoke to agreed that deferring payments helps drive e-commerce, “but scale matters and long-term margins look slim for BNPL startups,” reports Ryan.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

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Big Tech Inc.

• Match Group to bring live audio and video to its dating apps: A sign of the times, perhaps? The company behind OkCupid, Tinder and other dating apps intends to build out their chat and video capabilities. Let’s be honest, this isn’t a bad idea given how many of us are still stuck at home.
• Company that made crashing planes can’t get rocket into space: That’s the news from Boeing and its Starliner capsule. Apparently the aerospace company’s current efforts to put humans into space are really struggling. More space in the market, then, for SpaceX and Blue Origin? Perhaps.
• GM earnings dinged by its old electric car; new electric cars not impacted: That’s the story on TechCrunch regarding GM’s Q2 2021 earnings. The Chevy Bolt recalls were expensive, but the company’s future EV tech appears to be unaffected by the issues. In numerical terms, GM had revenues of $34.2 billion in the quarter, earning it net income of $2.84 billion.

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