Contrasting Journeys: From Startup Success to Controversy

This is our Friday show, and we’re talking about the week’s biggest startup and tech news. Here's what Mary Ann, Alex and Kirsten Korosec got into:

• Nvidia blew the doors off with its earnings report. We talked through some of the high-level numbers and marveled at the company's growth. TechCrunch has more on the matter here.
• Ramp raises $300M: In this market, a multi-billion-dollar valuation is a win for a fintech, even if Ramp's new price tag is a bit lower than it was previously. So, while Ramp likely doesn't love that it raised a down-round, it does have fresh capital and is worth $5.8 billion. That's simply not that bad.
• Lex raised $2.75M: Alex covered AI-powered writing tool's Lex seed round. Kirsten got to give the app a try, and we all had nice things to say about the nascent startup.
• Northvolt is bringing its volts to North America: The global battery-building boom includes Swedish company Northvolt building a new facility in the United States. The company raised $1.2 billion from BlackRock.
• Better.com went public: Mary Ann interviewed the company's CEO ahead of its SPAC-led public market listing, which got panned.
• In the transit world, Cruise got its wings clipped in San Francisco after an accident involving a fire truck. Alex is annoyed. Mary Ann is not.
• This year's TechCrunch Battlefield 200 companies feature a lot of startups focused on excrement. We're not kidding.

That’s all from us this week. We are back Monday morning, chat then!

For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.

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Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.

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