Equity Monday: Tesla buys bitcoin, Nexthink raises, and Bumble
Feb 8, 2021
This week features Tesla's bold $1.5 billion investment in Bitcoin, potentially revolutionizing vehicle purchases. Pony.ai lands another $100 million for self-driving tech, proving it's a costly endeavor. Meanwhile, Apple and Kia's collaboration fizzles out. Nexthink celebrates a $180 million funding boost, pushing its valuation past $1 billion, while Bumble eyes a higher share price in its upcoming IPO. Plus, Clubhouse faces a ban in China, emphasizing global communication hurdles.
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Self-Driving Car Funding
Pony.ai, an autonomous vehicle company, has raised another $100 million, exceeding $1 billion total funding.
This highlights that substantial funding doesn't guarantee the success of self-driving car technology yet.
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Kia-Apple Deal Failure
The collaboration between Kia and Apple on an electric vehicle has reportedly ended.
Kia's stock dropped after the news broke, likely due to violating Apple's confidentiality.
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Vroom's Super Bowl Ad
Vroom, an online car retailer, purchased a Super Bowl ad despite its recent IPO and significant cost.
Surprisingly, their stock rose instead of falling, possibly indicating changing investor expectations.
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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and be sure to check out last week's main ep that dug into Robinhood, Miami, and a host of other topics.
This morning we had a pile of news to get through. Here's the rundown:
Pony.ai raised another $100 million, which underscores our growing thesis that there is no amount of money yet that will produce the tech required for self-driving cars to work. Perhaps we will get there, but it is going to cost a pretty penny or two.
Sticking to cars, the Apple-Kia tieup is kaput, which we should have known the moment it became known. Apple previously bought startup Drive.ai back in 2019, of course.
Vroom, a 2020 IPO, bought a Super Bowl ad. Who would have expected that? Its shares are up, however, after the ad.
Still on the car beat, Tesla bought $1.50 billion in bitcoin, and may accept the stuff as tender to buy its vehicles in the future. The move sent the price of bitcoin higher.
And we may have figured out the ∆ between what investors are saying about the Seed market, and what data has largely said.
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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