News Headline: When a buy now, pay later strategy doesn’t pay off

Tuesday, December 05, 2023

ZestMoney, a buy now, pay later service, had a good run. It was once valued at $450 million and has some big-time investors, like Goldman Sachs, in its corner. However, in today's top story, Manish writes that new leadership, after an unsuccessful journey to find a buyer, plans to shut ZestMoney down. Get the scoop.

Meanwhile, after Meta built some functionalities across Instagram and Facebook, Ivan reports that the social media giant decided to discontinue the cross-messaging feature between the two services. Here's what we know.

And Annie covers Omniful's $5.85 million funding round that has the Middle East–based company coming out of stealth to digitize supply chain and e-commerce enablement. Read more.

Image Credits: Jane0606 / Shutterstock

More top reads

In more Meta news: Meta and IBM form an AI Alliance. Here's what that means. Speaking of AI, over on TechCrunch+, Alex writes that today's AI funding rush gives him all the feels of 2021 fintech investing. Read more.

Master blaster: Fortnite expands its horizons this week with a Lego building game and a Rock Band successor. Game on.

Breaker breaker one: Self-driving truck company TuSimple was flying, or should we say, driving, high in the U.S. Until it wasn't. Now it's leaving the country.

Encrypted email no more: Used by only a few nerds, Facebook kills PGP-encrypted emails. Here's what happened.

Link up: SoftBank takes a 51% stake in Cubic Telecom for $513 million to drive into the connected car world. Look, Mom, no wires.

Toot toot, hey, beep beep: For iPhone users who really care about the color of text chain bubbles, Beeper reversed-engineered iMessage for Android users. Get the scoop. And thanks to Beeper, Darrell has a new favorite phone. Meet the OnePlus Open.

When you need to find that next transmission: Egypt's Mtor nabs $2.8 million preseed for its online auto parts marketplace. Vroom.

In the driver's seat: Foretellix raises $85 million to build and test scenarios for self-driving systems. Here's how.

Carbon-friendly food: Carbon Maps, a French carbon accounting startup for the food industry, gets new backers. See what they do.

Dumplings to your door: Vancouver's Fantuan raises $40 million to deliver real Chinese food to your doorstep. Knock knock.

Heigh ho!: Mine digs up $30 million for its no-code approach to vetting data privacy. Read more.

Even more for your Tuesday:

Twilio might actually deserve activist investor attention (TC+)

Rightbot, which is developing robots to unload freight, lands investment from Amazon

Git platform AllSpice now curries favor with enterprises

Vercel makes it easier to ship better code at scale

Veteran life sciences firm RA Capital spins up 'planetary health' team to ride climate tech wave (TC+)

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

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On the pods

Today on Found, we're talking to David Rogier, the CEO and founder of MasterClass, a streaming platform where you can learn from the world's experts on a variety of topics, from baking to screen writing to developing empathy.

Before David launched MasterClass, he worked as a VC. Through his connections, he received a $500,000 seed round before he even had an idea for a company. That was nearly a decade ago, and today Dom, Becca and David talk about how he's built the company since.

They also talked about: