<p>Emblem, a relatively new European VC firm based in Paris, is announcing the final closing of its first fund. Eighteen months after the first closing, the Emblem team managed to secure €80 million in total (around $85 million at current exchange rates). This is no small feat in the current funding environment. According to Atomico’s [&hellip;]</p>

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<p>It’s sometimes said that European VC doesn’t have the firepower to compete with VCs in the U.S., which regularly raise billion-dollar+ funds these days. Perhaps further evidence of this view persists in the news that Berlin-based Cherry Ventures has closed its latest fund at $500 million, to be split between early-stage rounds and follow-on rounds [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The size of the new fund is a vote of confidence in a range of deep tech verticals.</p>

<p>Powerhouse venture firm Andreessen Horowitz has hired Daniel Penny as an investor, its web page confirms.&nbsp; Penny is the former Marine who was tried last year and found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the death of a homeless man on a New York City subway. After the man acted erratically, Penny held him [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Four years after accidentally launching a VC firm, GTMfund founder Max Altschuler has raised a second oversubscribed $54 million fund.</p>

<p>When accounting startup Bench abruptly failed last month, the shutdown was forced when the company&#8217;s lenders called in the startup’s loan. In late 2023, the digital freight company Convoy faced financial challenges, leading venture lending firm Hercules Capital to assume control of the company to recover its investments. Divvy Homes, which sold for about $1 [&hellip;]</p>

<p>When in mid-2022 Sarah Guo left Greylock to launch her own AI-focused fund, Conviction Partners, she indicated that she was tagging the word “Partners” to the firm’s name because she would eventually bring on other GPs. Now, more than two years later, Guo is being joined by Mike Vernal, who was a partner at Sequoia [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Investor, former GitHub CEO, and all-around Tech Guy™ Nat Friedman has posted a strangely enticing offer on X. His post reads, &#8220;Need volunteers to come to my office in Palo Alto today to construct a 5000 piece Lego set. Will provide pizza. Have to sign NDA. Please DM.&#8221; Thanks to the investigative reporting of my [&hellip;]</p>

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<p>Despite news that Andreessen Horowitz closed its London crypto-focused office, the VC reportedly still has dozens of scouts in Europe looking for startups.</p>

<p>To make smart bets on the current wave of startups, Matt Hartman thinks venture capitalists will need a deeper understanding of the tech those startups are building. Hartman (pictured above) spent nine years as a partner at Betaworks before starting a new firm, Factorial Capital, where he&#8217;s developed a different approach to identifying the startups [&hellip;]</p>

<p>8VC, a venture firm led by Palantir founder Joe Lonsdale, is seeking nearly $1 billion for its sixth fund, according to a regulatory filing. The Austin-based firm’s latest fund aims to raise nearly 14% more than its previous $880 million flagship vehicle, which closed in February 2023. TechCrunch has reached out to the firm for [&hellip;]</p>

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<p>Stargate &#8212; the massive infrastructure project to build data centers for OpenAI in the U.S. &#8212; lacks a fully developed plan and hasn&#8217;t secured funding yet, according to a report from the Financial Times. Backed by OpenAI, SoftBank, Middle East AI fund MGX, and others, Stargate would funnel around $100 billion — and upward of [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Tata Electronics has acquired a 60% controlling stake in the Indian arm of Apple assembly partner Pegatron as the conglomerate expands its iPhone-manufacturing capacity in the country. Taiwan-based Pegatron operates three iPhone production plants in India, including one near Chennai in India&#8217;s southern state of Tamil Nadu. The deal comes less than a year after [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Seattle-based Madrona Ventures is celebrating its 30 years in business by raising $770 million in fresh capital. This is the firm&#8217;s largest fundraise to date, exceeding $690 million across two funds Madrona closed in 2022.&nbsp; While an 11% capital pool upsize may not seem significant, any increase at a time when many venture outfits are [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Password managers have become commonplace at this point. But businesses often have different needs than consumers. Teams, after all, often have to share credentials to access resources, all while IT and security teams need ways to control who has access to them. Passbolt, which is announcing an $8 million seed round Thursday, aims to become [&hellip;]</p>