Quick commerce FirstClub doubles valuation to $255M in nine months

Every founder who applies to Startup Battlefield wants the same thing: the Disrupt Main Stage. Six minutes to pitch and demo live, in front of top-tier Silicon Valley investors. A dedicated TechCrunch article published as you present. A shot at the $100,000 equity-free prize and the Disrupt Cup. And all of that could be yours, but every path to Startup Battlefield success begins with an application. And we actually have extended the deadline for this year’s cohort to June 8, so you only have a brief window to send yours in. Head here to start up that application right now, but for a head start, we have some advice based on past competitions, and some detail on why participant perks start well before the main stage at Disrupt kicks off. What it takes to make the Startup Battlefield Top 20 The Startup Battlefield Top 20 represents the best of the best from the Startup Battlefield 200. Companies with ideas that are meaningfully different, category-defining, and capable of making a major impact in their industry or geography. Selection comes down to which companies are the most compelling, differentiated, and ready for a global stage. Your product and founder videos are everything. They are the first impression and play the most significant role in identifying which companies are ready for the Disrupt Stage. Show your product in action. Be specific about what makes you different. Let your conviction come through on camera, not just your metrics. Selected companies work closely with the TechCrunch team on pitch preparation ahead of Disrupt. Each company pitches and demos live for six minutes on the Disrupt Stage, followed by a live Q&A with top-tier investors like Aileen Lee (Cowboy Ventures), Kirsten Green (Forerunner), Navin Chaddha (Mayfield), Chris Farmer (SignalFire), Dayna Grayson (Construct Capital), Ann Miura-Ko (Floodgate), and Hans Tung (Notable Capital). Of the Top 20, five are selected to pitch again on the final day of Disrupt in front of a new panel of high-profile judges. The winner receives $100,000 in equity-free prize money and the Disrupt Cup. Check out the Top 20 from 2024 and 2025. Image Credits:TechCrunch / Slava Blazer Photography Not selected for the Top 20 initially? You’re still in the running The list isn’t final until Disrupt is underway. Every year, things change — founders drop out, schedules shift, and standout companies from the 200 rise quickly during the program. We keep the Top 20 confidential until the event begins and maintain a shortlist of companies ready to step in. It happens every cycle. And more importantly, being in the 200 is where the real opportunity begins. The stage is one moment. But the access, exposure, and network you gain as part of the cohort extends far beyond it. What every Startup Battlefield 200 company gets You don’t have to make the Top 20 for Startup Battlefield to change your trajectory. Every selected company receives a fully funded demo booth at TechCrunch Disrupt; complimentary event passes for the team; access to a pre-event virtual program with world-class VCs, operators, and founders; dedicated pitch preparation; and an invitation to the private Startup Battlefield reception. At Disrupt, all 200 companies present. Whether you’re on the Disrupt Stage competing for the $100,000 prize or on the Showcase Stage for Best in Industry, both are real opportunities to stand out in front of the investors, press, and partners who come to Disrupt to find what’s next. On the editorial side, every company enters the TechCrunch ecosystem. Coverage isn’t guaranteed, but our editors actively track Startup Battlefield companies through articles, the Build Mode podcast, the Equity podcast, and future updates as you grow. Standout companies are often invited to pitch, speak, and return across TechCrunch platforms. It’s an opportunity that compounds over time. Beyond that, you join the Startup Battlefield alumni community, which includes 1,700+ companies, such as Dro

Mach Industries, the three-year-old defense tech startup run by 22-year-old founder and CEO Ethan Thornton, has raised a $300 million Series C at a $1.8 billion valuation, the company announced on Monday. The raise nearly quadruples the valuation of the company in a year. In June 2025, Mach raised $100 million at a $470 million valuation. Other investors include Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Khosla Ventures. The round was led by deep tech fund Infinite Capital and Ribbit Capital, known for fintech and lately in hot deals everywhere — from AI coding startups like Cognition to neoclouds like Crusoe. Since building autonomous weapons is a capital-intensive industry, Thornton began actively fundraising a couple of months ago, he told TechCrunch, and quickly discovered that the round would be popular with investors. “We went out to raise 200 [million dollars] and we were extremely oversubscribed at 200 and happy with the price, so we decided to push up to 300. We’re still oversubscribed at the 300 mark,” Thornton said of the fundraising efforts. Founded in 2023, Mach and its growth have been a wild ride for Thornton, who famously dropped out of MIT at 19 to start the company. VC enthusiasm is high for a few reasons. Other than AI, defense tech is a hot area for investment right now as newfangled autonomous weapons and drone defense systems, prove themselves in battle in Ukraine. Mach has also become prolific in its short time. The Huntington Beach, California-based company now has five autonomous vehicles in development: Viper, a jet-powered vertical takeoff vehicle; Glide, a high-altitude glider capable of launching weapons; Stratos, an airborne surveillance platform; Dart, a low-cost counter-drone interceptor; and Pike, intended for launching long-range munitions. Production is expected to begin next year on at least three of these systems, the company says. Plus, just this week, it won a Department of Defense contract to create a new, sixth vehicle that the startup has never discussed publicly, Thornton tells TechCrunch. The contract is from the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to develop the Navy’s new “runway-independent strike aircraft,” as the startup describes it. This will be for a very large aircraft, Thornton says, that could have applications in the commercial industry, too. It has also grown from about a dozen employees in its first year to about 350 employees today, has a 115,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Huntington Beach, and design and production facilities in a number of other locations. “So by the end of this year, in 2026, we will have brought on four new production facilities,” Thornton said. But another reason VCs wrote big checks is that last month, Mach orchestrated an industry coup (excuse the pun) when it acquired solid rocket motor (SRM) startup Exquadrum in a $50 million cash-and-equity deal, as TechCrunch previously reported. It beat out upwards of eight other potential buyers, the startup said. There’s an acute shortage of SRMs as drones create unprecedented demand in a market controlled by two of the major prime defense contractors, Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman. The lead times for purchasing can stretch years. With this buy, Mach controls its own destiny for rocket motors and also launched a new commercial business, Mach Energetics, to sell the engines. While Thornton declined to share revenue, he said the current mix is 50/50 between selling to the government and selling to other companies. Thornton remembers a moment last year when all the fast growth of the company really hit him. Two years ago, the all-hands meetings were held in the conference room with “like 12 people,” he said. “At our two-year party we had like 200 plus chairs and it was standing-room only.” Still, he said, he’s most proud of the speed of product development. That is, after all, the entire reason for his company and for the defense tech industry. The idea with these startups, backed by

Some of the most consequential companies in tech history didn’t launch with a splashy fundraising announcement. They started with a pitch. Dropbox demoed to a room of skeptics. Cloudflare took the stage before most people understood what edge networking meant. Discord was a scrappy game developer called Hammer & Chisel. Mint, Trello, Forethought, N26 — all of them passed through the same crucible: TechCrunch Startup Battlefield. That’s not a coincidence. Battlefield isn’t just a competition. It’s a launchpad, and the numbers back it up. More than 1,700 companies have competed on the Battlefield stage. Together, they’ve raised $32 billion in total funding and generated over 250 exits — including acquisitions by Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Salesforce, Twitter, Uber, and Amazon. The Startup Battlefield network runs so deep that alumni have even acquired each other: Dropbox acquired fellow Startup Battlefield alum DocSend in 2021. For thousands of founders, it’s become a defining milestone — not just a pitch competition, but the moment the world started paying attention. And you actually still have a chance to join that illustrious alumni community this year. Due to intense demand, we’ve pushed the Startup Battlefield 2026 application deadline to June 8, and you can get your application in right here. In the meantime, we wanted to show you what happens after the confetti falls. We checked in with some of our recent alumni, many of whom have sat down with us on Build Mode: The Founder Survival Guide, TechCrunch’s podcast for founders at every stage. Here’s what they’ve been building, in their own words. About Build Mode Each season goes deep on a different chapter of startup life. Season 1 covered go-to-market. Season 2 — out now — is all about building your team. And mark your calendars: Season 3 drops in June, tackling the most requested topic we’ve ever gotten: fundraising. Subscribe now so you don’t miss it. The champions and runners-up From military logistics to Startup Battlefield 2025 champion Kevin Damoa, founder of Glīd — 2025 winner Kevin Damoa didn’t come from Sand Hill Road. He came from military logistics — a background that turned out to be ideal training for building under pressure, with constrained resources and real stakes. Damoa’s path to the Startup Battlefield 2025 championship is the kind of origin story that makes you reconsider where the next generation of great founders is actually coming from. → Listen to Kevin’s Build Mode episode From the Startup Battlefield stage to the International Space Station Capella Kerst, founder and CEO of geCKo Materials — 2024 runner-up Capella Kerst didn’t set out to reinvent adhesion. She set out to solve a problem that has stumped engineers for decades: How do you make things stick — reliably, repeatedly, and without residue — in the most extreme environments imaginable? geCKo Materials, spun out of Stanford, has developed gecko-inspired adhesive technology with applications ranging from manufacturing floors to, quite literally, the International Space Station. Kerst’s Startup Battlefield moment was a signal to the market that the science was ready for the world. What’s happened since is proof that runner-up isn’t a consolation prize — it’s a credential. Hear how she got there: → Listen to Capella’s Build Mode episode How Forethought AI found product-market fit — before it was obvious Deon Nicholas, co-founder of Forethought AI — 2018 winner (acquired by Zendesk) Few Startup Battlefield stories have a more complete arc than Forethought AI. Deon Nicholas took the stage with a conviction that AI could fundamentally transform customer support — before that was an obvious bet. Before the term sheets and the headlines, there was a pitch and a thesis. Forethought was recently acquired by Zendesk — the latest example of what the Startup Battlefield stage can set in motion. His Build Mode episode is essential listening, and a perfect primer for Season 3’s deep dive

As SpaceX counts down to what could be the largest IPO in history, the race to build the next generation of launch vehicles is heating up. Asia wants in. Startups across Australia, India, Japan, and South Korea are racing to establish themselves in a market long dominated by the U.S. and China. One of them is Unastella, a four-year-old South Korean startup that just closed a $24 million Series B, bringing its total funding to $44 million. The company launched its own rocket, the Una Express-I, from South Korean soil in May 2025. The Seoul-based rocket startup is developing its own launch vehicles and engines, with an initial focus on small satellite launch services. Unastella’s near-term focus is validating its technology and business model through orbital launches, with crewed suborbital spaceflight as a longer-term goal, founder and CEO Jae Park told TechCrunch. Unastella uses a kerosene and liquid oxygen propulsion system, one of the most proven combinations in rocket history, and one that is also used by SpaceX’s Falcon series. On top of that, the company swapped out the traditional turbo pump for an electric motor pump, a simpler and cheaper alternative that Rocket Lab has already validated in flight. The tradeoff is payload. Electric motor pumps are heavier, which means less room for satellites. But Park said that’s a deliberate decision. “We’re not an R&D group trying to build the most impressive rocket,” Park said. “We’re a commercial launch company trying to get to market fast.” Park also notes that Unastella handles everything in-house, such as design, manufacturing, ground operations, and flight data. The UNA EXPRESS-I launch last year was the first real-world test of the entire system end-to-end, Park said. The CEO has spent his entire career working on rocket engines. Before founding Unastella, Park worked on combustion systems for Korea’s Nuri rocket — the country’s first indigenously developed orbital launch vehicle, built by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI). He then moved to the German Aerospace Center in Berlin to work on European launch vehicle engines, and returned to Korea to join another rocket startup before deciding to build his own. Unastella isn’t generating revenue yet, but investors appear to be backing the startup’s roadmap. Altos Ventures led the Series B, joined by Korea Development Bank, Strong Ventures, and Hana Ventures, among others. UNA EXPRESS-II, targeted for later this year, is the launch Park is really building toward. Reaching 100 kilometers would mark a significant milestone, one he believes will open the door to partnerships with South Korea’s major aerospace and defense firms. The 22-person startup has already laid the foundation and developed institutional relationships. Korea’s national space agency has flown components on UNA EXPRESS-I, and the Korea Aerospace Research Institute has transferred electric motor pump technology to the company. Unastella is not alone in the race to tap into the global space launch market, which was worth roughly $15 billion in 2023. By 2030, it is projected to nearly triple to $41 billion, according to Grand View Research. South Korea’s commercial launch sector is still in its early stages, but the field is already taking shape. Hanwha Aerospace, the country’s largest defense conglomerate, took over the government-built Nuri rocket last year after acquiring full technology rights from KARI. Two startups are also competing: Innospace, which went public on the Korean stock exchange and has conducted a sub-orbital launch, and Perigee Aerospace, which is developing its Blue Whale rocket. None have yet achieved a commercial orbital launch. South Korea’s space agency KASA, established in 2024, has committed $266 million over seven years to build out launch infrastructure — a sign that the government is betting on the private sector to take the lead. The competition extends well beyond Korea. In Asia, China leads the pack: Galactic

According to Crunchbase’s latest data around black founders, $643 million has poured into US Black-founded startups since the beginning of the year — an amount not seen since 2022, when Black founders raised $653 million in funding. For context, Black founders raised $942 million of all venture dollars last year (that’s 0.32% of the $290 billion total, per Crunchbase estimates). That means in just a few months, Black founders have already raised almost 70% of what was they raised in all of last year. Driving this funding are just a handful of deals (34, to be exact, per Crunchbase), most notably the $350 million Series E raised by AI hardware company SambaNova, followed by the sports prediction startup Noviq (which raised a $75 million Series B) and the YC-backed AI insurance platform Harper (which raised $47 million). Still, though the $643 million raised so far is a record sum compared to the past few years, Crunchbase makes note that it’s still quite small compared to the $252 billion U.S startups have raised overall in the same period, and doesn’t really suggest that significant progress is being made. Speaking to TechCrunch, Crunchbase’s head of research Gené Teare said the factors that appear to be holding back many Black founders include “access to networks, relationships, and early introductions,” she said, even in the “increasingly concentrated, AI-centric funding market of 2026.” “We are eight to nine quarters into a venture funding downturn, but Crunchbase data has shown a persistent decline in funding to Black-founded companies that outpaces the overall decline in startup funding,” she continued. For now, it remains unclear what might happen next — there could be 34 more big deals this quarter, or there could literally be nothing. In some ways, it’s a reflection of the market, which has been described as barbell and or bifurcated for the way in which certain groups, like even some venture funds, have struggled to raise capital. “One has to wonder if the abundance of caution that’s now prevalent in the industry has prevented investors from taking chances on first-time founders who are more likely to be diverse,” Teare said. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Dominic-Madori Davis is a senior venture capital and startup reporter at TechCrunch. She is based in New York City. You can contact or verify outreach from Dominic by emailing dominic.davis@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at +1 646 831-7565 on Signal. View Bio

Every year I read through thousands of Startup Battlefield applications. And every year, I see the same pattern: The founders who belong on this stage are often the ones who almost didn’t apply. They think they’re too early. They think they need more traction. They think the program is for companies further along than they are. So here’s what we’re actually looking for and how to make sure your application reflects it. The deadline to be considered is May 27, which is tomorrow — time is running out for you to apply right here! And if you’re not up to speed on this year’s Startup Battlefield details, it’s once again a premiere part of TechCrunch Disrupt, which will be in San Francisco October 13-15 and concludes with the crowning of this year’s future champion. And that list of champions includes some incredible companies, from giants like Cloudflare and Discord, to the most recent crop of winners, who you can learn about in detail right here. What gets a company selected for Startup Battlefield Startup Battlefield is not a competition for the most polished companies. It never has been. It’s a competition for the most promising ones. We’re looking for companies with ideas that feel meaningfully different and category-defining, with the potential to make a major impact in their industry or geography. For every application, the question we ask is simple: Does this change something? Not incrementally. Genuinely. Product and disruption. What are you building, and does it represent a real shift in how something works? We’re not looking for a better version of what already exists. We’re looking for the thing that makes the existing version feel obsolete. The founding team. Why you, why now, why this problem? Your origin story is part of the application. The founders who can articulate their conviction clearly, not just their market size, are the ones who stand out. Industry and geographic diversity. The Startup Battlefield 200 is a global cohort. We actively look for companies from every corner of the world and every vertical in tech. If you’re building something important in a geography or sector that doesn’t often get a spotlight, that matters to us. What doesn’t disqualify you from Startup Battlefield Having press coverage. Local coverage is fine. Industry coverage is fine. A few founder profiles are fine. We’re looking for companies whose core technology hasn’t had its moment yet. If you’ve had some coverage but the product hasn’t been showcased, that’s exactly what Disrupt is for. Apply and show us what you have. Being pre-launch. You need a working MVP, but you don’t need customers. You don’t need revenue. Pre-launch companies are genuinely welcome. Having applied before. Many Startup Battlefield 200 companies applied more than once before being selected. A previous rejection says nothing about your company’s future or your chances this time. Raising money. Bootstrapped, pre-seed, and seed companies are all welcome. Series A companies are reviewed on a case-by-case basis, particularly founders building in capital-intensive industries or raising in markets where funding dynamics differ from Silicon Valley norms. Tips for a strong Startup Battlefield application Show your product working. This is the single most important thing. Not a mockup. Not a simulation. Not an animated explainer video with upbeat background music. Your MVP in action, in real time. Even if it’s rough, even if it’s a screen recording from your phone. We want to see it work. Know your competitive landscape. “We have no competitors” is not a credible answer, and it raises questions about how well you understand your market. Name your competitors, acknowledge them honestly, and then explain clearly and specifically why you win. This is one of the most important parts of the application and one of the most commonly underdeveloped. Tell your story. Why did you start this company? What did you see that others didn’t? What makes you the right pers

In the last few years, India’s online food delivery market has grown significantly, with both Zomato and Swiggy going public and an increase in the number of cloud kitchens. Meanwhile, startups working on home services, such as on-demand household staffing platforms, including Urban Company, Snabbit, and Pronto, have gained popularity. Silicon Valley-based start-up Human Archive is tapping into this trend, partnering with these companies to have workers wear special caps with cameras to collect egocentric (first-person point of view) video data of everyday tasks that could be used to train robots. Without naming specific partners, the startup said it is working with companies in the home services, hostel, and restaurant sectors to collect egocentric data, and it says it has more than 1,000 active headsets deployed across multiple locations. On the back of that traction, Human Archive said Tuesday it has raised $8.2 million in funding from Wing Venture Capital, NVP Capital, Y Combinator, and angels from OpenAI, Nvidia, Google, Mercor, AfterQuery, BAIR, SAIL, Brad Boa, and Meta. The startup was founded by two Berkeley and two Stanford students — Samay Mani, Rushil Agarwal, Shloke Patel, and Raj Patel, the latter two being cousins. All four have research backgrounds spanning robotics, hardware, and tactile data. The company’s founding is a direct bet on where the AI industry is heading. As robotics labs and frontier AI companies race to build machines that can perform physical tasks in the real world, they face a critical bottleneck — a shortage of high-quality, real-world training data showing humans doing everyday work. Human Archive’s bet is that the workers staffing India’s booming gig economy represent an untapped and scalable source of exactly that data. While Human Archive is working with multiple partners, the startup said it was rejected by many Indian home services companies, including Pronto and Urban Company, for a collaboration. The company’s rejection by major players became public fodder last weekend, when Indian outlet Entrackr reported that Pronto is actively seeking partnerships to collect worker data for robotics training, and that Snabbit had held early discussions with Human Archive before the project fell apart. Urban Company CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal responded on X, stating the company would not engage in such arrangements — prompting Patel to fire back that Urban Company would soon be forced to reconsider or risk losing relevance to customer churn. Co-founder Rushil Agarwal was blunter still, posting that Pronto founder Anjali Sardana had laughed at him and called him “stupid” when he raised the idea of a data partnership. Pronto acknowledged the conversations but said it chose not to move forward. Across the country, other startups are collecting egocentric data from different work environments, including factory floors. To differentiate itself, Human Archive is using and developing additional devices, such as tactile gloves, a full-body motion capture suit, and wrist cameras to capture data including motion, and tactile force, synchronously aligned with RGB-D (color imagery paired in real time with depth information), to sell to AI labs. The startup believes that video data alone is not sufficient, but that pairing it with other sensor data makes it significantly more valuable. Raj Patel told TechCrunch that while showing the project to other researchers, they came across egocentric data and wanted to combine video with tactile force data. The founders began talking to different labs and realized that the market for egocentric and sensor-based data was just heating up, and decided to build a company around that. Initially, Human Archive used makeshift setups or off-the-shelf rigs to capture the data. Now, it is working on custom hardware that works together and captures different kinds of data. It already has more than 50 different devices deployed to collect different data points. “To capture d

Beauty and wellness booking marketplace Fresha has announced an $80 million investment from KKR’s Next Generation Technology Growth fund, valuing the London-based company at more than $1 billion. The investment is notable for coming from KKR’s growth equity arm, which targets companies with proven business models that are still in aggressive expansion mode — a sign that Fresha is seen as past the risky early stages and ready to scale. The London-based company, founded in 2015, has grown significantly over the past few years. When TechCrunch covered a Fresha fundraising round in 2021, the company had 60,000 businesses on its platform and was working with more than 150,000 professionals across 120 countries. Today, the platform counts more than 140,000 businesses and says those businesses are booking more than 35 million appointments a month through Fresha. That volume — more than a billion appointments annually — puts it among the larger scheduling platforms of any kind, not just within beauty and wellness. The company has now raised $285 million to date and says it will use the new capital to expand to more countries and develop AI features.