Changes at YC, $1.5B more for ride hailing, and Airbnb buys HotelTonight

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

We’re back to basics this week with Kate Clark at the helm, Alex Wilhelm in the sidecar, and a stack of venture capital news and happenings to get through. And to make everyone feel included, we kicked off the episode with a roll-call of new VC funds.

Then, of course, we dug into the recent news out of Y Combinator. The famed accelerator is shopping around for a San Francisco HQ, signaling the end of an era where Silicon Valley ruled the world as home to YC and other the top-tier venture funds that have since moved South to The City by the Bay.

Next up was the new Grab round, a fresh $1.46 billion from the Vision Fund into what TechCrunch noted is now a $4.5 billion Series H. Amazingly, we’ve typed that out correctly. Grab, now topped up with about $8.8 billion in capital raised is not the ride-hailing shop that has raised the most capital, though it does round out the top three.

Next, Alex wanted to talk about Chime. Kate isn’t too big on fintech, but the $200 million round into the neo-bank brought its total capital raised to $300 million. That’s a lot of coin for the company which grew its accounts from one million last year, to three million. (Don’t forget that Acorns raised $105 million earlier this year.)

Changing gears, the Latin American scene, already hotting up, is going to get even warmer with the arrival of a new $2 billion fund from SoftBank. Called the SoftBank Innovation Fund, the Japanese telecom giant wants to raise a total of $5 billion to invest in emerging markets across South America. I know what you’re thinking: damn, that’s a lot of cash. Yes, yes it is.

Finally this week, hours before we hit record, Airbnb agreed to acquire the popular hotel booking app HotelTonight for what’s reported to be about a flat price to its last valuation (~$465 million). The deal made us wonder if the Airbnb IPO could be delayed due to the roughly half-billion deal (provided that reports bear out). We haven’t confirmed the transaction price, so more from us when we have it. Also, this is hardly Airbnb’s first buy.

That and we had fun. See you all in seven days!

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.

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