Thrive Capital led VCs into pro sports ownership; Collaborative Fund just upped that play
3:30 PM PDT · September 10, 2026
Collaborative Fund, the 15-year-old, New York-based generalist venture firm that has roughly $1 billion under management and which made early bets on Lyft, Reddit, Sweetgreen, and Olipop, among others, is taking a stake in the soccer club D.C. United and its stadium, Audi Field.
It’s the latest — and smallest — firm to try something that Thrive Capital opened the door to just months ago: turning venture money into pro sports ownership.
To recap, Joshua Kushner’s Thrive launched a new vehicle, Thrive Eternal, explicitly built to hold “iconic franchises and cultural institutions” for decades, funded by many of the same investors already in Thrive’s venture and growth funds. The firm kicked things off by announcing a stake in the San Francisco Giants. Months later, the same vehicle — with former Disney CEO Bob Iger, a Thrive partner, joining as co-owner — bought the Lakers outright for a record $12.5 billion.
That’s new. Historically, money has poured into pro sports two other ways: individual tech fortunes, and private equity. For example, Vinod Khosla and his family agreed this summer to buy the Seattle Seahawks for a record $9.6 billion soon after the Khosla family also took a stake in the San Francisco 49ers alongside OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor. That was a personal-wealth play, the kind we’ve seen over and over.
Private equity firms have also been at this for years, including Sixth Street, which holds stakes in the Boston Celtics, the New England Patriots, and MLB’s San Francisco Giants; Ares, which owns a piece of the Miami Dolphins outright and separately financed Chelsea’s stadium plans through a $500 million preferred-equity deal; RedBird, which owns AC Milan outright and holds a minority stake in Fenway Sports Group, the holding company behind Liverpool and the Red Sox; and Arctos, with minority positions scattered across MLB, the NFL, the NBA, and European soccer. (Apollo, the newest entrant, has mostly stuck to sports financing deals so far rather than ownership stakes.)
Thrive and Collaborative are doing neither of those things. At the same time, the two firms’ approaches to sports ownership look very different. Thrive built a standalone, permanent-capital vehicle specifically to hold trophy assets. Collaborative is investing out of the same early-stage fund it uses to write seed and Series A checks, and treating the deal less like something to buy and hold and almost more like infrastructure.
In a memo shared with TechCrunch, Collaborative Fund founder and managing partner Craig Shapiro framed the deal as an extension of what the firm already does. “A franchise is the ultimate consumer product,” he wrote, arguing that D.C. United’s status as one of Major League Soccer’s original clubs gives Collaborative access to an institution with a decades-long fan base to build on.
He pointed to the tailwinds around American soccer specifically (a World Cup just behind the sport, the LA Olympics ahead of it, soaring youth participation numbers in the U.S.) as well as D.C.’s ownership of Audi Field in Washington, D.C., plus a talent-development pipeline through Loudoun County, Virginia, and rights to a future Baltimore expansion team.
Indeed, the thesis Shapiro laid out at a TechCrunch StrictlyVC event Thursday night in New York is less about owning a piece of an appreciating asset – the sports team itself – and more about what the team makes possible. Collaborative wants to turn Audi Field into what he describes as a living showcase for its own portfolio.
As a backer of both fitness band maker Whoop and the beverage brand Olipop, for example, Collaborative Fund is imagining a WHOOP wearables activation for fans, or Olipop drinks woven into game-day concessions. He’s thinking about the stadium’s foot traffic — tens of thousands of people showing up on a predictable schedule — as a distribution channel at a time when, because AI is making more of daily life feel synthetic, live experiences are becoming more valuable.
Shapiro doesn’t dwell on this, but it surely helped sell Collaborative’s investors that team valuations have been soaring, so the stake could pay off on its own. Soccer valuations in particular have been on a tear. Inter Miami’s franchise value has roughly doubled in the two years since Lionel Messi arrived, MLS’s average club value is up roughly 134% since 2019, and D.C. United’s own valuation has climbed from $35 million in 2008 to $785 million today, factoring in its ownership of Audi Field and the surrounding real estate.
If Shapiro is right that a franchise is also “the ultimate consumer product,” it could be a pretty good place to park money. Time will tell.
The deal is subject to MLS approval.
European founders and VCs urge lawmakers ‘to get EU Inc right’
5:25 AM PDT · September 10, 2026
Europe could soon have its own equivalent of the Delaware C Corp, but its advocates aren’t releasing the pressure on lawmakers. In an open letter released on Thursday, a who’s who of Europe’s startup scene stressed that this new corporate status shouldn’t be watered down.
The letter is the latest step of the EU Inc campaign, a movement calling for an EU-wide company statute that would let companies incorporate under a common framework and operate across the bloc. Its promoters have secured endorsements from the European Union’s top authorities, but now are expressing concern that the final legislation could become “unusable if its central features are weakened.”
As usual with European lawmaking, various national lobbies have entered the chat, including Germany’s notaries, whose association has criticized aspects of the European Commission’s proposal. But negotiations are still ongoing for the European Parliament and Council to settle on a final text, and EU Inc’s promoters are pointing out what’s at stake.
With some 100 days left before European institutions shut down for winter recess, the letter calls on policymakers to preserve the proposal, saying it has the potential to “remove much of the friction and fragmentation that continue to throttle European companies, unlock investment and spur a new wave of entrepreneurship.”
Taking a page from older lobbies, the letter highlights points that “may seem like technical details, but [… ] separate a company form founders use from one they ignore.” In particular, they insist on one central registry; and that employees should be taxed only when they actually dispose of their stock options.
This need to get into the weeds isn’t new. In 2024, when the original petition was gaining steam, Index Ventures partner and EU Inc supporter Martin Mignot told TechCrunch that “the devil is in the details, and that’s going to be where we’re going to be very, very watchful.”
EU Inc has also stepped up its namedropping game. On the investor side, EU Inc’s new letter has been signed by VCs including Accel partner Sonali De Rycker, Sequoia partner Michael Moritz, and Atomico founder Niklas Zennström — one of many tech figures who’s been supporting the campaign by sporting its cap.
To add gravitas on the entrepreneur side, promoters also highlighted endorsements from founders behind unicorns including Alan, ElevenLabs, Lovable, Mistral, and Synthesia. Some of these have their HQs in the United States; reading between the lines, the message to lawmakers is also that if EU Inc has its way, this could be a thing of the past.
Instagram’s latest feature lets you add tagged posts to your profile grid
9:31 AM PDT · September 10, 2026
Instagram is rolling out a small but useful new feature that gives users a little more control over what appears on their profiles. Starting today, you can add posts you’re tagged in directly to your main profile grid.
While it’s not exactly a groundbreaking update, it’s one of those changes that a lot of people will probably find useful. Most of us have experienced coming home from a party, concert, vacation, or night out with friends and going through the shared album, only to realize one of them has already beaten everyone to the punch and posted one of the best group photos, tagging you in the process.
While you could post the same photo yourself, that feels a little awkward. So Instagram now has a solution.
You can add a tagged post to your grid from the DM notification you receive when you’re tagged, directly from the post itself, or through your Tagged tab. If you change your mind later, you can easily remove the post from your profile.
The original post stays exactly where it is. Adding it to your grid doesn’t delete or duplicate the original post, and you can remove it from your profile at any time without removing it from your Tagged tab.
Instagram says the feature could also be useful for creator collaborations, giving creators another way to showcase posts they’ve been tagged in without having to republish the same content or use the “Invite collaborators” option. It could also come in handy for brand campaigns featuring multiple creators who want to highlight a piece of content they were all tagged in on their profiles.
The update is part of a broader push from Instagram to give users more control over how their profiles look. Back in June, Instagram introduced the “ Reorder your grid” feature, allowing users to rearrange the content on their main profile grid.
Instagram has also been adding new tools to make creating and managing content easier. One recent addition is “ First Draft,” a new editing feature that automatically trims selected video clips and removes pauses, pulling together the best moments into an initial cut.
There’s also the newly launched “ Replace Audio” tool, which lets users update the music on an existing post whenever they want.
Uber invests $10M in Indian fleet operator Carrum at $168M valuation
7:38 AM PDT · September 9, 2026
Uber has invested $10 million in Indian fleet management startup Carrum Mobility in a Series B round as the ride-hailing giant increases its reliance on large fleet operators to supply vehicles and drivers in the South Asian nation.
The new investment values Carrum at ₹16 billion (about $168 million) post-money, founder and CEO Karan Jain told TechCrunch, up from a post-money valuation of ₹6 billion (around $63 million) after Uber invested $7 million in the firm in January. Jain said Uber now owns a stake in the “mid-teens” in Carrum.
A former McKinsey consultant who previously founded car-rental startup Revv, Jain started Carrum in 2024 after Indian automotive marketplace CarDekho acquired his earlier company in 2023. CarDekho was also Carrum’s first investor and remains a backer.
Carrum now owns about 5,100 vehicles across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, and Kolkata, and has onboarded more than 18,000 drivers. The startup is currently generating annualized revenue of about ₹4.3 billion (around $45 million), Jain said.
The startup supplies vehicles to Uber in India for its entry-level Uber Go, Premier, and the premium Black tiers. About 70% of its fleet are hatchbacks used for Uber Go, around 10% are sedans for the Premier tier, and about 20% are SUVs, largely deployed on Uber Black. Carrum is Uber’s largest fleet partner for Black in India, Jain added.
Unlike individual drivers who typically own or finance their vehicles, operators such as Carrum can put thousands of cars on Uber while recruiting and training drivers.
The business model may be growing important for premium offerings. Jain said Uber Black in India operates exclusively through fleet partners, as the service requires tighter control over vehicles, drivers, and service standards. He also said Uber’s preference for fleet operators has become part of its supply strategy in other markets.
Uber’s relationship with Carrum goes beyond a typical commercial arrangement, Jain said. The two companies are working on new product launches and planning how much vehicle supply to add to the ride-hail giant’s platform.
Carrum is not exclusive to Uber, but Jain said his startup currently has no intention of supplying vehicles to rival ride-hailing platforms.
The startup generated revenue of about ₹2.33 billion (around $24.5 million) in the year ended March 2026, up from around ₹620 million (about $6.5 million) a year ago, and net profit rose to about ₹70 million (around $736,000) from ₹35 million (about $368,000), Jain said.
Carrum typically finances its vehicles with debt while funding about 10% to 15% of their purchase price up front, Jain said. The firm’s borrowing costs, he stated, have fallen about 40% over the past year, which he attributed to its stronger balance sheet, profitability, and Uber’s backing.
Over the next 12 months, Carrum plans to more than double its fleet to about 11,000 vehicles, Jain said. The startup also plans to use the new capital to expand into more cities, strengthen its technology platform, and hire as it scales.
Ultimately, Carrum’s ambitions extend beyond India, Jain said, noting that the startup wants to eventually become a global fleet partner for Uber. He declined to say whether the two companies have specifically discussed expanding their partnership outside India.
Bending Spoons to buy collaboration tools maker Miro for $1.36B, 90% less than its 2022 valuation
7:34 AM PDT · September 10, 2026
Bending Spoons is continuing its trend of buying once-sought-after software companies for pennies on the dollar. This time, the Italian company is buying Miro for $1.36 billion in cash (equity value of $1.79 billion), a mighty dip in valuation for the once-hot workplace collaboration startup that was awarded a price tag of $17.5 billion in late 2021.
Founded in 2011 as a whiteboarding tool called RealtimeBoard, Miro found great fortune during the COVID-19 pandemic, when companies moved to remote work en masse and found their employees wanting to replicate the experience of collaborating on a physical whiteboard.
Miro quickly capitalized on that momentum by building a platform that could integrate with more than 250 apps and struck partnerships with Atlassian, Cisco, Microsoft, and Zoom. The company also started letting its users build integrations with common tools and customize the base product to meet their needs. Today, it calls itself an “AI innovation workspace” that offers AI assistants for its whiteboard tools, AI workflows, prototyping tools, and AI connectors that pull context from various platforms like GitHub, Jira, and Slack.
By 2022, Miro had grown from 5 million to about 30 million users within a scant two years, and its paying customer base had expanded by 550% — factors that likely contributed to its immense valuation at the time.
By all indications, the company has continued growing, though not at that blistering pace. Today, Miro has more than 4 million paying users and 100 million total users. Bending Spoons said Miro now has about $600 million in annual recurring revenue, of which 90% comes from businesses and enterprises. The company also has about $435 million in net cash and is profitable.
Still, the 92% dip in Miro’s valuation illustrates just how much software-as-a-service (SaaS) multiples have unwound since its heyday in 2021. By 2022, the dying pandemic tailwinds spurred companies to tighten spending by cutting down on duplicate apps and licenses. Miro, competing with much-better funded rivals such as Canva, Figma, and Microsoft in the workplace collaboration space, likely found itself shoved aside as businesses started preferring suites of various products instead of individual collaboration tools.
Miro, which had about 1,200 employees in 2022, cut jobs twice, laying off 119 staff in February 2023 and reportedly another 275 people in October 2024.
Bending Spoons, however, is probably happy it is able to snap up a company that’s been doing quite well for a smidgen of its former, arguably inflated, value. In that way, Miro is pretty similar to Airtable, which was valued at over $11 billion in the boom days of 2021 but sold to Bending Spoons for $1.28 billion last month.
The Italian serial acquirer of software companies seems to be exploiting a specific change: large, recognizable SaaS companies that were priced in 2021 as if they’d become software giants, but matured into slower-growing but still substantial businesses with decent recurring revenue and established user bases.
Still, it’s curious why Miro’s board and investors agreed to sell at that price now, especially seeing that the company didn’t apparently need the cash. Has confidence in SaaS companies being able to go public or find a comparable exit really plummeted that low?
