These in-between exits don't generate a lot of buzz, but collectively they add up to a tidy sum. Last year, for instance, U.S. startup purchases under $300 million 1 brought in about $8.7 billion altogether, Crunchbase data shows. These small and mid-sized deals are not a long-term growth area for M&A, by many measures. The total deal value of purchases between $100 million and $300 million last year was still below levels routinely reached nearly a decade ago, as charted below. Moreover, the total value can add up to just a fraction of a single, larger exit. Google's just-completed $32 billion purchase of Wiz, for instance, is worth more than 4x all these sub-$300 million deals put together. These sub-$100 million purchases are a mixed bag for returns. Investors might recoup solid profits from companies that raised a few million in seed funding and sold for prices in the tens of millions. In other cases, startups sold for considerably less than the sums they raised in venture investment. Using Crunchbase data, we aggregated a few examples of such deals from the past year. It includes companies with known struggles, such as Rad Power Bikes, which filed for bankruptcy before selling to an acquirer this month....

The electrical grid has changed more in the last decade than in the preceding five. Solar, wind, and batteries have pushed power generation away from monolithic producers. But fundamentally, the grid still suffers from the same challenges. 'The problem on the grid is a peak problem. Most of the time you're okay, you have plenty of power. But in those peak hours you might not have enough,' Michael Phelan, co-founder and CEO of GridBeyond, told TechCrunch. GridBeyond has been building hardware and software to stitch together disparate parts of the grid to behave as larger virtual power plants. The startup already manages around 1 gigawatt of solar, batteries, wind, and hydropower, and on the demand side, it has 'several gigawatts' across commercial and industrial facilities, Phelan said. To expand its portfolio, GridBeyond recently raised a '12 million ($13.8 million) equity round led by Samsung Ventures, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. Other participating investors include ABB, Act Venture Capital, Alantra's Energy Transition Fund, Constellation Technology Ventures, EDP, Energy Impact Partners, Enterprise Ireland, Klima, Mirova, and Japanese electronics and software company Yokogawa....

On the latest episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan, Sean O'Kane, and I were joined by Shardul Shah, a partner at Wiz's largest shareholder Index Ventures. Shah walked us through his history with Wiz, which extends before Wiz itself ' he previously backed Adallom, the startup previously founded by Wiz's Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik. Read an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, below. Shah kicked things off by noting, half-jokingly, that we may have been underselling things by calling the acquisition one of our deals of the week. Shardul: And more critically, it's no surprise that it's Wiz. Wiz is at the center of three tailwinds: AI, cloud, and security spend. And those are central today in light of the AI era where every single workload needs to be secured. So we're super proud that we were the largest shareholder in the company. And yes, I think it's at least [the] deal of the month. Shardul: Is it six years or 16, is a question for us internally. About 10 years ago, I joined the board of Assaf, Roy, and Ami first company, Adallom. So we got a front row seat at how they make decisions, how they develop trust and how that evolved over time....

The publicly traded company is now a few months away from delivering its most important EV yet, a mid-sized SUV called the R2. This EV is cheaper to build than its flagship R1 counterpart (Scaringe tells me 'roughly half' the cost), and yet, in many ways is more technologically capable. It will also be cheaper for buyers; the first version of the R2 will start at $57,990, 20% cheaper than its base R1T pickup. And then there's Also, the micromobility startup that began as a skunkworks program within Rivian and spun out last year backed by VC money. Also, which Rivian maintains a minority stake in, launched a pedal-assist modular electric bike and cargo quad vehicle last October. Scaringe is deeply involved with that startup as well. Mind Robotics was not born within the walls of Rivian, although the automaker may someday be a customer. Mind Robotics is a private company founded by Scaringe that recently raised a $500 million Series A round co-led by venture firms Accel and Andreessen Horowitz. The company, which has raised $615 million since its founding in November 2025, is now valued at about $2 billion....