Christine Hall

Senior Reporter, TechCrunch

Christine Hall writes about enterprise/B2B, e-commerce, and foodtech. She most recently reported on venture capital rounds for Crunchbase News. Based in Houston, Christine previously reported for publications including the Houston Business Journal, the Texas Medical Center’s Pulse magazine, and Community Impact Newspaper. She has an undergraduate journalism degree from Murray State University and a graduate degree from The Ohio State University. Email her at chall.techcrunch@gmail.com or on Twitter at @christinemhall.

Christine Hall

Latest from Christine Hall

Plonts’ cheese is made from soybeans, one of the most efficient ways to grow protein. Soybeans themselves are not very flavorful, and that is where fermentation and aging, help Plonts…

Who cut the plant-based cheese? Plonts did with microbes, and it’s stinky

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Even after $1.6B in VC money, the lab-grown meat industry is facing ‘massive’ issues

Any goal that puts cultivated meat in big box grocery stores or on fast food menus in the 2020s is “unrealistic,” according to experts.

Even after $1.6B in VC money, the lab-grown meat industry is facing ‘massive’ issues

Siddhi Capital’s second fund of $135 million is double the size of the venture capital firm’s first fund and will go into CPG and food tech startups.

Siddhi Capital grabs $135M for Fund II to invest in consumer packaged goods startups

Zoe sends customers at-home testing materials to collect blood or feces to test blood fat, blood sugar, and gut microbiome health. Following those results, the company scores every food (on…

Zoe, a microbiome-focused nutrition company, raises $15M to expand in the US

Digital banking startup Mercury informed some founders that it is no longer serving customers in certain countries, including Ukraine.

Digital banking startup Mercury abruptly shuttered service for startups in Ukraine, Nigeria, other countries

Fragment’s digital ledger API applies real-time, double entry accounting to find where things aren’t adding up.

Fintech Fragment eases ledger problems, nabs $9M from Jack Altman, BoxGroup, others

Slope’s founders both have a background in AI, so large language models power the company’s underwriting infrastructure. 

How a B2B payments startup won Max, Jack and Sam Altman, JP Morgan as investors

Astor is a free personal finance platform for women that merges community and investing in an approachable way, came to be.

Astor’s ‘community’ approach to financial advice aims to help women feel more confident about investing

Alma aims to simplify the visa process for technologists, founders and researchers by providing personal legal advisors.

Alma co-founder had such a bad immigration experience she founded a legal AI startup to fix it

After securing $14 million for its second fund in 2023, early-stage VC firm Kearny Jackson is back with a third fund.

Marc Andreessen, Sequoia again back Kearny Jackson, this time in $65M Fund III

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From Facebook to the face of crypto: Inside Anthony Pompliano’s wild career

He’s known by a single-syllable name: Pomp. But his story is of an unconventional rise to success that almost ended two years after it began.

From Facebook to the face of crypto: Inside Anthony Pompliano’s wild career

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Seed VCs are turning to new ‘pro rata’ funds that help them compete with the big firms

Three companies with new funds deploy capital to support seed and Series A VCs looking to exercise their pro rata rights.

Seed VCs are turning to new ‘pro rata’ funds that help them compete with the big firms

With increasing competition for what is, essentially, still a small number of hard tech and deep tech deals, Sidney Scott realized it would be a challenge for smaller funds like…

Why deep tech VC Driving Forces is shutting down

Samyr Laine and Ayanna Alexander-Laine now put their grit and determination to work for founders wanting to launch and scale consumer brands.

Husband-and-wife former Olympians target $50M for new fund to invest in influencer-led consumer brands

We’ve poked through the many product announcements made by the biggest tech companies and product trade shows of the year, so far, and compiled them into this list.

Here are the hottest product announcements from Apple, Google, Microsoft and others so far in 2024

Don’t call this company a “ghost kitchen.” Since its Series A in 2021, Local Kitchens grew 5x and achieved unit-level profitability.

General Catalyst leads $40M round for Local Kitchens, a different kind of restaurant kitchen startup

Being a solo GP hasn’t slowed Bilimoria a bit. He went on to raise three additional funds and has now closed a new fund to invest in biotech, climate and…

Zal Bilimoria just raised a $50M fourth Refactor Capital fund, and still relishes his solo GP status

Its technology involves spinning plant protein fibers, including soy proteins, similar to the way cotton candy is made, to create structured cuts of meat.

Plant-based ‘meat’ startup Tender has already nabbed a fast-food chain contract, and another $11M

The TechCrunch team runs down all of the biggest news from the Apple WWDC 2024 keynote in an easy-to-skim digest.

Here’s everything Apple announced at the WWDC 2024 keynote, including Apple Intelligence, Siri makeover

The hotel guest management technology company’s platform digitizes the hotel guest journey from post-booking through checkout.

Insight Partners backs Canary Technologies’ mission to elevate hotel guest experiences

InScope leverages machine learning and large language models to provide financial reporting and auditing processes for mid-market and enterprises.

Lightspeed Venture Partners leads $4.3M seed in automated financial reporting fintech InScope

RetailReady targets the $40 billion compliance market to help reduce the number of retail compliance losses that shippers incur annually due to incorrectly shipped packages.

YC grad RetailReady raises $3.3M for an AI warehouse app that hopes to save brands billions

Five years ago, Day One Ventures had $11 million under management, and Bucher and her team have grown that to just over $450 million.

The VC queen of portfolio PR, Masha Bucher, has raised her largest fund yet: $150M

Prolific Machines believes it has a way of transitioning away from molecules to something better: light.

Prolific Machines, with a $55M Series B, shines ‘light’ on a better way to grow lab proteins for food and medicine

Torpago’s Powered By product is geared for regional and community banks, with under $20 billion in assets, to launch their own branded cards and spend management programs.

Fintech Torpago has a unique way to compete with Brex and Ramp: Turning banks into customers

After growing 500% year-over-year in the past year, Understory is now launching a product focused on the renewable energy sector.

Insurance provider Understory gets into renewable energy following $15M Series A

Lance Riedel and Nigel Daley both spent decades in search discovery, but it was while working at Pinterest that they began trying to understand how to use search engines to…

How a couple of former Pinterest search experts caught Biz Stone’s attention

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Sujay Jaswa, along with three general partners, manage $1.5 billion in assets today through their Build, Venture and Seed strategies.

WndrCo officially gets into venture capital with fresh $460M across two funds

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Unicorn-rich VC Wesley Chan owes his success to a Craigslist job washing lab beakers

While all of Wesley Chan’s success has been well-documented over the years, his personal journey…not so much. Chan spoke to TechCrunch about the ways his life impacts how he invests in startups.

Unicorn-rich VC Wesley Chan owes his success to a Craigslist job washing lab beakers

It’s a lofty goal to take on legacy payments infrastructure, however, Forward’s model has an advantage by shifting the economics back to SaaS companies.

Fintech startup Forward grabs $16M to take on Stripe, lead future of integrated payments