Tech
In a changed VC landscape, this exec is doubling down on overlooked founders
Much of Silicon Valley has spent years chasing mega-rounds and buzzy AI deals. Meanwhile, Stacy Brown-Philpot is running Cherryrock Capital like a throwback to venture capital’s earlier days, writing smaller Series A and B checks to founders that larger firms routinely overlook.
The former TaskRabbit CEO and decade-long Google veteran launched Cherryrock a year ago after seeing what she calls a persistent gap: access to capital for “underinvested entrepreneurs” building software companies at the crucial growth stage.
“When I left TaskRabbit, I took some time off to figure out what was next and saw this gap in the market, which was access to capital, particularly for underinvested entrepreneurs,” Brown-Philpot told TechCrunch. She’d originally come to the Bay Area 25 years ago, planning to become a VC and even writing her Stanford Business School essay about it. After spending a decade at Google and leading TaskRabbit to a successful exit to IKEA, she’s finally back to that original plan.
She circled back to it for a reason. Before launching Cherryrock, Brown-Philpot was a member of the investment committee for the SoftBank Opportunity Fund, a $100 million vehicle started in 2020 to back underserved entrepreneurs. That experience proved there was no shortage of overlooked founders.
SoftBank itself sold the Opportunity Fund to its leadership team in late 2023, divesting from the diversity-focused initiative. Brown-Philpot, meanwhile, doubled down, and launched her own fund. By the time she closed Cherryrock’s debut fund in February 2025, she already had more than 2,000 companies in her pipeline.
Cherryrock is targeting 12 to 15 investments from its first fund — a concentrated approach and stark contrast to the seed funds that make dozens of bets, or massive funds that write nine-figure checks. Brown-Philpot’s also taking her time; a year after announcing the fund, she and her team, including cofounder Saydeah Howard, who spent nine years at the venture firm IVP, have backed just five companies, putting them about a third of the way toward their goal. In an era when many funds race to deploy capital almost as quickly as it’s raised, Brown-Philpot’s measured pace is another throwback to an earlier generation of VCs.
Brown-Philpot’s focus on “underinvested” founders — a careful choice of words in today’s political climate — means backing entrepreneurs who might not fit the typical Silicon Valley mold.
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When asked directly about the current political environment, where DEI has become a lightning rod, Brown-Philpot is unfazed. “It doesn’t change the pitch at all,” she said. “When we look at the people who decided to back Cherryrock, like JPMorgan and Bank of America…these are financial institutions who expect to generate a return. Our job as investors is to do just that.”
In addition to those investors, Cherryrock’s LP roster includes Goldman Sachs Asset Management, MassMutual, Top Tier Capital Partners, and Melinda Gates’s Pivotal Ventures. Some of these have stepped back from explicit diversity pledges amid pressure from the Trump administration. Yet Brown-Philpot may find herself in an unexpectedly advantageous position.
A new diversity reporting law in California requires VC firms with a California nexus to report demographic data on their portfolio companies’ founding teams, with the first deadline in April. Unlike some corporate diversity initiatives that have faced legal challenges, the law focuses on transparency rather than mandates, requiring reporting but not quotas. For a firm like Cherryrock that’s already tracking and prioritizing investments in diverse founders, compliance is “table stakes,” as Brown-Philpot puts it. “You accomplish what you measure.”
Brown-Philpot’s perspective is informed by her vantage point across multiple institutions. Beyond Cherryrock, she sits on the boards of HP, StockX, and Stanford University — roles that give her insight into both enterprise buyers and the next generation of founders. At Stanford, she’s watching students navigate questions about AI’s impact on employment. “What I see on campus is the students are charting a path and finding a way to create opportunities for themselves,” she said.
Her portfolio reflects her thesis. One investment is Coactive AI, led by Cody Coleman, an MIT grad with advanced degrees in philosophy and engineering from MIT and Stanford. The company provides multimodal AI infrastructure to the media and entertainment industry, a sector now under intense scrutiny following controversies around AI-generated content. Cherryrock led Coactive’s Series B alongside Emerson Collective.
Another bet is Vitable Health, founded by Joseph Kitonga, a Thiel Fellow and Y Combinator alum. The Philadelphia-based company provides on-demand, primary care-based health insurance to employers and hourly workers – the kind of population Brown-Philpot came to know well as the CEO of TaskRabbit during its last years as a standalone company. Kitonga “is the exact kind of founder that we want to back,” Brown-Philpot said. “He does what he says he’s going to do.” Brown-Philpot first invested at the seed stage of Vitable through her work with the SoftBank Opportunity Fund.
When asked about her operating philosophy, Brown-Philpot is pragmatic about exits. “It’s very difficult to go public,” she said. “Most companies don’t go public, they do get acquired.” It’s a refreshingly honest take in an industry that often overpromises on IPO prospects. She points to TaskRabbit’s sale to IKEA as proof that the right acquisition can create lasting value.
As for 2026, Brown-Philpot’s priority is simple: “We are actively deploying capital.” She’s looking for Series A and B companies that have achieved product-market fit at scale, letting founders define what that means. And while the broader venture ecosystem debates the future of diversity initiatives, she is focused on finding great founders, wherever they are.
“I’m from Detroit,” she says. “Hard things are hard, but we know how to do hard things.”
Tech
ElevenLabs lists BlackRock, Jamie Foxx, and Eva Longoria as new investors
Voice AI company ElevenLabs revealed new investors that are part of its $500 million Series D fundraise, which was first announced in February. The additions include institutions such as BlackRock, Wellington, D.E. Shaw, and Schroders; enterprises like Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Santander, KPN, and Deutsche Telekom; and individual investors such as Jamie Foxx, Eva Longoria, and Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk.
The startup also noted that it surpassed $500 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue), after ending last year with nearly $350 million in ARR. The company’s co-founder and CEO, Mati Staniszewski, said last month that ElevenLabs added $100 million in net new ARR in Q1 2026, ending the quarter at roughly $450 million in ARR.
The company has also accelerated its valuation rapidly, growing from $6.6 billion last September to $11 billion this February.
“Voice is the highest-stakes channel for any customer interaction, and the bar for quality, latency, and security is extremely high. ElevenLabs is not just a category leader – it is becoming a foundational enabler of Deutsche Telekom’s broader Industrial AI vision. From voice-as-a-service to multilingual automation and in-network AI agents, we believe the company is uniquely positioned to reshape how businesses interact with customers across all channels,” Karine Peters, managing director at Deutsche Telekom’s venture arm T.Capital, said in a statement.
In the past quarter, the voice AI company has signed enterprise contracts with the likes of Deutsche Telekom, Revolut, and Klarna.
ElevenLabs said that, besides the fundraising, it also closed a $100 million tender, a second in roughly six months after the company issued one last September. Staniszewski said in a blog post that the company will give an opportunity to retail investors to invest in ElevenLabs through Robinhood Ventures, but didn’t provide details about the program.
Staniszewski noted that consumers won’t trust systems that sound robotic or “interact strangely” and emphasized the importance of building “human-level AI voice models.” Last month, the company acquired the team from Polish voice AI startup Papla to bolster its research team.
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Tech
Kaspersky suspects Chinese hackers planted a backdoor into Daemon Tools in ‘widespread’ attack
Security researchers at Kaspersky say they have identified a malicious backdoor planted in the popular and long-running Windows disc imaging software, Daemon Tools.
The Russian cybersecurity company said on Tuesday that data collected from computers around the world running the Kaspersky antivirus software shows a “widespread” attack is under way, targeting thousands of Windows computers running Daemon Tools.
The hackers, whom Kaspersky has linked to a Chinese-language speaking group based on an analysis of the malware, used the backdoor in Daemon Tools to plant additional malware on a dozen computers across the retail, scientific and manufacturing sectors, as well as government systems. Kaspersky said the hacking of these specific computers implied a “targeted” effort.
The company said the targeted organizations are located in Russia, Belarus, and Thailand.
Kaspersky said the backdoor was first detected on April 8.
Kaspersky said it had contacted Disc Soft, the company that maintains Daemon Tools, but did not say if the developer responded or took action. Kaspersky said the supply chain attack is “still active,” suggesting that the hackers can still plant malware on thousands of computers running the disc imaging software.
This is the latest in a string of so-called “supply chain” attacks that have targeted developers of popular software in recent months. Hackers are increasingly taking aim at the accounts of developers who work on widely used code and software, and abusing that access to push malicious code to anyone who relies on the software. This approach lets the hackers break into a large number of computers at once when their malicious code is delivered as a software update.
Earlier this year, hackers associated with the Chinese government hijacked the popular text editing software Notepad++ to deliver malware to a number of organizations with interests in East Asia. Security researchers also warned of another attack last month targeting users who visited the website of CPUID, which makes the popular HWMonitor and CPU-Z tools.
TechCrunch downloaded the Windows installer from Daemon Tools’ website, and the file appeared to contain the backdoor when we checked it with the online malware scanner service VirusTotal.
It’s not known if the macOS version of Daemon Tools was compromised, or if other apps made by Disc Soft are affected.
When contacted for comment, a Disc Soft representative said they are “aware of the report and are currently investigating the situation.”
“Our team is treating this matter with the highest priority and is actively working to assess and address the issue. At this stage, we are not in a position to confirm specific details referenced in the report. However, we are taking all necessary steps to remediate any potential risks and to ensure the security of our users,” the representative said.
Do you know more about the cyberattack targeting Daemon Tools users? Did you receive an antivirus alert saying you were affected? We want to hear from you. To contact this reporter securely, reach out via Signal username zackwhittaker.1337.
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Tech
Etsy launches its app within ChatGPT as it continues its AI push
Etsy announced Tuesday the launch of its native app within ChatGPT, opening up a new way for shoppers to explore its catalog of over 100 million listings.
The new experience is designed to move beyond the limitations of traditional keyword queries. Instead of typing something like “wooden coffee table,” then scrolling and adjusting filters, users can now express what they’re looking for in natural language. For instance, “Help me find a Mother’s Day gift under $100 for my mom who loves gardening.”
Now live in beta, the feature allows users to tag @Etsy directly within a prompt. From there, the Etsy app in ChatGPT surfaces relevant product listings that users can browse, compare, and click through to Etsy for additional details or purchase.
This isn’t Etsy’s first experiment inside ChatGPT. Back in September, Etsy became an early partner in ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout integration, which let users buy products directly inside the chat interface. However, the initiative ended in March, suggesting it didn’t perform as OpenAI had hoped. It was reported that Etsy didn’t see a large volume of sales from the integration, leading Etsy to start building a native app within ChatGPT instead.
Alongside this launch, Etsy also revealed it’s testing a beta conversational search experience within its platform, specifically geared toward helping users find gifts. The gift assistant acts as a personal shopper, offering a guided, conversational way to discover ideas, narrow down preferences, and surface relevant products.
This builds on Etsy’s broader AI push, which includes an AI-powered discovery experience featuring curated collections and a suite of seller tools, including a tool that helps generate product titles and descriptions, as well as a writing assistant to help draft messages to buyers. In 2024, Etsy introduced a new “Designed” label to identify AI content, part of an effort to increase transparency as AI-generated artwork becomes more prevalent on the platform.
The news of a ChatGPT integration comes a week after Etsy reported its Q1 2026 earnings, surpassing revenue expectations with $631 million, and marketplace gross merchandise sales were up 6% year over year. Notably, active buyers increased for the first time in two years to 86.6 million. Etsy also touted 5.6 million active sellers on the platform.
In February, the company announced it was selling Depop to eBay for $1.2 billion in cash, a move aimed at doubling down on its core marketplace.
Etsy joins a growing list of companies building native apps within ChatGPT, including Angi, SeatGeek, Tubi, and Wix. Developers have been able to build apps within the chatbot since October.
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