Tech
Quince hits $10B valuation with giant $500M round led by Iconiq
In a sea of massive valuations for early-stage AI startups, today we have a bit of rare news: a jumbo round and valuation step-up for an e-commerce company. Quince announced on Wednesday that it raised a $500 million Series E round at a $10.1 billion valuation.
The round was led by previous investor Iconiq, which also led Quince’s $200 million Series D in early 2025 at a reported $4.5 billion valuation. That’s more than double the valuation in less than a year.
Quince rose to fame on Instagram with its $50 cashmere sweater, but has since amassed a wider range of product offerings, including apparel, home, accessories, beauty, and wellness. Unlike typical e-commerce retail sites, the company manufactures its products and sells them to consumers directly.
Quince, which launched out of beta in 2020, calls its business model “manufacturer-to-consumer.” And because it owns most of its own tech stack and controls its designs and manufacturing, Quince can more accurately predict its sales, according to a blog post by Iconiq. This allows smaller batch manufacturing with less waste.
Quince and its investors argue that, unlike fast fashion, Quince can produce higher-quality products at low costs.
Not that the company has been without controversy. It has faced several lawsuits from brands alleging Quince is selling dupes of their designs. Coach parent Tapestry is suing, as is Williams Sonoma, Puck reported. Deckers also sued over footwear designs, but a court ruled in Quince’s favor.
If such scuffles have given Quince a copycat reputation, as Puck describes, the site’s customers are apparently unphased. The company says that its top-line revenue has now surpassed $1 billion. In January, it also expanded to Canada.
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Other participating investors include Basis Set Ventures, Wellington Management, WndrCo, MarcyPen Capital Partners, Ballie Gifford, Notable Capital, and DST Global.
Tech
Hacker broke into FBI and compromised Epstein files, report says
An unidentified foreign hacker broke into the FBI’s field office in New York in 2023 and compromised files related to the bureau’s investigation into the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to Reuters.
The newswire cited a source familiar with the breach, as well as court documents, and reported that the hack took advantage of a server at the Child Exploitation Forensic Lab in the FBI’s New York field office that was inadvertently left vulnerable by an FBI special agent working on the case. The breach “included combing through certain files pertaining to the Epstein investigation,” according to a court document.
An FBI spokesperson said that the investigation is ongoing. “Following the 2023 cyber incident, the FBI contained the affected network and determined the incident to be an isolated one. The FBI restricted access to the malicious actor and rectified the network,” the spokesperson said in a statement sent by email to TechCrunch.
A source told Reuters that the hacker did not realize they had broken into the FBI until the agents asked them to join a video call where they showed their credentials to the hacker.
Tech
Poppi founder on TikTok, Super Bowl ads, and her return to Shark Tank
For years, venture capitalists have been skeptical of beverage startups, citing thin margins and brutal distribution as reasons most brands never break out. But a new wave of “functional soda” companies has been challenging that assumption, including Poppi, the prebiotic soda brand that grew from a kitchen experiment into a $1.95 billion acquisition by PepsiCo.
On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, is joined by Poppi co-founder Allison Ellsworth to talk about building a beverage startup in a venture world dominated by SaaS and AI. From pitching on Shark Tank while nine months pregnant to going viral on TikTok and buying a last-minute Super Bowl ad, Ellsworth breaks down what it really takes to build a category-defining consumer brand — and what she looks for now that she’s back on Shark Tank as an investor herself.
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
Tech
VC mega-funds are back with General Catalyst, Spark rumored to be raising billions
Following news last month that New York’s hottest venture firm, Thrive, just raised $10 billion for a new fund — its largest ever, double the previous one — another big-name VC firm is attempting to equal that raise. General Catalyst is in talks to raise $10 billion, unnamed sources tell Bloomberg. This firm, which has recast itself as a broader financial services company, raised $8 billion just a couple of years ago in 2024.
Meanwhile, Spark Capital is trying to raise $3 billion, sources tell The Information, which would also be a big boost from its previous funds. And, as TechCrunch just exclusively reported, Founders Fund is about to close a new $6 billion fund, too.
All of this follows Andreessen Horowitz’s $15 billion in new funding announced in January.
Venture firms were already sitting on a record amount of dry powder, meaning money available but not yet invested, at the end of 2025, according to the year-end report by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association. But 2026 is already shaping up to be a year of bigger and more, at least for venture firms with name recognition and enviable portfolios.
The obvious prediction is that VCs have plenty of money to keep fueling seed-stage AI startups with huge initial rounds and valuations. Record-breaking funding rounds for startups (as long as they are AI) will likely continue to be the new normal for 2026.
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Iran-linked hackers launch cyberattack against U.S. medtech company Stryker
