Nurx, the “Uber for birth control,” will allow customers to test themselves for many of the most common sexually transmitted infections within the comforts of their own homes with its new STI home-testing kits.

Nurx, a graduate of Y Combinator, has raised about $42 million in venture capital funding from Kleiner Perkins, Union Square Ventures, Lowercase Capital and others to date. It launched in 2015 to facilitate women’s access to birth control across the U.S. with a HIPAA-compliant web platform and mobile application that delivers contraceptives directly to customers’ doorsteps.

Its latest launch is its first since Varsha Rao replaced Hans Gangeskar, Nurx’s co-founder and CEO since 2014. Rao told TechCrunch in April that the startup realized they needed talent in the C-suite that had experienced fast growth.

In addition to selling birth control, Nurx provides PrEP, the once-daily pill that reduces the risk of getting HIV, and an HPV testing kit direct to consumer.

Nurx says they will facilitate in-person care for patients who test positive for an STI, if necessary, or will work closely with them to determine next steps, including offering oral treatment. Costs for the tests will vary. Each will include a $12 consultation fee, which provides patients with unlimited access to Nurx’s medical team.

Full Control Kit: Gonorrhea & Chlamydia (Throat, Rectal, Urine), Syphilis, Hepatitis C & HIV will cost $75 with health insurance, $220 without health insurance. Healthy Women’s Kit: Gonorrhea & Chlamydia (Throat, Vaginal), Trichomoniasis, Syphilis & HIV will cost $75 with health insurance, $190 without health insurance. Covered with the Basics Kit: Gonorrhea & Chlamydia (Urine), Syphilis, HIV will cost $75 with health insurance, $160 without health insurance.

“Nurx is uniquely positioned to address the STI epidemic by breaking down barriers to testing and providing a convenient and affordable ‘all-in-one’ experience for our patients, from testing to guidance to treatment,” Rao said in a statement.

The company’s latest product launch follows a damning report from The New York Times in April that asserted Nurx, which delivers birth control and other medications directly to consumers, employed unorthodox and downright irresponsible business practices, including reshipping returned medications and attempting to revise medical policy.

Rao was announced as Nurx’s new chief executive officer only one week before the NYT report. After being accused of cutting corners, the company said the irresponsible practices highlighted in the story “were in place for a very limited time, impacted a very limited number of patients, and ended nearly a year ago.”

“The story’s depiction of Nurx does not reflect our policies now, but just as importantly, they do not accurately reflect the full picture of how we operated then,” Nurx wrote in a response to the story.

Visa and Andreessen Horowitz are betting even bigger on cryptocurrency, funding a big round for fellow Facebook Libra Association member Anchorage’s omnimetric blockchain security system. Instead of using passwords that can be stolen, Anchorage requires cryptocurrency withdrawals to be approved by a client’s other employees. Then the company uses both human and AI review of biometrics and more to validate transactions before they’re executed, while offering end-to-end insurance coverage.

This new-age approach to cryptocurrency protection has attracted a $40 million Series B for Anchorage, led by Blockchain Capital and joined by Visa and Andreessen Horowitz. The round adds to Anchorage’s $17 million Series A that Andreessen led just six months ago, demonstrating extraordinary momentum for the security startup.

“As a custodian, our work is focused on building financial plumbing that other companies depend on for their operations to run smoothly. In this regard we have always looked at Visa as a model,” Anchorage co-founder and president Diogo Mónica tells me.

“Visa was ‘fintech’ before the term existed, and has always been on the vanguard of financial infrastructure. Visa’s investment in Anchorage is helpful not only to our company but to our industry, as a validation of the entire ecosystem and a recognition that crypto will play a key role in the future of global finance.”

Cold-storage, where assets are held in computers not connected to the internet, has become a popular method of securing Bitcoin, Ether and other tokens. But the problem is that this can prevent owners from participating in governance of certain cryptocurrency where votes are based on their holdings, or earning dividends. Anchorage tells me it’s purposefully designed to permit this kind of participation, helping clients to get the most out of their assets like capturing returns from staking and inflation, or joining in on-chain governance.

As three of the 28 founding members of the Libra Association that will govern the new Facebook-incubated cryptocurrency, Anchorage, Visa and Andreessen Horowitz will be responsible for ensuring the stablecoin stays secure. While Facebook is building its own custodial wallet called Calibra for users, other Association members and companies hoping to dive into the ecosystem will need ways to protect their Libra stockpiles.

“Libra is exactly the kind of asset that Anchorage was created to hold,” Mónica wrote the day Libra was revealed. “Our custody solution enables online participation with offline assets, so that asset-holders don’t face a trade-off between security and usability.” The company believes that custodians shouldn’t dictate which coins their clients hold, so it’s working to support all types of digital assets. Anchorage tells me that will include support for securing Libra in the future.

You’ve probably already used technology secured by Anchorage’s founders, who engineered Docker’s containers that are used by Microsoft, and Square’s first encrypted card reader. Mónica was at Square when he met his future Anchorage co-founder Nathan McCauley, who’d been working on anti-reverse-engineering tech for the U.S. military. When a company that had lost the password to a $1 million cryptocurrency account asked for their help with security, they recognized the need for a more idiot-proof take on asset protection.

“Anchorage applies the best of modern security engineering for a more advanced approach: we generate and store private keys in secure hardware so they are never exposed at any point in their life cycle, and we eliminate human operations that expose assets to risk,” Mónica says. The startup competes with other crypto custody firms like Bitgo, Ledger, Coinbase and Gemini.

Last time we spoke, Anchorage was cagey about what I could reveal regarding how its transaction validation system worked. With the new funding, it’s feeling a little more secure about its market position and was willing to share more.

Anchorage ditches usernames, passwords, email addresses and phone numbers completely. That way a hacker can’t just dump your coins into their account by stealing your private key or SIM-porting your number to their phone. Instead, clients whitelist devices held by their employees, who use the Anchorage app to submit transactions. You’d propose selling $10 million worth of Bitcoin or transferring it to someone else as payment, and a minimum of two-thirds of your designated co-workers would need to concur to form a quorum that approves the transfer.

But first, Anchorage’s artificial intelligence and human staff would check for any suspicious signals that might indicate a hack in progress. It uses behavioral analysis (do you act like a real human and similar to how you have before), biometric signals (do you look like you) and network signals (is your device what and where it should be) to confirm the transaction is legitimate. The same process goes down if you try to add a new whitelisted device or change who has permission to do what.

The challenge will be scaling security to an ever-broadening range of digital assets, each with their own blockchain quirks and complex smart contracts. Even if Anchorage keeps coins safely in custody, those variables could expose assets to risk while in transit. Now with deeper pockets and the Visa vote of confidence, Anchorage could solve those problems as clients line up.

While most blockchain attention has focused on the cryptocurrencies themselves and the exchanges where you can buy and sell them, a second order of critical infrastructure startups is emerging. Companies like Anchorage could make Bitcoin, Ether, Libra and more not just objects of speculation or the domain of experts, but safely functioning elements of the new world economy.

Richard Birnbaum: When I gave you the example of their cost of goods at 8% of retail, nothing is a secret. If we’re able to buy aged inventory from the stores, depending on the brand, deal and...

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Dataform, a U.K. company started by ex-Googlers that wants to make it easier for businesses to manage their data warehouses, has picked up $2 million in funding. Leading the round is LocalGlobe, with participation from a number of unnamed angel investors. The startup is also an alumni of Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator and graduated in late 2018.

Founded by former Google employees Lewis Hemens and Guillaume-Henri Huon, Dataform has set out to help data-rich companies draw insights from the data stored in their data warehouses. Mining data for insights and business intelligence typically requires a team of data engineers and analysts. Dataform wants to simplify this task and in turn make it faster and cheaper for organisations to take full advantage of their data assets.

“Businesses are generating more and more data that they are now centralising into cloud data warehouses like Google BigQuery, AWS Redshift or Snowflake. [However,] to exploit this data, such as conducting analytics or using BI tools, they need to convert the vast amount of raw data into a list of clean, reliable and up-to-date data sets,” explains Dataform co-founder Guillaume-Henri Huon.

“Data teams don’t have the right tools to manage data in the warehouse efficiently. As a result, they have to spend most of their time building custom infrastructure and making sure their data pipelines work.”

Huon says Dataform solves this by offering a complete toolkit to manage data in data warehouses. Data teams can build new data sets and set them to update automatically every day, or more frequently. The entire process is managed via a single interface and setting up a new data set is said to take as little as five minutes. “On top of this, we have an open-source framework that helps managing data using engineering best practices, including reusable functions, testing and dependency management.

Meanwhile, Dataform says the seed funding will help the company continue to grow both its sales and engineering teams. It will also be used to further develop its product. The startup generates revenue based on a classic SaaS model: typically charging per number of users.

Byju’s, India’s most valuable edtech startup, has received $150 million as it races to expand the reach of its learning app in the country and some international markets.

The unnamed financing round was led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the sovereign wealth fund of the State of Qatar, and included participation from Owl Ventures, a leading investor in education tech startups. This is Owl Venture’s first investment in an Indian startup. A person familiar with the matter said the new round valued Byju’s at $5.75 billion, up from nearly $4 billion last year.

The startup, which has raised about $925 million to date, said it would use the fresh capital to aggressively explore and expand in international markets. The startup has previously said it plans to enter the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

It acquired Osmo, a U.S.-based learning startup that is popular among kids aged between five and 12, for $120 million early this year. Osmo recently unveiled a new product to serve the pre-schoolers’ market.

Byju’s helps all school-going children understand complex subjects through its app where tutors use real-life objects such as pizza and cake. It also prepares students who are pursuing undergraduate and graduate-level courses. Over the years, Byju’s has invested in tweaking the English accents in its app and adapted to different education systems. It has amassed more than 35 million registered users, about 2.4 million of which are paid customers.

“Investment from prominent sovereign and pension funds validates our strong business fundamentals. Indian ed-tech firms attracting interest from eminent investors demonstrates that India is pioneering the digital learning space globally,” Byju Raveendran, founder and CEO of Byju’s, said in a statement.

In India, Byju’s competes with a handful of players, including Bangalore-based Unacademy, which is aimed at students who are preparing for graduation-level courses. It raised $50 million last month.

India has the largest population in the world in the age bracket of five to 24 years. A report by KPMG and Google in 2017 estimated that the country’s online education market would grow to $1.96 billion of sales by 2021.

Byju’s generated around $205 million in revenue in the fiscal year that ended in March. It plans to increase that figure to more than $430 million this year. Raveendran has stated that the startup intends to go public in the next two to three years.

OPay, an Africa-focused mobile payments startup founded by Norwegian browser company Opera, has raised $50 million in funding.

Lead investors include Sequoia China, IDG Capital and Source Code Capital. Opera also joined the round in the payments venture it created.

OPay will use the capital (which wasn’t given a stage designation) primarily to grow its digital finance business in Nigeria — Africa’s most populous nation and largest economy.

OPay will also support Opera’s growing commercial network in Nigeria, which includes motorcycle ride-hail app ORide and OFood delivery service.

Opera founded OPay in 2018 on the popularity of its internet search engine. Opera’s web-browser has ranked No. 2 in usage in Africa, after Chrome, the last four years.

On the payments side, OPay in Nigeria has scaled to 40,000 active agents and $5 million in daily transaction volume.

The $50 million investment in OPay is more than just another big round in Africa. It has significance for the continent’s tech ecosystem on multiple levels.

To start, OPay’s raise tracks greater influence in African tech from China — whose engagement with African startups has been light compared to China’s deal-making on infrastructure and commodities. OPay founder Opera was acquired in 2016 for $600 million by a consortium of Chinese investors, led by current Opera CEO Yahui Zhou.

The majority of the investment for OPay’s raise comes from Chinese funds and sources, including Source Code Capital, Sequoia China and GSR Ventures. There’s not a lot of statistical data on the value of Chinese VC investment in Africa, but a large portion of $50 million to a fintech venture stands out.

OPay’s VC haul also has significance vis-à-vis digital-finance in Nigeria. In tandem with other trends, it could support the shift of Nigeria surpassing Kenya as Africa’s digital payments leader. For years Kenya has outpaced Nigeria in P2P digital payments volumes and digital financial inclusion, largely due to the rapid adoption of mobile-money products, such as Safaricom’s M-Pesa.

Some of this is due in part to Nigeria’s Central Bank limiting the ability of non-banks (including telcos) to offer mobile payment services. The CBN eased many of those restrictions earlier this year. This opens the door for mobile operators like MTN, with the largest phone network in Nigeria, to offer mobile-money products. In addition to fintech regulatory improvements, there’s been a gradual increase in VC flowing to Nigerian payment ventures.

The country’s leading digital payment company, Paga, raised $10 million in 2018 to further expand its customer base that now tallies 13 million. OPay’s $50 million-backed commitment to grow mobile money in Nigeria should provide another big boost to digital-finance adoption across the country’s 190 million people.

And not to be overlooked is how OPay’s capital raise moves Opera toward becoming a multi-service commercial internet platform in Africa. Part of the $50 million investment includes diversifying country and product offerings. “Geographic expansion of OPay and other services is a key part of our plans,” Opera CEO Yahui Zhou told TechCrunch via email.

This could place OPay and its Opera-supported suite of products on a competitive footing with other ride-hail, food delivery and payments startups across the continent. It also could mean competition between Opera and Africa’s largest multi-service internet company, e-commerce unicorn Jumia.  

When it comes to financial services in emerging markets, remittances — people sending money to each other across international borders, often not to established bank accounts — continues to be one of the biggest, with the World Bank estimating that $529 billion was sent in and out of lower-income countries in 2018, up 9% over 2017. And today, Remitly, one of the bigger startups providing these services, is announcing that it has raised $220 million in funding to ride that wave.

CEO and founder Matt Oppenheimer said in an interview that the startup will use the money both to help it continue to keep growing that money transfer business and to catch new opportunities as they appear, in the form of new financial services for the immigrants and migrants that make up the majority of its customer base.

The money is coming in the form of equity and debt, specifically a $135 million Series E led by Generation Investment Management, and $85 million in debt from Barclays, Bridge Bank, Goldman Sachs and Silicon Valley Bank. Owl Rock Capital, Princeville Global, Prudential Financial, Schroder & Co Bank AG and Top Tier Capital Partners; and previous investors DN Capital, Naspers’ PayU and Stripes Group all also participated in the equity round.

Oppenheimer said the equity will be used to expand its remittance business but mainly to invest in that new wave of services it’s eyeing up. The debt, meanwhile, is to fuel the growth of its “express” fast-send option. “Today we can post funds, but we can also pre-fund for express transfers, and we wanted to have the capacity and the line of credit to be able to fund the pre-funding part, which is growing rapidly,” he said of the debt portion of the financing.

With the equity portion, Remitly’s valuation is now close to $1 billion (specifically between $950 million and $1 billion), sources close to the company say. As a point of comparison, that puts Remitly roughly on par with World Remit, another big player in remittances for emerging markets that raised $175 million in June also at around a $900 million valuation. (TransferWise, which focuses on “banked” accounts and mostly mature markets, earlier this year closed funding that valued it at $3.5 billion.)

It’s the biggest round of funding yet for the startup, and for some context, it was valued at just $230 million when it last disclosed the number. (Remitly did not disclose valuation in its most recent funding before this one, a $115 million round led by Naspers that finally closed in the beginning of 2018.)

Today, Remitly’s services cover 16 “send” (originating) and 44 “receive” countries, covering a total of some 700 “corridors” where the company specialises in providing an easy way — either online or by phone — for individuals to send money, with the service localised on the receiving end to come in formats that are most popular in each specific market.

The company said that average annual revenue growth has been at around 100% each year for the past three. Oppenheimer — who coincidentally used to be an executive for one of its new backers, Barclays — wouldn’t break out which markets were growing faster than the others, but that figure includes both Remitly’s more mature corridors as well as those that it’s added in recent years.

The plan for diversification is not surprising. The remittance market is extremely fragmented and — with the rise of smartphones that have untethered users from physical retail locations — getting even more so, with incumbents like Western Union accounting for less than 20% of the market today, bigger startups like TransferWise also looking like it’s also increasingly eyeing emerging markets as well and completely new concepts like using the blockchain to transfer money also potentially disrupting the disruptors.

That means pricing on money transfers for a section of that market that is already price-sensitive — immigrants and migrants — is very competitive, which in turn means a hit on remittance companies’ margins. Remitly itself has varying rates for different markets based on demand: sending money for example to Kenya from the U.K. currently costs nothing if you’re using MPESA accounts (other corridors obviously have higher costs than this).

Oppenheimer wouldn’t specify what kinds of other financial services it’s considering until they are closer to getting launched.

“We’re still working on that, but you can imagine the immigrant or migrant journey and the challenges that they face as they move to a new country,” he said. “It can have a painful impact not having a credit history: how do you get a loan, or set up a bank account? That is the strategic angle… The idea is to transform the lives of immigrants and their families.”

That mindset has been what helped Remitly raise this recent round. Generation — the investment firm co-founded by Al Gore — has made it a mission to put its money into sustainability. In its case, this means not only planet health but people health, in the form of services that improve their lives. Financial services for emerging markets is an important area for it in that regard.

Lucia Rigo, a director in growth equity at Generation who is joining Remitly’s board with this round, said that Generation had been looking at the remittance market for a while and had honed in on Remitly as a key company within it that ticked all the right boxes in terms of its mission, its journey so far, its numbers and, most importantly, its prospects.

“Foreign-born or foreign-resident populations in developed markets is a segment that is just not catered for well,” she said in an interview. “There are a lot of digital means for sending money today, which is definitely driving down the cost of doing so, but we also think that digital penetration is just at its early stages, and new markets will drive differentiation and that will expand the customer base, and Remitly’s services.”

Our 14th Annual TechCrunch Summer Party is a mere two weeks away, and we’re serving up a fresh new batch of tickets to this popular Silicon Valley tradition. Jump on this opportunity, folks, because our previous releases sold out in a flash — and these babies won’t last long, either. Buy your ticket today.

Our summer soiree takes place on July 25 at Park Chalet, San Francisco’s coastal beer garden. Picture it: A cold brew, an ocean view, tasty food and relaxed conversations with other amazing members of the early-startup tech community.

TechCrunch parties have a reputation as a place where startup magic happens. And there will be plenty of magical opportunity afoot this year as heavy-hitter VCs from Merus Capital, August Capital, Battery Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, Data Collective, General Catalyst and Uncork Capital join the party.

There’s more than one way to make magic at our summer fete. If you’re serious about catching the eye of these major VCs, consider buying a Startup Demo Package, which includes four attendee tickets.

Fun fact: Box founders Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith met one of their first investors, DFJ, at a party hosted by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. It’s one of our favorite success stories.

Check out the party details:

When: July 25 from 5:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.Where: Park Chalet in San FranciscoHow much: $95Startup Demo Package: $2,000

No TechCrunch party is complete without a chance to win great door prizes, including TechCrunch swag, Amazon Echos and tickets to Disrupt San Francisco 2019.

Buy your ticket today and enjoy a convivial evening of connection and community in a beautiful setting. Opportunity happens, and it’s waiting for you at the TechCrunch Summer Party.

Pro Tip: If you miss out this time, sign up here and we’ll let you know when we release the next group of tickets.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at the TechCrunch 14th Annual Summer Party? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

Fintech startup Bunq is announcing a handful of new features today, such as a way to track group expenses without creating a joint account, a web app and better Siri integration.

If you usually track vacation expenses and group expenses from your phone, chances are you’ve been using two different products — a mobile app like Splitwise to track group expenses with your friends, and a peer-to-peer payment app to settle up balances.

Bunq is essentially bundling these two features with Slice Groups for owners of the Bunq Travel Card. Given that the Bunq app already lists all your transactions, adding transactions to a group is easier than with your average group payment tracking app.

After adding other people to your Slice Group, each person can add expenses to the group. You get a list of your most recent Bunq transactions and you can add them to a group. You also can add manual transactions in case you paid for something using cash, for instance.

This is just a group accounting feature. When you add a transaction to a Slice Group, your money remains in your account. But you can see who has a positive balance and who has a negative balance.

When you settle up a group, people who owe money get a push notification. They can then tap on the notification and send money from their Bunq account to your friends’ Bunq accounts.

This feature will work particularly well for groups of people who all use the Bunq Travel Card. But it doesn’t fundamentally change how you manage your money with groups.

Bunq now has two tiers of users. Free users get a travel card with an account that they can top up. Paid users get a full-fledged bank account with banking information.

Multiple paid users can already create joint accounts with their roommates or partner. You can then associate your Bunq card with a joint account and spend money from that joint account directly.

So if you have a Bunq Travel Card, Slice Groups are for you. If you have a Bunq bank account, joint accounts are for you.

Revolut doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, either, as you can only split individual card transactions with other users. It could take a while to settle all transactions after a long vacation. Revolut also lets you create Group Vaults. Those are sub-accounts to put some money aside and invite other people to contribute. But only the admin can withdraw and spend money from those vaults.

N26 has promised Shared Spaces so that you can create sub-accounts and share them with other people. But the feature isn’t live yet.

Lydia’s take on group expenses works more like Bunq’s joint accounts. You can create sub-accounts and share those accounts with other people. Everyone can then top up that account and attach a payment method, such as a payment card or a virtual card in Apple Pay or Google Pay. You also can move expenses from one sub-account to another. When you’re back from vacation, you can associate your card with your personal Lydia account again.

In addition to Slice Groups, Bunq is launching a web interface to access your bank account. It works a bit like WhatsApp’s web app. You scan a QR code with your phone and you can then control the mobile app from a desktop web browser.

Bunq should also work better with Siri. You can now send money using your voice or change card settings. Finally, the startup has also made improvements to its business accounts with a few new features. For instance, you can now automatically put money aside to pay back VAT later down the road.

Frederic Moll has to be one of the most successful inventors and entrepreneurs who is not yet a household name.

Moll’s successes include the 22-year-old, publicly traded Intuitive Surgical, a robotic surgical systems manufacturer now worth around $61.4 billion, and Hansen Medical, a company that developed tools to manipulate catheters.

Most recently, the serial medical device entrepreneur sold Auris, a manufacturer of advanced surgical robots that was sold earlier this year to Johnson & Johnson in a $3.4 billion deal that also holds the possibility of an additional $2.35 billion in payouts.

More significant than the money, though, are the changes that technologies like Auris presage for the medical profession.

“With Auris, we realized there aren’t going to be enough surgeons to address the needs of the additional 5 billion people who are going to be on earth, and everyone deserves equally good healthcare, and you’ve got to find a way to deliver that with technology. So, what is the equivalent of cell phones for surgery?” said Ajay Royan, the co-founder of Mithril Capital and an investor in the company, in an interview with Fortune earlier this year. “It sounds crazy, but what is the iPhone of surgery, where you can deliver an insanely sophisticated platform but be able to operate it in a very intuitive and simple fashion? That was the thesis behind Auris; it was not an instrument that we were funding, we were funding a platform and a way of training people in surgery.”

Royan, who co-founded Mithril Capital with Peter Thiel back in 2014, saw in Auris a startup that epitomized his firm’s approach to investments. It led Mithril to back the company and paved the way for what looks like a $700 million windfall for the fund.

Mithril closed its second fund with $850 million roughly two years ago and has been methodically investing in a wide range of companies that include the intelligence data mining company Palantir, along with big swings in robotics companies around the world.

Mithril invested $140 million into a Singapore and Gurugram-based startup, GreyOrange, and the Miami-based dental surgical robotics company, Neocis.

Expect to hear updates on investment in robotics, disruptions in the medical device world and much, much more at Disrupt SF in October when these two titans take the stage.

Disrupt SF runs October 2 – October 4 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Tickets are available here.

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HQ Trivia’s troubles continue after a failed mutiny to oust the CEO, a 92% decline in downloads since versus a year ago, and layoffs of 20% of its staff last week. Now TechCrunch has learned HQ has failed to install a new CEO after months of searching. Meanwhile, users continue to complain about delays for payouts of their prizes from the live mobile trivia game, and about being booted from the game for no reason while on the final question.

Notably, Jeopardy winner Alex Jacob claims he hasn’t been paid the $20,000 he won on HQ Trivia on June 10th. This could shake players faith in HQ and erode their incentive to compete.

An HQ Trivia representative tells TechCrunch that the game has paid out $6.25 million to date and that 99% of players have been eligible to cash out within 48 hours of winning, but some winners may have to wait up to 90 days for it to ensure they didn’t break the rules to win. Given Jacob’s large jackpot, it’s possible the delay could be due to the company investigating to ensure he won fairly, though he’s clearly skilled at trivia given he won Jeopardy’s Tournament Of Champions in 2015. Jacob did not respond to requests for interview.

“We strive to make a game that is fair and fun for all players. As such, we have a rigorous process of reviewing winners for eligibility to receive cash prizes. Infrequently, we disqualify players for violating HQ‘s Terms of Service and Contest Rules” HQ Trivia’s press alias anonymously reponded to our request for comment. “It may take some eligible winners up to 90 days to receive cash prizes, however 99% of players have been able to cash out within 48 hours of winning a game and we have paid out a total of $6,252,634.58 USD to winners since launch.”

It seems that HQ’s internal problems are now metastasizing into public issues. Its team being short-staffed and distracted by weak morale could lengthen payout delays, which make players worry if they’ll ever get their cash. When they share those sentiments to social media, it could discourage others from playing. That, combined with concerns that bots and cheaters are winning the games, splitting the jackpots into tiny fractions so legitimate winners get less, has hurt the perception of HQ as a game where the smartest can win big.

Back in April, TechCrunch reported that 20 of HQ’s 35 staffers were preparing a petition to the board to remove CEO and co-founder Rus Yusupov for mismanagement. Yusupov caught wind of the plot and fired two of the leaders of the movement. However, HQ’s board decided it would bring in a new CEO. Board member and Tinder CEO Elie Seidman told TechCrunch that Yusupov had accepted he would be replaced by someone with the ability fire him and that a CEO search was ongoing. The startup’s lead investor Lightspeed has pledged to provide 18 months of funding once a new CEO was hired.

However, multiple sources tell TechCrunch that a new CEO has yet to be installed. One source tells me that management had promised a new CEO by the beginning of August, but that Yusupov had stalled the process seemingly to remain in power. HQ Trivia, Yusupov, and Seidman did not respond for requests for comment regarding the CEO search.

When asked about morale at the company, a source familiar with HQ’s internal situation told me “It’s terrible.” Yusupov is said to continue to be tough to work with, making decisions without full buy-in from the rest of the company. A substantial portion of the team was allegedly unaware of plans to launch a $9.99 subscription tier for HQ’s second game HQ Words until the company tweeted out the announcement.

Hopefully HQ Trivia can find a new captain to steer this ship back into smoother waters. The game has hundreds of thousands of players and many more with fond memories of competing. There’s still hope if it can evolve the product to give new users a taste of gameplay without waiting for the next scheduled match, find new revenue in expanded brand partnerships, fight off the bots and cheaters, and get everyone paid promptly. Perhaps there’s room for television tie-ins to bring HQ to a wider audience.

But before the startup can keep quizzing the world, HQ Trivia must endure its internal tests of resolve and find a champ to lead it.

SpaceX has been awarded a new contract by NASA to launch the agency’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE. This research spacecraft will study polarized light from sources including neutron stars, pulsar wind nebulae and supermassive black holes, and provide much more imaging than existing space-based observation resources.

The mission will help scientists in the study of magnetars (a specific type of neutron star with especially powerful magnetic fields), black holes and “Pulsar Wind Nebulae,” which are nebula that are found within the remains of supernova.

SpaceX will launch this IXPE mission aboard a flight-proven Falcon 9, and the total cost for the contract is around $50.3 million. The launch will take place in April 2021 per current plans, taking off from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“SpaceX is honored that NASA continues to place its trust in our proven launch vehicles to deliver important science payloads to orbit,” said SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell in a statement. “IXPE will serve as SpaceX’s sixth contracted mission under NASA’s LSP, two of which were successfully launched in 2016 and 2018, increasing the agency’s scientific observational capabilities.”

This is just one of a number of upcoming launches SpaceX is contracted to perform for NASA, including the commercial resupply missions it regularly performs for the International Space Station.

Hey startup founders — don’t miss your opportunity to receive the VIP treatment and showcase your early-stage startup at Disrupt San Francisco 2019. Apply to be a TC Top Pick and exhibit in Startup Alley for free. But get moving and fill out the application before the July 19 deadline. It’s now o’clock, people.

Applying is simple, but earning a TC Top Pick designation is anything but. Here’s what you need to know. Qualifying startups must fall into one of these tech categories: AI/Machine Learning, Biotech/Healthtech, Blockchain, Fintech, Mobility, Privacy/Security, Retail/E-commerce, Robotics/IoT/Hardware, SaaS and Social Impact/Education.

After TechCrunch editors thoroughly review all qualified applications, they’ll select up to five startups to represent each category. If you make the grade, you’ll get a free Startup Alley Exhibition Package good for one full day of exhibiting in Startup Alley.

TC Top Pick designees also receive three Founder passes and access to CrunchMatch, our automated investor-to-startup matching platform that simplifies the networking process. Find the people you want to meet based on mutual business goals, interests and criteria. You’ll also have access to the complete Disrupt SF 2019 press list and invitations to VIP events at Disrupt SF — like the investor reception.

TC Top Picks exhibit in a dedicated space within Startup Alley, and they benefit from our pre-conference marketing. Everyone wants to meet the TC Top Picks, and that adds up to a boatload of influential media and investor attention.

Caleb John, co-founder of Cedar Robotics, had this to say about his Top Pick experience at Disrupt SF 2018:

“Being named a TC Top Pick validated our startup and gave us credibility. We got to demo our technology in front of hundreds of people. It opened doors to investors, customers and vendors. It helped our business gain traction. Overall, I’d say it’s one of the coolest things we’ve ever done.”

Here’s another perk that provides long-lasting exposure. A TechCrunch editor will interview each Top Pick — live on the Showcase Stage in Startup Alley. We’ll record the interviews and promote them across our social media platforms. That’s a gift that keeps on giving, according to Vadim Rogovskiy, CEO and co-founder of 3DLOOK:

“Our Showcase Stage interview video received more than 150,000 collective views, and it helped drive significant traffic to our website. We still use the video — and our Top Pick status — whenever we meet with VCs and potential enterprise clients.”

So many reasons to apply to be a TC Top Pick — and so little time. The application deadline is July 19. Don’t miss this opportunity to take your startup on a whole new trajectory at Disrupt San Francisco 2019. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

Pro Tip: If you missed the deadline to compete in the Startup Battlefield, you have one last shot: Buy a demo table and exhibit in Startup Alley at Disrupt SF for a chance to win a Wild Card entry to Startup Battlefield.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt San Francisco 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.