Didi gets hit by Chinese government, and Pleo raises $150M

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is Equity Monday Tuesday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.

What a busy weekend we missed while mostly hearing distant explosions and hugging our dogs close. Here’s a sampling of what we tried to recap on the show:

• Didi vs. China: The Chinese government’s crackdown on Didi continued over the weekend, after announcing a cybersecurity review of the company on Friday. That decision blocked new user signups. Now Didi has had its app removed from pertinent app marketplaces. That’s going to hit revenue. Shares of the company are sharply lower in pre-marketing trading here in the United States. The company went public last week.
• Twitter vs. India: India’s attempts to cow Twitter into not enacting its own content moderation policies continues. Now India has taken away legal protections from the well-known American company. It’s not great news for India’s growing technology sector, or the investors backing the upstarts.
• Funding rounds: Lots of companies raised money, including Byrd, with $19 million in a Series B, Pleo with a huge $150 million unicorn round, and Obviously AI, which just extended its Seed round.

It’s going to be a busy week! Chat tomorrow.

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!

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