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Happy Thursday, landlubbers and salty sea dogs!

We’ve got some fun updates from the events team — Lauren S announced the TechCrunch Early Stage Audience Choice winners. And if you get all starry-eyed and bushy-tailed at the possibility of being on the TechCrunch Disrupt stage for our annual Battlefield, you’re hella in luck — Neesha just announced that applications are open for the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200! — Christine and Haje

While most VCs will tell you they had no problem raising their newest fund, Volition co-founder Larry Cheng — an alum of Bessemer Venture Partners, Battery Partners and Fidelity Ventures — says that wasn’t his experience when trying to raise the firm’s latest vehicle. “All of the LPs felt more constrained; we could feel it,” reports Connie.

The cloud is growing expensive. More than half of companies say that their spending on public cloud apps will increase in 2023 while 56% expect their public cloud infrastructure services spending will go up this year. ProsperOps raises $72 million to help, Kyle reports.

And we have five more for you:

Seafaring industries like fishing and oil exploration are inherently extractive, but technological advances and increased environmental awareness have ushered in a new era.

“Founders and investors have started to look for opportunities to conserve, and even enhance, the ocean’s resources rather than exploit them,” reports Tim De Chant.

He interviewed seven investors to examine some of the parallels between climate tech and ocean conservation tech and learn more about the opportunities they’re diving for:

Three more from the TC+ team:

TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!

Did you know that the average household subscribes to five streaming services per month? No doubt this can quickly add up. Netflix has read the writing on the wall and lowered its prices in over 100 territories across Africa, Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific in efforts to keep subscribers…subscribing, Lauren writes.

Developers of decentralized apps have a new friend in Coinbase, which launched Base, an Ethereum-focused layer to aid in development of the apps on the blockchain. Jacquelyn has more.

And we have five more for you:

Source @TechCrunch