Normally, Dawn Myers wears her hair up in a big old afro, and anyone with an afro can attest that wash days — the routine of washing and styling textured hair — are often tedious. They take a lot of detangling, product, styling, and, well, time. 

“I was watching ‘Shark Tank,’ and there was another curly girl idea,” she recalled of a day around eight years ago, when a pitch for a hair product aired. She started thinking about all the hair tools on the market, like blow dryers and curling irons, “things that straighten and change the chemistry of our naturally curly hair,” she told TechCrunch, adding that it takes around an hour and 20 minutes to wash and style her own hair.

None of those tools help with that, and for Myers, it highlighted a gap that has always existed in the beauty hardware space — a lack of tooling for textured hair. It’s a space that’s complex, expensive, and just overlooked. 

“If you think back to slavery, we were mandated to cover our hair. That’s where do-rags come from. You had to cover your hair. Why? Because our hair was seen as ugly and unkempt and unacceptable,” she said. Later came hot combs, chemical relaxers, and flat irons, all of which straighten textured hair. “It’s only been the past 15 years or so where women of color and Black women in particular and, quite frankly, white women as well have really felt comfortable exposing their naturally curly hair and really just embracing it.” 

Soon after that episode aired, she whipped out a legal pad and sketched out a business idea, then went to Ace Hardware and CVS and put together a “Frankenstein-looking prototype.”

Her idea eventually became the company Richualist, which is known for its product Mint, a hair tool that helps detangle, condition, gel, and style in a single stroke using refillable product pods. It even has warming technology to gently heat the product before it’s applied. 

“We get that styling time down to about seven to 10 minutes,” she said. “It’s a massive game changer for the customer really stressed out by wash day.” She said her product, which also comes in travel size, helps make hair a bit healthier, reducing shedding and breakage by up to 70% since people no longer need to tug endlessly on their strands as they wash and style.

She built it with the materials science company Dow, after an early prototype caught the company’s attention during a startup accelerator program. “It just so happens that Dow had identified this white space recently as well, and they were starting a textured hair care unit,” she said. “So they ended up collaborating with us and giving us a lot of engineering help and manufacturing guidance.” 

Even though she eventually became one of the first 100 Black women to raise more than $1 million in venture funding, the early days were rough. “It’s really impossible to get hardware funded,” she continued. “It’s even more impossible to get it funded when we’re talking about such a niche problem.” 

She recalled the early meetings with executives in the beauty industry. “There are no people who look like me in those R&D suites.” In fact, she said, when she described wash days, “these people didn’t know what a wash day was. They didn’t understand that there’s this whole process that their customers have to go through.” She would tell them how painful and arduous the process is. “And the powers that be, up until this point, did not know,” she continued. “Even the bonds in our hair are totally different than other technology types. We really do need bespoke technology.” 

Myers sold her home and liquidated her 401(k) retirement account to fund the initial development of this product. “That was a crazy bet, but it paid off,” she said. “We were able to get about $1.4 million in the door to commercialize the product and just validate it.” Overall, it took about five years of development to get the product to “a place where it made sense to the customer,” she said, adding that her team also had to conduct their own research in the space since what they needed — like how much product the average person with textured hair uses — didn’t yet exist.

Then, in 2022, just as she was about to expand and go to market, she was diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer. “We ended up closing our round while I was still going through treatment,” she recalled, saying the round took “forever” to close. She remembers sitting in the chemo chair at Johns Hopkins, on her laptop, trying to close deals. She applied to Shark Tank in 2023 and appeared on the show later that year, though the episode aired in 2024. “I was still wearing a binder around my abdomen [a compression wrap] under the dress I wore for my ‘Shark Tank’ experience,” she said.

She ended up nabbing a deal from investor Mark Cuban and serial entrepreneur Emma Grede, which helped her formally launch the product. Grede then helped it expand into Ulta’s online website earlier this year. 

“We’re actually about to market ourselves as sold out,” she said, adding that the company is mapping out ways to expand further.

Her company was picked as one of TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200 startups this year, earning a spot at TechCrunch Disrupt, the publication’s annual startup conference, which kicks off this Tuesday.

When asked how she first heard about Disrupt, she laughed. “I mean, who doesn’t know about Disrupt?” She said she’s bracing herself, as an introvert, for all the people she will meet and conversations she will have.

“But what I am most excited for is textured hair to be sitting on the stage with some of the most sophisticated tech in the space.”

Sepsis, an acute inflammation triggered by infection, is a leading cause of childhood mortality, claiming roughly 3 million children under the age of five annually.

Efferon, a startup selected as one of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026’s Startup Battlefield 200, is on a mission to drastically lower that number.

The company has developed a medical device that it says lowers organ failure rates and significantly accelerates recovery in children.

When standard treatments like antibiotics cannot stop the immune system’s overreaction, a patient’s blood must be filtered to remove deadly toxins. That is where Efferon’s devices, of absorbers of dangerous cytokines and toxins, step in to make a critical difference.

Dima Romashin, Efferon’s co-founder and CEO, compares what happens in the body during sepsis to a fire, where an immune response overwhelms the body rapidly. “In a fire, there are two things: the flame itself and smoke that it produces,” he told TechCrunch.

In sepsis, endotoxins are the flames and cytokines are the smoke. Efferon, unlike other devices on the market, has developed a mechanism that can absorb both at once, according to Romashin.

Although Efferon makes absorbers for adults, Efferon NEO, its pediatric device developed specifically for young kids, is proving especially effective. Since children have a significantly lower circulating blood volume, they require medical devices engineered specifically for their physiology, according to Romashin.

In April, Efferon NEO received a CE mark, Europe’s equivalent to FDA approval, making it the first multimodal blood purification device specifically engineered for pediatric sepsis.

Efferon NEO is used in intensive care units across 30 countries, including European hospitals, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand. The company is now preparing to file for FDA approval and is on track to hit $2 million in annualized revenue by the end of 2026.

The startup’s technology was originally developed by scientists at Moscow State University, including co-founder Ivan Bessonov. Recognizing its potential, Romashin, a serial entrepreneur, stepped in earlier this year as CEO to help commercialize it.

Although Romashin admits that Efferon isn’t growing at the breakneck pace of today’s AI startups, true success for the company is measured by something else entirely: every child who gets to go home.

Earlier this year, the streaming and entertainment industry witnessed one of its most high-stakes megadeals ever, stunning industry observers. Not only is it historic in its size, but it is also predicted to disrupt Hollywood and the media business as we know it. 

After years of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) struggling under the weight of billions of dollars in debt, compounded by declining cable viewership and fierce competition from streaming platforms, the company has been considering major strategic changes, including selling its entertainment assets to one of its rivals.

Several major players saw the potential in acquiring the media giant, and in December, Netflix announced it would acquire WBD’s studios and streaming for $82.7 billion.

But in a surprise eleventh-hour move in late February, the David Ellison-run Paramount became the winner of this bidding war, offering $111 billion to acquire all of WBD’s assets, including its studios, HBO, streaming platforms, games, and TV networks such as CNN and HGTV. Paramount was recently acquired by Ellison with significant support from his father, Larry Ellison — the Oracle chairman, world’s sixth-richest person, and major Trump donor.

Paramount’s offer was approved by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in June. A federal judge then paused the deal after a lawsuit was filed on July 13 by a coalition of 12 state attorneys general. However, a judge approved it in late September, with the acquisition finally official as of October 6.

Let’s break down exactly what happened and what could come next. 

What has happened so far?

​This all started back in October 2025 when Warner Bros. Discovery revealed it was exploring a potential sale after receiving unsolicited interest from several major players in the industry.

​The bidding process quickly became competitive, and Paramount and Comcast emerged as serious contenders, with Paramount initially viewed as the frontrunner. 

However, WBD’s board eventually determined that an offer from the streaming giant Netflix was the most attractive. Netflix offered $82.7 billion for just Warner’s film, television, and streaming assets.

Thus began the bidding war. Paramount believed its bid of approximately $108 billion for all of Warner’s assets was superior to Netflix’s offer that focused on just the studios and streaming. To sweeten its deal, Netflix amended its agreement in January to an all-cash offer at $27.75 per share of Warner Bros. Discovery, further reassuring investors and paving the way for the deal to proceed.

​Paramount persisted in its attempts to acquire WBD. Still, the Warner board repeatedly rejected its offers, citing concerns about Paramount’s heavy debt load and the increased risk associated with its proposal, including concern over the suite of investors bankrolling Paramount’s bid, which includes Saudi, Qatari, and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds. The board noted that Paramount’s offer would have left the combined company burdened with $87 billion in debt, a risk they were unwilling to take at the time.

In January, Paramount filed a lawsuit seeking more information about the Netflix deal. A month later, the company sought to sweeten its deal by announcing it would offer a $0.25 per share “ticking fee” to WBD shareholders for each quarter the deal fails to close by December 31, 2026. It also said it would pay the $2.8 billion breakup fee if Warner backs out of its deal with Netflix.

Then, in a final attempt to secure a deal, Paramount increased its offer to $31 per share in February. This prompted the WBD board to prolong discussions with Paramount regarding a potential agreement, considering it as a superior offer. Netflix declined to increase its bid and withdrew from the negotiations.

“The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval,” Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said in a statement on February 26. “However, we’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.”

In addition to the billions Paramount already holds in debt, the company is also set to assume the approximately $33 billion in debt Warner Bros. Discovery holds under the agreement. The deal will be backed by a $54 billion debt commitment from Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Citi, and Apollo Global Management, as well as $45.7 billion in equity from Larry Ellison.

Regulatory hurdles and other concerns

In addition to the assumption of substantial debt posing a significant financial burden, Paramount faced several other hurdles in its deal with WBD. 

For one, Ellison has warned about significant job reductions that are expected in the near future. There have already been widespread concerns among critics about potential job losses and lower wages.

Ellison is also a controversial figure in the industry, and his ownership of CBS News has been seen as sympathetic and supportive of the administration of Donald Trump, of whom his father, Larry Ellison, is a major donor. Under Ellison’s ownership of Paramount, reporting critical of the administration has been shelved or received increased scrutiny from Ellison or his appointed head of CBS News, the conservative provocateur Bari Weiss.

This has led to some concern among employees at Warner-owned CNN. Trump has personally sought concessions from news divisions critical of him, including a $16 million settlement from CBS, before his FCC would approve the Ellison takeover of Paramount. Before Netflix bowed out of the deal, Trump pressured the company to fire the former Biden White House official Susan Rice from its board. He has publicly stated his intentions to bring CNN to heel under new owners.

Regulatory scrutiny was another hurdle. Such a large-scale merger attracted attention from lawmakers.

For instance, California attorney general Rob Bonta said in a statement on February 26 that “these two Hollywood titans have not cleared regulatory scrutiny — the California Department of Justice has an open investigation, and we intend to be vigorous in our review.”

A day before Netflix backed out, a coalition of 11 state attorneys general urged the U.S. Department of Justice to review the merger under concerns it will stifle competition and increase subscription prices. This comes months after U.S. senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Richard Blumenthal voiced their concerns to the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, warning that such a massive merger could have serious consequences for consumers and the industry at large. The senators argue that the merger could give the new media giant excessive market power, enabling it to raise prices for consumers and stifle competition.

Despite the DOJ approving the deal in June, a coalition of 12 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit on July 13 to block the merger. The suit argues it would lessen competition and harm movie theaters, cable distributors, and viewers. The coalition is led by Bonta, with Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington also joining. 

In response, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a 14-day pause.

What now?

As of October 6, Paramount and Warner Bros. has officially been renamed Skydance, and the new combined corporation will have annual revenue of almost $70 billion.

In terms of its streaming services— Paramount+, HBO Max, and Discovery+,— those are all set to be combined eventually.