TechCrunch Startup News
3,836 episodes — Page 5 of 77
Is Jeff Bezos returning to the trenches with a new AI startup? Also, Bone AI raises $12M to challenge Asia’s defense giants with AI-powered robotics
Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos seems to be getting his hands dirty once again: the billionaire is partly backing a new AI startup called Project Prometheus that has raised $6.2 billion in funding, and will take on duties as co-chief executive. Plus, Bone AI, a South Korean startup, is combining AI and manufacturing to build next-gen defense robotics and challenge the region’s industry giants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Milestone raises $10M to make sure AI rhymes with ROI
Israeli startup Milestone raised a $10 million seed funding round to correlate AI tool usage with engineering metrics, including code quality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Exowatt wants to power AI data centers with billions of hot rocks
The solar-thermal startup wants to deliver electricity for as little as one cent per kWh. But first it has to scale production to 1 million units per year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
VCs abandon old rules for a ‘funky time’ of investing in AI startups
The goalposts are moving for AI startups when it comes to growth, product features and just about everything else. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI data startup WisdomAI has raised another $50M, led by Kleiner, Nvidia
WisdomAI is offering AI-driven data analytics that can answer business questions from structured, unstructured, and even “dirty” data, meaning data not cleaned of typos or errors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Teradar raises $150M for a sensor it says beats lidar and radar
Teradar's sensor uses the terahertz part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and combines the best traits of radar and lidar sensors without some of the drawbacks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How founders can prepare for their late-stage fundraises from the start
Startups should start forging connections with late-stage investors while they are still at the early stages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
6sense founder Amanda Kahlow raises $30 million for new human-replacement AI sales startup 1mind
Amanda Kahlow has been quietly been back in sales and marketing tech for about a year with agentic startup 1Mind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Knicks player Miles McBride launches Mmotion, a location-sharing friendship app, also, Scribe hits $1.3B valuation as it moves to show where AI will actually pay off
Mmotion is a new friendship app that combines elements of location sharing with social discovery features to find nearby users with shared interests. Also, Scribe Optimize is the startup's next major offering to help organizations identify where AI will be most useful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How startups can lure good talent fairly without big tech bank accounts
Three industry insiders walk through how startups can set up an employee equity strategy that remains fair as a company grows. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How one founder plans to save cities from flooding with terraforming robots; plus Chris Sacca’s VC firm is raising a second nuclear fusion fund
Instead of building seawalls or dikes, Terranova has developed a new way to raise cities to protect them from sea-level rise. In addition, Chris Sacca’s venture firm Lowercarbon Capital is raising a second fund to back nuclear fusion energy hopefuls, the VC said at the SOSV Climate Tech Summit on Thursday, as reported by Bloomberg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Anker-backed hybrid RV startup Evotrex comes out of stealth; plus, Inception raises $50 million to build diffusion models
Evotrex joins startups like Lightship, Pebble, and Grounded in trying to disrupt the RV market, which is skewing younger. Also, diffusion models already power AI image generators, but Inception thinks they can be even more powerful applied in software development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Replika founder raises $20M pre-seed for Wabi, the ‘YouTube of apps’
Wabi, a startup from the founder of Replika, has just raised a $20 million pre-seed round. Wabi is like "YouTube for apps" -- a social platform where anyone can use prompts to instantly create mini apps and share them with friends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
This startup’s metal stacks could help solve AI’s massive heat problem
Alloy Enterprises has developed a new additive manufacturing technique that can improve liquid cooling performance while bringing it to new parts of the server rack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Goldman Sachs doubles down on MoEngage in new round to fuel global expansion
MoEngage already has customers across 75 countries, with North America being its biggest business driver. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Elad Gil on which AI markets have winners and which are still wide open; also, Locket’s social app is picking up steam with Gen Alpha
Over the last year, certain AI markets appear to be nearly sewn up by startup market leaders. Plus, Locket's social app is using iOS Live Activities to reach Gen Alpha via the iPhone Lock Screen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
a16z pauses its famed TxO Fund for underserved founders, lays off staff
Andreessen Horowitz is pausing its Talent x Opportunity (TxO) fund and program, according to multiple sources. Several people who spoke to TechCrunch pointed out that its hiatus comes as top names in tech eliminate, cut, reframe, or completely walk back on prior public commitments related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Trump administration has threatened legal and political ramifications for businesses supporting anything that could be seen as DEI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Pine Labs aims to take Indian fintech global even as it cuts valuation for IPO
Pine Labs aims to take Indian fintech global even as it cuts valuation for IPO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sam Altman says ‘enough’ to questions about OpenAI’s revenue; plus, Bluesky hits 40 million users, introduces ‘dislikes’ beta
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said that the company is doing “well more” than $13 billion in annual revenue — and he sounded a little testy when pressed on how it will pay for its massive spending commitments. Also, Bluesky is looking to a new signal — "dislikes" — to personalize users' feeds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
YC alum Adam raises $4.1M to turn viral text-to-3D tool into AI copilot; also, Cluely’s Roy Lee on the ragebait strategy for startup marketing
After generating over 10 million social media impressions with the launch of its text-to-3D model app, Adam has raised a $4.1 million seed round to power its next steps. Plus, Cluely's Roy Lee has a message for startup founders: you should be thinking harder about how to go viral. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bevel raises $10M Series A from General Catalyst for its AI health companion; plus, IntrCity SmartBus lands $30M to deepen its grip on India’s intercity travel market
Most people tracking their health today end up with scattered clues. Their smartwatch shows sleep duration. A fitness app logs steps. A nutrition app counts calories. Yet few tools help people understand how all of this fits together. Bevel, a New York–based startup, believes that’s the missing piece in the shift toward proactive health. Also, IntrCity SmartBus, a tech-enabled intercity bus platform in India, has raised $30 million in funding to expand its network across smaller cities and towns in the South Asian nation. The all-equity Series D round, led by A91 Partners, values the Noida-based startup at $140 million post-money. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Prompting Company snags $6.5M to help products get mentioned in ChatGPT and other AI apps, plus India’s Snabbit valuation doubled to $180M in 5 months
People are increasingly asking AI, not Google, to help them discover products. A recent shopping report says Americans, this holiday season, will likely turn to large language models this season to find gifts, deals, and sales instead of traditional search. Also, Snabbit has raised its third funding round in nine months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Phia’s founders on how AI is changing online shopping, plus, Grammarly rebrands to ‘Superhuman,’ launches a new AI assistant
Phia founders, Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, are building an AI assistant that aims to help you shop, and save. Also, Grammarly is renaming itself as Superhuman, after acquiring Superhuman email client in July Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AccessGrid raises $4.4M to help turn phones into key fobs; also, Mem0 raises $24M to build the memory layer for AI apps
Access Grid builds APIs that companies can use to manage digital key fobs directly within Apple and Google's wallet platforms. Plus, Taranjeet Singh has launched six companies, with some failing and others seeing varying degrees of success. His seventh, Mem0, could be his defining one. The startup starts with the premise that large language models can’t remember past interactions the way humans do Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oxford spinout RADiCAIT uses AI to make diagnostic imaging more affordable and accessible
“What we really do is we took the most constrained, complex, and costly medical imaging solution in radiology, and we supplanted it with what is the most accessible, simple and affordable, which is CT,” Sean Walsh, RADiCAIT’s CEO told TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Israeli intelligence vets raise $20M to track developer buying signals; plus, Mercor quintuples valuation to $10B with $350M Series C
Onfire, a vertical AI platform for IT revenue teams, is coming out of stealth with $20 million in funding, including a $14 million Series A co-led by Grove Ventures and TLV Partners. Also, Mercor, which connects AI labs with domain experts for training their foundational AI models, is close to raising $350 million at a $10 billion valuation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
India, the market BlaBlaCar once walked away from, is now its biggest
BlaBlaCar is seeing rapid growth in India, with 20 million passengers expected this year — up 50% from last year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Tensormesh raises $4.5M to squeeze more inference out of AI server loads; also, Palantir enters $200M partnership with telco Lumen
Tensormesh uses an expanded form of KV Caching to make inference loads as much as ten times more efficient. Plus, Palantir said on Thursday it had struck a partnership with Lumen Technologies that will see the telecommunications company using the data management company's AI software to build capabilities to support enterprise AI services. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Redwood Materials raises another $350M to power up its energy storage business, also, Wonder raised $12M to bring AI content to Hollywood
The round was led by Eclipse and saw participation from Nvidia's venture capital arm, NVentures. Also, Wonder will use the fresh funds to double its engineering team and accelerate its push into IP ownership and original content production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why Cohere’s ex-AI research lead is betting against the scaling race
Cohere's former VP of AI research, Sara Hooker, is launching a new startup to build AI models that can adapt to their environment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Top OpenAI, Google Brain researchers set off a $300M VC frenzy for their startup Periodic Labs
After endless Silicon Valley takes on how generative AI would radically change scientific discovery, the founders decided that the pieces were finally in place to make this a reality. Or at least to found a startup that attempted it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
a16z-backed Codi launches AI agent office manager
Codi was founded in 2018, in a pre-pandemic world, with a mission to help companies find flexible office spaces. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Scale AI alum raises $9M for AI serving critical industries in MENA
Abu-Ghazaleh said his two-month-old company promises to cut inefficiencies in high-stakes sectors like aviation, logistics, and oil and gas through an AI-native operating system for decision-making. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oura launches redesigned app and 'Cumulative Stress' feature
The redesigned Oura app introduces more personalization with three main tabs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A new wave of social media apps provide hope in a doomscrolling world
"The platforms that won were the ones that kept people scrolling the longest, not the ones that made them feel the most connected,” Zehra Naqvi told TechCrunch. “Now there is an abundance of content but a scarcity of joy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Too burned out to travel? This new app fakes your summer vacation photos for you
Product designer Laurent Del Rey, who recently joined Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, launched a side project called Endless Summer, a photobooth app for iPhone that creates AI-generated vacation photos starring you in locations around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
General Intuition lands $134M seed to teach agents spatial reasoning using video game clips, also, Electric aircraft startup Beta Technologies seeks to raise $825M in IPO
Late last year, OpenAI reportedly tried to buy Medal and its vast trove of video game data for $500M. Today, the company spun out a frontier research lab that's using that data to build AI agents that understand how they move through space and time, a concept called spatial-temporal reasoning. Also, electric aviation startup Beta Technologies has priced shares for its initial public offering between $27 and $33, in hopes of raising as much as $825 million, according to a regulatory document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If the company attracts investors at the top of that range it will debut with a valuation of about $7.2 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Liberate bags $50M at $300M valuation to bring AI deeper into insurance back offices; also, Eightfold raised $35M for an AI digital twin startup
Liberate’s AI agents automate tasks for P&C insurers, working across sales, service, and claims. Viven's seed funding was led by Khosla Ventures and Foundation Capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Inaudible sound might be the next frontier in wildfire defense
Sonic Fire Tech has developed a device that can extinguish flames using acoustic energy below the range of human hearing. The startup is building a demo capable of protecting a home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
FleetWorks raises $17M to match truckers with cargo faster
Co-founded by a former Uber Freight product manager, and backed by Uber's lead seed investor, FleetWorks is quickly scooping up customers in the trucking world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sheryl Sandberg-backed Flint wants to use AI to build and update websites, and Coco Robotics taps UCLA professor to lead new physical AI research lab
Flint raised a $5 million seed round led by Accel, with participation from Sheryl Sandberg’s fund, Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, and prior investor Neo. Also, Coco Robotics is working toward automating its fleet of delivery robots using its millions of miles of collected data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
India’s Airbound bags $8.65M to build rocket-like drones for one-cent deliveries
An Indian drone startup called Airbound raised nearly $9 million in seed funding as it begins a drone-delivery pilot with a private hospital and works toward one-cent delivery using its ultra-light, blended-wing-body aircraft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Kalshi hits $5B valuation days after rival Polymarket gets $2B NYSE backing at $8B; also,
Kalshi, a prediction market that allows people to bet on future events, announced that it raised over three hundred million dollars at a 5 billion dollar valuation. The company’s value has increased two and a half times since its last fundraise just three months ago, when it was valued at two billion dollars. Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has lost one of its co-founders to Meta. The Wall Street Journal reports that AI researcher Andrew Tulloch announced his departure to employees in a message on Friday. A Thinking Machine Labs spokesperson confirmed Tulloch’s departure to the WSJ, saying he “has decided to pursue a different path for personal reasons.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Reflection AI raises $2B to be America’s open frontier AI lab, challenging DeepSeek
Reflection, once focused on autonomous coding agents, has raised $2B at an $8B valuation to expand into both an opensource alternative to closed frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, and a Western equivalent to Chinese AI firms like DeepSeek. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Novoloop’s upcycled plastic takes a step closer to production; and Knapsack picks up $10M to help bridge the gap between design and engineering teams
Novoloop has signed a deal with a contract manufacturer to produce its Lifecycled TPU material. Also, Knapsack creates a unified workspace that integrates design and coding tools to ensure design and engineering teams are on the same page. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Base Power raises $1B to deploy home batteries everywhere
Base Power's Series C will help the company expand beyond Texas, its beachhead market, and build batteries in the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Trump’s DOE proposes cutting billions in grants for GM, Ford, and lots of startups
Trump's Department of Energy wants to cancel billions more in awards that were granted by the Biden administration, and startups are in the crosshairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
One startup’s paper-thin stainless steel could change how bridges are built
By coating regular rebar with a thin layer of stainless steel, Allium Engineering could reduce the amount of concrete needed to build a bridge while also prolonging its life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Alternative app store AltStore raises $6M, connects with the fediverse; also, ÄIO invented a method to make edible fat from ag waste like sawdust
The third-party app store known as AltStore, one of the first companies to offer an alternative app marketplace in the European Union, is preparing to connect its platform with the open social web known as the fediverse. Also, ÄIO has developed a process to turn agricultural waste like sawdust into fats for the food and cosmetic industries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A 19-year-old nabs backing from Google execs for his AI memory startup, Supermemory
19-year-old Dhravya Shah, who is originally from Mumbai, has built a memory layer for AI applications with Google's AI chief's backing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices