Fundings and Exits

Devs expect tech vendors to supply software development kits, or SDKs, alongside their products to make it easier to create apps using those products. But many vendors only offer APIs, which are simply protocols that enable software components to communicate with each other. Alex Rattray, the founder of Stainless, thinks AI can assist, here. Stainless

WordPress hosting company Automattic said Monday that it is acquiring WPAI, a startup that builds AI solutions for WordPress, at an undisclosed price. WPAI has some products such as CodeWP, a tool to use AI to create WP Plugins; AgentWP, an AI assistant for WordPress site builders; and WP Chat, which is an AI-powered chat

Do we really need another social media app for college students? With the looming TikTok ban in the U.S., a new app called Connyct seems to think so.  Connyct closely resembles the popular short-form video app, providing all the features you would expect, such as a personalized content feed, private chatting, as well as video

In winter 2025, a comparative literature class at UCLA will feature a textbook, homework assignments, and TA resources generated by AI. The class in question is a survey of literature from the Middle Ages to the 17th century, while the materials are generated by Kudu — an “evolved” textbook platform founded by Alexander Kusenko, a

The influential accelerator Y Combinator made a splash in Africa in 2020 when it shined its light on the market and began to accept startups from the region into its cohorts. The move was huge: in this nascent market, startups especially rely on programs like these to find their feet and connect with investors, and

AI agent startup /dev/agents announced a massive $56M seed round, putting the company’s valuation at a whopping $500 million. The amount is impressive given the company won’t have a first version of its product available until at least early next year. The reason behind investors’ trust, however, becomes a bit clearer when you consider the

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. The week after Thanksgiving is usually rich in announcements, and this year was no exception. Blame it on the holiday season, but we would even go as

MobiKwik, an Indian financial services startup, has cut the size of its planned IPO for the third time, setting a price band of ₹265-₹279 ($3.1-$3.3) that values it at $250 million — down sharply from its last private valuation of $924 million in 2021. The Gurugram-based fintech, backed by Peak XV and ADIA, is seeking

OpenAI finally released the full version of o1, which gives smarter answers than GPT-4o by using additional compute to “think” about questions. However, AI safety testers found that o1’s reasoning abilities also make it try to deceive humans at a higher rate than GPT-4o — or, for that matter, leading AI models from Meta, Anthropic,

xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, has raised $6 billion, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Valor Equity Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz were expected to contribute to the round, along with Qatar Investment Authority, Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund. The new cash

Revel is adding to its electric vehicle charging empire in New York City. The startup said on Wednesday that it has broken ground on the installation of 24 EV fast chargers at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The installation doubles the airport’s existing EV charging capacity. This is the second time Revel has partnered with

Although heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, a significant portion of people who experience heart attacks are unaware that they have the underlying condition. Cleerly, a cardiovascular imaging startup, hopes to fix this. By analyzing CT scans of the heart, the company’s AI software aims to identify early-stage coronary

Three members of Google’s NotebookLM team, including its team lead and designer, have announced they are leaving Google for a new stealth startup.  On Linkedin, ex-team lead Raiza Martin said she and her two other co-founders, designer Jason Spielman and engineer Stephen Hughes, “couldn’t shake the feeling that there’s a massive opportunity to build something

Cyberattacks are on the rise, and the victims are high-profile. According to a KPMG survey, close to half of companies with $1 billion or more in annual revenue recently suffered a security breach. Surprisingly, an overabundance of security tools may be contributing to the problem. In a separate poll, 43% of businesses said their teams

Space startup SpinLaunch is fundraising again, though a source tells TechCrunch that it was exploring raising a significantly more ambitious sum earlier this year.  The company has closed an $11.5 million round out of a planned $25 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SpinLaunch confirmed funding to TechCrunch, but

Clarifai, once known as the young computer vision startup working with the Pentagon on its controversial Project Maven, has distanced itself from its early years of espousing questionable ideas on AI ethics, its interest in building autonomous weapons — years before Silicon Valley warmed up to defense tech — and its potential cyberbreach from Russia.

Cancer incidence is on the rise, particularly among younger adults, but most new drug compounds fail to progress through clinical trials. According to French entrepreneur Fanny Jaulin (on the right in the picture above), the problem lies with clinical trial design.  “Just because a drug isn’t successful in clinical trials doesn’t mean it’s not a

AI hardware startup Tenstorrent raised nearly $700 million in new funding. Tenstorrent raised a $693 million Series D round that values the company at more than $2.6 billion, Bloomberg first reported. The round was led by Samsung Securities and AFW Partners. Other investors including Hyundai and Jeff Bezos’s Bezos Expeditions, among others. The Toronto-based company

As promised, startup accelerator Y Combinator’s imminent Demo Day will be happening in person. In fact, YC seems to have kicked off the IRL return of Demo Day at the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend, with an in-person Alumni Demo Day on Sunday for the Fall 2024 class of startups.  Squad founder (and later

As more celebrities and popular influencers join Bluesky, the fast-growing social media service has been facing more concerns around impersonation and verified identity. The Bluesky Safety team posted Friday that the company has updated its impersonation policy to be “more aggressive,” adding that “impersonation and handle-squatting accounts will be removed.” The company said it should

As one of the most decorated track cyclists of all time, Sir Chris Hoy might not seem an obvious candidate to back the burgeoning electric bike movement. The common refrain, after all, is that e-bikes aren’t real bikes. However, the six-time Olympic gold medalist has done exactly that, investing in a fledgling U.K. startup that

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. With only so many days left in the year, there was plenty of startup news to round up since last Friday, despite a short workweek in the

Poor literacy skills have plagued the deaf and hard of hearing community for decades. The median literacy rates of deaf high school graduates have languished at a fourth-grade level since the turn of the 20th century, according to the National Center for Special Education Research. Bringing STEM concepts into the mix — the vocabulary for

If you’ve used ChatGPT Search or Perplexity you know that being able to search the web and get citations inline greatly improves these AI chatbots. Results are better when they involve timely information, and web search may reduce so-called hallucinations (i.e. when a generative AI outputs incorrect information). That’s why French startup Linkup is building

India has bucked the global trend in initial public offerings this year, establishing itself as a rare bright spot for tech listings while other major markets face continued headwinds. The world’s most populous nation is now preparing for an even more substantial wave of startup IPOs in 2025. More than 20 startups are preparing to

Europe must get much better at scaling startups. That’s the prognosis of the European Union’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, who’s on the cusp of taking up her second five-year term steering the bloc of some 449 million people — with a December 1 start date now locked in. Giving a speech to the European

Xiaodi Hou, the co-founder and former CEO of self-driving truck startup TuSimple, is demanding that the board immediately liquidate the company and return all remaining funds – roughly $450 million – to shareholders “on a pure pro-rata basis, regardless of share class,” according to a letter that TechCrunch has viewed.  Hou is also suing TuSimple

Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine, wants to get into hardware — kinda sorta. Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s founder and CEO, posted on X yesterday that he was considering making a “simple, under $50” device to “reliably answer” questions “voice to voice.” He promised that Perplexity would “definitely” sell such a device if the post got more

Vikram Bhaskaran was leading creator partnerships at Pinterest when his father started showing early symptoms of ALS, a rare, terminal neurodegenerative disease. “It turned my world upside down,” Bhaskaran said. He worked during the day, and spent his evenings Googling the illness and treatment options and in Facebook groups. But Bhaskaran discovered that finding clear,

This week on found, Dom and Becca are talking with the co-founders of Alloy Women’s Health. The startup just closed a new funding round to expand its mission of fixing menopause care. Alloy founders, Monica Molenaar and Anne Fulenwider, discussed raising capital in a competitive health tech landscape, their choice to bypass traditional insurance models,