Startups

On November 15, Peter Wang posted a message requesting ideas for a new incubator and fund to support experimental projects built on the burgeoning Bluesky/AT Protocol ecosystem. Four weeks later, Skyseed emerged with an initial commitment of $1 million. This turnaround, a speed underscored by the fact that the fund doesn’t even have a website

Anysphere, the developer of AI-powered coding assistant Cursor, raised $100 million Series B at a post-money valuation of $2.6 billion, according to sources with knowledge of the deal. The round is being led by returning investor Thrive Capital, the person said.  This new funding comes just four months after Anysphere raised its $60 million Series

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. This week was full of news, likely because it is also the last “real” week of 2024. Which is another way for us to say goodbye for

For some, AI fatigue is real. But clearly venture investors haven’t grown tired of the category. AI deals continued to dominate venture funding during the third quarter. AI companies raised $19 billion in Q3, according to Crunchbase data. That figure represents 28% of all venture funding. The fourth quarter of 2024 has been no less

Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch, is launching a new AI startup, TechCrunch has learned. The startup, called Stem AI, is currently in stealth. But public documents show it was incorporated in June 2023, and filed for a trademark in August 2023. Shear is listed as CEO on an incorporation document filed with the

Accounting firms are struggling to adopt high-tech solutions. That’s according to a survey earlier this year from Rightsworks, which found that, while 88% of firms believe tech has had a positive impact on their efficiency, 60% are suffering from disconnected systems, inconsistent processes, and a lack of standardized workflows. Startups like Aiwyn are trying to

As predicted, ServiceTitan’s wildly successful IPO is beckoning other fintechs to move forward on their own public debuts. Digital bank Chime has filed its confidential paperwork with the SEC, Bloomberg reports. It’s been prepping for this moment since it hired banker Morgan Stanley in September, with an eye to IPO in 2025.  The IPO won’t

Once, not long ago, booking a table at a hot new restaurant didn’t entail a midnight dash to Resy. Truly, we didn’t know how good we had it then. Hours-long lines out the door are now the norm, not the exception, in major cities from New York to Los Angeles. One reason is that restaurants

When it comes to frontier technology, the interests of government and Silicon Valley are increasingly aligned. We’ve been watching a trend emerge where dual-use startups cut their teeth by solving defense, infrastructure, or intelligence problems for the government and then scale up by taking those products to the public. “The advantage the government has is

Shein must surrender all data of Indian customers and control of its local operations to its partner, Reliance Retail, and keep operations fully local to re-enter the Indian market, according to new government disclosures that reveal how the apparel and accessories retailer secured a rare exception to India’s ban on Chinese-linked apps. In a parliamentary

Earlier this year, IVP general partner Tom Loverro, proclaimed that the post-pandemic downturn is over, and companies that made it this far should prioritize growth over cost-cutting. Yet, the companies still struggling to raise their next round of financing at a higher valuation or survive altogether could still be in the thousands, according to Brian

Drop by any given loading dock and a buzz of forklifts — loaded up with goods — can be spotted maneuvering in and out of truck trailers. This logistical dance can take up to an hour to fill a trailer, leaving truck drivers in idle limbo. The founders of Atlanta-based Slip Robotics say they’ve developed

Hexa, a Paris-based startup studio that has launched dozens of B2B software companies, is sharing a list of its next batch of projects that are soon going to become independent startups. Hexa originally started its life in 2011 as eFounders, a startup studio focused on B2B software-as-a-service products. Hexa usually comes up with the ideas

TuSimple co-founder and former CEO Xiaodi Hou is on a war path in the lead up to Friday’s annual shareholder meeting that will decide the makeup of the company’s board of directors.  Over the past several weeks, Hou has sued TuSimple for control of his voting rights, demanded the company immediately liquidate and return all

Cybersecurity practitioners take a community-driven approach to solving problems. Security researchers share the vulnerabilities they find with the broader cybersecurity community, which allows companies to patch up their security holes before something catastrophic happens. Prequel is looking to bring that same approach to software. The startup is building a database of software failure patterns or

Liquid AI, an AI startup co-founded by robotics luminary Daniela Rus, has raised $250 million in a Series A led by AMD. Per Bloomberg, the round values Liquid AI at over $2 billion. Liquid AI aims to build general-purpose AI systems powered by a relatively new type of AI model called a liquid neural network. Liquid

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. This week in startup news, we have some contrarian bets, funding rounds from all around the world, new VC funds, and a final word of warning. Most

Tom Gardiner and Harry Marshall founded Trevor.io in 2016 as a no-code business intelligence platform to help non-data people run analysis on their internal data. That business was solid, but customers increasingly started asking the company for access to the same tools for their customer-facing data. Gardiner told TechCrunch that the company initially resisted the

ServiceTitan, which offers financial and customer management software for the trades, went public in a big way on Thursday, much to the delight of retail investors. The stock quickly popped from its opening IPO sales price of $71 million to $105 a share in modest trading volume. It is currently maintaining an above-$100 price. ServiceTitan’s

When SlideShare, the presentation-sharing service acquired by Scribd, launched in 2006, generative AI technology was significantly less advanced than it is today, and social networking platforms were just beginning to take off. Recognizing the evolution of AI and the increasing desire for innovative ways to share documents, the founders of SlideShare—Amit Ranjan (COO), Jonathan Boutelle

Demand for South Asian fashion is growing globally as more South Asians are migrating and settling in new markets, then buying ethnic wear for occasions like local festivals and weddings. However, not many online platforms today sell an extensive catalog of apparel and footwear from local South Indian sellers to global markets. Those that do

Lumen Orbit, a startup looking to build data centers in space, was able to close its recent seed round in mere days amid intense investor interest. The Redmond, Washington-based company closed on a $11 million seed round at a $40 million valuation, confirming prior TechCrunch reporting that the company had raised a competitive double-digit round

Cybercrime became easier in 2024 with the rise of info-stealer malware, or software that collects login credentials. Instead of breaking into target networks using vulnerabilities, hackers can just log in with those stolen credentials. They don’t even have to steal them themselves, but can buy them on the dark web. IBM’s 2024 X-Force Intelligence report

In this week’s episode of found, Dom and Becca are joined by former Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn to talk about his mission to reverse America’s loneliness epidemic through Pie, an app built to facilitate connections in the real world. In this conversation, they get into Dunn’s personal experience moving to a new city that inspired

Languages are typically taught by first exposing you to reading and writing, but native speakers always start learning languages by hearing and talking. Speak has built a platform to teach languages by focusing on how native speakers learn: Using AI, the startup generates audio conversations and listens to users’ responses to improve their grasp of

Alexis Conneau thinks a lot about the movie “Her.” For the last several years, he’s obsessed over trying to turn the film’s fictional voice technology, Samantha, into a reality. Conneau even uses a picture of Joaquin Phoenix’s character in the movie as his banner on Twitter. Conneau’s X/twitter banner (Image Credit: X) With ChatGPT’s Advanced

Famm, the discovery platform for queer-owned brands, was created by BIPOC queer married couple Cat Perez and Marianna Di Regolo to help users find LGBTQ-owned businesses. Now it’s launching a new social networking app for LGBTQ+ professionals and business owners to connect and collaborate.  Famm Connect, now available on iOS and Android devices, includes common

Notable Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator held a Demo Day for its inaugural Fall cohort this week. The 95 startups in this latest batch looked quite similar to recent YC cohorts in the sense that it includes many AI startups. If I did my math right, 87% of the startups in this batch are

Not even the people inventing AI always know what it’s good for besides writing emails. But there are seed-stage companies, like Y Combinator grad and 2024 Disrupt Battlefield participant Nowadays, that are doing something mind-blowingly useful with AI. Nowadays uses LLM AI to automatically plan large, expensive events. Using its own database of 400,000 global

Over a hundred colleges and high schools are turning to a new AI tool called Nectir, allowing teachers to create a personalized learning partner that’s trained on their syllabi, textbooks, and assignments to help students with anything from questions related to their coursework to essay writing assistance and even future career guidance.  The company announced