Tootfinder

Keycard, which lets enterprises manage AI agent access to internal systems, raised a $30M Series A led by Acrew Capital and a $8M seed led by a16z and boldstart (Maria Deutscher/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2025/10/21/ai-agent-security-startup-keyca…

AI agent security startup Keycard reels in $38M - SiliconANGLE
AI agent security startup Keycard reels in $38M - SiliconANGLE

Ultralytics, which develops the YOLO series of open-source computer vision models and sells commercial licenses, raised a $30M Series A led by Elephant VC (Maria Deutscher/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2025/09/17/computer-vision-startup-ul…

Computer vision startup Ultralytics raises $30M in funding - SiliconANGLE
Computer vision startup Ultralytics raises $30M in funding - SiliconANGLE

Two former Harvard students are launching a pair of
“always-on” AI-powered smart glasses
that listen to, record, and transcribe every conversation and then display relevant information to the wearer in real time. 
“Our goal is to make glasses that make you super intelligent the moment you put them on,”
said AnhPhu Nguyen, co-founder of Halo, a startup that’s developing the technology. 
Or, as his co-founder Caine Ardayfio put it, the glasses “give you infinite m…

Harvard dropouts to launch 'always on' AI smart glasses that listen and record every conversation | TechCrunch
After developing a facial-recognition app for Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses and doxing random people, two former Harvard students are now launching a startup that makes smart glasses with an always-on microphone.

Sesame, which is developing an AI agent with a natural-sounding human voice and smart glasses, raised a $250M Series B and opens an early beta of its iOS app (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/21/sesa

Sesame, the conversational AI startup from Oculus founders, raises $250M and launches beta | TechCrunch
Former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe’s new startup, Sesame, is building AI-powered smartglasses with natural, humanlike voice interaction. Backed by Sequoia and Spark, the company also launched an invite-only iOS beta to preview its conversational AI.

It seems like this is mostly a hodge-podge of different API calls and various prompts.
Still, gives the lie to the theory that it's all just "regurgitating training data", "unable to come up with novelty", etc.
https://www.

AppZen, which builds AI-powered tools to automate finance functions, raised a $180M Series D led by Riverwood Capital, bringing its total funding to $290M (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/fintech/agentic-ai-startup-appzen-seriesd/…

With Amazon And Salesforce As Customers, Agentic AI Startup AppZen Lands $180M To ‘Transform’ Finance...
AppZen, which has built an agentic AI platform for finance teams, has raised $180 million in a Series D round, the company told Crunchbase News. Riverwood Capital led the growth financing round.

E-Bike-Startup Cowboy ist gerettet
Nach langer Funkstille hat sich das belgische E-Bike-Startup Cowboy zur eigenen Situation geäußert. Dank eines neuen Investors geht der Betrieb weiter.
https://www.heise.d…

Veeam snaps up Securiti in $1.7B deal to bolster cyber-resilience portfolio
https://blocksandfiles.com/2025/10/21/veeam-buying-securiti/

Veeam snaps up Securiti in $1.7B deal to bolster cyber-resilience portfolio – Blocks and Files
Veeam confirms it is buying Securiti, the cybersecurity startup founded by serial entrepreneur Rehan Jalil, with a $1.725 billion price tag.

PSA: do not update #ntfy to version 1.17.0 from #fdroid. It is a pre release that will crash ntfy on startup https://githu…

"Revolutionary Technology Uses Fungi to Decompose Diapers in Months, Not Centuries"
#Compost #Fungi
https://

Revolutionary Technology Uses Fungi to Decompose Diapers in Months, Not Centuries | Happy Eco News
Texas startup Hiro Technologies uses fungi to decompose diapers in nine months versus centuries for traditional disposables. Their MycoDigestible Diapers include fungi packets that parents add before disposal. While promising for reducing landfill waste and methane emissions, the $35 weekly cost and safety questions remain significant adoption barriers.

The RIAA amends its lawsuit against Suno, now accusing it of unlawfully "stream ripping" songs on YouTube and violating the DMCA (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/782448/riaa-suno-ai-lawsuit-update-stream-ripping-youtu…

Record labels claim AI generator Suno illegally ripped their songs from YouTube
Record labels have escalated their lawsuit against Suno, alleging that the AI startup knowingly pirated songs from YouTube to train its generative AI models

Will a new startup topple Nvidia's dominance with more efficient AI chips? I suggest it may not make much difference to AI's environmental footprint in this piece from Inc. magazine https://www.inc.com/ben-sherry/why-this-ai-startup-…

Distyl AI, which provides AI tools to automate business processes like HR management, raised $175M led by Lightspeed and Khosla Ventures at a $1.8B valuation (Natasha Mascarenhas/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/st

AI Consulting Startup Founded by Ex-Palantir Employees Raises at $1.8 Billion Valuation
A raft of venture-backed startups are emerging to offer high-tech consultants for businesses needing help with artificial intelligence, posing competition for companies like Palantir and McKinsey & Co. that specialize in high-priced consulting services. One is Distyl AI. The three-year-old ...

Amazon to Acquire AI Device Startup Bee https://ground.news/article/amazon-buys-bee-maker-of-50-wearable-ai-personal-assistant

Omnea, which makes AI tools for automating procurement, raised a $50M Series B led by Insight Partners and Khosla Ventures, taking its total funding to $75M (Geoff Weiss/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/omnea-procurement-a…

Procurement AI startup Omnea raises $50 million from Insight, Khosla
The AI for procurement field is heating up amid economic pressure, President Donald Trump's tariffs, and the AI boom, Omnea CEO Ben Freeman said.

Das bayerische Startup #Reverion testet ein reversibles #Biogas #Brennstoffzellenkraftwerk in #Mühlacker

Energieumwandlung nach Bedarf: Startup mit Alleskönner-Kraftwerk
Was tun, wenn zu wenig Strom produziert wird - oder zu viel? Das bayerische Startup Reverion hat eine Lösung entwickelt, die nicht nur flexibel ist, sondern auch noch CO2 einspart.

Sources: Fal.ai, which hosts multimodal AI models for developers, raised ~$250M at a $4B valuation, less than three months after announcing a $125M Series C (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/21/sources-multimodal…

Exclusive: Sources: Multimodal AI startup Fal.ai already raised at $4B+ valuation
Fal provides developers with over 600 image, video, audio, and 3D models, it says, and boasts that its cloud has thousands of Nvidia H100 and H200 GPUs and is fine-tuned for speedy inference.

HUN-REN RCNS and its consortium receive prestigious European funding for the first human testing of a prosthesis designed to restore vision https://www.ttk.hun-ren.hu/en/recent-news/

HUN-REN RCNS and its Consortium Receive Prestigious European Funding for the First Human Testing of a Prosthesis Designed to Restore Vision
Over the past five years, the Belgian startup ReVision Implant has been developing a groundbreaking brain prosthesis that aims to partially restore vision to the blind. A consortium was formed to carry out the first human testing of the technology, consisting of the manufacturing startup and three research groups, including the

Starbridge, which helps businesses monitor public sector opportunities by consolidating fragmented data, raised a $42M Series A led by David Sacks' Craft (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/22/david…

David Sacks' Craft leads $42 million Series A in govtech startup Starbridge | TechCrunch
Starbridge raises $42M Series A led by Craft Ventures to help businesses better monitor public service opportunities.

Seems like a good day to bring back this 2021 post: https://systemsapproach.org/2021/07/19/decentralizing-the-internet-again/

Lazarus Group Accused of Stealing $23M From British Crypto Startup Lykke
https://cryptonews.com/news/lazarus-group-accused-of-stealing-23m-from-british-crypto-startup-lykke/

»Perplexity – KI-Startup bietet 34,5 Milliarden für Chrome:
Perplexity will Googles Browser übernehmen - trotz begrenzter Finanzmittel.«
Ein weiteres Argument um den Chrome Browser und seine Abkömmlinge NICHT zu nutzen, auch wenn Firefox nicht 101% optimal ist.
P.S. zB @…, ein Firefox Abkömmling, ist sehr Privatsphäre freundlich.
🌐

Perplexity: KI-Startup bietet 34,5 Milliarden für Chrome - Golem.de
Perplexity will Googles Browser übernehmen – trotz begrenzter Finanzmittel.

⚡ How a New Jersey startup found an electrifying way to slash copper costs
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/30/how-a-new-jersey-startup-found-an-electrifying-way-to-slash-copper-costs/

How a New Jersey startup found an electrifying way to slash copper costs | TechCrunch
Still Bright is now loaded up with $18.7 million in seed money to build out its demonstration unit.

Berliner KI-Startup n8n erreicht 2,5 Milliarden Dollar Bewertung
Berliner Startup n8n sammelt 180 Mio. Dollar ein. Mit Nvidia als Investor erreicht das Unternehmen eine Bewertung von 2,5 Mrd. Dollar.
https:…

Startup Creative – Your Go-To Source For Straight-Up Business Advice
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: #GreatAusPods

A new question for your pub quiz:
Which AI company did Nvidia not invest in?
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/12/nvidias-ai-empire-a-look-at-its-top-startup-investments/

Nvidia's AI empire: A look at its top startup investments | TechCrunch
Over the last two years, Nvidia has used its ballooning fortunes to invest in over 100 AI startups. Here are the giant semiconductor's largest investments.

Sources: humanoid robotics startup 1X is seeking to raise up to $1B at a $10B valuation, more than 12x its previous valuation from a January financing (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/humanoid-robot-developer-1x-targ…

Humanoid Robot Developer 1X Targets $1 Billion in New Funding
Humanoid robotics startup 1X has told investors and employees it is trying to raise as much as $1 billion, according to three people who spoke to CEO Bernt Øivind. The decade-old company is aiming for a valuation of at least $10 billion, Børnich said, or more than 12 times its previous valuation ...

DC-focused digital news startup NOTUS launches Perspectives, an opinion-focused section with editorial "symposiums", or op-eds from diverse political voices (Max Tani/Semafor)
https://www.semafor.com/article/10/19/2025/notus-to-offer-new-op-ed-section

NOTUS to offer new op-ed section
NOTUS said its opinion efforts will be focused on short “symposiums” published weekly, along with longform reported opinion pieces published semiregularly.

So will ein Startup aus Gestein eine Großbatterie machen
Das Startup Quidnet Energie setzt auf unterirdisches Druckwasser zur Energiespeicherung. Ein Testlauf zeigt vielversprechende Ergebnisse für diese Großbatterie.

Keychain, which makes AI-powered software to help manufacturers manage their product cycles, raised a $30M Series B, bringing its total funding to $68M (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/19/cpg-startup-keychain-snags-…

CPG startup Keychain snags $30M to build in India, grow in the U.S. | TechCrunch
Keychain doesn't have a single customer in India — but the team helping it scale across North America and beyond is entirely based in Gurugram, a suburb of New Delhi.

Sources: Nvidia spent more than $900M to hire Enfabrica CEO Rochan Sankar and other employees at the AI hardware startup and to license the company's technology (CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/18/nvidia-spent-over-900-million-…

Nvidia just spent over $900 million to hire Enfabrica CEO, license AI startup's technology
In a deal reminiscent of acquihires by Meta and Google, Nvidia hired Enfabrica's CEO and other employees of the startup, and licensed its technology.

UK-based startup Mantic ranked #8 in the Metaculus forecasting cup that asks entrants to predict 60 geopolitical events, the first time an AI made the top 10 (Nikita Ostrovsky/Time)
https://time.com/7318577/ai-model-forecasting-predict-future-metaculus/

AI Is Learning to Predict the Future—And Beating Humans at It
An AI model just cracked the top 10 in a global prediction contest, signaling how machines are reshaping the future of forecasting.

Cowboy: Beim belgischen E-Bike-Startup scheint es zu brennen
Lange Lieferzeiten, miserable Kommunikation, hohe Schulden und ein kostspieliger Rückruf: Cowboy steckt offenbar in einer massiven Krise.
https://www.…

Lagos-founded payments startup Moniepoint raised $90M at a $1B valuation, after raising $110M in October 2024, and says it processes $250B yearly transactions (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-21/visa-…

Autonomous driving tech startup Nuro closed its $203M Series E at a $6B valuation, adding $97M from Uber, Nvidia, and others to April's $106M tranche (Rafe Uddin/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/264cecb7-aa7c-4cd3-9a54-601b3b7ba192

Findem, an AI-powered talent acquisition startup, raised $51M in equity and debt, including a $36M Series C led by SLW, taking its total funding to $105M (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/findem-funding-ai-powered-hiring-re…

Exclusive: Findem Lands $36M Series C To Supercharge AI-Powered Hiring 
Findem is just one of more than a dozen startups at the intersection of AI and recruitment globally that has raised venture capital in 2025.

Some Japanese stores are using robots from the startup Telexistence to restock shelves, piloted remotely by Filipino workers whose actions train AI models (Michael Beltran/Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2025/philippines-offshoring-automation-tech-jobs/

Japanese convenience stores are hiring robots run by workers in the Philippines
Filipino tele-operators remotely control Japan’s convenience store robots and train AI, benefiting from an uptick in automation-related jobs.

Meta announces a partnership with Midjourney, to license the startup's "aesthetic technology" for Meta's future models and products (Alexandr Wang/@alexandr_wang)
https://x.com/alexandr_wang/status/1958983843169673367

Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) on X
1/ Today we’re proud to announce a partnership with @midjourney, to license their aesthetic technology for our future models and products, bringing beauty to billions.

A review of Tim Berners-Lee's new book This is for Everyone, while his startup Inrupt, which aims to commercialize the Solid web protocol, struggles to scale (John Thornhill/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/13e4fad3-9fa1-4534-b84e-aafed97ae073

Sources: OpenAI has been partially using Google search results scraped by a startup called SerpApi for ChatGPT responses on current events like news and sports (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-challenging-google-using-search…

OpenAI Is Challenging Google—While Using Its Search Data
As it tries to unseat Google, OpenAI is relying on search data from an unlikely source: Google. OpenAI has been using Google search results scraped from the web to help power ChatGPT responses, according to two people with knowledge of it.

Hyro, whose AI agents let US health care organizations automate tasks like scheduling and prescription renewals, raised $45M, taking its total funding to $95M (Sophie Shulman/CTech)
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rylcu6valg

Hyro secures $45 million to scale AI automation in US healthcare
The startup aims to ease staffing pressures and improve patient access by deploying AI agents across hospitals and health systems nationwide.

Japanese regulators' plan to cull the smallest listings on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is spurring a record number of startup buyouts in Japan, while IPOs slump (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-20/de…

Deals for Startups Reach Record in Japan Before Listing Curbs
A plan to cull the smallest listings on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is spurring a record number of buyouts of young companies in Japan, reflecting Tokyo’s push to create more billion-dollar startups to better match the country’s global standing in scientific research.

Halo, a startup founded by former Harvard students who developed a facial recognition app for Ray-Ban Meta glasses, is launching "always-on" AI glasses for $249 (TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/20/harv

Harvard dropouts to launch 'always on' AI smart glasses that listen and record every conversation | TechCrunch
After developing a facial-recognition app for Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses and doxing random people, two former Harvard students are now launching a startup that makes smart glasses with an always-on microphone.

Kredete, which helps Africans abroad build credit while sending money home, raised a $22M Series A and launches Africa's first stablecoin-backed credit card (John Adoyi/TechCabal)
https://techcabal.com/2025/09/15/krede-raises-22m/

Kredete raises $22M to launch Africa’s first stablecoin-backed credit card
Kredete, a Lagos-based fintech startup, has raised $22 million in Series A funding to launch Africa’s first stablecoin-backed credit card.

Y Combinator filed an amicus brief in support of Epic Games in their antitrust lawsuit against Apple, calling App Store fees "a punitive tax on innovation" (Marcus Mendes/9to5Mac)
https://9to5mac.com/2025/08/21/y-combi…

Y Combinator backs Epic in Apple appeal - 9to5Mac
Startup accelerator (and Epic Games’ biggest investor) Y Combinator filed an amicus brief today siding with Epic in the long-running antitrust case against Apple.

The RIAA amends its lawsuit against Suno, now accusing it of unlawfully "stream ripping" songs on YouTube and violating the DMCA (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/782448/riaa-suno-ai-lawsuit-update-stream-ripping-youtu…

Record labels claim AI generator Suno illegally ripped their songs from YouTube
Record labels have escalated their lawsuit against Suno, alleging that the AI startup knowingly pirated songs from YouTube to train its generative AI models

Nexos.ai, which helps companies adopt AI tools by acting as a middleman between employees and AI systems, raised a €30M Series A co-led by Index and Evantic (Anna Heim/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/20/european-ai-ri…

European AI rising star Nexos.ai raises €30M to unlock enterprise AI adoption | TechCrunch
Nord Security co-founders have closed a €30 million Series A for their new startup, Nexos.ai, an orchestration platform aimed at helping companies adopt AI securely.

Anrok, which helps software companies automate sales tax compliance, raised a $55M Series C at a $525M valuation, up from $250M after raising $30M in April 2024 (Kate Clark/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

VCs and founders warn that the $100K fee will make H-1B sponsorship prohibitively expensive for startups, not Big Tech, and drive talent outside the US (Taylor Soper/GeekWire)
https://www.geekwire.com/2025/startup-leade…

Everett Randle, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins, joins VC firm Benchmark as general partner, following a slew of personnel departures at Benchmark (Natasha Mascarenhas/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/benchmark-names-ev…

Benchmark Names Everett Randle as New General Partner 
Everett Randle, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins investing out of its growth-stage funds, has joined Benchmark as the firm’s newest general partner, the early-stage firm announced Monday. At Kleiner, Randle worked on investments including enterprise search startup Glean and legal AI startup Harvey, earning him a top spot on The Information’s Next General Partners list in 2024. The hiring

PitchBook: in H1, AI startups raised $104.3B in the US, or about 66% of all US VC funding, up from 49% last year; there were 281 VC-backed exits totaling $36B (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/22/ai-startups-raised-1…

AI startups raised $104 billion in first half of year, but exits tell a different story
AI accounted for nearly two-thirds of all fundraising deal value in the first half of 2025, with the bulk of those dollars concentrated in a few companies.

Sources: chip startup Rivos, which plans to release a GPU for inference as early as 2026, is seeking to raise between $400M and $500M at a $2B valuation (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chip-startup-rivos-seeks-500-million…

Chip Startup Rivos Seeks Up to $500 Million to Compete With Nvidia
Rivos, a chip startup that aims to compete with Nvidia, is seeking to raise between $400 million and $500 million, according to two people familiar with the matter. The Santa Clara, Calif.–based startup, backed by Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan, is seeking a valuation of more than $2 billion, one of the ...

PitchBook: 15.9% of VC-backed deals in 2025 so far have been down rounds, a 10-year high, with AI and ML startups accounting for 29.3% of the down rounds (Allie Garfinkle/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/startup-down-rounds-are-at…

Startup down rounds are at a 10 year high, according to PitchBook data
PitchBook data revealed that 15.9% of venture-backed deals in 2025 to date have been down rounds, marking a decade high.

NYC-based Protege, which prepares and sells real-world datasets like lab results and sports footage for AI training, raised a $25M Series A led by Footwork (Natasha Mascarenhas/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/one-year-old…

The One-Year-Old Startup Notching Data Deals For Model Makers
Companies like Scale AI and Surge have proven there’s a market for human-labeled data, like professionals’ answers to complex math or law questions, that AI research labs can use to train their models. Now, a young startup is tapping a similar opportunity, linking large model makers and AI ...

Dreamdata, which offers a B2B marketing analytics platform, raised a $55M Series B led by PeakSpan, bringing its total funding to $67M (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/b2b-marketing-analytics-startup-dreamd…

Exclusive: B2B Marketing Analytics Startup Dreamdata Lands $55M Series B
Dreamdata, a B2B marketing analytics platform, has secured a $55 million Series B round of funding, the company told Crunchbase News exclusively.

Source: cloud startup Vercel has been approached by investors offering to invest hundreds of millions at an $8B-$9B valuation; it was valued at $3B last year (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/cloud-startup-vercel-fields-o…

Cloud Startup Vercel Fields Offers for $9 Billion Valuation
Vercel, a nine-year-old cloud startup that companies use to host and develop websites and artificial intelligence apps, has been approached by investors offering to invest hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation between $8 billion to $9 billion, according to a person with direct knowledge ...

Jump, a SaaS startup founded by Alex Rodriguez and Marc Lore for managing sports ticketing and fan experiences, raised a $23M Series A at a $100M valuation (Justin Birnbaum/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbau

Alex Rodriguez’s Startup Jump Raises $23 Million In Quest To Be Shopify For Sports Teams
Founded by the MLB legend alongside billionaire Marc Lore, his Timberwolves co-owner, the company is now valued at more than $100 million as it builds a one-stop shop for fans.

AI code review startup CodeRabbit raised a $60M Series B led by Scale Venture Partners, valuing the company at $550M, and says it makes $15M in ARR (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/16/coderabbit-raises-6…

CodeRabbit raises $60M, valuing the 2-year-old AI code review startup at $550M  | TechCrunch
The round, which brought the two-year-old startup’s total funding to $88 million, was led by Scale Venture Partners.

Upgrade, which offers online loans and other financial services, raised $165M led by Neuberger Berman at a $7.3B valuation and is "12 to 18 months" from an IPO (Jaures Yip/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/16/fintech-star…

Fintech startup Upgrade valued at $7.3 billion in new funding round
Upgrade raised $165 million in a new funding round that valued the fintech startup at $7.3 billion.

Austin-based Aalo Atomics, which is building a modular nuclear reactor and data center, set to finish construction in 2026, raised a $100M Series B led by Valor (Julia Hornstein/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/aalo-atomi

Aalo Atomics lands $100 million to launch nuclear reactors to power AI
Aalo Atomics raises $100 million to mass-produce nuclear reactors to power data centers amid the growing energy demand from AI.

Bengaluru-based FinBox, which provides B2B digital lending infrastructure, risk intelligence, and orchestration tools, raised a $40M Series B led by WestBridge (The Economic Times)
https://economictimes.indiati…

Digital credit infra startup FinBox raises $40 million from WestBridge Capital, others
FinBox, a digital credit infrastructure platform, secured $40 million in a funding round led by WestBridge Capital, with participation from A91 Partners and Aditya Birla Ventures. The company intends to utilise the funds to develop AI-driven solutions and expand its product offerings. Founded in 2017, FinBox enables enterprises and financial institutions to integrate financial services into their ecosystems.

Butterfly Effect, the startup behind Manus and an earlier product called Monica, says its annual revenue run rate has hit $90M, with Manus contributing the most (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-20/ope…

Sola, which wants to use AI agents to automate businesses' repetitive, manual tasks, raised $21M, including a $3.5M seed and a $17.5M Series A led by a16z (Emma Hinchliffe/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/sola-solutions-ai-startup-r…

Exclusive: Two MIT dropouts raised $21 million for their AI startup that does legacy businesses’ grunt work
Sola Solutions' technology, backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Sarah Guo, automates grunt work for businesses, replacing RPA.

TinyFish, which develops AI-powered web agents that automate complex online tasks like dynamic price surveillance, raised a $47M Series A led by ICONIQ Capital (Krystal Hu/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/technology/ai-agent-startup…

Sources: Character.AI has recently discussed a sale with potential buyers and also talked with investors about raising a few hundred million at a $1B valuation (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/character-ai-talks-sell-…

Character.AI in Talks to Sell or Raise Money, a Year After Founders Depart
Character.AI, the chatbot maker whose founders Google hired as part of a $2.7 billion deal last August, has in recent weeks discussed a sale of the company with potential buyers, bankers and staff, according to three people who have spoken to its executives. The nearly four-year-old startup ...

Reducto, which uses OCR with vision language models to convert complex documents into inputs for LLMs, raised a $75M Series B led by a16z at a $600M valuation (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/startup-using-ai-tran…

The Startup Using AI to Translate Documents Into Data
If you’ve ever uploaded a picture of a receipt to an expense report or read a PDF of a book online, you’ve likely used optical character recognition, a decades-old technique that converts images of typed, handwritten or printed text into text that’s editable on a computer.OCR might not sound ...

Viven, which builds AI "digital twins" that grant employees access to crucial information when coworkers are unavailable, emerges from stealth with a $35M seed (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/15/e…

Eightfold co-founders raise $35M for Viven, an AI digital twin startup for querying unavailable coworkers | TechCrunch
Viven's seed funding was led by Khosla Ventures and Foundation Capital.

Leaked audio: Apple nears a deal to acquihire computer vision startup Prompt AI; it was approached by other potential suitors, including xAI and Neuralink (Lora Kolodny/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/10/apple-nears-deal-to-acquire-ta…

Apple nears deal to acquire talent and technology from computer vision startup Prompt AI
Apple is in late-stage talks with startup Prompt AI to bring on the company's employees and its computer vision technology.

NYC-based Profound, which helps brands optimize visibility in AI search responses, raised a $35M Series B led by Sequoia, bringing its total funding to $58.5M (Sharon Goldman/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/08/12/ai-search-startup-profound-rais…

Exclusive: Profound raises $35M as Sequoia backs its ambitious bid to become the Salesforce of AI search
The startup wants to help brands stay visible as AI reshapes search, in what backers call a once-in-a-generation marketing shift.

Handshake CEO Garrett Lord says the startup hit $100M in ARR in eight months after a "refounding" to focus on AI, and forecasts $300M in ARR by end of 2025 (Alex Konrad/Upstarts Media)
https://www.upstartsmedia.com/p/handshake-refounding-layoff-ai

Handshake's CEO Declares 'Re-Founding' Of His $3.5B Startup All Around AI
Garrett Lord's refocus of his 11-year-old startup around its fast-growing ($100M in ARR) AI business includes a layoff affecting 15% of staff.

Nvidia acquires Solver, a three-year-old AI coding agent startup formerly known as Laredo Labs, which had raised $8M from Radical Ventures and other investors (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/nvidia-acquires-coding-startup-solver

Nvidia Acquires Coding Startup Solver
Nvidia has acquired Solver, a three-year-old software development startup, The Information reported Tuesday . The startup, formerly known as Laredo Labs, had developed an AI coding agent and raised $8 million in financing from investors including Radical Ventures and Horizons Ventures. Nvidia regularly buys small startups, including several whose technology can lower the cost of using its

OpenAI's Broadcom deal shows how the AI startup is diversifying its chip suppliers, including Nvidia chips for training and Broadcom chips for inference (Christopher Mims/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openai-broadco

Shenzhen-based humanoid startup X Square Robot raised ~$100M led by Alibaba, bringing total funding to ~$280M, and released a foundation model for embodied AI (Evelyn Cheng/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/08/alibaba-leads-100-mil…

Alibaba leads $100 million investment in Chinese humanoid robot startup
Capital is rushing into humanoids — X Square Robot has completed eight fundraising rounds in less than two years since the startup was founded.

Evan Spiegel says Snap is restructuring around small squads of 10 to 15 people to compete better; Snapchat now brings in $700M in ARR from 15M paying users (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/08/snap-breaks-into-startup-squads-…

Snap breaks into 'startup squads' as ad revenue stalls | TechCrunch
CEO Evan Spiegel just announced the company is restructuring around small "startup squads" of 10 to 15 people to regain agility against larger competitors.

Sources: Nvidia is in advanced talks to invest $500M in UK self-driving car startup Wayve, as part of a broader £2B funding pledge in UK startups (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/cec76ea1-2cc1-4da3-a9e9-1d76aaa50afc

Sources: Nvidia's China-only RTX 6000D receives lukewarm demand, with some seeing it as expensive given its performance lags the RTX 5090 (Reuters)
https://www.thestandard.com.hk/tech-and-st

Nvidia's new RTX6000D chip for China finds little favour with major firms, sources say
Nvidia's RTX6000D, its newest artificial intelligence chip tailored for the Chinese market, has seen only lukewarm demand with some major tech firms opting not to place orders, two people with knowledge of procurement discussions said.

Console, which uses AI agents in Slack to resolve lower-level IT support tickets, raised a $23M Series A led by DST Global Partners and Thrive Capital (Alex Konrad/Upstarts Media)
https://www.upstartsmedia.com/p/console-ai-for-it-raises-series-a

Console, AI For IT Startup, Raises $22 Million From DST, Thrive
One-year-old startup Console works with Ramp, Flock Safety and Scale AI. CEO Andrei Serban has raised a $23 million Series A to go beyond IT into HR and finance.

Humanoid robot startup Figure raised a $1B Series C led by Parkway Venture Capital at a post-money valuation of $39B, up from $2.6B in February 2024 (Jackie Davalos/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-1…

New York- and London-based ClaimSorted, which uses AI to help speed up insurance claims and works with 20 insurers, raised a $13.3M seed led by Atomico (Robert Olsen/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertolsen-1

This Startup Raised $13.3 Million To Inject AI Into One Of The World’s Slowest Industries
Armed with fresh capital, ClaimSorted is using artificial intelligence to ensure insurance claims get paid without the pain.

Bengaluru-based quick grocery delivery startup Zepto raised $450M from Goodwater, General Catalyst, and others at a $7B valuation, as it prepares for an IPO (Sankalp Phartiyal/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Campus, which is building an online alternative to community colleges, hires Meta's ex-VP of AI Jerome Pesenti as its CTO, and acquires his company Sizzle AI (Samantha Subin/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/10/sam-altman-college-startup-campus-meta-ai.htm…

Shaq, Sam Altman-backed college startup Campus taps former Meta AI head as CTO
As part of the deal, Campus will buy Pesenti's artificial intelligence learning platform Sizzle AI for an undisclosed amount.

Boston-based OneLayer, which offers zero-trust security and device management for private 5G and LTE networks, raised a $28M Series A led by Maor Investments (Dan Jones/Fierce Network)
https://www.fierce-network.com/wireless/private-…

Austin-based Routefusion, whose API for financial institutions lets them embed accounts, payments, currency conversion, and compliance, raised a $26.7M Series A (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/fintech-startup-routefusion-…

Exclusive: Payments Tech Startup Routefusion Raises $26.7M Series A 
Routefusion says it will use its new funding to help grow its engineering product and compliance teams, and expand its go-to-market efforts.

Sources: Polymarket considers an offer valuing it at ~$9B, up from $1B in the summer; Kalshi is close to raising money at a $5B valuation, up from $2B in June (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/pr

Prediction Startup Polymarket Fields Offer for $9 Billion Valuation; Kalshi Nears $5 Billion Financing
Startups that enable people to bet on events such as the New York mayoral race, NFL games and the Federal Reserve rate decisions are in talks to raise more money at multi-billion-dollar valuations, as trading volume and rivalry between the two apps intensifies. Polymarket has considered an offer ...

Sources: OpenAI is recruiting from Apple's design, manufacturing, and supply chain teams, as it targets late 2026 or early 2027 for its first devices (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-raids-apple-hardware-ta…

OpenAI Raids Apple for Hardware Talent, Manufacturing Partners
As OpenAI’s plans to make devices infused with its artificial intelligence get closer to reality, the company is increasingly plucking talent from Silicon Valley’s most successful device maker: Apple. In recent months, the startup behind ChatGPT has been raiding the ranks of Apple’s design, ...

Source: Pylon, which uses AI to automate B2B customer service, raised $31M led by a16z and Bain Capital at a valuation in the hundreds of millions of dollars (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/andreessen-…

Why Andreessen and Bain Backed a Self-Described ‘Zendesk Killer’
Automating customer service has been among the most popular applications of artificial intelligence models, and investors have pumped about $1 billion into six key startups developing them. Now, a seventh is throwing its hat into the ring.San Francisco-based startup Pylon has raised $31 million ...

Polars, the Amsterdam-based startup behind the popular open-source library for data manipulation of the same name, raised a €18M Series A led by Accel (Anna Heim/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/29/the-startup-behind-open-source-t…

The startup behind open source tool Polars raises $21M from Accel | TechCrunch
Polars, the Amsterdam-based company behind the popular open source project by the same name, has raised an €18 million Series A led by Accel.

Israel-based Terra Security, which offers an AI-driven penetration testing platform, raised a $30M Series A led by Felicis, bringing its total funding to $38M (Meir Orbach/CTech)
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/awdq1yv5k

AI startup Terra Security raises $30M Series A for continuous penetration testing
Israeli startup aims to scale offensive security testing beyond manual and costly methods.

A profile of Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan, whose estimated 11% stake is now worth $1B following ICE's $2B investment, as its rivalry with Kalshi intensifies (Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciap…

Crypto’s Fastest-Growing Startup Mints World’s Youngest Self-Made Billionaire
A $2 billion investment from NYSE parent ICE vaults Polymarket’s 27 year-old founder Shayne Coplan into the three-comma club and intensifies its rivalry with prediction market competitor Kalshi.

Campfire, an AI-powered ERP and accounting services provider, raised a $65M Series B co-led by Accel and Ribbit Capital, after raising a $35M Series A in June (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/ai-fintech-campfire-raise-…

Why Accel Led A Round For Fintech Startup Campfire For The Second Time In Under 4 Months
Campfire, a San Francisco-based AI-powered accounting startup, has raised $65 million in a Series B round just months after closing on its Series A.

Relace, which makes tools and specialized language models to help AI agents code faster for customers like Lovable and Figma, raised a $23M Series A led by a16z (Stephanie Palazzolo/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/an

Andreessen Backs a Startup Developing Tools That Coding Agents Use
Countless startups sell tools to software engineers, such as version control systems to track who’s making changes to a codebase, and sandboxes where code can be safely run and tested without affecting the main system.Now, a startup is building such tools for artificial intelligence agents that ...

Tahoe Therapeutics, which is building AI models of living cells, raised $30M led by Amplify Partners at a $120M valuation, taking its total funding to $42M (Alex Knapp/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/202

Biotech Startup Tahoe Therapeutics Raised $30 Million To Build AI Models Of Living Cells
The Palo Alto, California-based company, now valued at $120 million, has developed a scalable way to quickly generate crucial biological data needed for AI models–and use them to find new cures for cancer.

British renewable energy startup Octopus Energy spins off its AI arm, Kraken, in what could create a stand-alone entity worth $15B (Yusuf Khan/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/octopus-energy-to-s…

Source: Meta has acquired WaveForms AI, which is working on AI that understands and mimics emotion in audio and debuted in December with a $40M seed led by a16z (Kalley Huang/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/meta-acquires-ai-audio-star…

Meta Acquires AI Audio Startup WaveForms
Meta Platforms has acquired WaveForms AI, a small startup working on artificial intelligence capable of understanding emotion and mimicking it in audio form, according to a person with direct knowledge. The acquisition comes as Meta continues to overhaul its efforts in AI, after stumbles earlier ...

Brain Co., co-founded by Jared Kushner, Elad Gil, and others to help enterprises and governments use AI, comes out of stealth with a $30M Series A (Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2025/09/10/jared-…

Meet Jared Kushner’s New AI Startup, Brain Co
Kushner teamed up with prolific solo investor Elad Gil and Luis Videgaray, the former Mexican foreign minister, to launch Brain Co., which helps businesses and governments apply AI to their operations.

The Players' Tribune owner Minute Media acquires VideoVerse, whose AI tools let broadcasters extract highlights from sports footage, sources say for $200M-$250M (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/09/blac

BlackRock-backed Minute Media acquires Indian AI startup that extracts sports highlights | TechCrunch
Minute Media's main reason behind the acquisition is to use VideoVerse's tech and its own publisher network to better distribute content across various sports properties and generate ad revenue out of distributed content.

Numeral, which provides AI-powered sales tax compliance software, raised a $35M Series B led by Mayfield at a $350M valuation, six months after an $18M Series A (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/18/numeral-raises-35m-to-automate-sal…

Numeral raises $35M to automate sales tax with AI | TechCrunch
The two-year-old sales tax startup Numeral is now valued at $350 million.

Lyric, which offers AI-powered supply chain management and forecasting tools, raised a $43.5M Series B led by Insight Partners, taking its total funding to $67M (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2025/08/05/ne…

Next-generation supply chain intelligence startup Lyric gets $43.5M in funding - SiliconANGLE
Next-generation supply chain intelligence startup Lyric gets $43.5M in funding - SiliconANGLE

Data integration startup Fivetran and data management startup dbt Labs announce a merger in an all-stock deal; Fivetran CEO will be CEO of the combined company (Krystal Hu/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/a16z-backed-data-fi…

Stockholm-based driverless truck startup Einride raised about $100M, a source says at a $1B valuation, up from a valuation of €400M in a 2021 funding round (Rafaela Lindeberg/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Einride Valuation Tops $1 Billion as Truck Startup Raises Funds
Einride AB raised about $100 million in funds in a round that values the Swedish driverless truck startup at more than $1 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity discussing private information.