@Techmeme@techhub.socialTech startups have started to offer nicotine pouches as a free perk to employees, as some claim the products help them focus despite health hazards (Angel Au-Yeung/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/tech-star…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialAn analysis of Crunchbase and PitchBook data: in 2025 so far, 80 tech startups reached $1B valuations, many of them focused on AI with exceptions like Kalshi (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/01/at-least-36-new-tech-…
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialSome podcasters are embracing AI voice clones from ElevenLabs and other startups, aiming to augment, translate episodes, and even replace in-studio performances (Reggie Ugwu/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/arts/podcast-ai-voices-clones.html…
@cdarwin@c.imIsraeli tech founder Maor Shlomo,
whose vibe coding startup Base44 sold for over $80 million when it was acquired by Wix,
said on the podcast “20VC” that “it’s relatively easy to create a vibe coding tool.”
“Every feature that we put out, we know that’s going to take either a few weeks or a few months for competitor to copy,” he complained.
It's trivially easy for competitors to copy your brilliant innovation.
@Techmeme@techhub.socialA look at startups like AGI and Plato, which build replicas of websites to let AI agents learn to navigate and complete specific tasks, like booking flights (Cade Metz/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02…
@cdarwin@c.imFlying drones used during the Ukraine war have changed land battle tactics for ever.
Now the same thing appears to be happening under the sea.
Navies around the world are racing to add autonomous submarines.
https://www.theguardian.com…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSome podcasters are embracing AI voice clones from ElevenLabs and other startups, aiming to augment, translate episodes, and even replace in-studio performances (Reggie Ugwu/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/arts/podcast-ai-voices-clones.html…
@marcel@waldvogel.family"There was no choice, there is no choice: either submit to capital or watch your ideas wither and die. There are no other practical ways to raise significant capital. Real Angels don’t exist"
On the Feudal-like structures in Silicon Valley. Written in 2018, but not much has changed.
https://<…
@heiseonline@social.heise.deMilliarden-Spritze für Startups: Bund und EU wollen Tech-Champions schaffen
Das Bundeswirtschaftsressort und der Europäische Investitionsfonds legen ein milliardenschweres Programm auf, um „internationale Technologieführer“ zu stützen.
@seeingwithsound@mas.toWhat actually matters in neurotech startups (and what doesn't) https://www.owlposting.com/p/questions-to-ponder-when-evaluating "a device must earn its place in a patient's life";
@digitalnaiv@mastodon.socialDas Software-AG-Areal ist von uns keine 500 Meter weg - Wie geht es nach dem Ausverkauf der Software AG jetzt weiter? Der lokale Darmstädter Unternehmer Kirk soll - wenn es nach den Grünen geht - ein Campus-Quartier für Forschung, Startups und Nachhaltigkeit schaffen. #Darmstadt #Ewwerscht
@aral@mastodon.ar.al
@chiraag@mastodon.onlinehttps://restofworld.org/2025/chatgpt-india-alternative-ai-llms/
Thanks @… for sharing!
@Techmeme@techhub.socialYC updated its website to remove Canada from its list of approved jurisdictions for incorporation, leaving the US, Cayman Islands, and Singapore as options (Murad Hemmadi/The Logic)
https://thelogic.co/news/exclusive/y-combinator-canada-startups/
@holger_moller@bildung.socialDas #Fediverse wird vielleicht viel schneller viel wichtiger als wir uns vorstellen können.
#HateAid #Sanktionen
@Techmeme@techhub.socialUS startups are increasingly adopting Chinese open source AI models, as some capabilities of Chinese models start to catch up with those of frontier US labs (NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/silicon-valley-building-free-chinese-ai-r…
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialA look at eight pitch decks startups used to raise funds for AI tools for Hollywood, offering scaled dubbing, script analysis, synthetic voice/video, and more (Lucia Moses/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-startups-hollywood-pitch-…
@johnleonard@mastodon.socialWelcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at Tencent’s abusive bot, Chinese AI startups profiting from IPOs and Indian tech’s pessimistic outlook.
https://www.computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/chinese-chatbot-has-had-e…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialPitchBook: the biggest US private startups raised $150B in 2025, surpassing the previous high of $92B in 2021, boosted by large funding rounds by AI startups (George Hammond/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/7f989b72-0722-4b0a-9a50-876417abc06f
@tinoeberl@mastodon.online👻 #Mythos zum #Frühstück: 😱
„#Plastikmüll kann man wieder aus dem Ozean holen“.
Es gibt Startups, die
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSequoia, a16z, and other VC firms invested $1.2B into police and public safety tech startups over the past year, following the success of Palantir and others (Abram Brown/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/a
@ncoca@social.coopFrom a podcast "#Japan has one of the longest lived and healthiest populations in the world, and let #Japanese startups are playing a relatively small role in the recent #longevity-
@Techmeme@techhub.socialTracxn: VC funding for Indian startups fell 17% YoY to $10.5B in 2025 across 1,518 deals, down ~39% YoY; AI startups raised $643M, up 4% YoY, across 100 deals (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/27/india-startu…
@tinoeberl@mastodon.online👻 #Mythos zum #Frühstück: 😱
„#Plastikmüll kann man wieder aus dem Ozean holen“.
Es gibt Startups, die
@primonatura@mstdn.social"Success! EU Microplastic Ban Regulation Drives Innovation in Biodegradable Alternatives"
#EU #EuropeanUnion #Plastic
@cdarwin@c.imAnduril cofounder Palmer Lucked defended the use of AI technology to make life-and-death decisions in war on Sunday.
A group of defense tech startups that includes Anduril,
along with traditional defense companies,
is developing autonomous AI weapons and tools for use in conflicts around the world,
-- worrying some who say the technology is not ready for such high-stakes environments.
"When it comes to life and death decision-making, I think that it is too …
@Techmeme@techhub.socialHow executives at humanoid robot startups like Agility Robotics and Weave Robotics are managing safety risks and tempering expectations for the technology (Sean McLain/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/humanoid-robot
@Mediagazer@mstdn.socialAn interview with Semafor's Justin Smith on growing its events business around tentpoles and how DC-focused media benefits from the corporate affairs market (Peter Kafka/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/semafor-ju…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialA look at Indian startups like TuluAI, which are building LLMs for low-resource languages by creating data sets nearly from scratch with community involvement (Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2025/chatgpt-india-alternative-ai-llms/
@Techmeme@techhub.socialFlapping Airplanes, an AI research lab "devoted to solving the data efficiency problem", raised $180M at a $1.5B valuation from GV, Sequoia, Index, and others (Kate Clark/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.
@brichapman@mastodon.socialThe fossil fuel era is ending faster than you think.
Startups like 247Solar are combining concentrating solar power with heat-storing batteries that deliver 24/7 electricity—even when the sun isn't shining. Their systems can slash carbon emissions by 95% and cut energy costs by 25% or more.
The best part? Businesses can upgrade with zero upfront costs through Energy-as-a-Service.
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSouth Korea enacts the AI Basic Act, which it says includes the world's first comprehensive set of laws regulating AI, as startups warn of compliance burdens (Kyu-Seok Shim/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific<…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialAI Whistleblower Initiative says OpenAI recently updated its whistleblower policy, addressing 8 of 13 recommendations and going further than Anthropic's policy (Rocket Drew/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-one-ups-a…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialA look at "neolabs" such as Safe Superintelligence and Humans&, which give priority to long-term AI R&D over immediate profits; dozens have become unicorns (Kate Clark/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.
@Techmeme@techhub.socialAs startups flood the market with AI shopping agents, Amazon is playing defense by blocking agents' access to its site and investing heavily in its own tools (Annie Palmer/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/24/amazon-faces-a-dilemma-fight…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialPitchBook: US AI and robotics VC deals are up over 4x since 2023 to $160B so far in 2025, while comparable China deals are just $10B , up from $9.24B in 2023 (CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/26/cnbc-china
@cdarwin@c.imTech Billionaire investor Marc Andreessen has long criticized the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
— calling it an impediment to fintech and crypto companies. 
Andreessen’s investment firm (Andreessen Horowitz aka A16Z) backed many fintech/crypto players that were under CFPB scrutiny,
Under the Trump administration, the CFPB’s enforcement efforts were sharply scaled back:
investigations suspended,
consumer-protection rule-makings shelved,
and …
@Techmeme@techhub.socialAI sector minted 50 new billionaires in 2025; Crunchbase: investors poured $200B into AI startups in 2025, or about 50% of global funding, up from 34% in 2024 (Alicia Park/Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciapark/2025/12/25/ai-minted…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialChinese state media: China launches three VC funds of $7.1B each to back early-stage "hard technology" startups valued below ¥500M, or about $71M (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boa…
@cdarwin@c.imMarc Andreessen is one of America’s most well-known investors and an outsize figure in the so-called fintech industry.
His firm seeded eight companies since 2016 that landed in the crosshairs of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
-- the small watchdog agency that Congress created after the 2008 financial crisis to protect vulnerable consumers from exploitation.
Some of those inquiries have resulted in consent orders, fines and, for one company, a lifetime industry ba…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialTotal global VC funding to fintech startups totaled $51.8B in 2025, up 27% YoY and above pre-pandemic totals, but much lower than 2021's peak of $141.6B (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/fintech/funding-jumped-big-checks-ai-ye-2025/<…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialIn recent months, several companies like Airtable, Handshake, and Opendoor have announced that they are "refounding", as they scramble to add new AI features (Lora Kelley/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/06/business/refounding-startups-ai.html…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialPolygon buys crypto startups Coinme and Sequence for a total of $250M , as it seeks to bolster its stablecoin and fintech infrastructure and compete with Stripe (Ben Weiss/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/01/13/polygon-labs-acquisition-coinme-seq…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSources: Nvidia's licensing deal with Groq, which has raised ~$1.8B, includes payouts to Groq's key execs and investors, including BlackRock and Tiger Global (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/nvidia-struck-20-billion-megadeal-gro…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialQualcomm Ventures and six Indian VC firms join India Deep Tech Alliance with an additional $850M in commitments; Nvidia joins as a strategic technical adviser (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/04/nvid
@Techmeme@techhub.socialMistral's CEO says claims that Chinese AI startups lag behind the US are a "fairy tale," and China's open-source tech is "probably stressing" US CEOs (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-0…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSorcero, which makes AI agents for pharmaceutical companies to market new medications, raised a $42.5M Series B, bringing its total funding to $59M (Katherine Davis/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/biotech-deals/2025/11/21/sorcero-series-b-agen…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialHow Google, Huawei, Microsoft, and Nvidia, as well as startups and university research teams, spent millions of dollars to develop AI weather forecasting tools (Tim Fernholz/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-01-22/how…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialThe UK announces a £100M plan to support local AI hardware startups via guaranteed "first customer" payments, and estimates its AI market to be worth over £72B (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/d4d9d091-5fd7-4c20-a3ca-f68f580f7d6b
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSources: Kalshi told investors that its trading volume grew six times in the last six months and it is on an annualized pace for $600M to $700M in net revenue (Cory Weinberg/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/las-vegas-kalshi-king
@Techmeme@techhub.socialEuropean VC funding rose 9% YoY to hit $58B in 2025, below North America's 46% YoY rise; AI led with $17.5B, followed by biotech's $13.4B and hardware's $10.8B (Gené Teare/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/european-funding-nudged…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialHow scientists are exploring the use of quantum sensors, developed by startups like Q-CTRL, as a secure GPS alternative with military and civilian applications (Mike Cherney/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/the…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialAtomico: European startups are on track to raise $44B in 2025, up from $41B in 2024; tech now makes up 15% of Europe's GDP, up from 4% in 2016 (Kai Nicol-Schwarz/Sifted)
https://sifted.eu/articles/state-european-tech-report-2025/
@Techmeme@techhub.socialMeta's win over the US FTC may mean Meta, Google, Microsoft, and others can resume buying startups to stay ahead of the pack, after a slowdown under Lina Khan (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/technology/meta-ruling-silicon-valley…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialBarret Zoph says Thinking Machines Lab fired him only after learning he was leaving, and at no time did the company cite his performance or unethical conduct (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-messy-h…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialA look at Tsinghua University, which leads China's AI innovation, with 4,986 AI patents between 2005 and 2024, alumni behind startups like DeepSeek, and more (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg)
@Techmeme@techhub.socialLightning AI merges with data center operator Voltage Park to create an "AI cloud" with a $2.5B valuation, managing 35,000 Nvidia GPUs across six data centers (Iain Martin/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/20
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSources detail how Tiger Global fueled the COVID-era unicorn bubble that burst ahead of the AI boom; the firm recently shared its $12.7B 2021 fund is now up 16% (Issie Lapowsky/Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2025/tiger-global-unicorn-investment-crash/
@Techmeme@techhub.socialLightspeed raised a record $9B across six funds to invest in AI, with $3.3B to back breakout companies like Anthropic; Lightspeed has backed 165 AI startups (Erin Griffith/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/technology/ai-venture-capital-big-fun…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialHow Skövde, a small Swedish city of 58,000, built a local video game ecosystem via a degree for game developers at University of Skövde and a startup incubator (Ralph Jones/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2025/dec/12/sko…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSolve Intelligence, which offers generative AI tools to law firms for IP and patent law work, raised a $40M Series B, bringing its total funding to $55M (Mike Butcher/Pathfounders)
https://pathfounders.com/p/generative-ai-is-coming-for-ip
@Techmeme@techhub.socialHow US startups like Oakland-based Brimstone are racing to develop sources of raw materials that the US needs for tech, an industry China has long dominated (Heather Somerville/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.
@Techmeme@techhub.socialA late-2025 amendment to California's wealth tax proposal treats founder control as ownership, a move that could end founder-controlled startups in the state (Mike Solana/Pirate Wires)
https://www.piratewires.com/p/californias-tech-industry-kill-switch
@Techmeme@techhub.socialChinese AI startups Zhipu and MiniMax are set to go public in Hong Kong on January 8 and 9, respectively; MiniMax has 210M users, and Zhipu has 8,000 clients (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-06/o…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialA look at data labeling startups like Objectways, whose workers record and annotate repetitive tasks like folding towels to train AI robots for physical tasks (Nilesh Christopher/Los Angeles Times)
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/202…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialIn DeepSeek's first public appearance since R1's success, a senior researcher told a state-run conference he was pessimistic about AI's impact on humanity (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSources: Charles Schwab is expected to announce a deal to acquire Forge Global, a leading platform for trading stakes in private startups, for as much as $600M (Sujeet Indap/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/ffa0dabd-7e87-4327-b788-73e8fb598de3
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSources: China is considering how to build fences around its AI know-how amid the AI race and is identifying standout companies to add to an export control list (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/china-warns-ai-startups…
@Techmeme@techhub.socialSources and docs: after Marc Andreessen donated $5M to Trump's 2024 campaign, most CFPB probes have stalled, including three into Andreessen-backed companies (Jake Pearson/ProPublica)
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-cfpb-marc-andreessen-silicon-vall…
