Category: Fundraising

AI, Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise, evergreens, Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, Startups

9 US AI startups have raised $100M or more in 2025

March 8, 2025

Last year was a monumental year for the AI industry in the U.S. and beyond. There were 49 startups that raised funding rounds worth $100 million or more in 2024, per our count at TechCrunch. Three companies raised more than one “mega-round” last year, and seven companies raised rounds at $1 billion or larger. How…

Cursor in talks to raise at a $10B valuation as AI coding sector booms

March 7, 2025

Investor interest in AI-coding assistants is exploding. Anysphere, the developer of AI-powered coding assistant Cursor, is in talks with venture capitalists to raise capital at a valuation of nearly $10 billion, Bloomberg reported. The round, if it transpires, would come about three months after Anysphere completed its previous fundraise of $100 million at a pre-money…

Startups Weekly: Startups raised funding to help others navigate challenges

March 7, 2025

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. Sometimes problems are just that: problems. But often, they are also fodder. This week brought us a mix of startups facing adversity, sometimes of their own doing,…

Founder of battery startup Our Next Energy returns as CEO following new funding

March 6, 2025

Why VCs ghost founders, or reject deals and never speak to the founder again

March 6, 2025

Getting ghosted is never fun. Especially if you’re a founder seeking capital from investors. It’s similar to dating. You might be left wondering “Why is this person not getting back to me? Did I do something wrong?” Did the investor hate the product? Did they not care for me personally?” It’s enough to drive anyone…

Faireez raises $7.5M for AI-powered hotel-style housekeeping for condo residents

March 6, 2025

Faireez, which aims to bring “5-star hotel-style housekeeping” to multifamily buildings, is emerging from stealth with $7.5 million in seed funding, the startup told TechCrunch exclusively. Founded in 2023, New York-based Faireez’s goal is to make the cleaning services it offers as customized as possible. It offers a subscription model where each building is assigned…

Turing, a key coding provider for OpenAI and other LLM producers, raises $111M at a $2.2B valuation

March 6, 2025

As AI companies race to improve the accuracy of Large Language Models and apps built on top of them, a startup that has emerged as a key partner in fulfilling that effort is announcing a significant round of funding to expand. Turing, which works with armies of engineers to contribute code to AI projects —…

Crogl, armed with $30M, takes the wraps off a new AI ‘Iron Man suit’ for security analysts

March 6, 2025

AI agents are marching across the world of IT, and on Thursday a startup called Crogl is debuting its contribution to the field: an autonomous assistant for cybersecurity researchers to help them analyse thousands of daily network alerts to find and fix actual security incidents. The assistant — described by Crogl’s CEO and co-founder Monzy…

Renaissance Fusion raises €32M to radically simplify complex fusion reactors

March 6, 2025

Alpine Eagle secures funding from European backers for counter-drone tech amid rising threats

March 6, 2025

The war in Ukraine has brought drones to the forefront of modern warfare, creating a surge in demand for counter-drone systems. However, legacy solutions to counter drones, such as ground-based defense systems and cyber warfare, often come with a hefty price tag. For German startup Alpine Eagle, these solutions fall short: When now-ubiquitous $500 first-person…

Anna Patterson’s Ceramic.ai looks to help enterprises build AI models faster and more efficiently

March 5, 2025

Anna Patterson has had a storied career in Silicon Valley. She founded three startups, including search engine upstarts Xift and Cuil, as well as recall.archive.org, which became the Internet Archive. She was the vice president of engineering at Google, and later on started Gradient Ventures, an AI-focused seed fund. And she isn’t done building. Patterson…

Flex, a Brex for business owners, has raised $25M at a $250M valuation

March 5, 2025

Flex, which offers personal finance software and payments infrastructure for business owners, has raised $25 million in equity funding while securing a $200 million credit facility, it told TechCrunch exclusively. The equity funds were raised at a valuation of “just under $250 million.” The company last raised a $20 million Series A announced in September…

Grain emerges from stealth with $50M to help any business hedge against FX volatility

March 5, 2025

Foreign exchange fluctuations can make or break a business that trades across borders, but keeping up and responding to the FX market can be tricky if you’re anything smaller than the world’s largest enterprises. Today, a startup called Grain is emerging from stealth with a product that it says will let finance teams at companies…

Darwinbox, the HR upstart from India, raises $140M to take on Deel and Rippling

March 5, 2025

Darwinbox, an Indian startup building a SaaS platform for hiring, onboarding and employee administration, has raised $140 million to take on the likes of Rippling and Deel as it seeks to expand internationally, especially in the U.S. The funding is being co-led by KKR and Partners Group, and is a mix of primary and secondary…

CoreWeave partner EcoDataCenter racks up half a billion dollars to build more sustainable buildings for AI

March 5, 2025

EcoDataCenter, a Swedish company that builds eco-friendly data centers used by major compute providers to handle their AI traffic, has raised nearly half a billion dollars — $478 million (€450 million) to be exact — in anticipation of more demand. The equity funding, which is coming from a group of unnamed institutional investors, will be…

Defense tech startup Epirus raises $250M Series D to counter drone swarms

March 4, 2025

Quantexa nabs $175M at a $2.6B valuation to double down on data analytics for AI

March 4, 2025

London startup Quantexa has made its name over the years with an enterprise platform that employs AI and data analytics to fight money laundering and fraud. Today, it is announcing new funding of $175 million to double down on that business while also moving deeper into another hot area: using its technology to help organizations…

Foundation Capital, an early backer of Solana and Cerebras, raises $600M fund

March 4, 2025

Foundation Capital has come a long way since it was forced to scale down its fund size from $750 million in 2008 to $282 million (its sixth main fund) in 2013. On Tuesday, the 30-year-old firm announced that it raised a $600 million eleventh flagship fund, which is 20% larger than the predecessor $500 million…

Didi reportedly seeking funds for self-driving unit at $5B valuation

March 4, 2025

Chinese ride-hail firm Didi is on the hunt for fresh funds for its autonomous vehicle technology unit that could value it at $5 billion, according to Bloomberg News. Investor interest in self-driving cars is high in China on the backs of IPOs from WeRide and Pony AI, which have a market capitalization of $4.7 billion…

Swap banks $40M to build tools for merchants to deal with tariffs and other cross-border trading nightmares

March 4, 2025

Cross-border trade could become significantly more challenging with the wave of new tariffs getting introduced across different markets. Today, in a timely piece of news, a London-founded startup called Swap — which is building tools for e-commerce companies to better navigate the cross-border trading world — is announcing $40 million in funding to expand. Iconiq…

LlamaIndex launches a cloud service for building unstructed data agents

March 4, 2025

Agents are the next big thing in AI. Some define these “agents” differently from others, but the general idea is, they’re AI-powered tools that can perform tasks autonomously. The agent hype has reached a fever pitch, but one startup was relatively early to the game: LlamaIndex. Founded by former Uber research scientists, Jerry Liu and…

Hotel management platform Mews books $75M round led by Tiger Global

March 4, 2025

Despite clouds of uncertainty looming over the economy and geopolitics, people still want to travel. To meet that demand, Mews, an Amsterdam-founded ‘unicorn’ building an SaaS platform for hotel management, has raised a fresh $75 million. The funding is coming at a crossroad in the travel industry. On one hand are positive signals. Analysts at…

Cino cracks bill-splitting at the moment of payment, raises seed round

March 4, 2025

While Venmo or Splitwise are effectively ‘debt collector’ tools, which require one person to pay a full bill and then request funds from others, neither have cracked bill-splitting at the moment of payment. European startup Cino, which has come up with just such a product, has now raised €3.5m in a Seed funding round led…

Dutch startup QuantWare seeks to fast-track quantum computing

March 4, 2025

Big tech companies aren’t sleeping on quantum chips: Amazon Web Services introduced Ocelot; Microsoft, Majorana; and Google, Willow. But although all of these can be considered to be breakthroughs, quantum startups often focus on more practical advancements — and they are making progress. Founded in 2020, Dutch startup QuantWare is one of these, which claims…

HackerPulse wants to help enterprises spot engineering bottlenecks

March 3, 2025

Cloudsmith raises $23M to improve software supply chain security

March 3, 2025

The software supply chain is notoriously porous: a reported 81% of codebases contain high- or critical-risk open source vulnerabilities. A single vulnerability can have a far-reaching impact on the wider software supply chain, as evidenced by the likes of the Log4Shell exploit that saw millions of applications exposed to potential remote code execution hacks via…

OpenAI’s startup empire: The companies backed by its venture fund

March 1, 2025

Only 3 more days to save up to $325 at TechCrunch Sessions: AI

February 28, 2025

The AI revolution won’t wait — will you? Secure your seat at TechCrunch Sessions: AI before time runs out! You’ve got only three days left to save up to $325. The clock stops on March 2 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Don’t miss out on the lowest rates of the year! AI is transforming everything, and…

TechCrunch Disrupt 2025: Final 24 hours to save up to $1,130

February 28, 2025

The early bird gets the worm and time is running out! You have less than 24 hours left to save up to $1,130 when purchasing passes to TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. If you want massive savings on Disrupt 2025 individual passes and up to 30% on group tickets, secure your low ticket rate today. These offers…

Snowflake grows startup accelerator with $200M in new capital

February 27, 2025

Snowflake plans to expand its startup accelerator with $200 million in additional commitments, the tech giant that specializes in cloud-based data storage said Thursday. The new injection of capital follows a string of activity by Snowflake over the past several months that illustrates that company’s growth ambitions. The Snowflake Startup Accelerator, formerly known as the…

Archipelo comes out of stealth with $12M funding to secure human and AI-driven code

February 27, 2025

When it comes to AI software, you can build something clever, but that’s not always the same as building something that is secure. With so much software now getting written by AI, having a window into its security can be a challenge. That’s the premise of Archipelo, a San Francisco-based cybersecurity startup that is today…

Workhelix taps years of research to help enterprises figure out where to apply AI

February 27, 2025

AI has the power to transform how people work, but getting tangible value out of AI isn’t as easy as throwing any AI application at any workflow. It can be hard for enterprises to figure out which AI applications help their business and which are just hype. Workhelix wants to solve that problem. Workhelix is…

2025 TechCrunch Events Calendar

February 27, 2025

For two decades, TechCrunch has provided a front row view to the future of technology, shaping conversations that matter and spotlighting the next big things before they break — both on the page and in person at our world-renowned events. This year, as we celebrate our 20th anniversary, we’re launching our most ambitious events calendar…

Stripe finalizes tender sale at a $91.5B valuation, says payment volumes grew to $1.4T in 2024

February 27, 2025

Digital payments platform Stripe has yet to lay out plans to go public, but in the meantime the company has thrown past and present employees a line for some liquidity. The company on Thursday confirmed a tender offer where investors will buy up shares from those employees at a valuation of $91.5 billion. Stripe said…

Taktile helps fintechs build automated decision-making workflows

February 27, 2025

The automated logic behind many financial decisions — for example, decisions that determine whether a client is approved for a credit line — is hard-coded. Often, it’s not easily changed. If a head of credit at a bank wanted to adjust the bank’s lending criteria, for example, they’d likely have to raise a ticket with…

Shop Circle raises $60M to encircle e-commerce with an app suite

February 26, 2025

The boom in e-commerce post-pandemic meant shops moved online. However, some merchants ended up with dozens of separate app providers to accommodate everything from supply chains, to inventory, to marketing. The founders of Shop Circle realized this and either built or bought many such apps. The company has now raised $60 million in a Series…

Inception emerges from stealth with a new type of AI model

February 26, 2025

Inception, a new Palo Alto-based company started by Stanford computer science professor Stefano Ermon, claims to have developed a novel AI model based on “diffusion” technology. Inception calls it a diffusion-based large language model, or a “DLM” for short. The generative AI models receiving the most attention now can be broadly divided into two types:…

Continue wants to help developers create and share custom AI coding assistants

February 26, 2025

A new startup wants to help developers create customized, contextual coding assistants that can connect with any model and integrate seamlessly with their development environments. Founded in June 2023 by CEO Ty Dunn and CTO Nate Sesti (pictured above), Y Combinator alum Continue has already garnered some 23,000 stars on GitHub and 11,000 Discord community…

Lock screen platform Glance launches AI-powered shopping experience, gets fresh backing from Google

February 26, 2025

Lock screen platform Glance announced today that it is launching a new generative AI-based shopping experience. It will suggest different outfits on a user’s personalized avatar. The company is partnering with Google to use the company’s Gemini models and Vertex AI to deploy the experience. Separately, the company also got fresh backing from Google —…

Anagram takes a gamified approach to employee cybersecurity training

February 26, 2025

Despite employers requiring their employees to complete yearly cybersecurity training courses, human-driven cybersecurity breaches still happen. The problem could even get substantially worse as generative AI increases the scale and personalization of social engineering campaigns. Anagram, formerly known as Cipher, is taking a new approach to employee cybersecurity training that the company hopes can keep…

Regie.ai injects sales enablement with AI, but keeps humans in the loop

February 26, 2025

There’s no sure-fire approach to sales enablement, the process of providing a sales team with the resources it needs to close deals. Some teams are deficient on the prospecting side — that is, identifying and contacting potential customers. Others require help getting deals over the finish line. To meet these diverse wants, founders Matt Millen…

Nomagic picks up $44M for its AI-powered robotic arms

February 26, 2025

Regions like the U.S. and Europe have been doubling down on rebuilding their industrial muscle, after decades of closing down factories and outsourcing the work to countries like China. To that end, a fast-growing Polish startup called Nomagic, which builds robots — specifically robotic arms — for logistics operations, is announcing $44 million in funding,…

Sweden’s Lovable, an app-building AI platform, rakes in $15M after spectacular growth

February 25, 2025

Using generative AI to create software has been possibly the largest use case since it first appeared a couple years ago. But platforms like Cursor and Copilot are mostly confined to a world inhabited by trained engineers. Lovable, a Swedish AI startup, reached the front page of both Product Hunt and Hacker News last year…

DocUnlock wants to solve a customs bottleneck

February 25, 2025

When goods enter the U.S., they have to be declared to U.S. customs so the importer can be charged the proper taxes. That applies to everything from a consumer ordering clothes from a brand based overseas to every single item on a massive container ship. When it comes to commercial importing, filling out the necessary…

Mitico raises $4.3M seed round to capture CO2 using ‘prehistoric chemistry’

February 25, 2025

Quantum Machines raises $170M, says it’s working with more than half of all quantum computing companies

February 25, 2025

Quantum computing remains a holy grail in the world of technology, but with some important breakthroughs in the last several months, investors are betting on the more promising startups in the space to make the concept of super-efficient particle- and electron-based computing a reality. In the latest development, Quantum Machines, an Israeli startup that provides…

Perfect taps $23M to fix the flaws in recruitment with AI

February 25, 2025

“Agentic AI” is the concept of the moment. Developers big and small are rushing to build apps to leapfrog the heavy lifting needed to employ generative AI in specific contexts… and investors are rushing to fund the most interesting of these. In one of the latest examples, a startup out of Israel called Perfect —…

Anthropic reportedly ups its next funding round to $3.5B

February 24, 2025

Anthropic’s next funding round is reportedly growing larger. Anthropic, which makes the AI chatbot Claude, is finalizing a $3.5 billion fundraising round that values the company at $61.5 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Anthropic initially set out to raise $2 billion, but investors have now agreed to a larger tranche, per the WSJ.…

The startup battle begins now: TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 applications are open

February 24, 2025

Pre-Series A founders, this is your moment! If you’re ready to showcase your game-changing innovations on a global stage, the battlefield awaits. Applications for TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 — the premier startup pitch competition — are officially OPEN. This is your shot to shine! Step onto the global stage and showcase your groundbreaking startup to…

Cambium is building an AI that helps turn waste wood into usable lumber

February 24, 2025

Yope is sparking GenZ (and VC) interest with an Instagram-like app for private groups

February 24, 2025

Photo and video apps targeting young adults with social hooks are a dime a dozen these days, so those that show traction with 18-twentysomethings tend to catch the attention of investors looking for the next Instagram or TikTok. In the latest example, photo-sharing app Yope, which lets you share still images to private groups, says…

Augury and Hightouch joined the unicorn club

February 21, 2025

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. Startup life is a story of births and deaths. This week confirmed this, and it confirmed that unicorn rounds are not dead. Most interesting startup stories from…

Apply to Speak at TechCrunch Sessions: AI before the deadline

February 21, 2025

AI Innovators, seize your moment! Have insights that could inspire 1,200 AI founders, investors, and enthusiasts eager to advance the future of AI? Take center stage, influence the AI conversation, and exchange ideas at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. We’re gathering top AI visionaries from the startup world to…

Three reasons every founder and VC should be at TechCrunch All Stage 2025

February 21, 2025

From idea to IPO — where are you on your startup journey? If any of that sounds like you — or if you’re in between stages and ready to level up — TechCrunch All Stage 2025 (formerly Early Stage) is the place to be. Join 1,200 founders to exchange ideas and meet the right VC…

TechCrunch Disrupt 2025: Lowest prices of the year end in 7 days

February 21, 2025

You read that headline correctly! The best deals for TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 tickets are about to end in just 7 days. Save up to $1,130 on individual passes and up to 30% on group tickets. Don’t wait — these offers end on February 28 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Join us in celebrating 20 years of…

6 new tech unicorns were minted in January 2025 so far.

February 20, 2025

Despite a still tight venture capital market, new unicorns are still being created every month. Using data from Crunchbase and PitchBook, TechCrunch tracked down the newly VC-backed startup minted unicorns so far this year as of the end of January. Those include healthcare companies like Hippocratic AI and satellite space companies like Loft Orbital. This…

61 US startups became unicorns in 2024: Here’s the full list

February 20, 2025

Cherryrock Capital raises new $172M fund from all-star investors to back diverse founders

February 20, 2025

Cherryrock Capital, founded by ex-TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot, announced Wednesday the closing of its $172 million Fund I with an all-star limited partner list that includes JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, MassMutual, Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, Reid Hoffman, Mellody Hobson, and Sheryl Sandberg. Brown-Philpot told Bloomberg that the fund actually closed in January. The firm launched…

Arize AI hopes it has first-mover advantage in AI observability

February 20, 2025

SmartSuite raises $38M to be the final word on enterprise collaboration

February 20, 2025

Three founders who built out one of the bigger startups in risk management are scaling a new company to take on another pain point in the world of work. SmartSuite‘s platform lets teams collaborate on projects, build automations around that work, and search and access work across larger libraries of data spanning a disparate number…

Spore.Bio raises $23M to apply machine learning to microbiology testing

February 19, 2025

Recalls in the food and beverage industry due to contamination incidents can have catastrophic effects. Not only do companies have to pay fines and damages, but the impacts on the brand’s reputation can be long-lasting. That’s why Spore.Bio, a Paris-based deeptech startup, is trying to reinvent microbiology testing to avoid the next PR crisis in…

AI-coding startup Codeium in talks to raise at an almost $3B valuation, sources say

February 19, 2025

Codeium, an AI-powered coding startup, is raising a new round of funding at a $2.85 billion valuation, including fresh capital, according to two sources with knowledge of the deal. The round is being led by a returning investor Kleiner Perkins, the people said. The new round comes just six months after Silicon Valley-based Codeium announced…

After raising $1 billion, fintech Varo closes another $29 million, replaces founder CEO

February 19, 2025

Fintech Varo has been hoping to raise a $55 million Series G round but has, so far, closed on $29 million to date, according to a recent SEC filing. Varo declined to comment on this new round but the fintech has raised just over $1 billion in funding since its 2015 inception, according to PitchBook. …

Brand new women’s focused Swizzle Ventures skyrockets past its fundraising target

February 19, 2025

Swizzle Ventures has closed its Fund I at $6.6 million, bypassing its initial $3 million target, Jessica Kamada, the firm’s founder, told TechCrunch. Back in December, TechCrunch previously reported that the firm, which quietly launched in 2023, was raising and has already bypassed $5 million, per its SEC filing. The thesis of Fund I will…

Sanas taps AI to change call center workers’ accents in real time

February 19, 2025

The demand for voice and speech recognition technologies is massive — and growing. An analysis by market research firm Markets and Markets found that the sector could be worth over $28.1 billion by 2027. There’s no shortage of vendors providing voice and speech recognition solutions, but some newer upstarts have managed to carve out niches.…

Hyperlume wants to make chip-to-chip communication faster and more efficient

February 19, 2025

Data centers consumed 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023 and are estimated to use up to 12% by 2028. The majority of the energy data centers suck up is used to help transfer data from chip to chip. A company called Hyperlume is looking to make that process more energy-efficient while also speeding it up.…

Augury raises $73M on a $1B+ valuation for AI to detect malfunctions in factory machines

February 19, 2025

As companies like Nvidia and SoftBank make industrial robotics into a key focus for future R&D, a startup has raised funding today for another facet of how AI is being used on the factory room floor. Augury, which develops AI-based hardware that measures vibrations, sound, temperature and other factors to understand how machines are working…

Guidde taps AI to help create software training videos

February 19, 2025

Creating corporate training videos for software is a time-consuming ordeal, especially if you’re an organization with a lot of software licenses. Training videos can help get employees up to speed, but they’re a big lift. They often take entire teams to produce. Tel Aviv-based entrepreneur Yoav Einav thought there might be an alternative, cheaper way…

Safe Superintelligence, Ilya Sutskever’s AI startup, is reportedly close to raising roughly $1B

February 18, 2025

Safe Superintelligence, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, could be close to raising more than $1 billion at a $30 billion valuation — a higher valuation than reported just weeks ago. Bloomberg reports that VC firm Greenoaks Capital Partners is leading the deal and pledging to invest half a billion…

Fintech fundraising is giving me 2021 flashbacks

February 18, 2025

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week we’re looking at some big valuation jumps, how Stripe is eyeing another shareholder sale, a colorful conversation with an early-stage VC, and more! To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here. The big…

Fetii’s group rideshare app for young people attracts funding from Mark Cuban, YC

February 18, 2025

When he was a senior studying at Texas A&M University, Matthew Iommi realized that there were no good options for transporting groups of people. Fellow college students heading out for the night together didn’t have access to on-demand rides with the same convenience, accessibility, and affordability of typical ride-hail platforms, like Uber and Lyft. “Once…

Hightouch raises $80M on a $1.2B valuation for marketing tools powered by AI

February 18, 2025

Last decade, companies like Segment rewrote the book on how organizations used APIs to merge data from disparate apps to improve marketing strategies. Today, a startup called Hightouch — co-founded by a former engineering manager at Segment — is announcing $80 million in funding for the next chapter: a platform that lets sales, marketing, and…

Legal AI-startup Luminance, backed by the late Mike Lynch, raises $75M

February 18, 2025

Given Generative AI is very good at interpreting dense texts, it’s been a boon for startups attacking one of the most complex sets of texts there is: the law. We’ve thus seen an explosion of legal tech, supercharged by AI, in the last year or so. Lawtech startup Eudia bagged $105 million only last week. …

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, said to be in talks to raise $10B

February 14, 2025

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, is said to be in talks to raise $10 billion in a round that would value xAI at $75 billion. Bloomberg reported Friday that xAI is canvassing existing investors, including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Valor Equity Partners for the round, which would bring xAI’s total raised to $22.4 billion,…

Call for Speakers: TechCrunch All Stage 2025

February 14, 2025

Founders, VCs, and startup experts—This is your moment! Got scaling insights? Now’s your chance to share them with 1,200 founders, investors, and entrepreneurs at TechCrunch All Stage 2025 presented by Fidelity, on July 17 in Boston! We’re gathering leading experts from the startup and VC communities to host engaging sessions, interactive roundtables, and dynamic breakouts.…

ICON, a pioneer in 3D home printing, raises $56M led by Norwest, Tiger Global

February 14, 2025

ICON, which builds homes using 3D printing, has closed on $56 million in Series C funding co-led by Norwest Venture Partners and Tiger Global, the company has confirmed to TechCrunch exclusively. The raise represents a first close for the Austin-based ICON, according to a spokesperson. Existing backers CAZ Investments, LENX, Moderne Ventures, Oakhouse Partners and…

Plain pulls in $15M to agregate B2B customer services chats into one platform

February 14, 2025

Internal customer support platforms are moving from platforms like email ticketing systems and chat to channels like Slack, Microsoft Teams, and even Discord. But with Slack, for instance, able to host hundreds of channels, the whole thing can become quite unwieldy. Plain, out of the UK, thinks it has the answer. Its API-first platform consolidates…

Phase raises $13M to speed up the UX design process with its no-code platform

February 13, 2025

UX and UI designers work closely with engineers throughout product development to build and implement design concepts and wireframes for functional user interfaces. Regular communication, feedback and testing are required for the collaboration to work smoothly and deliver a user experience that aligns with the intended design goals. Nick Budden, a serial entrepreneur who used…

Tofu is building an omni-channel marketing platform for enterprises

February 13, 2025

When EJ Cho started his first company in 2018, he was exposed to what it takes to market a product. He was surprised to find a market filled with different single-use tools. “It was a very frustrating experience,” Cho told TechCrunch. “I had to learn and juggle all these different tools. It felt like a…

Startup Battlefield 200: The competition starts on the waitlist

February 13, 2025

Is your pre-Series A startup solving big problems with game-changing potential? Do you have the drive to compete against the world’s top early-stage startups? Or know a founder whose vision deserves to be seen? TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200 is where the most innovative early-stage startups battle it out in front of world-renowned VC judges in…

EnCharge raises $100M+ to accelerate AI using analog chips

February 13, 2025

EnCharge AI, a semiconductor startup developing analog memory chips for AI applications, has raised more than $100 million in a Series B round led by Tiger Global to spur its next stage of growth. The funding is significant partly because interest in AI is at an all-time high, but the high price of building and…

Ulu Ventures sticks to its diversity strategy, raises $208M

February 12, 2025

While large corporations like Google and Meta curbing their DEI programs, Ulu Ventures, which just raised a fourth $208 million fund, doesn’t plan to change its strategy of investing in diverse founders, the firm told the Wall Street Journal. Co-founded by Miriam Riviera, a Latina and former vice president and deputy general counsel at Google,…

Security compliance firm Drata acquires SafeBase for $250M

February 12, 2025

Drata, a security compliance automation platform that helps companies adhere to frameworks such as SOC 2 and GDPR, has acquired software security review startup SafeBase for $250 million. SafeBase co-founders Al Yang (CEO) and Adar Arnon (CTO) will retain their roles, and SafeBase will continue to offer a standalone product while bringing its core solutions to…

Suger helps companies list and scale up on cloud marketplaces

February 12, 2025

When cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and AWS launched cloud software marketplaces a decade ago, it opened up a new sales channel for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies to get in front of potential enterprise customers. These marketplaces effectively enabled SaaS companies to bypass the traditional, lengthy sales cycles. But rarely is the seller-side experience a walk…

SGNL snags $30M for a new take on ID security based on zero-standing privileges

February 12, 2025

Security experts often describe identity as the “new perimeter” in the world of security: in the world of cloud services where network assets and apps can range far and wide, the biggest vulnerabilities are often leaked and spoofed log-in credentials. A startup called SGNL has built a new approach that it believes is better at…

SpotDraft taps AI to help streamline contract management

February 12, 2025

More and more legal professionals are embracing AI, surveys show. Per a recent poll from legaltech company Clio, 79% of firms used some form of AI for casework last year, up from just 19% in 2023. Despite some skepticism of the tech, in-house counsel has shown an interest, as well, with one survey suggesting that…

Chestnut Carbon gets $160M to turn old farms into forests

February 12, 2025

Founders Fund is about to close another $3B fund

February 11, 2025

Founders Fund is on track to conclude fundraising of its third growth fund at the end of March, according to people close to the firm. The Peter Thiel-founded outfit is raising $3 billion, a source told TechCrunch and Axios also reported. The fund, which is intended primarily for additional investments in its successful late-stage portfolio…

Stripe mulls employee shareholder sale at $85B-plus valuation

February 11, 2025

Stripe is in talks for another shareholder sale that could value the company at “at least” $85 billion, according to multiple reports and a source familiar with the matter. The Information first reported the news that the payments infrastructure giant is working to sell employee-owned stocks. The move would help workers gain some liquidity as…

Mast Reforestation hatched a plan to restore wildfire-ravaged forests. Investors took notice.

February 11, 2025

Google leads $230M convertible note for Boston quantum computing startup QuEra

February 11, 2025

Quantum computing, long relegated to the realm of theoretical, feels like it is back on the agenda as a potentially viable alternative to the expensive race for more powerful compute. On the heels of some notable advancements in quantum chips and error correction (two of the key areas that have kept quantum computers from becoming…

Voyantis aims to help companies figure out their customers’ worth

February 11, 2025

How much is a customer worth to a company? That’s the eternal question. To arrive at an answer, customer and sales teams are often forced to use spreadsheets and other manual data analysis methods. The problem is, these methods tend to be slow and error-prone, leading to gaps in reporting processes. The challenge spurred two…

Insurance co’s stand to lose billions from disasters like the LA fires; Comulate raises $20M to build tech to help them work more smoothly

February 11, 2025

Unimaginable disasters like the fires in Los Angeles with their hundreds of billions of dollars in destruction put a huge focus on the role the insurance industry plays in the process of rebuilding. Those events will also lead to major financial losses at the insurance companies themselves. And longer term, all of this will put…

Archer Aviation doubles down on defense aircraft with fresh $300M

February 11, 2025

Escalating geopolitical tensions and a new administration with a hawkish defense agenda has led many startups to embrace dual-use strategies to secure revenue through military applications. And it’s a trend that is already heating up in aerospace. Just look at Archer Aviation, a California-based startup building eVTOLs (electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles). Until very…

Australian health tech startup Harrison.ai scores $112M Series C

February 11, 2025

Medical imaging is crucial for the timely identification of serious diseases like cancer. However, manual interpretation of scans is a time-intensive process. Healthcare professionals increasingly use AI-powered tools for diagnostic purposes, as such technologies can be very effective in detecting and categorizing diseases. A Sydney, Australia-headquartered startup, Harrison.ai, has built AI-enabled medical diagnostic software and…

AI investments surged 62% to $110 billion in 2024 while startup funding overall declined 12%, says Dealroom

February 11, 2025

Venture capitalists are gobbling up term sheets for startups peddling artificial intelligence, even as they remain picky when it comes to funding the wider spectrum of technology. According to new figures from analytics firm Dealroom, AI startups raised $110 billion in funding last year, up 62% on the year before. At the same time, privately-backed…

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