Category: Fundraising

AI, Enterprise, expense management, Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, procurement, software spend, spend optimization, Vertice

Vertice raises $50M for its AI-powered SaaS spend platform

January 22, 2025

London startup Vertice has made a name for itself over the years in the very crowded world of expense management with a focus on applying AI to optimize a single area where businesses, collectively, are currently sinking hundreds of billions of dollars in IT budgets that are exceeding $5 trillion annually: software and cloud spend.…

Funding to fintechs continues to decline, but at a slower pace

January 21, 2025

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at just how much fintech startups raised in 2024, a slew of fundraising deals, Plaid’s reported revenue growth last year, 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…

Karmen secures $9.4 million for its revenue-based financing products

January 20, 2025

French startup Karmen has secured a small funding round so that it can improve its instant financing products. The company offers short-term loans to small companies facing a working capital crunch. It’s a €9 million equity-and-debt round ($9.4 million at today’s exchange rates) with Seventure Partners buying a stake in the small startup. Financière Arbevel…

Netradyne snags $90M at $1.35B valuation to expand smart dashcams for commercial fleets

January 17, 2025

Distracted driving is one of the leading causes of car accidents and a major reason why auto insurance premiums are expected to increase in 2025. For commercial fleets, that’s a nightmare. But for California-based startup Netradyne, it’s a tailwind. Netradyne provides fleet owners, including big names like Amazon, with AI-enabled dashcams that collect vehicle data…

Perplexity acquires Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals

January 17, 2025

Read.cv, a social media platform for professionals that competed with LinkedIn, has been acquired by AI-powered search engine Perplexity. As part of the deal, Read.cv will begin to wind down operations Friday. Users will be able to export their data, including their profiles, posts, and messages, until May 16. “We’ve long admired Perplexity and believe…

Big Tech expands its reach with new startup acquisitions and investments

January 17, 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. This week’s newsletter is about startups, but it is also about Big Tech companies expanding their reach, both through acquisitions and through investments. Most interesting startup stories…

Nord Security founders launch Nexos.ai to help enterprises take AI projects from pilot to production

January 17, 2025

A new AI orchestration startup from the founders of Lithuanian unicorn Nord Security is setting out to help enterprises put their AI projects into production, with an initial focus on bringing greater visibility, security and adaptability to large language models (LLMs). Nexos.ai, as the startup is called, is the handiwork of Tomas Okmanas (pictured above)…

This MIT spinout wants to spool hair-thin fibers into patients’ brains

January 16, 2025

You can’t start a company without a healthy dose of daring, and that’s certainly the case with NeuroBionics. The MIT-spinout thinks it could one day improve the lives of millions of people who live with neurological conditions like depression, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease. Famed investor Steve Jurvetson of Future Ventures said that if everything goes…

Symbotic set to take over Walmart’s robotics business

January 16, 2025

Walmart and Symbotic announced a deal Tuesday that would find the Massachusetts robotics firm taking control of the mega-retailer’s automation business. Symbotic is paying $200 million in cash for the program, plus up to $350 million in “additional contingent consideration,” depending on how the deal shakes out. The relationship is more partnership than straight acquisition,…

Netradyne snags $90M at $1.25B valuation to expand smart dashcams for commercial fleets

January 16, 2025

Distracted driving is a leading cause of car crashes — and rising auto insurance premiums, which are expected to increase in 2025. For commercial fleets, that’s an expensive challenge to navigate. But for California-based startup Netradyne, it’s a tailwind. Netradyne provides fleet owners, including big names like Amazon, with AI-enabled dashcams that collect vehicle data…

Teal Health raises $10M to create at-home cervical cancer screenings

January 16, 2025

The process of getting screened for cervical cancer is quite intimidating. It’s the once-a-year, sometimes life-changing treatment, that involves the bright lights of a doctor’s office and an uncomfortable insertion that always seems to last too long. It’s no wonder why Kara Egan and Dr. Avnesh Thakor saw the potential to make this process more…

Prepaid payments platform Recharge raises €45M to go on M&A spree

January 16, 2025

With inflation still stubbornly high in comparison to previous years, and the siren voices of subscription services like Netflix and Spotify continuing to lure, consumers have understandably turned to alternative forms of payment to manage their household bills. As a result, online prepaid payment platforms have benefited. That’s the bet being laid today by Recharge,…

Loft Orbital lands a fresh $170 million after logging over $500 million of bookings

January 15, 2025

As Gen Z job applicants balloon, companies are turning to AI agent recruiters

January 15, 2025

According to some of the latest statistics, employers are swamped by job applications. In the UK alone, employers running graduate training schemes received an average of 140 applications for each job in 2024, 59 per cent more than in 2023, according to the Institute of Student Employers. And despite some trepidations amongst a few recruiters,…

Synthesia snaps up $180M at a $2.1B valuation for its B2B AI video platform

January 15, 2025

As the world continues to work through how to handle the explosion of deepfake content online, it seems that not all AI-created videos are stirring controversy. Synthesia, a London startup building products around highly realistic AI avatar technology, says it’s a big hit with enterprises, with some 60,000 of them — 1 million users —…

Nelly raises $51 million to digitalize medical practices across Europe

January 14, 2025

Nelly wants to become the biggest fintech startup in the healthcare industry. The Berlin-based startup is already working with more than 1,200 medical practices in a handful of European countries. But there are thousands more that could benefit from an upgrade for their administrative workflows. That’s why Nelly recently raised €50 million in funding (around…

A 24-year-old who exited his first company to Coinbase raises $3M for his next venture

January 14, 2025

At 24 years old, Pryce Yebesi already has one exit: selling his crypto invoicing company Utopia Labs to Coinbase for an undisclosed amount. Some founders don’t just have one company in them. On Monday, Yebesi announced the launch of his new company, Open Ledger, which embeds automated accounting software into products that enterprises and small…

Boardy AI raises $8M seed round months after closing pre-seed

January 14, 2025

Months after announcing a $3 million pre-seed, the AI networking startup Boardy is back with an $8 million seed announcement led by Creandum. The company connects users with other people when they call an AI agent who chats with them for a bit and then connects them with others it thinks they ought to know.…

Thoras helps companies reach reliability without overspending on cloud costs

January 14, 2025

For years, twin sisters Nilo Rahmani and Jen Rahmani swapped stories — and commiserated — over the pain points they were facing in their respective engineering jobs. Nilo told TechCrunch that a frequent topic of conversation was about frustrations over the reliability platforms they were using at work. When they noticed the reliability landscape starting…

A 24-year-old who exited his first company to Coinbase, raises $3M for his next venture

January 13, 2025

At 24 years old, Pryce Yebesi already has one exit: selling his crypto invoicing company Utopia Labs to Coinbase for an undisclosed amount. Some founders don’t just have one company in them. On Monday, Yebesi announced the launch of his new company, OpenLedger, which embeds automated accounting software into products enterprises and small businesses already…

Clearwater agrees to buy investment management platform Enfusion for $1.5B

January 13, 2025

Clearwater Analytics, a company developing accounting, compliance, and risk reporting tools for asset managers, said on Monday it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire investment management platform Enfusion for $1.5 billion. Clearwater, which says it has obtained an $800 million loan to fund the transaction, along with a $200 million revolving line of…

Moody’s agrees to acquire Cape Analytics, which develops geospatial AI for insurance providers

January 13, 2025

Financial services firm Moody’s announced on Monday that it has agreed to acquire Cape Analytics, a geospatial AI startup, for an undisclosed sum. The deal, which is expected to close in Q1, subject to customary closing conditions, will give Moody’s access to Cape’s geospatial AI analytics technology for insurance underwriting. With the tech, Moody’s plans…

Float Financial, which aims to be the Brex of Canada, lands US$48.5M Series B

January 13, 2025

Float Financial, an expense management and corporate card startup focused on the Canadian market, has raised $48.5 million in a Series B funding round. The Toronto-based fintech likens itself to U.S.-based fintech giants Brex and Ramp but says it is different in that its sole focus is on Canadian SMBs, which CEO and co-founder Rob…

More money comes to AI healthcare: Qventus nabs $105M at a $400M+ valuation

January 13, 2025

Healthcare is proving to be one of the more lucrative industries when it comes to building AI solutions to speed up how work is carried out across clinical, research and administrative operations. Today comes one of the latest examples of how that is playing out in terms of venture funding. Qventus, a startup that builds…

UK in-home healthcare provider Cera raises $150M to expand its AI platform

January 12, 2025

Around the world, public healthcare systems have struggled to reset post-pandemic, and in particular, the increasingly aged populations in Western countries are putting pressure on services, not least in the UK where ‘NHS in crisis’ is a regular headline in the media. As a result, private companies, many powered with technology, see a gap in…

Here are the five best pieces of founder advice I learned as a host of Found

January 12, 2025

After more than two years — and nearly 100 episodes — as a host of TechCrunch’s recently ended Found podcast, I have learned a lot about how founders approach building their startups. I’ve heard stories about how founders know when it is the right time to expand from their core product, to how startups approach…

Nvidia’s AI empire: A look at its top startup investments

January 11, 2025

Over the last two years, Nvidia has used its ballooning fortunes to invest in over 80 AI startups. Here are the giant semiconductor’s largest investments. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

January almost had its first pentacorn, and other startup news

January 10, 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. The second week of the year is usually a busy one for startup news, and 2025 is no exception. From CES product launches to M&As and funding…

Overhaul raises another $55M to help companies like Dyson and Microsoft fight supply chain theft

January 10, 2025

Businesses dependent on the physical supply chain — the network of facilities and transportation systems used to move materials from one location to another — chain face a number of challenges, from staff shortages to increasing customer expectations. The pressures aren’t easing up. According to a survey from Prologis, a real estate investment trust, two-thirds…

Gumloop, founded in a bedroom in Vancouver, lets users automate tasks with drag-and-drop modules

January 10, 2025

Developers Max Brodeur-Urbas and Rahul Behal think that AI has the potential to automate lots of business-relevant tasks, but that many of the AI-powered automation tools on the market today are unreliable and costly. Part of the problem is that users expect too much of AI, Brodeur-Urbas told TechCrunch — for instance, they assume that…

PrettyDamnQuick snaps up $25M to speed up online checkout

January 9, 2025

A startup hoping to provide a credible alternative to Amazon has picked up funding to double down on the gap in the market. PrettyDamnQuick (PDQ) provides tech to retailers to let them customize and test different shipping and checkout flows, and now it has picked up a deal of its own: a $25 million Series…

Innovaccer aims to become healthcare’s AI powerhouse with $275M Series F

January 9, 2025

Innovaccer has raised a $275M Series F from investors including B Capital Group, Banner Health, Danaher Ventures, Generation IM, Kaiser Permanente, and M12. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Biosphere zaps germs with UV light to make biomanufacturing cheaper

January 9, 2025

Using LEDs has the potential to bring down the cost of biomanufacturing, allowing such processes to make materials that previously would have been too expensive. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Xocean raises $119M to capture ocean data with uncrewed surface vessels

January 9, 2025

Xocean, an Irish marine robotics startup that provides ocean data to the energy and hydrography industries using uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), has raised €115 million ($119 million) as it looks to expand coverage to additional sectors. Founded in 2017, Xocean has built a fleet of remotely-controlled USVs that can remain offshore for long periods of…

Grand Games, the Turkish startup behind Magic Sort, drinks up $30M

January 9, 2025

Gaming startups, specifically those building casual mobile games, are very hot in Turkey right now, and today another one is announcing a sizable round. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Gridware’s boxes literally listen to power lines to find outages

January 8, 2025

Siren secures strategic funding for its socks that detect diabetic foot ulcers

January 8, 2025

After studying burn victims and war veterans, entrepreneur Ran Ma hand-made a sock that contained sensors to detect foot ulcers. Now, her company, Siren, has secured $9.5 million, with an $8 million check from lead investor Mölnlycke Health Care to further the development and adoption of its diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) prevention product. It’s now…

Report: VC in emerging markets plummeted by over 40% last year

January 7, 2025

8th January at 9:30 am Dubai VC investments in emerging markets such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) plummeted by over 40% compared to 2023, according to a new report. The data mirrors the wider global trend of reduced VC funding in the last two years, especially for non-AI companies. The total raised…

Chinese VCs are hounding failed founders to claw back their investments

January 7, 2025

In the US, it’s accepted that most startups fail – and when that happens, VCs (generally) accept their losses and move on. But that’s not the case in China, where VCs are trying to claw back their investments in failed startups by pursuing the personal assets of their founders in court, The Financial Times reports.…

Anthropic reportedly in talks to raise $2B at $60B valuation, led by Lightspeed

January 7, 2025

OpenAI rival Anthropic is in talks to raise $2 billion in new capital in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to The Wall Street Journal. The round, which The Journal reports would value Anthropic at $60 billion, would bring Anthropic’s total raised to $15.7 billion, going by Crunchbase’s data. It would also…

HR software startup OnPay was inspired by the founder’s family payroll business

January 7, 2025

In 2007, Jesse Burgess joined his family’s payroll business. He quickly noticed that the business’ six payroll clerks were getting bogged down by repetitive, monotonous tasks — and so he sought to streamline those tasks by creating workflow automation tools. Several years later, Burgess sensed an opportunity to bring the tools he developed for his…

What will this year bring in VC? We asked a few investors

January 4, 2025

A new year brings with it hope for a better tomorrow — kind of, at least. In the world of venture capital, nothing is quite predictable. The number of firms in the U.S. has taken a sharp dip as risk-averse institutional investors splash money on only the biggest names in Silicon Valley, as reported by…

Generative AI funding reached new heights in 2024

January 3, 2025

If there was any doubt, the generative AI bubble didn’t burst in 2024. Investments in generative AI, which encompasses a range of AI-powered apps, tools, and services to generate text, images, videos, speech, music, and more, reached new heights last year. According to data from financial tracker PitchBook compiled for TechCrunch, generative AI companies worldwide…

Electra found a cheap, clean way to purify iron, and it’s raising $257M to make it happen

January 3, 2025

Electra has raised $76.3 million to clean up the dirty ironmaking industry, TechCrunch has learned. The startup has developed a novel method of using electricity to coax pure iron out of low-grade ores, opening the door to cleaner steel. The new funding round, which was disclosed in a regulatory filing, seeks to raise a total…

KoBold used AI to find copper. Now investors are piling in to the tune of $537M

January 2, 2025

Apheris rethinks the AI data bottleneck in life science with federated computing

January 2, 2025

AI is fundamentally dependent on data, but the vast majority of health data goes unused for understandable reasons — chiefly patient privacy, regulation and IP protection. “This is the core underlying problem” of building AI solutions for life sciences and related areas like pharmaceutics, said German entrepreneur Robin Röhm. And not only that: collaboration when…

Internal SpaceX documents show the sweet stock deals offered to investors like a16z, Gigafund

January 1, 2025

Like many highly valued startups, SpaceX sometimes allows its employees to cash out some of their shares by selling to company-authorized outside investors. TechCrunch has gotten a peek at an internal SpaceX document about such a tender offer from May 2022. Musk posted on X last month that SpaceX holds such sales for employees about…

Backed by a16z and QED, Brazilian startup Carecode puts AI agents to work on healthcare

December 30, 2024

AI holds huge promise for healthcare, but not just on the medical side; many startups are convinced machine learning-based systems can do a lot of good on adjacent tasks such as appointment scheduling and confirmations. Brazilian startup Carecode is among these AI believers. It’s coming out of stealth with an ambition to reduce healthcare costs…

Calo raises $25 million to expand its ready-to-eat meal service beyond the Middle East

December 30, 2024

A business built around increasingly customized ready-to-eat meals has netted Middle Eastern startup Calo a sizeable funding injection as it looks to expand both what it can offer its time-strapped customers and where it delivers its growing range of just-heat-to-eat dishes. The meal delivery market in the Middle East will hit $11.2 billion by 2030,…

Elon Musk’s xAI lands $6B in new cash to fuel AI ambitions

December 25, 2024

Updated December 25, 12:21 p.m. Pacific: Added details of xAI’s valuation and Kingdom Holdings’ contribution. xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, has raised $6 billion in a Series C financing round. The company announced this week that Andreessen Horowitz , Blackrock, Fidelity, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Nvidia,…

Elon Musk’s xAI lands $6B in new cash to fuel AI ambitions

December 23, 2024

xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, has raised $6 billion, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. Investors gave a minimum of $77,593, per the filing (97 participated, but the document doesn’t reveal their identities). xAI later announced (confirming some earlier reporting) that Andreessen Horowitz , Blackrock, Fidelity, Kingdom Holdings,…

The year is coming to a close, but startup news keeps rolling in

December 20, 2024

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week was full of news, likely because it is also the last “real” week of 2024. Which is another way for us to say goodbye for…

Here’s the full list of 49 US AI startups that have raised $100M or more in 2024

December 20, 2024

Lerer Hippeau files to a raise Fund IX

December 20, 2024

Lerer Hippeau, one of New York’s most prolific and A-list VC firms, has filed to raise its ninth fund, according to an SEC filing made Wednesday. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

British university spinoff Mindgard protects companies from AI threats

December 20, 2024

AI creates a dilemma for companies: Don’t implement it yet, and you might miss out on productivity gains and other potential benefits; but do it wrong, and you might expose your business and clients to unmitigated risks. This is where a new wave of “security for AI” startups come in, with the premise that these…

Perplexity has reportedly closed a $500M funding round

December 19, 2024

AI-powered search engine Perplexity has reportedly closed a $500 million funding round, valuing the startup at $9 billion. Bloomberg, citing sources familiar, reports that the round was led by Institutional Venture Partners, and that it closed earlier in December. In an email to TechCrunch, a Perplexity spokesperson declined to comment. The mammoth tranche comes as…

Boon raises $20.5M to build agentic AI tools for fleets

December 19, 2024

Logistics is the name of the game during the holiday season: Companies that can seal the deal and get people and things to the places they need to be, on time, rake it in this time of year. But behind that demand lies a huge amount of inefficiency and fragmentation. Are logistics businesses ready for…

A bad experience with an accounting firm spurred this founder to start Aiwyn

December 19, 2024

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

Ex-Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is founding an AI startup backed by a16z

December 19, 2024

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

Real estate VC Fifth Wall is raising $500M for a new fund

December 19, 2024

Hotel booking platform Safara raises $14M, acquires rival Skipper

December 19, 2024

Doug Schuessler has always been a founder. This passion, which has been with him since childhood, saw him launch two startups, move to San Francisco, and take a job at Square to see what a “real rocket shop looked like.” He later became chief revenue officer at restaurant booking platform Resy, before becoming a founder once…

Culina Health nabs $7.9M to provide virtual access to registered dietitians

December 19, 2024

As a dietitian, Vanessa Rissetto’s main goal is to help people stay healthy. She also knew that there were some roadblocks to achieving that. For example, the Black community deals with pressing health concerns, in addition to a disproportionate lack of access to care. More than 80% of registered dietitians in the U.S. are white,…

Decart adds another $32M at a $500M+ valuation

December 19, 2024

A young startup that emerged from stealth less than two months ago with big-name backers and bigger ambitions to make a splash in the world of AI is returning to the spotlight. Decart is building what its CEO and co-founder Dean Leitersdorf describes as “a fully vertically integrated AI research lab,” alongside enterprise and consumer…

BlueQubit raises $10M to take Quantum software into real-world applications

December 19, 2024

Integrating quantum computing into real-world computer applications is an ongoing problem, as the platforms are architected fundamentally differently. BlueQubit, a San Francisco-based quantum software startup founded by Stanford alumni, thinks it might have the answer. Its Quantum Software as a Service (QSaaS) platform attempts to tackle the above problem by providing end-users with access to…

‘We want to pay it forward’: Funding Societies raises $25M to boost capital for SMEs in Southeast Asia

December 18, 2024

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for nearly 50% of Southeast Asia’s GDP, contributing to job creation, innovation, and overall economic expansion. Nevertheless, as in other parts of the world, SMEs in Southeast Asia face challenges when it comes to sufficient working capital. In a nutshell, SMEs are typically deemed too risky for traditional banks…

Hauler Hero wants to bring waste management software into the 21st century

December 18, 2024

After nearly four years of working in sales at tradesperson software company ServiceTitan, Mark Hoadley (pictured above) was looking for a change and to potentially start something of his own in a similar industry. Hoadley’s brother-in-law, and now co-founder, Ben Sikma, was working on M&A in the waste management space at the time. Sikma discovered…

Access bets people will pay thousands of dollars a year for guaranteed restaurant reservations

December 18, 2024

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

‘It’s dumb to IPO this year’: Databricks CEO explains why he’s waiting to go public

December 18, 2024

Databricks just closed one of the largest funding rounds ever, raising a staggering $10 billion in fresh capital. Naturally, technology investors were quick to ask what this means for the company’s highly anticipated IPO. During an event in San Francisco on Tuesday night, Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi explained why he’s waiting until at least 2025…

India’s MobiKwik surges 82% in market debut

December 17, 2024

Shares in digital payments firm MobiKwik surged 82% to ₹507.5 ($6) on their first day of trading, as the Indian fintech company made its market debut amid fierce competition from larger rivals. The listing pushed MobiKwik’s market value to $464 million, well above its initial target of $250 million for the public offering. The valuation…

Google joins $90M investment into Cassava to bolster Africa’s digital infrastructure

December 17, 2024

With cloud spend continuing to surge, tech companies are scrambling to meet demand for the necessary infrastructure, with the growing need for AI compute only adding fuel to the fire. By way of example, Microsoft and BlackRock have created a $30 billion fund to support new data centers and energy infrastructure for the burgeoning AI…

Databricks raises $10B as it barrels toward an IPO

December 17, 2024

Databricks, the data analytics platform, has raised $10 billion in a funding round that values the company at $62 billion (up from $43 billion). Backers include Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, GIC, and Iconiq Growth. The round is one of the largest venture rounds in history, and will drive future future mergers and acquisitions,…

Nuon helps companies deploy their software into their customers’ cloud accounts

December 17, 2024

Jon Morehouse launched PowerTools in 2019 to help companies ship static sites and serverless apps to their cloud accounts on providers like AWS and Azure. When a customer asked him if they could use PowerTools to deploy their software into one of their customer’s cloud accounts, Morehouse was skeptical. Morehouse told TechCrunch that after that…

While some account-to-account payments players falter, Volume raises fresh cash

December 17, 2024

Online merchants can usually pay up to 8% of every sale on an item to companies like PayPal, Apple Pay, and Stripe — and those costs are usually passed to consumers. So-called ‘account-to-account’ or ‘A2A’ payments can cut transaction fees to below 1%, saving merchants and consumers quite a bit of cash. The difficulty has been…

Travel is back: Hostaway raises $365M at a $925M valuation

December 17, 2024

The tourism and travel industries — after several tough years that included not just a global health pandemic but economic and geopolitical upheaval — are finally back on track, expected to make a “full recovery” to pre-pandemic levels of activity, the UN said earlier this month. As an indicator of that, Hostaway, one of the…

Agave, the startup behind Find the Cat, finds $18M

December 17, 2024

A startup out of Turkey that has built a hit casual mobile game where you have to find cats in Where’s Wally-style drawings of increasing complexity has found something else: $18 million in funding. Agave Games, the creator of Find the Cat, will be using the Series A to build out the team and to…

iRobot co-founder’s new home robot startup hopes to raise $30M

December 16, 2024

Colin Angle, one of the co-founders of Roomba maker iRobot, is raising cash for a home robotics venture. A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that Angle’s new company, Familiar Machines & Magic, is trying to raise $30 million. So far, it has raised $15 million from a group of eight investors.…

Prequel is building a community-driven approach to finding software bugs

December 16, 2024

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

Databricks is on track to raise a record $9.5+ billion round at $60B valuation

December 13, 2024

Databricks is close to finalizing a $9.5 billion round at a $60 billion valuation, including a secondary sale for employees that could climb even higher before it closes, Reuters reports. Just 17 days ago, Reuters reported that the deal was at $8 billion and a $55 billion valuation. Thrive Capital is leading the deal with…

Liquid AI just raised $250M to develop a more efficient type of AI model

December 13, 2024

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

As AI-fueled disinformation explodes, here comes the startup counterattack

December 13, 2024

With disinformation on the rise, especially given the explosion of AI, companies are just as vulnerable to its effects as individuals. Refute is a London-based startup that detects and responds to disinformation on behalf of these commercial entities. It’s now raised a £2.3 million ($2.9 million) pre-seed round led by UK investors Playfair and Episode 1.…

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