Category: Fundraising

Fintech, Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, powerledger, superlogic

Superlogic raises $13.7M at a $200M valuation to help consumers use reward points toward cool ‘experiences’

February 6, 2025

Superlogic, a startup that helps give consumers a way to apply rewards points toward experiences, has raised $13.7 million at a $200 million valuation, the company tells TechCrunch exclusively. Lin Dai, CEO and co-founder of Miami-based Superlogic, said his company’s technology is designed to “enhance the value of rewards points” by giving consumers a broader…

Pendulum’s AI-driven platform helps enterprises better predict supply and demand

February 6, 2025

Supply chains have had a tumultuous few years, beginning in 2020, when COVID-19 upended legacy global supply chains. More recently, the “TikTok-ification” of retail has companies like Shein and Temu creating new products constantly as consumer demands change at the same rapid pace. Pendulum aims to help companies better plan for supply and demand in…

Presto is building Stripe for EV charging

February 6, 2025

Avelios nabs $31M led by Sequoia to fix the ailing world of healthcare IT

February 6, 2025

The race is on to build a new generation of healthcare software to replace legacy hospital systems that in some cases may not have been updated in decades. A startup out of Munich, Germany called Avelios has ambitions to build a new kind of end-to-end administrative system, leaning into more modern tooling using AI and…

Aiming to accelerate product design with AI, Trace.Space raises a Seed round

February 6, 2025

Modern product engineering requires the production of highly accurate digital simulations, allowing engineers to create prototypes and understand the real-world performance of materials. Currently, legacy software platforms from companies like IBM and Dassault are generally employed, but — now powered by Generative AI — startups are joining the arena. One such is Trace.Space, coming out of…

XOi raises $230M, acquires Specifx to expand its tech for field service technicians

February 5, 2025

Field service engineers may not be the first group of customers that come to mind when you think about lucrative opportunities in B2B technology. But that same blind spot speaks of the opportunity in the space for those who are stepping up and targeting “the job site.” One of the players in that space, XOi …

Tickets on sale: TechCrunch All Stage 2025, formerly known as Early Stage

February 5, 2025

Founders and investors, it’s time! TechCrunch Early Stage has evolved into TechCrunch All Stage 2025, returning to Boston on July 17. Get your tickets now and save up to $310 on select ticket types, securing your spot at the best rates. Register here for your All Stage ticket at unbeatable prices. All Stage covers all…

Cherry Ventures raises a new $500M fund for early stage and beyond, but will it be enough?

February 5, 2025

It’s sometimes said that European VC doesn’t have the firepower to compete with VCs in the U.S., which regularly raise billion-dollar+ funds these days. Perhaps further evidence of this view persists in the news that Berlin-based Cherry Ventures has closed its latest fund at $500 million, to be split between early-stage rounds and follow-on rounds…

Modern Synthesis is making compostable materials that last a lifetime

February 5, 2025

Hitachi Ventures raises $400M fund to invest in everything from fusion to AI

February 5, 2025

Krafton leads Cashfree’s $53M funding at $700M valuation

February 4, 2025

Cashfree, an Indian payments startup that facilitates and processes more than $80 billion for its customers each year, has raised $53 million in a new round of funding as it gears up to deepen its presence in some international markets. Krafton, maker of sleeper hit titles such as PUBG and BGMI, led Cashfree’s Series C…

Miist, founded by a 25-year-old, wants people to vape their way out of smoking addiction and migraines

February 4, 2025

As a university student, Dalton Signor was troubled by how many people around him smoked or vaped, including his grandmother and 14-year-old sister. Signor (pictured center) felt that existing smoking cessation medicines, whether patches, gums, or lozenges, are not very effective because they take too long to start working. “They take about 30 minutes to…

Deel unloads $300M in secondary sale, brings General Catalyst on as an investor

February 4, 2025

Fintech-turned-HR outfit Deel is trying to lay the groundwork for an IPO. On Tuesday, it said its annual revenue run rate climbed to $800 million in 2024 after growing by 70%. The startup, which helps businesses globally hire, manage and pay employees remotely, also said it has sold $300 million in secondary shares to General…

Archive raises $30M to solve fashion’s pollution problem with online resales

February 4, 2025

The fashion industry has concerned Emily Gittins since adolescence. The sector is, after all, one of the most polluting in the world. According to some sources, it is responsible for nearly 10% of the earth’s CO2 emissions and more than 20% of all water waste. Yet people still want more, fast. “The way we consume…

Neuralk-AI is developing AI models specifically designed for structured data

February 4, 2025

Tabular data is a broad term that encompasses structured data that generally fits into a specific row and column. It can be a SQL database, a spreadsheet, a .CSV file, etc. While there has been tremendous progress on artificial intelligence applied to unstructured and sequential data, these large language models are fuzzy by design. They…

Riot raises $30 million for its cybersecurity product suite focused on employees

February 3, 2025

French startup Riot has raised a $30 million Series B round after reaching $10 million in annual revenue in 2024. Originally focused on educating employees about cybersecurity risks, the company now wants to go one step further and nudge employees so that they minimize their attack surface. Left Lane Capital is leading today’s round with…

Tana snaps up $25M, with its AI-powered knowledge graph for work racking up a 160k+ waitlist

February 3, 2025

An app that helps people and teams in the working world simplify their to-do lists — ideally by organising and doing some of the work for them — has remained one of the unsolved goals in business technology. Leaning into AI, on top of battle scars from once building Google Wave, a startup called Tana…

Here are all the IPOs reported to be in the works for 2025

February 1, 2025

Guo’s Conviction Partners adds Mike Vernal as GP, raises $230M fund

January 31, 2025

When in mid-2022 Sarah Guo left Greylock to launch her own AI-focused fund, Conviction Partners, she indicated that she was tagging the word “Partners” to the firm’s name because she would eventually bring on other GPs. Now, more than two years later, Guo is being joined by Mike Vernal, who was a partner at Sequoia…

Backed by Mayo Clinic, Nutrix’s hardware monitors worker stress

January 31, 2025

Stress isn’t just bad for you — it’s also bad for your employer. Factoring in absenteeism, diminished productivity, turnover, medical costs, and accidents, the non-profit American Institute of Stress estimates that workplace stress costs U.S. businesses over $300 billion annually. One way to measure stress is by monitoring cortisol levels. Even influencers know this, with…

OpenAI said to be in talks to raise $40B at a $340B valuation

January 30, 2025

OpenAI may have billions of dollars in the bank. But it’s gearing up to raise billions more, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Per The WSJ, OpenAI is in talks to secure up to $40 billion in a funding round that would value the startup at $340 billion. SoftBank would lead the…

ElevenLabs, the hot AI audio startup, confirms $180M in Series C funding at a $3.3B valuation

January 30, 2025

ElevenLabs, one of the more popular startups working in the field AI audio, said Thursday that it has raised a Series C round of $180 million, valuing the company at $3.3 billion post-money. a16z and ICONIQ Growth are co-leading investment. Rumors of the fundraise were first reported by TechCrunch. The final numbers confirm some but…

European embedded banking startup Swan adds another $44 million to its Series B

January 30, 2025

French startup Swan has raised another €42 million (around $44 million at current exchange rates). The company considers this round as the second part of the Series B round that was originally announced in September 2024. Swan helps other companies offer financial products at scale. The company can generate both virtual and physical cards that…

Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC seeking $1B for new fund

January 29, 2025

8VC, a venture firm led by Palantir founder Joe Lonsdale, is seeking nearly $1 billion for its sixth fund, according to a regulatory filing. The Austin-based firm’s latest fund aims to raise nearly 14% more than its previous $880 million flagship vehicle, which closed in February 2023. TechCrunch has reached out to the firm for…

This Bay Area startup is using AI to help families navigate long-term care planning

January 29, 2025

Lily Vittayaruksku was studying aerospace engineering when her aunt was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Her aunt had lived under the same roof as Vittayaruksku while she was growing up and helped raise her. “We went all in on her care,” she recalled. Post-chemotherapy, Vittayaruksku’s aunt “became very frail,” so her family – originally from…

Clutch grabs $20M to build out its non-human security ID platform

January 29, 2025

When it comes to the world of cybersecurity, identity is often thought of as a “perimeter” around an organization. So many breaches begin through techniques like password theft, phishing, and credential stuffing; ergo, securing the identities of not only users, but also applications and machines, is the key to securing the whole system. Easier said…

Solar startup Niko is building Mexico’s first virtual power plant

January 29, 2025

After more than a year of helping solar installers sell, plan, and finance panels for residential and small commercial building owners, Niko found another opportunity. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Meteomatics eyes U.S. expansion for its enterprise-focused weather forecasting tools

January 29, 2025

Martin Fengler knows a lot about the weather. Fengler got his Ph.D. in mathematics, focused on numerical weather prediction, before working for Meteomedia AG, a network of weather stations in Switzerland and Germany. But while he knew a lot about weather forecasting from the prediction side, he realized the gaps that remained on the consumption…

This fintech has a fix for the biggest cross-border payments issues in Francophone Africa

January 29, 2025

Until a few years ago, it used to be difficult to make payments across borders almost anywhere in the world. But it’s still a big problem in Africa, where fragmented, disconnected systems, high fees, and poor infrastructure make it tough for businesses and individuals to move money quickly and affordably. The majority of people and…

SoftBank to invest $500M in robotics startup SkildAI

January 28, 2025

SoftBank is negotiating a $500 million investment in Skild AI, a software company building a foundational model for robotics at a $4 billion valuation, Bloomberg and Financial Times reported. The two-year-old company raised its previous funding round of $300 million at a $1.5 billion valuation last July from investors including Jeff Bezos, Lightspeed Venture Partners,…

Automattic and others back Openvibe, an app that’s unifying the open social web

January 28, 2025

Openvibe’s clever app that integrates multiple open social networks including Bluesky, Mastodon, Nostr, and Threads, just got a boost toward its future development. The company on Tuesday announced that it has received outside investment of $800,000 in a round led by Czech Founders VC, which includes backing from WordPress.com and Tumblr parent company, Automattic, as…

Geek Ventures, a fund that specializes in backing immigrant founders, is raising a second fund

January 28, 2025

Geek Ventures is raising a Fund II, according to a recent SEC filing. The firm, founded in 2021 by Ihar Mahaniok, focuses on investing in early-stage immigrant founders. Mahaniok immigrated to the U.S. from Belarus and spoke to TechCrunch a few years ago about how hard the venture ecosystem can be for immigrants. “Talent is…

This founder was worried about his mother slipping — so he created sensors to detect falls

January 28, 2025

Falls are common for older people living semi-independently. According to the CDC, they’re the leading cause of injury for adults aged 65 and up. On average, about 10% of these falls are serious, requiring medical attention. Yet many fall victims don’t get the treatment they need. George Netscher, a software developer by training, watched his…

Quibim raises $50M to develop AI models for medical imaging

January 28, 2025

Quibim, a Spanish startup that’s developing foundational AI models for medical imaging spanning oncology, immunology, neurology, and metabolic disorders, has raised $50 million in a Series A round of funding. The cash injection comes as AI makes ever deeper inroads into healthcare, spanning everything from drug discovery to clinical trials. Quibim, for its part, is…

Helion raises $425M to help build a fusion reactor for Microsoft

January 28, 2025

Helion’s unorthodox approach to fusion power and relative secrecy has earned it plenty of fans — and critics. But don’t count its investors among the naysayers. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

TravelPerk raises $200M as valuation nearly doubles to $2.7B

January 28, 2025

Barcelona-based business travel management platform TravelPerk has raised $200 million at a hefty $2.7 billion valuation — almost double the $1.4 billion valuation at its previous fundraise last year. Alongside the raise, TravelPerk also announced it has acquired Swiss startup Yokoy to bring native expenses management into the fray. With the travel and tourism industry…

Reid Hoffman’s Manas AI raises $24.6M, a fraction of other AI drug discovery startups

January 27, 2025

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Siddhartha Mukherjee, cancer researcher and author of the book “The Emperor of All Maladies,” have co-founded an AI-powered drug discovery startup, Manas AI. The company, which will initially focus on breast cancer, prostate cancer, and lymphoma, has raised $24.6 million in seed funding from Hoffman, General Catalyst, and Greylock. Manas…

ElevenLabs has raised a new round at $3B+ valuation led by ICONIQ Growth, sources say

January 24, 2025

Companies that want to build AI voice into their products are rushing to work with ElevenLabs, the startup that develops synthetic voice technology like voice cloning and dubbing tools. Now ElevenLabs is turning up the volume on its business with a huge series C raise, just a year after a sizable series A. The New…

Foyer unlocks $6.2M to help people save up to buy homes

January 24, 2025

Landy Liu knows how hard it is to save for a home. While working at mortgage startup Better.com, he spent years dealing with first-home home buyers who felt overwhelmed when it came to shopping for homes. By the time it was his turn in 2022, mortgage rates had nearly doubled, and he found himself in…

Madrona just announced its biggest fund ever, closing on $770M as other venture funds grow smaller

January 24, 2025

Seattle-based Madrona Capital is celebrating its 30 years in business by raising $770 million in fresh capital. This is the firm’s largest fundraise to date, exceeding $690 million across two funds Madrona closed in 2022. While an 11% capital pool upsize may not seem significant, any increase at a time when many venture outfits are…

Bedrock Energy wants geothermal to make data centers cooler and offices more comfortable

January 23, 2025

Method is helping fintech companies like SoFi build repayment functionality into their apps

January 23, 2025

It can be challenging for developers of fintech apps to integrate repayment, balance transfer, and bill pay functionality. Devs often have to deal with a patchwork of brittle screen-scraping APIs to extract data from users’ financial institutions — or worse, tools to process mounds of physical checks and paperwork. Three friends and entrepreneurs — Jose…

Fundraise Up claims its AI can boost nonprofit donations

January 23, 2025

Many nonprofits are stuck with outdated, expensive, and limited tech that hinders their ability to fund their mission or cause. While most consider adopting tech to be a priority, they’re faced with a number of blockers, including siloed data and issues with integration. Peter Byrnes, the co-founder of Fundraise Up, a Brooklyn-based fundraising platform for…

Tive’s tools help companies track the status of their shipments in real time

January 23, 2025

The global supply chain is under strain, and one of the reasons is a lack of visibility into how shipments are being transported around the world. According to one recent survey, nearly half of the organizations polled reported having little-to-no visibility into their upstream supply chains. In search of a remedy, Krenar Komoni, who’d for…

Neko, the body-scanning startup co-founded by Spotify’s Daniel Ek, snaps up $260M at a $1.8B valuation

January 23, 2025

Stockholm startup Neko Health has made a big bet on consumers wanting to learn about their state of health and how to prevent things going wrong. Now, investors are making a big bet on Neko. The startup has raised a fresh $260 million in funding, a Series B that values Neko at $1.8 billion post-money,…

Raymond Tonsing’s Caffeinated Capital seeks $400M for fifth fund

January 22, 2025

Caffeinated Capital, a San Francisco venture firm started by a solo capitalist Raymond Tonsing, is raising a fifth fund of $400 million, according to a regulatory filing. The firm, an early investor in software company Airtable and defense startup Saronic, has already raised $160 million toward the fund. If Caffeinated hits its target, it will…

Ati Motors raises $20M as India’s robotics industry grows

January 22, 2025

Anthropic reportedly secures an additional $1B from Google

January 22, 2025

Anthropic has reportedly raised around $1 billion from Google as the AI company looks to deliver a number of major product updates this year. First reported by the Financial Times, Google’s fresh investment brings the tech giant’s total stake in Anthropic to around $3 billion. Google poured $2 billion into Anthropic late last year. Anthropic,…

Lindus Health raises $55M to ‘fix the broken clinical trial industry’

January 22, 2025

A four-year-old London startup backed by Peter Thiel has raised a $55 million Series B round as it sets about “fixing the broken clinical trial industry.” The announcement comes as artificial intelligence is shaping up to revolutionize drug discovery and development, in turn spurring demand for a streamlined clinical trial process to help get new…

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…

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