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Category: venture capital

Fundraising, Global Security News, newsletters, Startups, Startups Weekly, venture capital

Startups Weekly: Mercury more than doubled its valuation, and other news

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 reminded us that creative accounting doesn’t only happen in Hollywood. Some hopes were dashed, but startups are delivering on all sorts of promises, from nuclear…

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Europe, Exclusive, Global Security News, Leitmotif, Startups, Transportation, Venture, venture capital, Volkswagen

Meet the new VC firm secretly backed by Volkswagen

A new venture firm called Leitmotif has been on a quiet blitz for the last 16 months, funding around 20 startups broadly focused on decarbonization. Its portfolio includes EV companies, space and battery plays, and four nuclear fusion startups. But the firm has only said its funding is from “European industrial interests.” Now, Leitmotif has…

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Europe, Exclusive, Global Security News, Leitmotif, Startups, Transportation, Venture, venture capital, Volkswagen

Meet the new VC firm secretly backed by Volkswagen

A new venture firm called Leitmotif has been on a quiet blitz for the last 16 months, funding around 20 startups broadly focused on decarbonization. Its portfolio includes EV companies, space and battery plays, and four nuclear fusion startups. But the firm has only said its funding is from “European industrial interests.” Now, Leitmotif has…

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bloomberg beta, Cybersecurity, Enterprise, enterprise startups, Exclusive, Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, Security, Startups, TC, venture capital

Anagram takes a gamified approach to employee cybersecurity training

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…

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Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, newsletter, Startups, Startups Weekly, venture capital

AI and security startups blossom on cloudy days

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 confirmed that even when current events cloud the outlook, some startups still manage to raise significant amounts of funding, with those tied to security and…

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Global IT News, Global Security News, Hims, openai, papaya global, Poppi, Ramp, Startups, super bowl, Tech, venture capital

Here are five startups that are running Super Bowl ads this year

Super Bowl weekend is here with the Philadelphia Eagles set to take on the Kansas City Chiefs in New Orleans on Sunday evening. While many folks tune in to the Super Bowl for the actual football, others do so for the halftime performance, and some tune in just for the ads. The ad roster this…

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Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, newsletter, Startups, Startups Weekly, venture capital

Startups face the recurring dilemma of whether to partner

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 first week of February was busy on the geopolitical front, as well as in the world of startups and VC news, with many announcements and significant…

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise, enterprises, Fundraising, Global Security News, retail, Startups, supply chain, venture capital

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

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…

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Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, newsletter, Startups, Startups Weekly, venture capital

In another challenging year for startups, higher valuations and revenue give reason for hope

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 aftermath of DeepSeek’s launch was arguably the biggest tech story of the week, especially for anyone keeping a close eye on public markets. But private companies,…

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AI, business intelligence, data analytics, Enterprise, enterprise startups, Global IT News, Global Security News, Startups, VC, venture capital

Data analytics startup Athenic AI wants to be an enterprise’s central nervous system

Jared Zhao originally got interested in data analytics during his time at UC Berkeley because he was drawn to how it could turn raw data into a story. Zhao founded his first data analytics startup Polyture in 2021. But advancements in generative AI just a year later made Zhao realize what Polyture was building was…

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AI, Climate, Enterprise, enterprise tech, Exclusive, Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, startup fundraising, Startups, TC, venture capital

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

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…

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Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, newsletter, Startups, Startups Weekly, venture capital

Neko Health’s unicorn-sized Series B is larger than some Series C rounds

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 supposed to be a short one in the U.S., as it started with a holiday. But Inauguration Day kept some founders busy, and the…

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AI, AI agents, Enterprise, enterprise tech, Global IT News, Global Security News, Startups, TC, VC, venture capital, Waymo, Y Combinator

Coval evaluates AI voice and chat agents like self-driving cars

What do AI voice agents and self-driving cars have in common? Their performance can be evaluated in the same way, argues Brooke Hopkins, a former tech lead at Waymo. Coval, Hopkins’ new startup, looks to do just that. “When I left Waymo, I realized a lot of these problems that we had at Waymo were…

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AI, AI startups, AI Tools, Enterprise, Enterprise AI, Exclusive, Global IT News, Global Security News, Startups, VC, venture capital

Sales knowledge automation platform 1up gets a third of its customer leads from memes

When George Avetisov was the founder and CEO of cybersecurity startup HYPR, he spent a lot of time in the trenches with the company’s sales team. He quickly realized that regardless of how good his sales team was, they were consistently pulling in other departments to answer customer questions or fill out technical questionnaires. “They…

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AI, AI agents, Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise, enterprise startups, Global IT News, Global Security News, VC, Venture, venture capital

Here are the types of AI companies enterprise VCs want to back in 2025

The AI startup market is sprawling, from companies looking to develop new chips, to those using AI to build robots, to others looking to use AI to create niche solutions for industry-specific workflows. There are a lot of potential areas for venture capitalists to invest in, but there are clearly a few subsectors they are…

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise, Global IT News, Global Security News, Rockfish, Startups, synthetic data, VC, venture capital

Rockfish is helping enterprises leverage synthetic data

For years, Vyas Sekar would call up Muckai Girish, an old friend from undergrad, to talk through potential startup ideas and get Girish’s opinion. The two usually talked through an idea and ended the conversation at that. When Sekar called Girish with an idea involving synthetic data in early 2022, the conversation didn’t just end…

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AI, cloud cost optimization tools, cloud costs, Cloud observability, cloud reliability, Enterprise, enterprises, Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, Startups, venture capital

Thoras helps companies reach reliability without overspending on cloud costs

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…

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AI, AI startups, Artificial Intelligence, Enterprise, enterprise startups, Global IT News, Global Security News, VC, Venture, venture capital

VCs say AI companies need proprietary data to stand out from the pack

AI companies across the globe raised more than $100 billion in venture capital dollars in 2024, according to Crunchbase data, an increase of more than 80% compared to 2023. It encompasses nearly a third of the total VC dollars invested in 2024. That’s a lot of money funneling into a lot of AI companies. The…

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CES, Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, newsletter, Startups, Startups Weekly, venture capital

January almost had its first pentacorn, and other startup news

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…

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Asia Pacific, china, Fundraising, Global Security News, Startups, VC, venture capital

Chinese VCs are hounding failed founders to claw back their investments

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.…

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Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, newsletter, Startups, Startups Weekly, venture capital

Bench saved by the bell, and other last-minute deals that closed 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. Welcome to 2025! The first half of the week was relatively quiet in terms of startup announcements, but activity is already starting to pick up. We’re also…

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AI, entrepreneurs, Found, Founder Stories, founders, Global IT News, Global Security News, Startups, VC, venture capital

A look back on my favorite episodes of TechCrunch’s Found podcast

TechCrunch’s Found podcast, which has brought listeners the stories behind the startups since April 2022, released its final episode today. I’ve been one of the hosts of Found since November 2022 and in that time have spoken to more than 75 founders about the startups they are building. These founders hail from many different backgrounds…

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, data, Enterprise, enterprise startups, enterprise tech, Global IT News, Global Security News, Startups, Venture, venture capital

From AI agents to enterprise budgets, 20 VCs share their predictions on enterprise tech in 2025

While AI is lauded by some as the biggest technological breakthrough since the industrial revolution, enterprises — arguably the tech’s biggest potential customer base — have been slow to adopt AI. While some investors predicted that 2024 would be the year we’d start to see more AI adoption by enterprises, that didn’t play out as…

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evergreens, Founders Fund, Global IT News, Global Security News, investors, Keith Rabois, Startups, Venture, venture capital

Venture capitalists continue to play musical chairs

From Keith Rabois to Matt Miller, a lot of VCs have switched firms or spun out of storied VC institutions this year. These employment changes are surprising because unlike in many other fields, venture capitalists don’t traditionally move around very much — especially those who reach the partner or general partner level. VC funds have…

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Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, newsletters, Startups, Startups Weekly, venture capital

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

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…

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Europe, Global Security News, Klarna, London, matt miller, Sequoia Capital, Venture, venture capital

Sequoia’s Matt Miller is exiting the firm after making headlines earlier this year

The writing was on the wall, seemingly.  Sequoia Capital partner Matt Miller announced on Wednesday that he’s leaving the powerhouse outfit after a 12-year career to build his own new firm focused on European founders. He added he will remain a venture partner with Sequoia and maintain his board seats while fleshing out the “specifics…

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AI, down rounds, Global IT News, Global Security News, recapitalization, Startups, Tribeca Venture Partners, Valuations, venture capital

AI boom masks fundraising struggles for non-AI startups

Earlier this year, IVP general partner Tom Loverro, proclaimed that the post-pandemic downturn is over, and companies that made it this far should prioritize growth over cost-cutting. Yet, the companies still struggling to raise their next round of financing at a higher valuation or survive altogether could still be in the thousands, according to Brian…

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Cloud, Enterprise, enterprise startups, Funding, Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, M12, Mantis.VC, Nuon, SaaS, Startups, Uncork Capital, venture capital

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

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…

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Cybersecurity, Enterprise, enterprise startup, Exclusive, Fundraising, Global IT News, Global Security News, Prequel, startup, Startups, venture capital

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

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…

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