Startups

For many years, it was taken as a given that venture investing was fundamentally incompatible with defense technology. Cripplingly long acquisition cycles — upward of 10 to 15 years for major weapons programs — and unfavorable economics of defense tech startup exits were frequently cited as two

Yet another software license is vying for the attentions of SaaS companies seeking to align themselves with the open source realm, without compromising their commercial endeavors. Sentry, an app performance monitoring (APM) company that helps companies such as Disney, Microsoft and Cisco track and

The “traitorous eight,” the PayPal Mafia and . . . the OpenAI expats? OpenAI's meltdown is likely to become the latest installment in what's becoming a Silicon Valley tradition: turmoil at a leading company spurring a round of employee departures that ends up seeding a fresh crop of

As fundraising got tougher for venture firms in 2022, many feared emerging managers, which don’t have the same networks or track records that more established VCs have, would be hit disproportionately hard. While that rang true in 2022, this year, emerging managers fared better than they got

The OpenAI saga continues. This morning, Ilya Sutskever, the AI startup’s chief scientist and board director, published a mea culpa of sorts on X (formerly Twitter). Sutskever was among those who pushed to abruptly remove former Y Combinator president Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI and demote Gr

The AI hype train is going full swing. At this point, it is hard to name an industry not affected by this disruptive technology. Startups feel these hype waves like no one else as the inventors’ demands rise and competition grows. It’s becoming increasingly challenging for startups to r

After five years sharpening his technology investor skills at Susquehanna Growth Equity, Shalin Mehta is now a solo general partner at his own growth equity firm, securing $85 million in capital commitments for his debut fund. While at Susquehanna, the 28-year-old led investments in companies, incl

Riverwood Capital has closed on $1.8 billion in new capital, the growth investment firm announced today. The firm last raised in 2020, with total capital commitments of $1.4 billion at that time. Riverwood's strategy is to invest in and support “high-growth” mid-size technol

Capping off a tumultuous weekend at OpenAI that culminated in investors — and a contingent of employees — attempting to convince the company’s board to hire back former Y Combinator president Sam Altman after firing him on Friday, Altman won’t be returning as CEO, according

On Friday, the board of OpenAI, the AI startup behind ChatGPT and other viral AI-powered hits, did something unexpected but seemingly well within its right: it removed the company’s CEO, Sam Altman. But judging by how the situation’s unfolded, it seems that OpenAI’s investors and

Welcome back to The Interchange, where we take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. If you want to receive The Interchange directly in your inbox every Sunday, head here to sign up! This week, we dig into spend management companies’ AI aspirations, and one U.K. f

In 2018, I wrote a technewss article stating that 2018 was “the year social networks were no longer social.” Reflecting on that article, I'm not sure that 2018 was the turning point. But the premise of the article still holds up well. At some point, social networks were no longer about con

Since the AI frenzy started over a year ago, we’ve seen many, um, interesting use cases for the tech that’s been deemed the greatest innovation since the internet. From AI meant to help sales folks be 5% faster, to AI bots that teach you to understand your human relationships, to AI th

Securing funding for startups has never been a walk in the park, and the current economic volatility has made it even more demanding. According to PitchBook's 2023 report, capital demand surpasses supply by a daunting 50.5% for early-stage and 67.1% for growth-stage ventures. Startups cannot re