Startups

With Y Combinator Demo Day upon us, 'tis the season of $2 million on $20 million cap SAFEs. While many investors have been vocal against such raises, YC partners generally stand by them and even YC founder Paul Graham is vocal with his defense. As a longtime seed investor, I've seen many fo

Nextdoor promised to help connect communities, but browsing through my own Nextdoor feed feels more like a Hitchcock thriller where everyone is both a suspect and a detective. If Alfred Hitchcock were alive today, he would no doubt have an account, perhaps sharing cryptic warnin

It’s clear that tech minds are working on ways to apply AI to a host of verticals. At Y Combinator’s first day of showing off its Summer 2023 cohort, there were enough companies preparing to use AI in a medical context that we started keeping an internal running tally. The Exchange exp

"">Imbue, the AI research lab formerly known as Generally Intelligent, has raised $200 million in a Series B funding round that values the company at over $1 billion. Among those participating are the Astera Institute, Nvidia, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt and Notion co-founder Simon Last. The new tranche ta

There’s a new self-driving trucks startup in town. And the faces are familiar. Bryan Salesky, Peter Rander and Brett Browning — the trio behind the now defunct Ford and VW-backed autonomous vehicle startup Argo AI — have formed a new company called Stack AV that’s focused on commerc

Syscap closed on $2.3 million in seed funding to continue building an infrastructure that helps Mexico's non-banking lenders to manage and access private credit. David Noel Ramírez and Alejandro O’Farrill met while working at the multinational beverage and retail company Fomento Económi

Certa, a compliance, governance and risk management platform for enterprises, today announced that it raised $35 million in a Series B round co-led by Fin Capital and Vertex Ventures, with participation from Tru Arrow Partners, Point72 Ventures, BDMI, The Chainsmokers-backed Mantis VC and GOAT Capi

Fighting for relevance in the growing — and ultra-competitive — AI space, IBM this week introduced new generative AI models and capabilities across its recently launched Watsonx data science platform. The new models, called the Granite series models, appear to be standard large language

The United Kingdom (U.K.) is set to rejoin the European Union’s (EU) preeminent science R&D funding program, after a prolonged hiatus resulting from Brexit. The joint statement, issued by the European Commission (EC) and the U.K., hailed the news as a “landmark moment” for sci

OpenAI will host a developer conference — its first ever — on November 6, the company announced today. At the one-day OpenAI DevDay event, which will feature a keynote address and breakout sessions led by members of OpenAI's technical staff, OpenAI said in a blog post that it’

Social media often disconnects people from the real world, keeping people inside scrolling feeds on their phones. New social app Voiijer wants to do the opposite by connecting nature enthusiasts to the world’s wonders, where they can create community, share their adventures, document their di

Tech companies are getting the hang of making money — or at least they’re losing far less than they used to when money was cheap and “growth” was sexy. We’re seeing this happen across the tech sector: in enterprise software, fintech, and heck, even in the tech-adjacent dig

500 Global, the venture firm and seed accelerator, has closed $143 million in financing for what it claims is its largest Southeast Asia early-stage fund to date. The new tranche, 500 Southeast Asia III, or “500 SEA III” for short, counts a sovereign wealth fund, public and private pens

Bandana's co-founder and CEO Timothy Makalinao grew up in a working class household and saw firsthand how hard it can be for hourly wage employees to find decent work and support a family. When he launched his company last year with two friends he met at college a decade ago — COO Caleb L