Startups

In “The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future,” Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey examines our AI-obsessed moment through one of its key figures — Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. Hagey begins with Altman's Midwest upbringing, then takes readers

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 brought more than just Nvidia's earnings reports; startups and VCs also had some news — quieter perhaps, but still worth p

Grammarly has secured a $1 billion commitment from General Catalyst. The 16-year-old writing assistant startup will use the new funds for its sales and marketing efforts, freeing up existing capital to make strategic acquisitions. Unlike a traditional venture round, General Catalyst will not recei

As Kevin Malone from “The Office” once said, “Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?”  For Julia LeStage and Lisa Le, the creators of a new dating app called LoveJack, finding love online doesn't have to feel like filling out a mountain of paperwork. Sometimes

In the construction industry, managers can easily become disconnected from what's happening on-site. Among the many tasks to juggle are staying apprised of costs, communicating with all stakeholders, and assessing risk related to aspects like contractor billing and performance. Buildots wants

Horizon3.ai, a cybersecurity startup that provides tools like autonomous penetration testing, is seeking to raise $100 million in a new funding round and has locked down at least $73 million, the company revealed in an SEC filing this week. NEA led the round, according to two people familiar with

Karat Financial, the company known for its credit cards for creators, is launching a creator-focused business banking product. Powered by digital bank Grasshopper, Karat’s banking product is a natural extension of its credit card offering with Visa. “Six years in, the problem we’

Over three and a half years after family locator app Life360 acquired lost item tracker Tile for $205 million, the two services are finally fully integrated. On Wednesday, Life360 announced that the item-finding capabilities of Tile, a competitor to Apple’s AirTag and other Bluetooth-based tr

For accounting departments, no software is more important than the general ledger system. It’s the central hub that summarizes all financial transactions, providing the essential data needed to create accurate financial statements. “The general ledger is the beating heart of the financ

If and when AI will start replacing human labor has been the subject of numerous debates.   While it's still hard to say with certainty if AI is beginning to take over roles previously done by humans, a recent survey from the World Economic Forum found that 40% of employers intend to

From OpenAI's 4o to Stable Diffusion, AI foundation models that create realistic images from a text prompt are now plentiful. In contrast, foundation models capable of generating full, coherent 3D online environments from a text prompt are only just emerging. Still, it's only a question of

Teddy Warner, 19, has always been interested in robotics. His family was in the industry, and he says he “grew up” working in a machinist shop while in high school. Now Warner is building a robotics company of his own, Intempus, that looks to make robots a bit more human. Intempus is b

The idea of becoming a real estate investor for as little as $5 may seem too good to be true. And for many users of Landa, a proptech company that promised just that — it has been. Landa emerged from stealth in August 2022, announcing a total of $33 million in funding and a

Kesha may have taken the dollar sign out of her name, but now, the singer is thinking about money again — not for herself, but to fund the seed round of her new startup, Smash. According to Kesha’s Instagram post, Smash will be a “community-based platform to connect and protect m