After Shopify bought his last startup, Birk Jernström wants to help developers build one-person unicorns

Sam Altman and “his tech CEO friends” have a betting pool on the year we will see the first one-person billion-dollar company. The idea of a single person reaching a billion-dollar valuation for a startup would have been unthinkable without AI. But single-person, AI-first businesses have been

Aspora gets $50M from Sequoia to build remittance and banking solutions for Indian diaspora

India has been one of the top recipients of remittances in the world for more than a decade. Inward remittances jumped from $55.6 billion in 2010-11 to $118.7 billion in 2023-24, according to data from the country’s central bank. The bank projects that figure will reach $160 billion in 2029.

Zevo’s EV-only car-share fleet is helping Tesla owners make money

Hebron Sher remembers daydreaming in 2019 when Elon Musk promised Tesla's cars would become robotaxis, capable of going out in the world to make money for owners. Sher was already a user of the car-sharing platform Turo, and the idea of turning a Tesla into an even bigger moneymaker was an attr

Startups Weekly: Different paths on the road to liquidity

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 busy for startups: While there were no IPOs of note, there were other exits and even unusual liquidity events, as well as a

Bill Gates tells his foundation to spend it all by 2045

The Gates Foundation received a death sentence of sorts today. Microsoft co-founder turned billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said Thursday that his foundation will have just 20 years to exhaust its coffers and wind down operations. He has pledged to donate 99% of his fortune, which today is wo

Blinq lands $25M to further its mission to make business cards passé

It’s 2025, but business cards are still in vogue — just visit any conference or industry expo and you’ll end up with a pile that’s likely to be discarded sooner rather than later. But as smartphones have become our repositories of information and contacts, people are understanda

Lightrun grabs $70M using AI to debug code in production

AI-based coding has exploded in popularity on the promise that it will make developers' jobs faster and easier. But AI coding has also resulted in something else: a vast increase in lines of code, and thus the likelihood of bugs resulting in crashes or other mishaps. On Monday, an Israeli sta

Startups Weekly: Tech IPOs and deals proceed, but price matters

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 deals can still happen in a troubled world, but price considerations and adjustments are now part of the picture.

RepAir Carbon is making carbon removal machines inspired by batteries

In the span of a decade, direct air capture technology that draws CO2 out of the atmosphere has gone from wildly expensive to somewhat expensive. Companies like Microsoft, which set a target to eliminate its emissions by 2030, are happy to pay more to get the ball rolling. But smaller companies wou

British startup Isembard lands $9M to reshore manufacturing for critical industries

Geopolitical pressures are accelerating a demand in many countries and regions to reshore — that is, to redevelop critical industry infrastructure, and to bring back businesses, which had moved or outsourced some or all of their industrial operations to cheaper countries farther away. But th

Alpaca raises $52M Series C to take its API brokerage platform to new markets

For all the turmoil these days, the U.S. stock market remains extremely attractive to investors around the world, simply because of its sheer size and liquidity. But it’s still quite difficult for investors in other parts of the globe to trade stocks on U.S. exchanges. A San Mateo-based start

Froda secures $23M Series B for its debt financing platform for SMEs

Swedish fintech startup Froda has secured a $22.7 million (€20 million) Series B round led by Incore Invest, also based in Sweden. The move bucks the trend of a slight slowdown in investments into fintech, plus a further confirmation of the long-term trend toward the “embedded finance”

Parallel Systems is building autonomous electric rail for short-distance freight

The business of moving goods in the United States is dominated by trucks, which handle about two-thirds of the 20.2 billion tons of freight that's transported annually. Parallel Systems founder and CEO, Matt Soule, wants to change that by putting a modern autonomous and electric twist on the ce