Apptronik, a University of Texas spin-out that was quietly building humanoid robots before it became quite so fashionable, on Thursday announced a $350 million Series A round of financing. B Capital and Capital Factory co-led the round, which also featured participation from Google, whose DeepMind division is partnering with Apptronik to deliver embodied AI for
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“The fintech market is hot again,” said Sheel Mohnot, fintech investor and founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures (BTV). “And we are going to see some more exits in the near future.” According to recent reports, fintech funding is on the rise, with global investment hitting $60 billion in the first half of the year alone,
If you follow fintech on X, it’s very likely that you have come across the account of Sheel Mohnot, co-founder and general partner of Better Tomorrow Ventures. With over 150,000 followers, Mohnot has built an impressive presence on the social media site. Interestingly, many of his posts have nothing to do with venture capital. Mohnot
How much is a customer worth to a company? That’s the eternal question. To arrive at an answer, customer and sales teams are often forced to use spreadsheets and other manual data analysis methods. The problem is, these methods tend to be slow and error-prone, leading to gaps in reporting processes. The challenge spurred two
Rebuilding after a wildfire isn’t cheap. The recent Los Angeles wildfires, for example, incurred up to $164 billion in property and capital losses. But restoring the forest isn’t, either, with a few thousand acres running a couple million dollars, Grant Canary, co-founder and CEO of Mast Reforestation, told TechCrunch. “If you’re a land owner and
On Monday, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, offered to buy the nonprofit that effectively governs OpenAI for $97.4 billion. The unsolicited buyout would be financed by Musk’s AI company, xAI, and a consortium of outside investors, per a letter sent to California and Delaware’s attorneys general. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly dismissed Musk’s bid,
As Africa’s tech ecosystem booms, more people from the region are landing remote jobs with big tech firms and global startups. But getting paid remains a challenge for many of these freelancers and remote workers — they struggle to open accounts that accept U.S. dollars, face slow invoicing and payment processes, and it doesn’t help
Cap table management firm Carta made headlines in 2020 when its former marketing VP Emily Kramer filed a lawsuit alleging gender discrimination and retaliation. That case was settled in 2023. But since then, Carta has settled two other lawsuits filed by women who worked at the firm and alleged sexual harassment and discrimination, legal filings
Hundreds of heads of states, tech CEOs, and nonprofits have flocked to Paris for the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit. So far, the winner of this week’s diplomatic and business parade seems to be Mistral. In business lingo, we would say that the French AI unicorn is experiencing tailwinds. Mistral has been one of the leading
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020 and schools transitioned to online learning, both Joe Titus and Paul Suhr were concerned about how to maintain their children’s activity levels in the absence of mandatory physical education classes and sports. The two friends’ solution was Hiveclass, a New York-based edtech platform that hosts online courses for
Humanoid robotics company Figure raised eyebrows this week when it announced it would be stepping away from a partnership with OpenAI in favor of building its own in-house AI models. Figure CEO Brett Adcock alluded to a “major breakthrough” in their own process and plans to unveil “something no one has ever seen on a
A number of startups are racing to make vehicle inspections faster, easier, and cheaper. Self Inspection, a startup based in San Diego, thinks it has them all beat with its AI-powered service — and now it has convinced outside investors. Self Inspection, founded in 2021, is set to announce Thursday it’s raised $3 million in
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
TrueFoundry, a startup run by a group of former Meta engineers to help enterprises deploy AI systems at scale, has raised $19 million in fresh investment led by Intel Capital. With GenAI’s emergence following the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, enterprises of all sizes have looked at ways they could embrace AI. But GenAI
When you think about platforms in the construction industry, chances are the concrete slabs designed to support steel beams and tall pillars will come first to your mind. Munich-based startup Comstruct wants to design a different kind of platform for the construction industry — a software platform. At its core, Comstruct is a procurement platform for
For decades, the U.S. healthcare system has struggled to address the diet-related chronic illnesses affecting nearly half of all adults. That changed in recent years with the discovery of Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs that help people lose weight. While insurance covers these medications, doctors frequently require patients to see a nutritionist as part of
As the interest in both space and solar grows, one startup aims to merge the two industries. By tapping into the momentum of the commercial space industry and the increasing demand for renewable energy, Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt is on a mission to make space-based solar power a reality with his latest startup: Aetherflux. Today
The fashion industry has concerned Emily Gittins since adolescence. The sector is, after all, one of the most polluting in the world. According to some sources, it is responsible for nearly 10% of the earth’s CO2 emissions and more than 20% of all water waste. Yet people still want more, fast. “The way we consume
On a clear spring evening in Michigan, the stars aligned — just not in the way Upfront Ventures partner Nick Kim expected. He’d just led a $9.5 million seed round for OurSky, a software platform for space observational data, and was eager to see what its telescope partner PlaneWave Instruments could do. But when they
Swiss startup LogicStar is bent on joining the AI agent game. The summer 2024-founded startup has bagged $3 million in pre-seed funding to bring tools to the developer market that can do autonomous maintenance of software applications, rather than the more typical AI agent use-case of code co-development. LogicStar CEO and co-founder Boris Paskalev (pictured
Tabular data is a broad term that encompasses structured data that generally fits into a specific row and column. It can be a SQL database, a spreadsheet, a .CSV file, etc. While there has been tremendous progress on artificial intelligence applied to unstructured and sequential data, these large language models are fuzzy by design. They
When accounting startup Bench abruptly failed last month, the shutdown was forced when the company’s lenders called in the startup’s loan. In late 2023, the digital freight company Convoy faced financial challenges, leading venture lending firm Hercules Capital to assume control of the company to recover its investments. Divvy Homes, which sold for about $1
TikTok’s potential U.S. ban has sparked a flurry of development within the open social web community. Several new applications are being built that could one day serve as a TikTok replacement for those who favor the open source, decentralized social network Bluesky and the technology that powers it, the AT Protocol. Though the TikTok ban
India announced a new $1.15 billion Fund of Funds for startups on Saturday while unveiling sweeping regulatory reforms and an ambitious nuclear energy program, as New Delhi seeks to boost tech innovation and clean energy in the world’s fifth-largest economy. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, presenting the federal budget for 2025-26, said the fund builds on
A startup called Graze, which lets you build your own feeds for the Bluesky social network, has caught investors’ attention. In addition to offering tools to easily build, customize, publish, and manage Bluesky feeds, Graze will soon allow feed creators to monetize their efforts with advertising, sponsored posts, and subscriptions. In other words, Graze has
Stress isn’t just bad for you — it’s also bad for your employer. Factoring in absenteeism, diminished productivity, turnover, medical costs, and accidents, the nonprofit American Institute of Stress estimates that workplace stress costs U.S. businesses over $300 billion annually. One way to measure stress is by monitoring cortisol levels. Even influencers know this, with
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,
OpenAI may have billions of dollars in the bank. But it’s gearing up to raise billions more, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Per The WSJ, OpenAI is in talks to secure up to $40 billion in a funding round that would value the startup at $340 billion. SoftBank would lead the
Web-based party games are making a comeback, now with the infusion of generative AI. Among the startups joining the trend, the current forecast looks good for one startup, Little Umbrella, which leverages AI for its social party games. The company announced on Thursday its $2 million seed funding round. Little Umbrella plans to use the
French startup Swan has raised another €42 million (around $44 million at current exchange rates). The company considers this round as the second part of the Series B round that was originally announced in September 2023. Swan helps other companies offer financial products at scale. The company can generate both virtual and physical cards that