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Venture Intelligence

While everyone in AI is chasing "superintelligence," Alexandre LeBrun, CEO of Yann LeCun’s world model startup, AMI Labs, dismisses the word.

Aina is going to pilot a new device in the coming weeks.

Livestream shopping platform Whatnot has acquired AI startup Shaped, a machine learning company focused on real-time recommendations and search. The deal will bolster Whatnot’s personalization and discovery features as it expands into new product categories.

Watch as Equity catches up with Chris Taylor and Eddie Siegel, co-founders of Fractional AI, the applied AI services startup that Ode with Anthropic acquired earlier this year to serve as the new venture’s core.

Anthropic-backed Ode launches as AI labs bet that embedding forward-deployed engineers inside enterprises is the key to accelerating enterprise AI adoption.

The app is designed for people who want to create social content, but find traditional video editing tools too complex or time-consuming.

The startup has reached a $120 million annualized revenue run rate and more than 200,000 paying customers.

Co-founded by serial entrepreneur Shai Morag, Israeli identity management startup Oak is emerging out of stealth with $60 million in seed funding.

DeepSeek, the Chinese large language model developer, is said to be preparing for a 2027 IPO debut as it also looks to raise around $1.5 billion in new funds at a $71 billion valuation.

Kid-friendly tech company Pinwheel announced the launch of a new landline phone designed to let children stay connected without the distractions of a smartphone.

PrismML announces Bonsai 27B, the flagship of its 1-bit large language model family, delivering frontier-quality inference at a fraction of the memory, compute, and energy of full-precision models.

Phia, the shopping startup founded by Bill Gates’ daughter, Phoebe, and her friend Sophia Kianni is under fire for a practice known as “cookie stuffing,” which helped the product receive commissions and credit for sales it did not actually generate, per a Bloomberg investigation.

Travel agency Fora announced a $60 million Series D round led by Forerunner and Tactile Ventures, valuing the company at $1 billion.

The startup, founded in 2021, lets enterprise customers use smartphones to scan and spot vehicle damage.

Syntetica, a French startup that has developed a novel approach to recycling nylon, has already obtained big-name partners and investors.

Applied Computing has raised a $20M Series A to build a foundation AI model for the oil, gas and petrochemical industry.

By keeping the number of investments to about 25 per fund, Greylock aims to remain what it calls "the most important partner" to its founders.

Neko Health has developed proprietary body-scanning technology, which it couples with bloodwork, to assess a person's health.

The funding discussions point to investor interest in applying AI to make breakthroughs in life sciences.

General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund doesn't make equity investments. It's providing $1 billion for IM8, known for its longevity vitamin drink.

The company is raising at least $75 million, led by Robot Ventures, with significant participation from USV and other prominent investors.

When we last sat down with Jobs at TechCrunch Disrupt nearly three years ago, his firm Yosemite was brand new and biotech was still reeling from its post-pandemic crash. Now, the venture outfit has a team of 17; a cluster of blockbuster drugs are all losing patent protection in roughly the same window, creating all kinds of new opportunities; and AI has gone from a curiosity to, in Jobs' words, a huge part of what Yosemite does. "I didn't expect Yosemite to be moving this fast," he said.

Fizz has expanded its lawsuit against rival Sidechat, alleging that a Maveron VC shared its confidential information obtained during a fundraising meeting with the competing startup.

The massive round was co-led by ARCH Venture Partners, Spark Capital, and Khosla Ventures.