Institutional-Grade
Venture Intelligence

Benchmark-backed Ollama has amassed 176,000 stars, and nearly 17,000 forks on GitHub by helping developers easily run AI on their PCs.

Command Code announces a $5M seed round and introduces its command-line AI coding agent, positioned as the first agent that continuously adapts to an individual developer's coding taste through accept, reject, and edit feedback signals.

Hippo Harvest closed a USD 30 million Series C funding round led by Cox Farms to scale its robotic indoor growing technology and expand to new markets.

Kraken Technology Group closed a $175 million Series B round at a $1 billion valuation, led by Digital Transformation Capital Partners with backing from the British Business Bank, NATO Innovation Fund, and Rheinmetall.

Like its U.S. counterpart, the European Chips Act aims to foster the semiconductor industry — in part thanks to state subsidies. One of the beneficiaries is QuantumDiamonds, a German startup that applies a novel approach to inspecting chips.

Watch as General Intuition CEO Pim de Witt joins TechCrunch's Equity podcast to explain how the startup's $320M round and gaming data are powering the next wave of physical AI and robotics.

Founded in 2024, Prime Intellect’s goal is to give organizations capabilities to train their own agentic systems without relying on frontier AI labs.

There are a lot of fast-growing AI startups, but some are growing even faster, they say.

Paradigm raised a $1.2 billion venture fund targeting artificial intelligence and robotics startups while continuing to back crypto companies, broadening its strategy beyond digital assets.

Houston propulsion startup Venus Aerospace closed a $91 million Series B round led by Mercury Fund, with participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, MESH, PEAK6, and Draper Associates, to scale production of its rotating detonation rocket engine for hypersonic and space-transportation applications.

Kevin Weil's new role at Stoke Space suggests reusable rockets are the next hot thing in Silicon Valley.

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

Lyzr, a startup that builds AI agents for enterprises, used its own AI agent to raise a $100 million round — proof, evidently, that the product actually works.

In this week’s episode of Build Mode, Isabelle Johannessen talks with Precursor Ventures' Charles Hudson about the headwinds facing early-stage founders today and the most common mistakes founders should avoid in order to get funded.

A new $20 billion valuation would be a giant step up from the $10 billion valuation it reached in October.

The company is using the cash to open an office in the Bay Area and compete for talent there, "strengthening its position at the heart of the world's leading AI ecosystem."

Nilekani remains Fundamentum's anchor investor as the firm expands its leadership team and targets AI and fintech startups in India.

For Paradigm, the technical frontier will stretch beyond its cryptocurrency investment roots. This fund is expected to expand its investment focus to include robotics and AI.

Vermilion Cliffs Ventures announced Wednesday the close of a $25 million Fund II.

Venus Aerospace raised a $90 million Series B led by Mercury Fund to scale its Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine, with Lockheed Martin Ventures, MESH, PEAK6, Draper Associates, Starboard Star, and Green Sands Equity joining as the Houston startup pivots toward hypersonic weapons and high-speed military space vehicles.

Houston-based Venus Aerospace closed a $91 million Series B led by Mercury Fund, with Lockheed Martin Ventures, MESH, PEAK6, Draper Associates, Starboard Star, and Green Sands Equity participating, to scale its reusable rotating detonation rocket engine, which the startup says outperforms conventional rocket cycles by roughly 15%.

ZML, a hot French AI startup endorsed by Turing Award winner Yann LeCun, has now released ZML/LLMD, software that could make running AI less costly.

AI chip maker SambaNova has raised at an $11 billion valuation months after Intel was rumored to be trying to buy it for about $1.6 billion.