OpenAI working on new $30B raise at $1.25T valuation ahead of IPO
Should OpenAI command an over $1 trillion valuation with this round, it would break records as the most highly valued private company ever.
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Nirva raises $33M for a pendant that only listens to you
Nirva will ship its $249 ambient AI pendant by the end of the year.
TechCrunch ·DeepSeek reportedly raises $15B days after US restrictions
DeepSeek has reportedly raised $15 billion in one of China's largest funding rounds, just days after the US ordered federal agencies to remove its technology over national security concerns.
TechCrunch ·Exclusive: Slingshot Raises $27M In Seed Funding To Build An Insurer For Those Small Policies Sold At Checkout
Slingshot Insurance, a Minneapolis-based AI-native embedded insurance startup, is emerging from stealth with $27 million in a seed funding round co-led by Rally Ventures and Skyward Group, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
Crunchbase News ·The AI IPO Wave Is The Dot-Com Bubble’s Evil Twin. Anthropic’s Delay Just Proved It.
In this guest article from Airrived co-founder and CEO Anurag Gurtu, he contends that Anthropic’s rapid revenue growth does not justify its proposed $2 trillion IPO valuation, given enormous infrastructure commitments, safety concerns,…
Crunchbase News ·Your Next Customer Might Be An Agent. Here’s How To Build Your Brand For Both Humans And AI.
As AI agents increasingly recommend and purchase products, brands must appeal to both machines and humans by documenting their voice, creating clear product descriptions and checking how AI summarizes their messaging. Guest author Toby…
Crunchbase News ·Recursive launches Flint, a laptop coding model it says was largely built by AI
Startup Recursive has released Flint, a free, laptop-sized coding model built largely by its own AI research system, as an early test of AI that improves itself.
TechCrunch ·Legal AI startup Legora raises $550M Series E at $8.8B valuation
Legal AI startup Legora announced Wednesday that it raised a $550 million Series E round, valuing it at $8.8 billion.
TechCrunch ·Blacksmith hits unicorn valuation after Sequoia leads Series C
Blacksmith, a platform that lets companies build and test AI code more effectively, just announced a $66 million Series C round led by Sequoia that values the company at $1 billion.
TechCrunch ·Anthropic’s cloud partnerships are getting messy
Anthropic is reportedly struggling to secure enough compute from cloud providers that increasingly view it as a competitor, even as its infrastructure spending balloons ahead of a planned November IPO.
TechCrunch ·OpenAI acquires startup Orchestra Bio to beef up its biotech business
OpenAI says it's adding Orchestra's team and technology to work on Rosalind, its AI model for life sciences research, and to its related Rosalind Workbench tool, a harness that aims to help researchers plan experiments and analyze results.
TechCrunch ·Plants can speak using electricity, so this startup built an AI model to decipher their language
Electric Plant has built an AI-powered translator to help humans listen to what plants are saying with the subtle electricity coursing through their stems.
TechCrunch ·Otter.ai raises $320 million from General Catalyst’s growth fund for its meeting tool
Meeting note-taking tool Otter.ai announced on Tuesday that it has raised $320 million from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund (CVF), which provides capital to startups without diluting equity and gets returns on the results of…
TechCrunch ·DC professionals are becoming founders. AI is helping them close the gap.
A vibrant session at DC Startup and Tech Week (DCSTW/Instagram) " data-large-file="https://technically-wpengine.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/technically/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/dcstw-session-2026-1-scaled.jpg" /> Product experience…
Technical.ly ·Spain-Based Startups Advance Regional Innovation With Barcelona Supercomputing Center
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC)’s AI Factory Accelerator Programme, now in full operation following a pilot initiative, gives startups access to sovereign compute, technical support and training to support innovation across…
NVIDIA ·Tolan snags $30M for its AI companion that helps users navigate life
AI companion app Tolan has raised another $30 million after attracting more than 250,000 active users.
TechCrunch ·Replika’s founder built the AI assistant she pitched at Disrupt 12 years ago
Eugenia Kuyda's newest startup Wabi is positioned to take advantage of an idea she had more than a decade ago. Wabi offers a personal AI assistant with a twist, free and downloadable to anyone today.
TechCrunch ·Tenstorrent hits $6.2B valuation to scale open-weight AI chips
After drawing acquisition interest earlier this year, the Nvidia challenger raised $1.5 billion to remain independent.
TechCrunch ·AI assistant startup Town nabs unicorn valuation four months after launch
AI assistant startup Town nabbed a unicorn valuation on Monday, announcing a $108 million Series B round co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures.
TechCrunch ·“We were looking at it wrong”: The explosive claim that’s upended the AI world
“I think I have good news about the nature of neural networks.” With those simple words of optimism, Nick Cammarata, a researcher at the AI startup Goodfire, kicked off a 26,000-word blog post that has knocked the AI world on its head,…
MIT Technology Review ·The FDE Bubble: Silicon Valley’s Most Expensive Game Of Pretend
Enterprise AI companies relying on armies of forward deployed engineers are disguising labor-intensive services as scalable software, inflating recurring revenue and valuations while falling short of autonomy claims, argues Anurag Gurtu,…
Crunchbase News ·Disney agrees to hire the majority of Character.AI’s workforce
After chatbot startup Character.AI filed for bankruptcy earlier this week, many of its employees will have the opportunity to take jobs at Disney. Character.AI’s former CEO Karandeep Anand recently became the entertainment giant’s first…
TechCrunch ·Meta removes language that raised scraping and AI training concerns
A Meta spokesperson insisted that the updated terms did not reflect a change in the way Meta crawls the web.
TechCrunch ·The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Spending Contracts For Latest AI-Driven Startup Batch
Startup investors aren’t exactly hitting pause, but they did scale back on giant rounds this past week, with just two startup financings in the multiple hundreds of millions.
Crunchbase News ·Mark Wahlberg on using AI in film ‘the right way’ and being open to an AI clone carrying on his legacy
Actor and angel investor Mark Wahlberg says he's OK with using AI in filmmaking, provided it's used "to enhance what you're doing."
TechCrunch ·Veritas expands its anti-counterfeit chip to jewelry, trophies, and fragrance bottles
Counterfeiters are getting better at replicating brands' marks and passing off dupes, known as "superfakes," as genuine items. A startup called Veritas wants to tackle the problem with its own chip that verifies goods.
TechCrunch ·Asia’s Startup Funding At Near Record High In Q3, Driven By AI
Overall, investors put $38.5 billion into reported seed- through growth-stage financings for Asian startups in Q3, per Crunchbase data. Of that, a majority went to AI-focused companies, echoing the trends we’ve seen globally.
Crunchbase News ·Even Benchmark thinks AI is eroding the venture pact against backing rivals
Benchmark says the Valley’s rule against backing rivals is getting harder to keep.
TechCrunch ·Last chance to save up to $200 on your TechCrunch Founder Summit pass: Early booking ends October 16
Savings of up to $200 end October 16 for TechCrunch Founder Summit. These savings for Founder and Investor Passes vanish after Friday. Join 1,000 founders and investors on November 4 at Boston’s SoWa Power Station. Bring your toughest…
TechCrunch ·Amazon’s Bee launches two new personal AI devices, starting at $75
Amazon-owned Bee has launched its first new AI devices since its acquisition, including an updated wearable and a credit-card-sized recorder that attaches to smartphones. The devices can summarize conversations, create to-do lists, and…
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