TechCrunch Startup News

On Monday, Luminal announced $5.3 million in seed funding, in a round led by Felicis Ventures with angel investment from Paul Graham, Guillermo Rauch, and Ben Porterfield.  Also, as U.S. giants like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic race to develop the large language models that underpin their AI products, startups such as Sakana AI, Mistral AI, DeepSeek, and AI 21 Labs are carving out their own niche...

Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos seems to be getting his hands dirty once again: the billionaire is partly backing a new AI startup called Project Prometheus that has raised $6.2 billion in funding, and will take on duties as co-chief executive. Plus, Bone AI, a South Korean startup, is combining AI and manufacturing to build next-gen defense robotics and challenge the region’s industry giants. Learn m...

Israeli startup Milestone raised a $10 million seed funding round to correlate AI tool usage with engineering metrics, including code quality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The solar-thermal startup wants to deliver electricity for as little as one cent per kWh. But first it has to scale production to 1 million units per year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The goalposts are moving for AI startups when it comes to growth, product features and just about everything else. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

WisdomAI is offering AI-driven data analytics that can answer business questions from structured, unstructured, and even “dirty” data, meaning data not cleaned of typos or errors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Teradar's sensor uses the terahertz part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and combines the best traits of radar and lidar sensors without some of the drawbacks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Startups should start forging connections with late-stage investors while they are still at the early stages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amanda Kahlow has been quietly been back in sales and marketing tech for about a year with agentic startup 1Mind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mmotion is a new friendship app that combines elements of location sharing with social discovery features to find nearby users with shared interests. Also, Scribe Optimize is the startup's next major offering to help organizations identify where AI will be most useful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Three industry insiders walk through how startups can set up an employee equity strategy that remains fair as a company grows. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Instead of building seawalls or dikes, Terranova has developed a new way to raise cities to protect them from sea-level rise. In addition, Chris Sacca’s venture firm Lowercarbon Capital is raising a second fund to back nuclear fusion energy hopefuls, the VC said at the SOSV Climate Tech Summit on Thursday, as reported by Bloomberg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoic...

Evotrex joins startups like Lightship, Pebble, and Grounded in trying to disrupt the RV market, which is skewing younger. Also, diffusion models already power AI image generators, but Inception thinks they can be even more powerful applied in software development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wabi, a startup from the founder of Replika, has just raised a $20 million pre-seed round. Wabi is like "YouTube for apps" -- a social platform where anyone can use prompts to instantly create mini apps and share them with friends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alloy Enterprises has developed a new additive manufacturing technique that can improve liquid cooling performance while bringing it to new parts of the server rack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

MoEngage already has customers across 75 countries, with North America being its biggest business driver. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the last year, certain AI markets appear to be nearly sewn up by startup market leaders. Plus, Locket's social app is using iOS Live Activities to reach Gen Alpha via the iPhone Lock Screen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Andreessen Horowitz is pausing its Talent x Opportunity (TxO) fund and program, according to multiple sources. Several people who spoke to TechCrunch pointed out that its hiatus comes as top names in tech eliminate, cut, reframe, or completely walk back on prior public commitments related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Trump administration has threatened legal and political ramifications...

Pine Labs aims to take Indian fintech global even as it cuts valuation for IPO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said that the company is doing “well more” than $13 billion in annual revenue — and he sounded a little testy when pressed on how it will pay for its massive spending commitments. Also, Bluesky is looking to a new signal — "dislikes" — to personalize users' feeds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After generating over 10 million social media impressions with the launch of its text-to-3D model app, Adam has raised a $4.1 million seed round to power its next steps. Plus, Cluely's Roy Lee has a message for startup founders: you should be thinking harder about how to go viral. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Most people tracking their health today end up with scattered clues. Their smartwatch shows sleep duration. A fitness app logs steps. A nutrition app counts calories. Yet few tools help people understand how all of this fits together. Bevel, a New York–based startup, believes that’s the missing piece in the shift toward proactive health. Also, IntrCity SmartBus, a tech-enabled intercity bus platfo...

People are increasingly asking AI, not Google, to help them discover products. A recent shopping report says Americans, this holiday season, will likely turn to large language models this season to find gifts, deals, and sales instead of traditional search. Also, Snabbit has raised its third funding round in nine months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Phia founders, Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, are building an AI assistant that aims to help you shop, and save. Also, Grammarly is renaming itself as Superhuman, after acquiring Superhuman email client in July Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Access Grid builds APIs that companies can use to manage digital key fobs directly within Apple and Google's wallet platforms. Plus, Taranjeet Singh has launched six companies, with some failing and others seeing varying degrees of success. His seventh, Mem0, could be his defining one. The startup starts with the premise that large language models can’t remember past interactions the way humans do...