Fundraising

Databricks is on track to raise a record $9.5+ billion round at $60B valuation

Databricks is close to finalizing a $9.5 billion round at a $60 billion valuation, including a secondary sale for employees that could climb even higher before it closes, Reuters reports. Just 17 days ago, Reuters reported that the deal was at $8 billion and a $55 billion valuation. Thrive Capital is leading the deal with […]

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As AI-fueled disinformation explodes, here comes the startup counterattack

With disinformation on the rise, especially given the explosion of AI, companies are just as vulnerable to its effects as individuals. Refute is a London-based startup that detects and responds to disinformation on behalf of these commercial entities. It’s now raised a £2.3 million ($2.9 million) pre-seed round led by UK investors Playfair and Episode 1.

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Gigs, an ‘MVNO in a box,’ gets $73M to power mobile network services for any company

Gigs, a platform that makes it easier for any company to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), has raised $73 million in a Series B round of funding. The announcement comes as countless companies have added mobile networking services to their product lineup this past year, including neobanks such as Nubank (a Gigs customer)

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Embedded data analytics startup Embeddable is still handpicking its customers despite strong demand

Tom Gardiner and Harry Marshall founded Trevor.io in 2016 as a no-code business intelligence platform to help non-data people run analysis on their internal data. That business was solid, but customers increasingly started asking the company for access to the same tools for their customer-facing data. Gardiner told TechCrunch that the company initially resisted the

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Anybotics raises $60M to bring more autonomous industrial robots to the U.S.

Swiss robotics company Anybotics has raised an extra $60 million to close its Series B round off at $110 million, some 18 months after first announcing it had raised a $50 million Series B. Spun out from the Eth Zurich research university in 2016, Anybotics has built a quadruped autonomous inspection robot dubbed Anymal, replete

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Upvest, a stock trading API used by N26, Revolut and others, raises $105 million

Upvest might not be a familiar name if you don’t pay close attention to the fintech industry, but chances are you’ve already interacted with the company’s products. Founded by Martin Kassing (pictured above), the Berlin-based startup builds a white-label investment platform that is used by some of the biggest fintech companies in Europe. Upvest clients

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Green ammonia startup Amogy is trying to raise $90M to reduce truck pollution

Green ammonia startup Amogy has raised $11.2 million of a targeted $90 million round, an SEC filing reveals. The new round’s target is significantly smaller than its last round — a $139 million Series B-1 that was announced in March 2023 — highlighting the challenges that middle-stage climate startups face today when trying to attract

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Founder who built Snap’s AI launches a snappy new take on video chatbots

A deep learning scientist whose last startup was acquired by Snap to build its My AI chatbot has raised seed funding for his latest venture: a platform for building and operating real-time, video-based conversational AI agents.  eSelf, as the startup is known, is today coming out of stealth with $4.5 million in its coffers to

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Electrified Thermal Solutions has a plan to help industry replace natural gas with bricks

Getting rid of fossil fuels is relatively simple for some things. Housing? Replace furnaces with heat pumps. Cars and light trucks? Ditch internal combustion for batteries and electric motors. Yet for many industries like cement, steelmaking, and more, it’s hard to replace the heating power of fossil fuels. But Dan Stack thinks bricks have a

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YC-backed EzDubs is chasing consumer market for translation

The global translation service market is worth around $40 billion, according to various analysts. Within that market, enterprise services represent a significant share. For consumers, apps like Google Translate and Apple Translate are dominating, but they don’t work with calls or voice messages. Y Combinator-backed EzDubs wants to solve this problem of person-to-person translation through

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