Fundraising

OpenAI Startup Fund backs AI healthcare venture with Arianna Huffington

Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are throwing their weight behind a new venture, Thrive AI Health, that aims to build AI-powered assistant tech to promote healthier lifestyles. Backed by Huffington’s mental wellness firm Thrive Global and the OpenAI Startup Fund, the early-stage venture fund closely associated with OpenAI, Thrive AI […]

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Valuations of startups have quietly rebounded to all-time highs. Some investors say the slump is over. 

Generative AI businesses aside, the last couple of years have been relatively difficult for venture-backed companies. Very few startups were able to raise funding at prices that exceeded their previous valuations.   Now, approximately two years after the venture slump began in early 2022, some investors, like IVP general partner Tom Loverro, are saying that the

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Granza Bio grabs $7M seed from Felicis and YC to advance delivery of cancer treatments

Ashwin Nandakumar and Ashwin Jainarayanan were working on their doctorates at adjacent departments in Oxford, but they didn’t know each other. Nandakumar, who was studying oncology, one day stumbled across a curious dataset for prostate cancer, with which he needed sequencing help. “I reached out to a few friends asking to help me analyze this

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Industry Ventures raises a $900M fund for investing in small, early-stage VCs and their breakout startups

The venture fundraising trend in 2024 is fairly clear by now: Large, established VC firms are continuing to attract capital from limited partners, while smaller, newer funds are finding it more difficult to raise.  But Industry Ventures’ latest fundraise should offer a dash of good news for emerging managers. On Tuesday, the 24-year-old firm announced

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Identity.vc is bringing capital and community to Europe’s LGBTQ+ venture ecosystem

When Til Klein and Jochen Beutgen came across Gaingels, the U.S.-based syndicate of angel investors backing LGBTQ+ founders, they wondered why there wasn’t a firm looking to do the same for the European LGBTQ+ startup community. Five years later, when a firm like that still didn’t exist, Klein and Beutgen decided they should try to

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YC alum Fluently’s AI-powered English coach attracts $2M seed round

There are plenty of resources to learn English, but not so many for near-native speakers who still want to improve their fluency. That description applies to Stan Beliaev and Yurii Rebryk, and this is what inspired them to create Fluently. Making use of AI, Fluently operates as a coach that gives users feedback and tips

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Rohlik rolls up $170M to expand in European grocery delivery and sell its tech to others

The salad days of fresh grocery delivery startups are over, but those that have stayed the course, and built businesses that are seeing gains, are still here and hungry for more growth. On Friday, one of those survivors, the Czech grocery delivery company Rohlik, announced $170 million in new funding. Rohlik – which means ‘baker’

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Rondo Energy funding shows a new way across the climate startup ‘valley of death’

Outside of AI, few startups have drawn venture investments like climate tech. And like AI, companies in the sector need large infusions of cash, sometimes well beyond what a typical venture investor might offer, to reach a size where they’ll be able to make a mark. A new deal involving Rondo Energy, which makes thermal energy

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