Fundraising

Wonderful raised $100M Series A to put AI agents on the front lines of customer service

Israeli AI agent startup Wonderful has raised $100 million in a Series A round led by Index Ventures, with participation from Insight Partners, IVP, Bessemer, and Vine Ventures. The large round, in a market already crowded with AI agent startups, suggests Wonderful has convinced top tier investors it’s not just another GPT wrapper, but a company building the infrastructure and orchestration that could scale if

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Remote driving startup Vay could grab up to $410M from Singapore’s Grab

Autonomous vehicles are having a moment, and it’s making it a lot easier for smaller companies to raise money. Vay, a German startup offering remote-controlled rental cars, will get $60 million in cash from Singaporean tech heavyweight Grab, the company announced on Monday. The deal, which is subject to regulatory approval and expected to close

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Replika founder raises $20M pre-seed for Wabi, the ‘YouTube of apps’ 

Eugenia Kuyda saw the future of consumer AI before most. She founded Replika, the first major AI companion startup, in 2017 years before ChatGPT launched. Today it has 35 million users.   Now Kuyda is back with a new startup called Wabi, which she describes as YouTube for apps – a social platform where anyone can use prompts to instantly create mini apps and share

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Sequoia’s Roelof Botha warns founders about chasing sky-high valuations as the firm doubles down on its selective approach

The Trump administration has begun taking direct equity stakes in American companies, not as temporary crisis measures, as in 2008, but as permanent fixtures of industrial policy. The moves raise interesting questions, including what happens when the White House appears on your cap table. At TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco last week, Sequoia Capital’s global

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Arbor’s ‘vegetarian rocket engine’ power plant is actually an omnivore

Two years ago, former SpaceX engineers used rocket tech to develop a power plant capable of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, with a small asterisk. To draw down CO2, it burned plant waste, making it a sort of “vegetarian rocket engine” for the grid. This week, Arbor Energy said it had raised a $55

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TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 Side Events schedule: Women in Tech, MongoDB, Silkroad Innovation Hub and more to host

With TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 right around the corner, we’re thrilled to introduce the companies hosting Side Events that will extend the buzz and excitement to the thousands of attendees and Silicon Valley locals alike. Whether it’s a fun happy hour, insightful panels, or energizing morning runs, “Disrupt Week” — happening from October 25-31 — offers

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