Fundraising

Equity Live: Bret Taylor’s $4.5 billion startup and Waymo’s $5.6 billion round

Fundraising /

The Equity crew was live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024! Hosts Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey and Margaux MacColl took over the Builders Stage to kick off day 2 of Disrupt with no shortage of conference highlights, startups deals and venture news to chew through. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Equity will be back with a special interview episode on […]

Equity Live: Bret Taylor’s $4.5 billion startup and Waymo’s $5.6 billion round Read More »

Regal claims its customer service chatbots are better than most

Fundraising /

People are generally skeptical of customer service chatbots, and many outright despise them. In a recent Gartner survey, 64% of consumers said that they’d prefer companies didn’t use AI of any kind — including chatbots — in their customer service. Fifty-three percent went so far as to say they’d weigh switching to a rival if

Regal claims its customer service chatbots are better than most Read More »

Actor and director Olivia Wilde launches a VC firm

Fundraising /

Actor and director Olivia Wilde, famous for in “Tron: Legacy” and “Don’t Worry Darling,” quietly launched venture firm Proximity Ventures late last year, according to Bloomberg. She launched the early- and growth-stage investment fund with Neil Sirni, formerly of Roc Nation’s venture division Arrive; Jason Mack, formerly of Mack Ventures; and Santi White, the musician

Actor and director Olivia Wilde launches a VC firm Read More »

Why Crosscut Ventures is ‘following the founders’ into climate, space, and beyond

Fundraising /

Eight years ago, Brian Garrett and his partners sensed the ground shifting.  At the time, Crosscut Ventures, where Garrett is co-founder and managing partner, had been investing in early stage startups in Los Angeles and Southern California for nearly a decade. It focused mostly on software companies, but it started shifting its attention to hardware,

Why Crosscut Ventures is ‘following the founders’ into climate, space, and beyond Read More »

Read AI raises $50M to integrate its bot with Slack, email and more

Fundraising /

Now that we have so many startups offering AI bots that can do everything from listening to your meetings and transcribe them, to taking notes and surfacing insights, companies in the space are being forced to differentiate themselves by offering additional feature sets and integrations. One such company, Read AI is trying to do just

Read AI raises $50M to integrate its bot with Slack, email and more Read More »

NASDAQ CEO Adena Friedman isn’t surprised we haven’t seen a resurgence in startup IPOs yet

Fundraising /

While many venture investors, and likely their LPs, were hoping IPOs were going to come back in 2024, that hasn’t happened and isn’t likely to in the next two months. NASDAQ CEO Adena Friedman isn’t surprised. Friedman said at Axios’s BFD event on Tuesday that while on paper the public markets have been experiencing a spectacular year

NASDAQ CEO Adena Friedman isn’t surprised we haven’t seen a resurgence in startup IPOs yet Read More »

Stripe’s biggest acquisition yet, and what’s a16z doing with all of those Nvidia GPUs?

Fundraising /

It’s no secret that Stripe has doubled down on its crypto offerings, enabling crypto purchases in the EU back in July and announcing a Pay with Crypto feature earlier this month. This week, the fintech giant made its dedication even clearer with its largest deal to date: its acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge for an

Stripe’s biggest acquisition yet, and what’s a16z doing with all of those Nvidia GPUs? Read More »

Airdog’s founders are back with a precision-strike drone meant for modern warfare

Fundraising /

The war in Ukraine has shown that warfare changes by the day. It’s also clear that the tech used to make war today is costly: While larger countries can afford legions of tanks, helicopters, and precision-strike systems, smaller nations find themselves scrambling for cheaper ways to defend themselves. Origin, a new defense tech startup out of

Airdog’s founders are back with a precision-strike drone meant for modern warfare Read More »