Fundraising

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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Albert Invent hopes to revolutionize the chemicals sector with its AI platform

If startup funding rounds are any metric, generative AI is seeing ample adoption in the sciences. It makes sense: there’s a lot of trial and error involved in research and development, and any tool that can speed up the process for researchers is bound to be useful. The latest is Albert Invent, which offers an

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HongShan, Peak XV back stablecoin-powered neobank KAST

Peak XV and HongShan, the Indian and Chinese investment firms that split from powerhouse Sequoia last year, have co-led a $10 million seed investment in KAST, a dollar-denominated neobank-like platform that lets customers hold and spend stablecoins through traditional payment avenues.  Kast also issues credit cards that work with standard merchant networks, enabling users to

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A new disclosure shows, again, how badly Tiger’s ‘pray and spray’ fund performed

Tiger Global famously fueled the pandemic-era venture capital boom, investing heavily in a wide range of startups, setting up bidding wars for even the most unproven startup that led to sky-high valuations. In 2021 alone, the hedge fund backed 315 startups, according to PitchBook data. And much of the VC industry was not happy about

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CarDekho SEA raises first-ever outside funding, co-founder says he’s interested in acquisitions

CarDekho SEA, a Singapore-based auto financing service platform, has raised $60 million in equity, valuing the company at over $300 million, from Navis Capital Partners and Dragon Fund. This is its first round of external funding, following a previous investment of $40 million from its parent company, CarDekho Group. The company, the Southeast Asia unit

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Stainless helps build SDKs for OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta

Devs expect tech vendors to supply software development kits, or SDKs, alongside their products to make it easier to create apps using those products. But many vendors only offer APIs, which are simply protocols that enable software components to communicate with each other. Alex Rattray, the founder of Stainless, thinks AI can assist, here. Stainless

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Software testing platform LambdaTest secures $38 million for AI push

LambdaTest, a cloud-based software testing platform, has raised $38 million in a funding round as it looks to expand its presence in existing markets and advance its AI capabilities. The San Francisco and Noida-headquartered startup’s Series D round has been led by Avataar Ventures with participation from Qualcomm Ventures, bringing its total funding to $108

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Riverside raises $30 million Series C to expand its podcast and video recording platform

Podcast recording platform Riverside said Monday that it has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Zeev Ventures, with participation from Seven Seven Six, and angel investor Sam Lessin. The company wants to use this funding to grow its team and build out solutions for the podcast and content creation space. The startup,

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