Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week brought reassuring signs that dealmaking is still happening on both sides of the table. New unicorns are being minted, and more capital is flowing into […]
Sitting in Athens during the first Covid-19 lockdown, entrepreneur Rania Lamprou watched as online e-commerce exploded because of social distancing. But merchants still struggled with low conversion rates because their checkout processes were complicated, and they had to integrate multiple providers for payments, shipping, and loyalty programs. “I knew there had to be a better
She sat down in the COVID Lockdown and started coding — now she’s taking on Bolt Read More »
Alan, the French insurance unicorn, just signed a multi-faceted deal with Belfius, one the largest banks in Belgium, that includes a distribution partnership along with a significant financial investment in the startup. Belfius is leading Alan’s Series F funding round of €173 million (around $193 million at current exchange rates). Some of Alan’s existing investors
Health insurance startup Alan reaches $4.5B valuation with new $193M funding round Read More »
Last year, the U.S. designated magnesium as a critical mineral, one of the “electric 18” that are critical for the energy transition. The metal is used in a range of electronics, and it weighs less than aluminum, making it an attractive alternative for automakers. But like with so many other minerals, China has grown to
Tidal Metals sees seawater as the solution to a critical mineral shortage Read More »
Industrial heat, which is used by companies as diverse as breweries and food processors to chemical manufacturers and paper mills, is one of the last bastions of fossil fuels. After all, it’s pretty hard to beat a flame when you need to heat something up. But recently, a slew of startups have started exploring ways
Karman Industries hopes its SpaceX-inspired heat pumps will replace industrial boilers Read More »
With an explosion of weather and climate data that the last generation of tools can’t handle, is AI the future of forecasting? Research certainly suggests so, and a newly funded startup called Brightband is taking a shot at turning machine learning forecast models into both a business and open source standard. Today’s weather prediction and
Brightband sees a bright (and open-source) future for AI-powered weather forecasting Read More »
Fal.ai, a dev-focused platform for AI-generated audio, video, and images, today revealed that it’s raised $23 million in funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Black Forest Labs co-founder Robin Rombach, and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. It’s a two-round deal. $14 million of Fal’s total came from a Series A tranche led by Kindred Ventures.
Fal.ai, which hosts media-generating AI models, raises $23M from a16z and others Read More »
The real estate market and many real estate-focused startups were hit hard when mortgage rates skyrocketed in 2022, but that didn’t stop industry veteran Clelia Warburg Peters from leaving her role as a venture partner at Bain Capital Ventures to launch her own proptech venture firm. Peters, unlike many other specialist proptech funds, invests in
Era Ventures raises $88M first fund for transforming the “built” environment Read More »
Zander Brumbaugh discovered Roblox when he was 12. Quickly, he went from playing on the platform to creating his own user-generated content and games. “The games I self-developed have garnered over 500 million visits, with titles peaking at over 80,000 concurrent users,” he told TechCrunch. Brumbaugh noticed that Roblox still needed developer tools, such as
The 22-year-old building Roblox developer tools to make gaming more efficient Read More »
Investment powerhouse BlackRock is set to launch a massive AI-focused investment fund, exceeding $30 billion, in collaboration with Microsoft and the Abu Dhabi-backed investment outfit MGX, the FT reported today. According to the outlet, the fund — among Wall Street’s largest — will focus on creating data centers and funding energy infrastructure to support AI.
BlackRock and Microsoft are reportedly planning a $30B AI-focused megafund Read More »
