Startups

Fal nabs $140M in fresh funding led by Sequoia, tripling valuation to $4.5B

Startups /

Fal, a startup that hosts image, video, and audio AI models for developers, has announced that it raised $140 million Series D led by Sequoia, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz and other investors. The round, which was Fal’s third fundraise this year, valued the company at $4.5 billion, about three times what the […]

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Why Cursor’s CEO believes OpenAI, Anthropic competition won’t crush his startup

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Anysphere, the company that makes AI coding assistant darling Cursor, isn’t thinking about an IPO any time soon, its co-founder CEO Michael Truell said onstage Monday at Fortune’s AI Brainstorming conference. After reaching $1 billion in annualized revenue in November and raising $2.3 billion at a $29.3 billion valuation last month, Truell said his company

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Pebble’s founder introduces a $75 AI smart ring for recording brief notes with a press of a button

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After rebooting the Pebble smartwatch brand, founder Eric Migicovsky is expanding his company’s device lineup with a new smart wearable: an AI-powered smart ring known as Index 01. Named for the finger where the ring is meant to be worn, the new $75 ring is not meant to be a competitor to always-on, always-listening AI

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SoftBank and Nvidia reportedly in talks to fund Skild AI at $14B, nearly tripling its value

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SoftBank Group and Nvidia are in talks to lead an investment of over $1 billion at a $14 billion valuation in Skild AI, a software company building a foundational robotics model, Reuters reported. The nearly three-year-old startup was last valued at $4.7 billion in May when it raised $500 million in a round led by

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Sources: AI synthetic research startup Aaru raised a Series A at a $1B ‘headline’ valuation

Startups /

Aaru, a startup that provides near-instant customer research by using AI to simulate user behavior, has raised a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures, according to three people familiar with the deal. The funding round included different valuation tiers, these people said.  Although some equity was sold at a $1 billion valuation, a lower valuation

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New streaming channel launches to give viewers a peek into city council meetings

Startups /

The launch of Hamlet was quite personal for Sunil Rajaraman. Back in 2022, he ran for city council in a small California town. He lost, but the moment forever changed the way he saw the place — and local governments, for that matter. “I was trying to become a better candidate,” he recalled to TechCrunch.

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From the NFL to Startup Battlefield: How Alltroo built a brand that wins

Startups /

On season one of Build Mode: Product, Meet Market, we explore what it really takes to get your product into the hands of customers. We’ve talked a lot about product-market fit, but this week we take a step back to something just as essential and far less discussed: founder-market fit.  Investors love to ask, “What’s your competitive advantage?” Usually they’re talking about moats,

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Celebrity Co-Founders Not Required: Building Influence from Scratch

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Alltroo co-founders Kyle Rudolph and Jon Walburg share how they transformed their pro-athlete star power into a fundraising platform that allows their community the ability to donate to a variety of organization and win high-value prizes. In this episode of Build Mode, they reveal how they leveraged their networks to disrupt the charitable giving industry,

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