Startups

The 10 companies that just launched from Betaworks latest startup camp

Startups /

Early-stage venture fund Betaworks announced the latest 10 companies launching from its prestigious Camp program, the 13-week biannual residence program launched in 2016 that has given way to names like Hugging Face and Graze Social.   The theme for this year’s Camp is Interfaces, as in companies that are designing products that impact how users experience AI. (Previous Camp themes focused on application layers and agents). Applications opened in June, and the camp began in August, with DemoDay being November […]

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Coding assistant Cursor raises $2.3B 5 months after its previous round

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Developer AI coding tool Cursor continues to gobble up venture capital as its valuation keeps climbing. On Thursday, Cursor announced a $2.3 billion funding round that valued the company at $29.3 billion, as originally reported by the Wall Street Journal. This round more than doubles the company’s previous valuation of $9.9 billion, which it achieved

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How founders can prepare for their late-stage fundraises from the start

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Raising a $250 million Series D round may seem like a distant and unnecessary distraction to startup founders pitching investors for that first $1 million in seed money. But it shouldn’t be, according to several founders and venture capitalists. In their view, founders should be charting out a strategy for those later stage fundraises from

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Kaltura acquires eSelf, founded by creator of Snap’s AI, in $27M deal

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Kaltura, a New York-headquartered AI video platform company, is acquiring eSelf.ai, an Israel-based startup behind conversational avatars — AI-generated digital humans that can talk with users — for about $27 million. Kaltura announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire eSelf, a platform supporting more than 30 languages and featuring a user-friendly

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Consolidation begins to hit the carbon credit market

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Carbon management startup Carbon Direct is buying another carbon credit startup, Pachama, the companies announced today. Pachama laid off around 20 employees this summer as voluntary carbon markets softened. The company had attracted investments from a range of prominent names, including Amazon’s Climate Pledge, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, and several celebrity angel investors, including

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Scribe hits $1.3B valuation as it moves to show where AI will actually pay off

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After helping several enterprises document how work actually happens, Scribe has raised $75 million at a $1.3 billion post-money valuation to roll out Scribe Optimize, a platform that maps workflows across the enterprise to reveal where automation and AI will actually yield returns — instead of becoming another sunk cost. The all-equity Series C round

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6Sense founder Amanda Kahlow raises $30 million for new human-replacement AI sales startup 1Mind

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Although LLM-powered AI agents are a fairly new phenomenon, one of the areas where they’ve been most popular so far is in sales. 1Mind, a startup co-founded by Amanda Kahlow, has been quietly shipping its sales agent, named Mindy, for about a year.   On Monday, the startup announced a $30 million Series A round led by Battery Ventures. This brings 1Mind’s total raise to $40 million, the company says.  Kahlow is

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Lenskart recovers from tepid open to close first day slightly above IPO price

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Lenskart shares recovered after a soft start to finish slightly above the offer price on Monday, following the Indian eyewear retailer’s ₹72.8 billion ($821 million) IPO that sold out within hours but stirred debate over its valuation. The stock opened at ₹395, below the IPO price of ₹402, and fell as much as 11% to

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Slow Ventures holds a ‘finishing school’ to help founders learn to be fancy

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Slow Ventures hosted a three-hour “Etiquette Finishing School” this week, covering topics like the perfect handshake, public speaking, and office decorum. There was even a fashion show with models showing off different looks for different occasions, and then a closing lesson about caviar and wine. The San Francisco Standard reports that a few hundred founders

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