Kodiak Robotics made a financial move that was ubiquitous in 2021. Yup, the self-driving truck startup plans to go public through a merger with Ares Acquisition Corporation II, a special purpose acquisition company. It’s a bold bet in a market where SPACs have lost their shine and the autonomous vehicle space has numerous shutdowns, including […]
Is the SPAC back? | TechCrunch Read More »
“We are in a period of what I’ll call fintech maximalism,” says Chemistry founder and GP Mark Goldberg. “By that, I mean the companies that grew up in the last five to ten years in fintech, those that quietly executed through the winter of the 2021 to 2024 period, have emerged as compounders in a
We’ve entered an era of Fintech Maximalism according to Mark Goldberg Read More »
Meta dropped three new models over the weekend: Scout, Maverick, and the still-training Behemoth, billed as the next evolution of “open-ish” AI. But instead of excitement, the response was mostly shrugs. Critics called the release underwhelming, saying it lacked the edge expected in today’s breakneck AI race. Meta’s clear attempt to claw back some attention
Meta’s Llama drama and how Trump’s tariffs could hit moonshot projects Read More »
Rippling’s latest lawsuit reads less like a legal filing and more like the plot of a corporate espionage thriller, complete with secret crypto payments, an alleged mole, and a fake Slack channel trap. This week, the HR tech startup publicly named the employee at the center of its case against its rival Deel, claiming the
Spy games in HR tech: Inside Rippling’s wild lawsuit against Deel Read More »
Six years ago, while researching for a college entrepreneurship competition, Valentina Agudelo identified a troubling gap in breast cancer survival rates between Latin America and the developed world: women in her native Colombia and the rest of South America are dying at higher rates due to late detection. Today, Agudelo is the co-founder and CEO
Startup Battlefield winner Salva Health is changing the game in breast cancer detection Read More »
OpenAI is reportedly nearing completion of a massive $40 billion funding round, with SoftBank leading the way. But this week, it wasn’t just the company funding news making headlines— its new image generator went live in ChatGPT, with capabilities including the ability to turn ordinary images into Studio Ghibli-style animation stills. While AI-generated art often
OpenAI is aiming for AGI but landing on Studio Ghibli Read More »
According to Bradley Tusk, co-founder and managing partner of Tusk Venture Partners, venture capital has been “effectively dead for the last four years.” A self-proclaimed “Fixer,” Tusk recently made the decision not to raise a fourth fund. Instead, he decided to go back to his roots and launch an equity-for-services firm aimed at helping early
Bradley Tusk says VC is dead. But the ‘fixer’ in him is just getting started Read More »
It was on, then off, and welp, now it’s on again — and this time for a lot more money. Yep, the Equity podcast dug into Google’s $32 billion acquisition of cloud security startup Wiz. There was a lot to unpack: the why, the how, what it means. And of course, there was the “who
Inside the Google-Wiz acquisition and the deal’s biggest winners Read More »
“The enthusiasm into AI actually carries over into everything, which effectively impacts all startups,” said AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli when asked if investors remain as excited about emerging startups outside of AI. According to Kohli, AI startups make up nearly 40% of the startups on AngelList’s platform. Today on Equity, Mary Ann Azevedo caught up
‘Every software company is an AI company now,’ says AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli Read More »
This week, OpenAI inked a five-year, $11.9 billion deal with CoreWeave, the GPU-heavy cloud provider, securing its own AI computing pipeline—and a $350 million equity stake in the company. With CoreWeave’s pending IPO and deep ties to Microsoft, OpenAI’s deal marks a significant shift in the AI cloud wars. Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts
OpenAI and Microsoft’s ‘frenemies relationship,’ and what you missed at SXSW Read More »
