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Insight VC describes Databricks’ wild $10B deal and the bad advice the CEO ignored

It’s been a wild week for investors clawing their way into Databricks’ record-breaking $10 billion fundraising, one of the VCs leading the deal told TechCrunch. “There were calls that went well late into the night, and that’s okay, that’s how good opportunities emerge,” George Mathew, managing director at Insight Partners, described with a grin. Along with […]

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Stephen Curry’s Penny Jar Capital files to raise a Fund II

Venture / Sasandara Dilmina

Penny Jar Capital, the early-stage firm founded by Bryant Barr and Richard Scudellari and where basketball star Stephen Curry serves as a special advisor, has filed to raise a Fund II with no target amount, according to an SEC form filed in October. The firm also filed in October to raise what appears to be

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Focused Energy buys two of the world’s most powerful lasers for its fusion quest

Climate / Sasandara Dilmina

Fusion power startup Focused Energy has signed a deal to buy two of the world’s most powerful lasers, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The massive lasers will be installed in the startup’s future facility, which it is building in the San Francisco Bay Area over the next two years. “These are some of the highest-average-power

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Cohere is quietly working with Palantir to deploy its AI models

AI / Sasandara Dilmina

Cohere is one of the best-known AI startups outside of OpenAI and Anthropic, hitting a $5.5 billion valuation as of July as we previously reported. It’s co-founded by an author of the ‘Attention is All You Need’ paper that helped launch the LLM revolution. Based in Toronto and San Francisco, Cohere sells AI to the

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Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners merges with investment arm of Pendulum Holdings

Venture / Sasandara Dilmina

Jay-Z’s venture capital firm, Marcy Venture Partners, has merged with another Black-owned investment firm, Pendulum Holdings’ investment arm Pendulum Opportunities, to form MarcyPen Capital Partners, a MarcyPen spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. The newly formed MarcyPen Capital Partners has $900 million in assets under management, according to PitchBook. MarcyPen’s spokesperson declined to comment further on the

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Prequel is building a community-driven approach to finding software bugs

Startups / Sasandara Dilmina

Cybersecurity practitioners take a community-driven approach to solving problems. Security researchers share the vulnerabilities they find with the broader cybersecurity community, which allows companies to patch up their security holes before something catastrophic happens. Prequel is looking to bring that same approach to software. The startup is building a database of software failure patterns or

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Kalshi CEO admits enlisting influencers to dis Polymarket in a now-deleted podcast segment

Venture / Sasandara Dilmina

Kalshi’s CEO, Tarek Mansour, confirmed on a podcast interview that his employees did ask social media influencers to promote memes about the FBI’s raid on the home of his arch rival, the CEO of Polymarket. Both of these companies offer competing events-betting markets, a new kind of betting industry where people wager about the outcomes

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G2 Ventures Partners is raising $750 million for a third fund

Climate / Sasandara Dilmina

G2 Venture Partners, the high-profile firm that spun out of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is raising a third fund with a target of $750 million, TechCrunch has learned. The raise, which was disclosed in a regulatory filing, is a bullish vote of confidence in climate and sustainability startups, while other investors have voiced cautious

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UnitedHealthcare’s Optum left an AI chatbot, used by employees to ask questions about claims, exposed to the internet

Security / Sasandara Dilmina

Healthcare giant Optum has restricted access to an internal AI chatbot used by employees after a security researcher found it was publicly accessible online, and anyone could access it using only a web browser. The chatbot, which TechCrunch has seen, allowed employees to ask the company questions about how to handle patient health insurance claims

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Activate and The Engine Accelerator team up to train scientists to become founders

Climate / Sasandara Dilmina

The road from scientist to founder is well trodden, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Those pitfalls are why, over the last decade, several programs have sprung up to help smooth the path for technical founders. Now, two prominent programs, Activate and The Engine Accelerator, have decided they can give founders an even bigger advantage

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