Venture capital firm Catalio Capital Management announced today the closing of its more than $400 million Fund IV, as first reported by Bloomberg. The fund will continue the firm’s thesis of backing healthcare and biotechnology companies. The firm was founded in 2020 and has made more than 100 investments, according to PitchBook. Catalio’s Fund IV, […]
Catalio Capital closes over $400M Fund IV Read More »
The conversational AI market has exploded since ChatGPT was released in November 2022 and is predicted to grow into a nearly $50 billion global industry by 2031, according to MarketsAndMarkets. Synthflow AI is just one of many companies building in this space that hopes to stand out from the pack because of its focus on
How Synthflow AI is cutting through the noise in a loud AI voice category Read More »
AI investments hit $110 billion in 2024, and the funding landscape in 2025 is more competitive than ever. For early-stage startups, that means more money in the market, but also more pressure to stand out. At TechCrunch Sessions: AI, Rebecca Bellan sat down with three experienced investors: Jill Chase, Partner at CapitalG; Kanu Gulati, Partner
Seed to Series C: What VCs actually want from AI startups Read More »
Buzzy autonomous vehicle software company Applied Intuition has closed a $600 million Series F funding round, pushing its valuation up to $15 billion. The round was co-led by BlackRock-managed funds and Kleiner Perkins, and included new investments from the Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi Investment Council, Greycroft, and more. Existing investors General Catalyst, Lux, Elad
Applied Intuition raises $600 million as it pushes further into defense Read More »
XRobotics thinks it has cracked the code on getting pizza restaurants to adopt robotics. The San Francisco-based robotics company built a countertop robot called xPizza Cube, which is roughly the size of a stackable washing machine, and uses machine learning to apply sauce, cheese and pepperonis to pizza dough. The machines, which lease for $1,300
XRobotics’ countertop robots are cooking up 25,000 pizzas a month Read More »
Impact investor and advisor Christian Tooley posed a simple question to the audience at SXSW London last week: What if investors put aside societal prudence for profit? Tooley was mainly referring to vice clauses, the restrictions that limited partners place on venture firms to guardrail their investments. Some of these no-no sectors often include products
An investor makes a case for funding sex, drugs and other socially taboo products Read More »
The global assistive technology market was valued at more than $22 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow substantially by 2030. Despite the potential market size, many founders building tech to help people with disabilities struggle to secure the kind of early funding needed to get their companies off the ground in the first
Retail investors are increasingly shaping the secondary market. In Q4 2024, platforms like EquityZen reported that 86% of total transaction volume came from retail participants—an eye-catching shift as tools like Forge and EquityZen promise broader access to private shares. But does more access mean more opportunity, or more risk? Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan is
The rise of retail investors in secondaries, and why delayed IPOs will become the norm Read More »
Last month, Brett Adcock, founder of a robotics startup Figure AI, claimed in a post on X that his company “is now # 1 most sought-after private stock in the secondary market.” But the company has sent cease-and-desist letters to at least two brokers who run secondary marketplaces, those brokers told TechCrunch.These people said Figure
Figure AI sent cease-and-desist letters to secondary markets brokers Read More »
Despite a still tight venture capital market, new unicorns are still being created every month. Using data from Crunchbase and PitchBook, TechCrunch tracked down the newly VC-backed startup minted unicorns so far this year (as of the end of January). These include healthcare companies like Hippocratic AI and satellite space companies like Loft Orbital. This
20 new tech unicorns were minted in 2025 so far Read More »
