Startups

Weka raises $140M as the AI boom bolsters data platforms

While an increasing number of companies are investing in AI, many are struggling to get AI-powered projects into production — much less delivering meaningful ROI. The challenges are many. But a commonly recurring one is data management. The data that companies need to train, run and fine-tune AI models is disorganized, siloed, and otherwise unoptimized. […]

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Shipping logistics startup Harbor Lab raises $16M Series A led by Atomico

Cargo ships docking at a commercial port incur costs called “disbursements” and “port call expenses.” These might include port dues, towage, and pilotage fees. It’s a complex patchwork and all ports operate their own procedures, much of it on spreadsheets. The global cost from port calls, for all vessels, is over $220 billion dollars per

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Bye-bye bots: Altera’s game-playing AI agents get backing from Eric Schmidt

Autonomous, AI-based players are coming to a gaming experience near you, and a new startup, Altera, is joining the fray to build this new guard of AI agents. The company announced Wednesday that it raised $9 million in an oversubscribed seed round, co-led by First Spark Ventures (Eric Schmidt’s deep-tech fund) and Patron (the seed

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Human composting and timber marketplaces: talking “industrial” VC with investor Dayna Grayson

While the venture world is abuzz over generative AI, Dayna Grayson, a longtime venture capitalist who five years ago co-founded her own firm, Construct Capital, has been focused on comparatively boring software that can transform industrial sectors. Her mission doesn’t exclude AI, but it also doesn’t depend on it. Construct recently led a seed-stage round,

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Amae Health is building an in-person approach to mental healthcare in an increasingly digital space

When Sonia García and Stas Sokolin decided to launch Amae Health to solve the broken care system for people with severe mental illness, they were already intimately familiar with the industry’s issues. “I started thinking about this problem a very long time ago,” said Sokolin, Amae’s CEO. “I grew up with a sister who had

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Musk raises $6B for AI startup. Also, is TikTok dodging Apple’s commissions?

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje’s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Musk’s 10-month-old baby, xAI, is closing in on a whoppin’ $6 billion funding round. The social network X, née Twitter — also part of Elon’s tech

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Despite recent successes, IPO market still won’t fully open until 2025

This year already proved that startups are willing to go public in a less-than-ideal market — and get rewarded for it, too. But bankers, lawyers and investors said the recent IPO successes aren’t enough to foster more than a dozen tech IPOs this year. “I don’t think we will have the floodgates open like I

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Midi is building a digital platform for an oft-overlooked area of women’s health

When Joanna Strober was around 47, she stopped sleeping. While losing sleep is a common symptom of perimenopause, she first had to go to multiple providers, including driving 45 minutes out of San Francisco to pay $750 out of pocket, to get that diagnosis and proper treatment. “That feeling of wow, I’ve really been suffering

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