VC

Serial founder DIVINE launches creator app with hip hop legend RAKIM

Startups /

Serial entrepreneur and recording artist Victor D. Lombard, also known as DIVINE, announced this week the launch of a new company, in partnership with RAKIM, one of hip-hop’s most influential emcees.  The company is called Notes, a fintech specifically for independent urban musicians and creators. It provides the knowledge and tools to help artists manage […]

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Data analytics startup Athenic AI wants to be an enterprise’s central nervous system

AI /

Jared Zhao originally got interested in data analytics during his time at UC Berkeley because he was drawn to how it could turn raw data into a story. Zhao founded his first data analytics startup Polyture in 2021. But advancements in generative AI just a year later made Zhao realize what Polyture was building was

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DeepSeek triggered a wild, baseless rally for some Chinese stocks

AI /

Chinese AI company DeepSeek made global headlines for helping spark a massive sell-off in U.S. tech stocks on Monday, with Nvidia dropping almost 20%. In China, the hype around DeepSeek has sent shares of some public companies with supposed ties to it soaring. The problem: There’s no evidence these companies ever invested in or cooperated

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Sales knowledge automation platform 1up gets a third of its customer leads from memes

Enterprise /

When George Avetisov was the founder and CEO of cybersecurity startup HYPR, he spent a lot of time in the trenches with the company’s sales team. He quickly realized that regardless of how good his sales team was, they were consistently pulling in other departments to answer customer questions or fill out technical questionnaires. “They

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Here are the types of AI companies enterprise VCs want to back in 2025

AI /

The AI startup market is sprawling, from companies looking to develop new chips, to those using AI to build robots, to others looking to use AI to create niche solutions for industry-specific workflows. There are a lot of potential areas for venture capitalists to invest in, but there are clearly a few subsectors they are

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Chinese VCs are hounding failed founders to claw back their investments

Startups /

In the U.S., it’s accepted that most startups fail — and when that happens, VCs (generally) accept their losses and move on. But that’s not the case in China, where VCs are trying to claw back their investments in failed startups by pursuing the personal assets of their founders in court, The Financial Times reports.

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Generative AI funding reached new heights in 2024

Startups /

If there was any doubt, the generative AI bubble didn’t burst in 2024. Investments in generative AI, which encompasses a range of AI-powered apps, tools, and services to generate text, images, videos, speech, music, and more, reached new heights last year. According to data from financial tracker PitchBook compiled for TechCrunch, generative AI companies worldwide

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