venture capital

Farmblox puts the control into farmers’ hands with its AI-powered sensor-reading platform

Nathan Rosenberg, the founder of farm automation platform Farmblox, said if there is one thing to know about trying to sell technology to farmers, it’s that you can’t tell them what to do. “[Farmers] are multigenerational,” Rosenberg told TechCrunch. “It is not a profession, it’s more a community, a way of life, and you need

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17-year-old Eric Zhu’s startup was built in a high school bathroom — now it’s raised $2.3M and is emerging from stealth

Eric Zhu started building Aviato, an analytical platform for private market data, in a very typical place for an entrepreneur: the bathroom in his Carmel, Indiana, high school. Now the 17-year-old’s startup is emerging from stealth with $2.3 million in venture funding. Aviato tracks funding rounds and headcount, similar to competitors like Crunchbase and PitchBook, but

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Why it made sense for an online community college to raise venture capital

When Tade Oyerinde first set out to fundraise for his startup, Campus, a fully-accredited online community college, it was incredibly difficult. VCs have backed for-profit education companies in the past, including Coursera and Udacity, but backing a more traditional two-year college is different. Plus, he was looking for funds a few years ago when higher

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Tribe AI raised venture capital to keep up with demand after six years of bootstrapping

When Jaclyn Rice Nelson and Noah Gale launched AI talent and services company Tribe AI in 2019, they had to convince companies that having an AI strategy mattered. After the release of ChatGPT in 2022 and the AI mania it ushered in, the startup has experienced a “massive boom” in demand, Gale told TechCrunch. Rice

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If the music stops, what startup gets a chair? Renegade Partners’ co-founders are finding out

Renegade Partners co-founders Renata Quintini and Roseanne Wincek have seen it all in their careers — notably over the past four years when they launched their first fund as the COVID pandemic took hold and navigated the economic roller coaster that followed.  Now, with a second $128 million fund — and a plan to write

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Campus wants to crack the code to get community college to work for everyone

Community colleges aren’t immune from the current reckoning higher education is facing. Student enrollment is declining while institutions keep raising tuition prices which can prevent students from finishing their programs. Clearly, it’s time for the industry to try something new. Tade Oyerinde thinks startups can help. Oyerinde is the founder and CEO at Campus, a

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Here’s the full list of 28 US AI startups that have raised $100M or more in 2024

For some, AI fatigue is real — but clearly venture investors haven’t grown tired of the category. In the first half of 2024 alone, more than $35.5 billion was invested into AI startups globally, recent Crunchbase data found. Five of the six venture rounds of more than $1 billion raised in the first half of 2024

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From Ethan Choi to Spencer Peterson, venture capitalists continue to play musical chairs

When Keith Rabois announced he was leaving Founders Fund to return to Khosla Ventures in January, it came as a shock to many in the venture capital ecosystem — and not just because Rabois is a big name in the industry. It was surprising because unlike in many other fields, venture capitalists don’t traditionally move

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