Meta just made a $14.3 billion bet on data-labeling company Scale AI, but it’s not a traditional takeover: Meta’s taking a 49% stake in the company and adding Scale’s co-founder Alexandr Wang to its team. The move signals Meta’s growing urgency to keep up in the AI race, even if its strategy for competing with […]
Meta’s big AI bet and our not-so-hot-take on fintech IPOs Read More »
Tesla sued a former engineer for allegedly stealing trade secrets from its humanoid robotics program, Optimus, and using them to launch a rival startup. The lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday and originally reported on by Bloomberg, accuses Zhongjie “Jay” Li of stealing trade secrets regarding Tesla’s development of “advanced robotic hand sensors” to launch
Tesla sues former Optimus engineer over alleged trade secret theft Read More »
Canary, the hotel guest management platform, announced Thursday the raise of an $80 million Series D in a round led by Brighton Park Capital. Harman Singh Narula and childhood friend SJ Sawhney launched the company in 2018 to help hotels digitize and automate guest interactions. The company has raised nearly $180 million in funding to
Hotel management platform Canary nabs $80M Series D from YC, Insight Partners Read More »
Generative AI comes in many forms. Increasingly, though, it’s marketed the same way: with human names and personas that make it feel less like code and more like a co-worker. A growing number of startups are anthropomorphizing AI to build trust fast — and soften its threat to human jobs. It’s dehumanizing, and it’s accelerating.
For the love of God, stop calling your AI a co-worker Read More »
Y Combinator-backed startup Firecrawl is back on the hunt for AI agent employees. As we reported back in February, its first attempt didn’t yield an AI worth hiring. But it’s now placed three new ads on YC’s job board for “AI agents only” and has set aside a $1 million budget total to make it
Y Combinator startup Firecrawl is ready to pay $1M to hire three AI agents as employees Read More »
Despite courtroom chaos, Rippling is still going full steam ahead. The HR tech startup at the center of an increasingly dramatic legal battle with rival Deel just raised a fresh $450 million in funding at a $16.8 billion valuation, and launched a new “Startup Stack” to woo early-stage companies—winning over Y Combinator as both an
Unpacking Rippling vs Deel: corporate espionage and a $16.8B plot twist Read More »
Fabled startup investor and accelerator Y Combinator has some choice words for Google in an amicus brief it just submitted in the U.S.’s monopoly case against the search giant. In the brief, YC charged that Google is a “monopolist” that has “stunted” the U.S. startup ecosystem by making VC firms like itself hesitate to fund
Y Combinator says Google is a ‘monopolist’ that has ‘stunted’ the startup ecosystem Read More »
HR tech startup Rippling has raised a $450 million Series G round at a $16.8 billion valuation, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. It is also conducting a $200 million tender offer to give current and former employees some liquidity. The equity raise marks a big jump in valuation from a year ago. In April 2024,
Rippling raises $450M at a $16.8B valuation, reveals YC is a customer Read More »
Techstars, a nearly 20-year-old startup accelerator, announced new terms for startups that enter its three-month program. The organization will now invest $220,000, which is $100,000 more than it offered previously, in companies starting with its fall 2025 batch. The capital will be divided into two components. The group is offering companies $20,000 in exchange for
Techstars increases startup funding to $220,000, mirroring YC structure Read More »
On February 18, 2024, Ian Laffey posted on X that he and two others he’d just met built a cheap drone at a hackathon that calculated its coordinates simply by using its camera and Google Maps. He and his colleagues, Sacha Lévy and Carl Schoeller, were all engineers under the age of 25. The tech
Defense tech Theseus landed Y Combinator, the US Special Forces and $4.3M from a tweet Read More »
