Y Combinator hosted its Summer 2025 Demo Day last week, showcasing the latest batch of over 160 startups. As with recent batches, the majority of startups presented AI-centric solutions. However, a clear evolution was evident. Instead of “AI-powered” products, many companies are now building AI agents or the infrastructure and tools needed to develop them….
Eight U.S. and Indian venture capital and private equity firms — including storied investors Accel, Blume Ventures, Celesta Capital, and Premji Invest — have formed an unusual coalition to back India’s deep tech startups, pledging more than $1 billion over the next decade to strengthen U.S.-India tech ties. The alliance addresses longstanding funding concerns. In…
Investing in Y Combinator startups can lead to significant returns to investors. “If you look at the data: 6% of YC companies become unicorns, and of that 6% a quarter become decacorns,” Kulveer Taggar told TechCrunch. Taggar is a two-time YC alum best known for founding Zeus Living, a property management startup that raised over…
When Cluely, a startup claiming to be building a product that helps people “cheat” on everything, announced that it raised a $15 million Series A financing from Andreessen Horowitz, some people on X criticized the VC firm for backing the controversial company. After all, Cluely isn’t just offering a product that may have questionable uses,…
Last year was monumental for the AI industry in the U.S. and beyond. There were 49 startups that raised funding rounds worth $100 million or more in 2024, per our count at TechCrunch; three companies raised more than one “mega-round,” and seven companies raised rounds that were $1 billion in size or larger. How will…
On Monday, Google announced the launch of its AI Futures Fund, a new initiative that seeks to invest in startups that are building with the latest AI tools from Google DeepMind, the company’s AI R&D lab. The fund will back startups from seed to late stage and will offer varying degrees of support, including allowing…
Google held its Google Cloud Next conference in Las Vegas this week, where it announced dozens of new features, like its next generation AI processing chip, called Ironwood, and its latest AI model, Gemini 2.5 Flash. It also announced a long list of AI startups that have signed to use its cloud. Among them are…
Amazon started the Alexa Fund in 2015 to back early-stage voice startups. With the advent of large language models and Amazon launching Gen AI-powered Alexa+ along with a family of multimodal AI models, the fund now wants to broaden its scope and invest more in AI startups. In a blog post Amazon shared with TechCrunch…
Last year was a monumental year for the AI industry in the U.S. and beyond. There were 49 startups that raised funding rounds worth $100 million or more in 2024, per our count at TechCrunch. Three companies raised more than one “mega-round” last year, and seven companies raised rounds at $1 billion or larger. How…
Humane announced on Tuesday that most of its assets have been acquired by HP for $116 million. The hardware startup is immediately discontinuing sales of its $499 AI Pins. Humane alerted customers who have already purchased the Pin that their devices will stop functioning before the end of the month — at 12 p.m. PST…