Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. Some startups accrued value at lightning speed this week, and we got confirmation that defense tech is red hot. Most interesting startup stories from the week Image…
Early-stage micromobility has shifted over the last few years. The cowboy antics of e-scooter companies causing chaos in a bid to scale has faded along with those fat venture checks that are now flowing to AI startups. Tighter capital combined with an existential need to create sustainable business models has produced a new crop of…
Charles Hudson had just closed his fifth fund several months ago — $66 million for Precursor Ventures — when one of his limited partners asked him to run an exercise. What would have happened, the LP wondered, if Hudson had sold all his portfolio companies at Series A? What about Series B? Or Series C?…
If becoming a spy sounds like an exciting way to live like a le Carré character, let this newest affidavit from confessed Rippling spy Keith O’Brien serve as a warning. On Friday, an Irish judge granted O’Brien a restraining order against several men who have not yet been identified, according to the court order seen…
Cluely, a startup that claims to help users “cheat” on job interviews, exams, and sales calls, has raised a $15 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, the company announced on Friday with a video posted on X. Two investors who were not part of the deal tell TechCrunch they believe Cluely’s post-money valuation is…
Thinking Machines Lab, the secretive AI startup founded by OpenAI’s former chief technology officer Mira Murati, has closed a $2 billion seed round, according to The Financial Times. The deal values the six-month-old startup at $10 billion. The company’s work remains unclear. The startup has leveraged Murati’s reputation and other high-profile AI researchers who have…
Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Waymo might be the largest commercial robotaxi operator — offering 250,000 paid rides per week — but it is hardly smooth. The past seven days in Waymo’s…
Several weeks after Anthropic released research claiming that its Claude Opus 4 AI model resorted to blackmailing engineers who tried to turn the model off in controlled test scenarios, the company is out with new research suggesting the problem is more widespread among leading AI models. On Friday, Anthropic published new safety research testing 16…
Snap has acquired Saturn, a calendar app that helps students manage their school schedules and share them with others, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Friday. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Saturn will continue to operate as a standalone app. The news was first reported by Engadget. Snap says almost the…
X’s plans for a payments service may extend beyond the digital realm, new data suggests. According to findings from mobile app intelligence firm App Sensa, the X app has been updated over the past few weeks with several references related to a physical debit card, which can be customized with your X username. Dozens of…
