It’s not your imagination: AI seed startups are commanding higher valuations

It’s not your imagination: AI seed startups are commanding higher valuations

Pete Martin remembers raising a $5 million seed round at a $25 million post-money valuation for his AI-powered cybersecurity company Realm way back in 2024, aka, like a thousand “AI years” ago.   That valuation seemed high for that amount at the time, he recalled. But today, “it’s pretty typical” to see a $10 million seed…

Toyota’s Woven Capital appoints new CIO and COO in push for finding the ‘future of mobility’

Toyota’s Woven Capital appoints new CIO and COO in push for finding the ‘future of mobility’

Sometimes, Michiko Kato thinks back on the great challenges of her life.  She once dropped everything in her native city of Tokyo to attend Harvard Business School in Massachusetts. One day, she decided to leave her career in the stable world of finance to enter the rocky terrain of startup life. That jump is what…

Mercor says it was hit by cyberattack tied to compromise of open-source LiteLLM project

Mercor says it was hit by cyberattack tied to compromise of open-source LiteLLM project

Mercor, a popular AI recruiting startup, has confirmed a security incident linked to a supply chain attack involving the open-source project LiteLLM. The AI startup told TechCrunch on Tuesday that it was “one of thousands of companies” affected by a recent compromise of LiteLLM’s project, which was linked to a hacking group called TeamPCP. Confirmation…

Salesforce announces an AI-heavy makeover for Slack, with 30 new features

Salesforce announces an AI-heavy makeover for Slack, with 30 new features

Salesforce, the cloud software giant, has been remaking its business around AI, and at a small gathering in San Francisco on Tuesday, CEO Marc Benioff and his team unveiled the latest results of those efforts: an updated version of Slack, with a plethora of new AI features. The most significant of these is a serious…

OpenAI, not yet public, raises $3B from retail investors in monster $122B fund raise

OpenAI, not yet public, raises $3B from retail investors in monster $122B fund raise

OpenAI has closed a deal to raise $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation, its largest funding round to date as the company is expected to hit the public markets this year. The round will add to OpenAI’s war chest as it spends enormous amounts of money on AI chips, data center buildouts, and hiring…

Robotaxi companies refuse to say how often their AVs need remote help

Robotaxi companies refuse to say how often their AVs need remote help

In February, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) sent letters to seven U.S. companies working on autonomous vehicle technology with a list of questions. He especially wanted to know how often these companies’ vehicles — operated by Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox — rely on input from remote staff. They all refused to…

Yupp.ai shuts down after raising $33M from a16z crypto’s Chris Dixon

Yupp.ai shuts down after raising $33M from a16z crypto’s Chris Dixon

Sometimes an apparently good idea, a big raise from a big-name VC, and a sea of well-connected angel investors is not enough. Less than a year after launching, Yupp.ai is closing its business, co-founders Pankaj Gupta and Gilad Mishne announced on Tuesday. Yupp offered a crowdsourced AI model-picking service. It allowed consumers to test and…