Cascade raises $3.5M to help construction firms find and win projects

a16z Speedrun, Ada Ventures, and Snowball VC have invested in Cascade’s $3.5 million seed round.

Passionfroot raises $15M to expand its B2B creator marketplace to the US

Passionfroot, a German startup building a marketplace connecting B2B creators with brands, has raised $15M in a Series A round led by Insight Partners.

Gritt exits stealth with $34 million for robots to build solar plants—then, everything else

Gritt is coming out of stealth with $34 million and plan to automate the hardest tasks on construction sites.

Databricks hits $188B valuation, extending its run as AI’s favorite second act

Databricks has remade its image into an AI company and has published research on the cost savings of open weight AI models for coding.

No product? No problem. This Disrupt 2026 session shows how to get pre-seed funding with conviction, storytelling 

It’s not just you: AI startups are taking in a huge amount of seed funding, and in the process making things harder for anyone looking for funding even at a pre-seed stage. We’ve covered the trend in detail, and at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt event,…

AI-powered travel agency Fora hits unicorn status, raises $60M

Travel agency Fora announced a $60 million Series D round led by Forerunner and Tactile Ventures, valuing the company at $1 billion. 

Applied Computing wants to give oil and gas operators an AI model for the entire plant

Applied Computing has raised a $20M Series A to build a foundation AI model for the oil, gas and petrochemical industry.

Lululemon backs nylon recycling startup Syntetica in $30M Series A

Syntetica, a French startup that has developed a novel approach to recycling nylon, has already obtained big-name partners and investors.

Why Greylock capped its new fund at $1.5B when it says it could have raised more

By keeping the number of investments to about 25 per fund, Greylock aims to remain what it calls “the most important partner” to its founders.