Databricks’ cofounder just raised $20M to be the Switzerland of AI compute
Databricks’ cofounder just raised $20M to be the Switzerland of AI compute

The company came out of stealth on Tuesday. The founders built it at UC Berkeley, in the same lab that produced Spark, Databricks, and Anyscale. The team includes Zongheng Yang and Databricks co-founders Ion Stoica and Scott Shenker. The star-studded c…

Natural raised $30M to build a Stripe for AI agents, before Stripe gets there
Natural raised $30M to build a Stripe for AI agents, before Stripe gets there

The next big customer for a payments company may not be a person at all. It may be an AI agent, and a startup called Natural has raised $30 million to serve it. The Series A was led by Kirsten Green at Forerunner Ventures, and closed when Natural was j…

Fig Expands Platform Across the Full SecOps Engineering Lifecycle, Making Resilience the Default
Fig Expands Platform Across the Full SecOps Engineering Lifecycle, Making Resilience the Default

Security operations environments are constantly evolving. New cloud services, data sources, automations, and detections are introduced on a regular basis, while upstream systems can change without warning. Although these updates are intended to improve…

Empirical Security raised $25M to predict which flaws hackers will actually exploit
Empirical Security raised $25M to predict which flaws hackers will actually exploit

Most security teams face the same problem. There are far more flaws than anyone can fix, and no clear way to know which ones matter. Empirical Security wants to predict the answer. The Chicago startup’s Series A was led by Brightmind Partners, chief ex…

This startup raised $15M to break Nvidia’s tightest grip on AI, its software
This startup raised $15M to break Nvidia’s tightest grip on AI, its software

The pitch is bold for a seed round. Infinity says it can strip away the one advantage that has kept Nvidia untouchable. It has just raised money to try. The company closed a $15 million seed round at a $100 million valuation on Monday, it announced. Ba…

Decart’s Lucy 2.5 unlocks new live video effects, but physical AI is the real winner
Decart’s Lucy 2.5 unlocks new live video effects, but physical AI is the real winner

Artificial intelligence startup Decart continues to stretch the boundaries of what’s possible with the release of its latest live video model, Lucy 2.5, introducing real-time streaming visual effects capabilities for the first time. The startup claims …

Alibaba says Qwen3.8 is the world’s No.2 AI model. It has shown no proof.
Alibaba says Qwen3.8 is the world’s No.2 AI model. It has shown no proof.

Days after a rival Chinese lab shook Silicon Valley, Alibaba has fired back. The company previewed Qwen3.8, its most powerful model yet, and made a bold claim: it trails only one model on Earth. Alibaba unveiled the model at the World Artificial Intell…

The Company Brain and the Future of Go-to-Market Strategy
The Company Brain and the Future of Go-to-Market Strategy

Founders eagerly bought into the promise of autonomous agents over the past year, and software usage skyrocketed across the industry as teams rushed to adopt the latest tools. Despite this massive investment in new technology, sales pipelines remained …

a16z is backing Runta, a startup that wants to ‘parent’ your AI agents
a16z is backing Runta, a startup that wants to ‘parent’ your AI agents

AI agents can now book travel, write code and spend money on your behalf. That power is also the problem. A new startup called Runta has raised $20 million to keep those agents from doing damage. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the round, which values R…

French startup Syntetica raised $30M to recycle the nylon fashion throws away
French startup Syntetica raised $30M to recycle the nylon fashion throws away

A French startup has raised $30 million to tackle one of fashion’s hardest waste problems. Syntetica recycles nylon, and it can process two grades at once that the industry has long struggled to pull apart, its founder told TechCrunch. The Ecotechnolog…