Browsing: Venture

For much of his life, Zain Javaid, 19, wanted to be a quant who uses math and data to guide his investment decisions. And for a while, he was one. But he got bored. Then, in 2022, ChatGPT was released, and he told TechCrunch, “I felt fundamentally excited in a way that I never had…

Menlo Ventures partner Matt Murphy and his team announced Monday in a blog post that the firm has invested in AI coding startup Factory.

The biggest stage at TechCrunch Disrupt is where the people building the future come to talk about what happens next in the tech ecosystem.

The scan, co-founded by Spotify’s David Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne, uses advanced technology to screen for issues in the blood, skin, and metabolism. The company was founded in Sweden, has raised nearly $1 billion total, and just landed in New York. It has a global waitlist already topping 300,000 people, the company says.

AI startups can grow at a speed that would have been difficult to imagine a generation ago. But rapid growth comes with another reality: scaling AI can require enormous amounts of capital, and founders have to make financing decisions long before they know whether early momentum will turn into an enduring business.

Matan Grinberg, co-founder and CEO of the AI coding startup Factory, said in a post on X on Wednesday that he fired VC Chris Degnan from his role as a board adviser. Grinberg alleges that Degnan shared confidential information with Factory’s biggest competitor, Cognition.

Two Google alumni have closed an $11.3 million fund to back early-stage AI startups, betting that the era of enterprise AI experimentation is ending and that customers will increasingly pay only for products that prove their worth.

AI startup EliseAI announced on Tuesday that it has raised $350 million at a $4 billion valuation, double what it was worth when it raised its Series E last August.

When former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer earlier this month told me she was finally ready to unveil Dazzle, the personal AI assistant that raised an $8 million seed round last December, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’s playing copycat to Meta’s Muse, Instinct, and the wave of similar tools that have flooded the market…

Defense and venture capital used to rarely overlap, but that’s no longer the case. Defense tech VC dealmaking set a record in Q1 2026, and new VC firms have emerged around the world to invest solely in defense startups.