The developer behind VLC’s 6 billion downloads now wants to connect hundreds of millions of robots
The developer behind VLC’s 6 billion downloads now wants to connect hundreds of millions of robots

Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the lead developer of VLC Media Player, has raised $5 million for his startup Kyber, an infrastructure layer for controlling remote devices in real time. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, which also led Mistral AI’s…

17 fusion startups have now raised over $100M each, and the total keeps climbing
17 fusion startups have now raised over $100M each, and the total keeps climbing

The number of fusion startups that have raised more than $100 million has reached 17, according to a TechCrunch tally published Thursday, with total private investment in the sector now exceeding $13 billion. Two of the most recent rounds, Helion Energ…

The bet against bigger models: Aether AI lands $20mn for causal AI
The bet against bigger models: Aether AI lands $20mn for causal AI

Most of the AI industry is betting that bigger models mean smarter machines. A new startup is betting the opposite. Aether AI, based in San Diego, has raised a $20mn seed round to chase a different idea entirely. Its founder thinks the next leap will n…

A startup betting on a different material for AI’s optics problem just raised $80mn from the people who build the hardware
A startup betting on a different material for AI’s optics problem just raised $80mn from the people who build the hardware

AI’s next bottleneck is not the chips. It is the wiring between them. As clusters grow to hundreds of thousands of GPUs, the copper links that shuttle data between them are running out of road. So the industry is racing to move that traffic onto light …

Immigrant-focused VC Geek Ventures returns with larger checks
Immigrant-focused VC Geek Ventures returns with larger checks

Immigrant founders have long played a significant role in U.S. technology, but access to early-stage capital often still depends on local networks, customer introductions and proximity to established investors. That gap has created room for a small num…

Warren raises €10M to fix Belgium’s broken workplace pensions
Warren raises €10M to fix Belgium’s broken workplace pensions

The typical Belgian works for about 40 years and retires with a workplace pension worth less than a second-hand car. Warren, a Ghent-based fintech, wants to fix that. The company has raised €10mn in a seed round led by Motive Ventures, the venture arm …

GitHub for the factory floor: Copia raises $26M to protect the code that runs industry
GitHub for the factory floor: Copia raises $26M to protect the code that runs industry

Ask an industrial engineer how their plant would recover if a controller’s code got corrupted or encrypted, and the honest answer is often grim: a backup on someone’s laptop, in a folder named “final_backup_2”. Copia Automation wants to replace that wi…

The Big Four bill by the hour. Andera just raised $37M to let AI do the audit.
The Big Four bill by the hour. Andera just raised $37M to let AI do the audit.

Audit is the part of corporate life almost no one thinks about, and almost everyone pays for. Public companies spend thousands of hours a year collecting evidence, testing controls and writing it all up. Most of it is done by hand, in Excel, much the w…

He spent 15 months hunting for compliance software that didn’t exist. So he built Flagright, which just raised $12.5M.
He spent 15 months hunting for compliance software that didn’t exist. So he built Flagright, which just raised $12.5M.

Baran Ozkan spent 15 months looking for software that did not exist. As head of financial-crime product at a European bank, he wanted a single tool to catch money laundering and fraud. Vendors overpromised. His own employer tried to build one in-house …

General Atlantic wants to back China’s Kling AI at $18bn. Beijing is telling its AI firms to refuse US money.
General Atlantic wants to back China’s Kling AI at $18bn. Beijing is telling its AI firms to refuse US money.

A US investor wants to buy into China’s most successful AI-video company. The timing could hardly be more awkward. General Atlantic is in talks to lead the first outside funding round for Kling AI, the video arm of Chinese tech group Kuaishou, Bloomber…