AI inference startup Baseten reportedly raising $1.5B months after its last mega-round

Startup Baseten is reportedly close to finalizing a $1.5 billion round at a $13 billion as the “inference gold rush” marches on.

The 11 standout startups from YC’s Demo Day, according to VCs

TechCrunch spoke to investors to find the hottest startups in the Spring 2026 YC batch. Some of them commanded valuations of over $175 million, VCs said.

‘Queer Eye’s’ life coach Karamo Brown launches Kē, a wellness app featuring his AI digital clone

Karamo Brown, famous for his pep talks on Netflix’s “Queer Eye,” has jumped into the wellness and AI space with his new app, Kē. After spending a year and a half focusing on his own journey—from fitness and nutrition to meditation, sobriety, rela…

Pixi’s new iOS app turns text messages into interactive AR experiences

Forget stickers, GIFs, and emoji reactions. Pixi is betting that the next evolution of messaging is interactive augmented reality (AR).

World model maker Odyssey nabs $1.45B valuation backed by Amazon and other big names

World models are the next big thing in AI beyond LLMs and, with this round, Odyssey has cemented itself as one of the startups to watch.

Collecting robot training data is dirty, unglamorous work. Some AI labs are already paying XDOF to do it.

If physical AI is going to match the accomplishments of LLMs, there’s a data problem that needs to be solved.

DeepL acquires Mixhalo for live-event audio streaming and translation

With this acquisition, DeepL is opening an office in San Francisco to expand its U.S. business.

Anthropic’s latest feud with the Trump admin may actually help it, sales data suggests

Anthropic’s popularity with business users is growing so well that the latest beef with the government might actually boost it, data from Ramp suggests.

Payments startup Flutterwave hits $3.2B valuation, backed by Ripple

African payments infrastructure company Flutterwave has hit a new valuation and landed blockchain company Ripple as investor and partner.

Malaysia’s AI agent-powered messaging app Respond.io raises $62.5M, eyes acquisitions

Respond.io, one of Malaysia startups to watch, uses AI agents to handle high volumes of customer inquiries and charges per convo, not per seat.