Voice AI engine and OpenAI partner LiveKit hits $1B valuation

The five year-old-startup raised a $100 million round led by Index Ventures.

Humans& thinks coordination is the next frontier for AI, and they’re building a model to prove it

Humans&, a new startup founded by alumni of Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and Google DeepMind, is building the next generation of foundation models for collaboration, not chat.

Quadric rides the shift from cloud AI to on-device inference — and it’s paying off

Quadric aims to help companies and governments build programmable on-device AI chips that can run fast-changing models locally.

Tiger Global, Microsoft to fully exit Walmart-backed PhonePe via its IPO

Tiger Global and Microsoft are offering up their full stakes in the company, while Walmart is choosing to retain its majority stake, and selling up to 45.9 million shares.

Irony alert: Hallucinated citations found in papers from NeurIPS, the prestigious AI conference

Research from startup GPTZero points to the impossible problem prestigious conferences face in the age of AI slop.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 tickets now on sale: Lowest rates all year 

TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 tickets are officially on sale. Save up to $680 on your ticket and be among the first 500 registrants to score a +1 pass at 50% off. Don’t miss 10,000 tech leaders, founders, and VCs in San Francisco from Oct 13-15. Register bef…

PraxisPro raises $6M seed from AlleyCorp to coach medical sales reps

PraxisPro, founded by a former pharma sales rep, offers small language model AI training specifically designed for medical product sales.

Language learning marketplace Preply’s unicorn status embodies Ukrainian resilience

Language learning marketplace Preply is now valued at $1.2 billion after raising a $150 million that marks a new chapter for the 14-year-old company.

Retail startup Another raises a $2.5M seed to help sell excess inventory

Another raises a $2.5 million seed round led by Anthemis FIL and Westbound to help retailers with off-channel inventory.