Silicon Valley reporter profiling emerging tech founders and venture capital funding trends.
VitalFluid, a spin-out from Eindhoven University of Technology, has closed a €17.2 million Series A round to expand plasma-activated water technology as a residue-free alternative to chemical fungicides.
The London-based fintech, known for banking without branches, is opening a branded lounge at Copenhagen Airport in 2027, the first in a planned European network.
Anthropic has published technical detail on the invisible watermark now embedded in text and code generated by its Claude chatbot, a measure driven by the EU AI Act. The company says the mark can survive light editing but does not alter the substance of what Claude produces.
Bengaluru-based Yulu has secured $93 million to grow its rental fleet fourfold to 200,000 electric two-wheelers, as India's rapid grocery and parcel delivery apps push demand for gig-worker transport.
River AI, founded by former xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin, has raised $1.1 billion in seed and Series A funding barely four months after incorporation. The Palo Alto startup wants companies and eventually individuals to train and own custom AI models rather than rent general-purpose ones.
OpenAI has folded NextSlide, a startup that turned notes and documents into slide decks, into its ChatGPT team. The deal closed earlier this year but was only announced this week.
Klaviyo, a publicly traded e-commerce marketing platform, has agreed to acquire the AI customer support startup Agency. Its founder, serial entrepreneur Elias Torres, will join Klaviyo as chief product officer to lead its AI agent efforts.
The US Justice Department says OpenAI and its former subsidiary Statsig discouraged American citizens from applying for jobs earmarked for foreign workers seeking permanent residence. The AI company denies wrongdoing but has agreed to three years of federal monitoring.
The San Francisco cybersecurity firm behind an AI system that autonomously hacks networks to find flaws has secured fresh funding as European and global firms shift from annual penetration tests to continuous, automated security checks.
Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital has led a $1 billion funding round for Valar Atomics, tripling the small reactor developer's valuation to $6 billion after it powered an Nvidia chip with fission-generated electricity.
California startup Antares Nuclear has closed a $470 million funding round to deploy compact nuclear reactors at US military installations by 2028, racing to meet a deadline set by presidential executive order.
Spur Intelligence, a Florida cybersecurity startup, has secured $200 million from Insight Partners to scale its platform that identifies bot traffic, VPNs, and residential proxies in real time.