TechCrunch Startup News

The startup was started earlier this year by Yang Fan Yun and Charlie Deane. Yun is a former product manager at Uber, while Deane founded a company selling server proxies. When he was at Uber, he realized that a lot of people around him were doing grunt work in their browsers.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Periodic Labs was founded by Ekin Dogus Cubuk and Liam Fedus. Cubuk led the materials and chemistry team at Google Brain and DeepMind, where one of his projects was, for instance, an AI tool called GNoME. Researchers say that tool discovered over 2 million new crystals in 2023, materials that could one day be used to power new generations of technology. 

Whoop Advanced Labs offers health-screening blood tests from Quest Diagnostics that cover a variety of markers, from calcium to white blood cells. The platform integrates those results with the band’s continuous monitoring of activity, sleep, respiratory rate, and blood pressure to offer more personalized wellness advice.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

CommanderAI launched in early 2024 as a customer relationship manager and sales prospecting platform built for waste management — and other industrial services like dumpster rentals and industrial recyclers – to fill that gap.  

Also, Silicon Valley-based Cerebras announced it raised a $1.1 billion Series G round on Tuesday that valued the AI hardware company at $8.1 billion. The round was co-led by Fidelity and Atreides Management with participation from Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners, and 1789 Capital, among others.  

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s no secret that vibe coding — using AI-powered coding tools to build apps and websites via natural language prompts — is exploding in popularity. In July, Swedish vibe coding startup Lovable hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue just eight months after launch, plans to close the year at $250 million ARR and thinks it will hit $1 billion ARR within the next 12 months. Meanwhile, Replit said earlier this month that its ARR soared from $2.8 million to $150 million in less than a year.

Also, job seekers in all fields can expect to soon be doing a lot more initial screening interviews. While that may sound like positive news, it doesn’t mean that there will suddenly be more open positions. Instead, recruiters, often bogged down with determining which applicants are qualified for the next round, will outsource the routine screening tasks — like checking backgrounds, salary needs, and availability — to (you guessed it) AI.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Polars, the Amsterdam-based company behind the popular open source project of the same name, has raised about $21 million in a Series A round led by Accel, with participation from Bain Capital Partners and angel investors. But while raising this kind of money is the dream of many developers, its creator Ritchie Vink didn’t set out to do so.

Also, making democracy work isn’t easy, as recent events have made clear. Some critics would argue that technology is making it worse. But one startup is hoping that AI could help bridge some differences instead of widen them.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Paid just closed an oversubscribed $21.6 million seed round led by Lightspeed. With the €10 million pre-seed round it raised in March, London-based Paid has already raised $33.3 million and hasn’t even hit its Series A yet. A source familiar with the deal says the startup’s valuation is over $100 million.

Also, despite millions spent on financial software, many finance teams still rely on Excel to close their books and reconcile numbers while preparing them for audit. Two former Microsoft executives view it as a problem — and they have started Maximor to replace spreadsheets with AI agents for the grunt work finance teams perform.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A Y Combinator startup called Burnt thinks AI agents — software that can automatically handle tasks typically done by humans — can succeed where traditional enterprise software hasn’t in the trillion-dollar U.S. food market.

Doorstep integrates into existing delivery apps and then, using phone sensors, tracks when a driver has entered a building, gone up an elevator, and made it to the desired doorstep. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Starpath’s new space-rated solar panel business kicked off sales in the U.S. on Thursday with an eyebrow-raising pitch. The company says its solar panels, called “Starlight,” are priced around 10 times cheaper than typical industry pricing of $72.50 per watt, roughly a 90% cost reduction versus the status quo.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hardware startup Nothing said Thursday that it plans to make its affordable device brand, CMF, into an independent subsidiary with India serving as its headquarters for manufacturing and R&D. The company first launched CMF in 2023 with a pair of earbuds and a smartwatch. Since then, it has introduced smartphones under the brand as well.

Also, the accelerator has introduced a new application track called Early Decision, designed for students who want to start companies but don’t want to drop out. The program allows them to apply while still in school, get accepted and funded immediately, and defer their participation in YC until after they graduate. For example, a student applying in fall 2025 could graduate next spring, then participate in YC’s Summer 2026 batch.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Wednesday, Enterprise AI model-maker Cohere said it raised an additional $100 million in an extension to a round announced in August, bumping its valuation to $7 billion. The company said at the time that the  August round was an oversubscribed $500 million round at a $6.8 billion valuation.

Also, Waymo’s ever-expanding robotaxi aspirations have spread to the corporate world.

The Alphabet-owned self-driving vehicle unit has launched “Waymo for Business,” a new service designed for companies to set up accounts so their employees can access robotaxis in cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices