TechCrunch Startup News

The US loves trucks. So is the key to making them love electric trucks… a very small one? That’s the bet that California-based startup Telo has been making since its inception in 2022. The company has designed a bite-sized truck called the MT1 with an admittedly not-so-small starting price of around $41,000.

Also, Sila, the battery materials startup, started operations Tuesday at its facility in Moses Lake, Washington, a milestone that could pave the way for longer range, faster charging EVs. The factory, which will initially be capable of making enough battery materials for 20,000 to 50,000 EVs, is the first large-scale silicon anode factory in the West, and future expansion could fulfill demand for as many as 2.5 million vehicles.

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Tim Chen, solo VC at his firm Essence VC, said he just closed his fourth fund, a fresh $41 million, without even trying. Limited partner investors were so eager to invest, they preempted it, he told TechCrunch. He didn’t even have time to generate a pitch deck. 

Also, For Julien Emery, the problem has always been personal. 

He’s the CEO and co-founder of Superpanel, a platform that helps law firms seamlessly onboard new clients. 

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 In a new blog post, the company said it received comments from more than 14,000 community members and that it “especially heard from community members who shared concerns about how the guidelines could impact creative expression and traditionally marginalized voices.” The company  said, “after considering this feedback, and in a return to our experimental roots, we are going to bring a greater focus to encouraging constructive dialogue and enforcing our rules against harassment and toxic content. For starters, we are going to increase our enforcement efforts.”

Also, Oura Health Oy, the maker of the Oura health and fitness ring, is raising $875 million in a new Series E financing round valuing it around $10.9 billion, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang descended on the United Kingdom this week, armed with a pledge to invest $2.6 billion to supercharge the country’s AI startup ecosystem. Wayve, the U.K.-based self-driving tech startup, could be one of those to receive funds from Nvidia’s AI investment commitment.

Also, U.K.-based fintech Tide has entered the unicorn club with a fresh funding of $120 million led by TPG, as the startup now serves over 1.6 million micro and small enterprises globally — with more than half of them based in India, the company’s largest and fastest-growing market.

The new round — a mix of primary and secondary investment, though the startup declined to confirm the exact split — values the eight-year-old startup at $1.5 billion.

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Jar, an Indian fintech startup that allows users to invest in gold, has turned profitable by helping millions of first-time savers use its app to build digital gold holdings.

While many consumer fintechs focus on affluent urban users or credit products, Jar has gained traction by offering a culturally familiar asset — gold — as a low-barrier entry point to saving. 

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On Thursday, Google Cloud announced it added fast-rising AI coding startups Lovable and Windsurf to its roster of customers. Both companies have chosen Google Cloud as their primary cloud computing provider, the latest sign of Google’s rising prominence against larger rivals AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Also, Sam Ross, the co-founder and CEO of Numeral, came up with the idea for his sales tax compliance startup while traveling the world after having worked as a product manager at Airbnb.

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Airbuds, a music social app aimed at Gen Z, raises $5M as the app reaches 5 million monthly users.

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As speed becomes the defining currency in an AI-driven software world, Blacksmith has raised another round led by Google Ventures — just four months after its initial seed round — to accelerate how code gets shipped.

Icarus Robotics cofounders Ethan Barajas and Jamie Palmer spent hours interviewing astronauts about what it was like working in space as they homed in on their startup idea. Their big takeaway: the work was often more cargo logistics than cutting-edge science.

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Amazon made same-day delivery the benchmark on Earth. Impulse Space is pitching a similar concept for satellites bound for geostationary orbit about 22,000 miles above Earth, compressing what is typically a months-long transit into a matter of hours.

Also, CodeRabbit is helping companies like Chegg, Groupon, and Mercury, along with over 8,000 other businesses, save time on the famously frustrating task of code review, which has become even more time-consuming with the rise of AI-generated code. 

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While many robotics companies are building human-sized robots, or working to automate entire factories, MicroFactory is instead trying to think big by building small.

Also, Smartphone startup Nothing announced today that it closed its Series C round of $200 million, which was led by the investment firm Tiger Global. With this round, the consumer electronics company is now valued at $1.3 billion.

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