TechCrunch Startup News

By TechCrunchNews Technology Tech News

TechCrunch Startup News episodes

July 06 Midjourney wants Hollywood studios to reveal the details of their AI usage; plus, Thiel Capital’s Jack Selby nabs stakes in hot startups
As part of an ongoing legal dispute with three Hollywood studios, Midjourney is seeking to compel those studios to reveal how they use AI themselves.
Also, Selby's VC firm Copper Sky Capital is currently raising a $300 million second fund, according to a regulatory filing.

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7 min
July 02 Nvidia competitor Etched hits $5B valuation, $1B in sales for AI chip; plus, Indian tech tycoon bets $30M of his own money to build AI alternative to Microsoft Office
Nvidia AI chip competitor Etched says it has already booked $1 billion under contract for the inference systems powered by its chip.
Also, Neo is Bhavin Turakhia’s fifth venture and his latest involving enterprise software. This time he's taking on Microsoft Office, Google Apps with AI.

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8 min
July 01 Arena, the AI leaderboard everyone uses, is now a $100M business
The startup, which runs a popular free AI leaderboard, launched its commercial service just last September.

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5 min
June 30 Corgi says it didn’t steal an open source product; plus, Omen AI’s plan to optimize data centers is all wet
Corgi became embroiled in controversy when Papermark accused it of stealing its software. Corgi says it did not, raising new questions about vibe coding.
Also, Omen AI raised a $31 million Series A to monitor chip coolant and stop bacterial outbreaks in data centers.

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11 min
June 26 Robotaxis drive miles just to get cleaned and charged; Aseon Labs wants to fix that; plus, General Intuition bets that video games can train AI agents for the real world
Aseon Labs, which came out of Y Combinator's 2026 spring cohort, has raised $10 million from Crane Venture Partners and others.
Also, General Intuition has raised $320 million to scale AI trained on millions of hours of gameplay, betting action data can help AI develop something closer to human intuition.

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17 min
June 25 Slate Auto’s radically simple electric truck starts at $24,950; also, Valor Equity Partners looks to raise a $2.5B Fund VII
The Jeff Bezos-backed startup finally revealed more pricing details for its debut EV, including a $29,950 starting price for the SUV variant, and boosted the base range to 205 miles.
Plus, new details have emerged about Valor's latest fund, which last year announced it was raising an unspecified amount of capital.

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7 min
June 24 Fika Jobs raises $4M to build a video-first hiring platform where AI agents interview candidates
Fika Jobs announced on Tuesday a $4 million pre-seed round, which will be used to continue developing the platform, grow the team, and prepare for a wider launch later this year.

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6 min
June 23 Seedcamp raises $320M for its new fund to expand its US footprint
After 18 years of focusing on Europe, early-stage investor Seedcamp said that it has raised $320 million for its latest fund which will see it expanding its presence in the United States.

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4 min
June 22 He made your free video player run smoothly. Now he’s doing that for robots.
French serial entrepreneur and open-source legend Jean-Baptiste Kempf has been building Kyber, an infrastructure layer to control remote devices in real time.

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6 min
June 19 World model maker Odyssey nabs $1.45B valuation backed by Amazon and other big names; plus, General Intuition in talks to raise $300M at around $2B valuation
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.
Also, General Intuition is in talks to raise around $300 million at a roughly $2 billion valuation from backers including Jeff Bezos. The startup trains AI agents on spatial-temporal reasoning.

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6 min