TechCrunch Startups – Spoken Edition

The round was co-led by Salesforce Ventures and Anjney Midha (AMP), and saw participation from a16z, NVIDIA, Northzone, Creandum, Earlybird VC, BroadLight Capital, General Catalyst, Temasek, Bain Capital Ventures, Air Street Capital, Visionaries Club, Canva and Figma Ventures. Also, analysts will be watching to see if Thrive-owned firms actually succeed in building long-term profitable businesses using OpenAI's tech, or if the result is really just pumped up valuations based on speculative market potential. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Adam Joseph was shocked when Mark Cuban replied to his email with an inquisition full of questions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

MyHair AI examines photos of the scalp to help diagnose hair loss and suggest scientifically validated clinics and treatments. The startup uses AI to help immigrants understand the system, connect with lawyers and reduce associated costs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An investor explains the "buy, fix, and hold" model employed by Bending Spoons and similar companies that buy distressed startups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google and Accel will jointly invest up to $2 million in each startup through their new partnership. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Career exploration platform Find Your Grind raises $5 million to help more students discover alternative professions. Also, the discovery of a massive lithium deposit suggests that a region in Quebec might hold even more lithium than originally suspected. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The small modular reactor startup is capitalizing on surging interest from tech companies and data center developers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Startups are still racing to build the world's first commercial fusion power plant on land, but Maritime Fusion thinks the path will be easier out at sea. Also, AI testing startup Momentic has raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Standard Capital, with participation from Dropbox Ventures. Existing investors at Y Combinator, FCVC, Transpose Platform and Karman Ventures also participated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sierra's rapid growth suggests that enerprises are embracing AI agents. Also, Phictly helps fans find niche clubs for their favorite books, shows, and movies, offering intimate, spoiler-safe communities with flexible pacing and tracker tools. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The region's startup market is hungry for its first trillion-dollar startup, and in many ways has set itself up to reach that goal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The quickly growing prediction betting market raised fresh capital from Sequoia and CapitalG, according to someone familiar with the deal. Also, Point One Navigation, now valued at $230 million, is building out well beyond automotive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Curastory's founder and CEO, Tiffany Kelly, has resigned from the role and replaced herself with Dave Dickman, former CEO of the influencer marketing platform Tagger. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Anthony Sardain began developing Cavela in 2023, an AI startup that helps brands automate supplier sourcing, he did not foresee that new tariffs would drive customers to become increasingly wary of manufacturing products in China. Function Health, which offers a regular lab testing service to help people track their health, wants to change that by consolidating health data and making it usable for its customers by connecting that data to an AI model. To further that effort, the company recently raised $298 million in a Series B round led by Redpoint Ventures at a valuation of $2.5 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“The best ideas in drug discovery were often blocked not by biology, but by synthesis,” Boiko told TechCrunch. Synthesis is the creation of new molecules by using chemical reactions. It's like a recipe or Lego pieces, where small pieces, ingredients, molecules, come together to form a wider puzzle picture, a food dish, a larger molecule. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Instead of getting an AI-generated travel plan, Boop aims to give users access to itineraries from real people who went on real trips. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With consumers increasingly asking questions to ChatGPT, not Google, product discovery is changing — and the promise to give brands visibility and control over this fast-growing search channel has made Peec AI one of Europe's hottest startups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Monday, Luminal announced $5.3 million in seed funding, in a round led by Felicis Ventures with angel investment from Paul Graham, Guillermo Rauch, and Ben Porterfield.  Also, as U.S. giants like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic race to develop the large language models that underpin their AI products, startups such as Sakana AI, Mistral AI, DeepSeek, and AI 21 Labs are carving out their own niche with specialized models designed for specific regions, industries, or unique features. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos seems to be getting his hands dirty once again: the billionaire is partly backing a new AI startup called Project Prometheus that has raised $6.2 billion in funding, and will take on duties as co-chief executive. Plus, Bone AI, a South Korean startup, is combining AI and manufacturing to build next-gen defense robotics and challenge the region's industry giants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Israeli startup Milestone raised a $10 million seed funding round to correlate AI tool usage with engineering metrics, including code quality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The solar-thermal startup wants to deliver electricity for as little as one cent per kWh. But first it has to scale production to 1 million units per year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The goalposts are moving for AI startups when it comes to growth, product features and just about everything else. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

WisdomAI is offering AI-driven data analytics that can answer business questions from structured, unstructured, and even “dirty” data, meaning data not cleaned of typos or errors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Teradar's sensor uses the terahertz part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and combines the best traits of radar and lidar sensors without some of the drawbacks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two experienced investors share their tips for founders and operators hoping to nail product-market fit at their AI startups. Also, Uare.ai, formerly Eternos, raised $10.3 million in seed funding led by Mayfield and Boldstart Ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Startups should start forging connections with late-stage investors while they are still at the early stages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amanda Kahlow has been quietly been back in sales and marketing tech for about a year with agentic startup 1Mind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mmotion is a new friendship app that combines elements of location sharing with social discovery features to find nearby users with shared interests. Also, Scribe Optimize is the startup's next major offering to help organizations identify where AI will be most useful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Three industry insiders walk through how startups can set up an employee equity strategy that remains fair as a company grows. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Instead of building seawalls or dikes, Terranova has developed a new way to raise cities to protect them from sea-level rise. In addition, Chris Sacca's venture firm Lowercarbon Capital is raising a second fund to back nuclear fusion energy hopefuls, the VC said at the SOSV Climate Tech Summit on Thursday, as reported by Bloomberg. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evotrex joins startups like Lightship, Pebble, and Grounded in trying to disrupt the RV market, which is skewing younger. Also, diffusion models already power AI image generators, but Inception thinks they can be even more powerful applied in software development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wabi, a startup from the founder of Replika, has just raised a $20 million pre-seed round. Wabi is like "YouTube for apps" -- a social platform where anyone can use prompts to instantly create mini apps and share them with friends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alloy Enterprises has developed a new additive manufacturing technique that can improve liquid cooling performance while bringing it to new parts of the server rack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

MoEngage already has customers across 75 countries, with North America being its biggest business driver. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the last year, certain AI markets appear to be nearly sewn up by startup market leaders. Plus, Locket's social app is using iOS Live Activities to reach Gen Alpha via the iPhone Lock Screen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Andreessen Horowitz is pausing its Talent x Opportunity (TxO) fund and program, according to multiple sources. Several people who spoke to TechCrunch pointed out that its hiatus comes as top names in tech eliminate, cut, reframe, or completely walk back on prior public commitments related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Trump administration has threatened legal and political ramifications for businesses supporting anything that could be seen as DEI.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pine Labs aims to take Indian fintech global even as it cuts valuation for IPO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said that the company is doing “well more” than $13 billion in annual revenue — and he sounded a little testy when pressed on how it will pay for its massive spending commitments. Also, Bluesky is looking to a new signal — "dislikes" — to personalize users' feeds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After generating over 10 million social media impressions with the launch of its text-to-3D model app, Adam has raised a $4.1 million seed round to power its next steps. Plus, Cluely's Roy Lee has a message for startup founders: you should be thinking harder about how to go viral. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Most people tracking their health today end up with scattered clues. Their smartwatch shows sleep duration. A fitness app logs steps. A nutrition app counts calories. Yet few tools help people understand how all of this fits together. Bevel, a New York–based startup, believes that's the missing piece in the shift toward proactive health. Also, IntrCity SmartBus, a tech-enabled intercity bus platform in India, has raised $30 million in funding to expand its network across smaller cities and towns in the South Asian nation. The all-equity Series D round, led by A91 Partners, values the Noida-based startup at $140 million post-money. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

People are increasingly asking AI, not Google, to help them discover products. A recent shopping report says Americans, this holiday season, will likely turn to large language models this season to find gifts, deals, and sales instead of traditional search. Also, Snabbit has raised its third funding round in nine months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Phia founders, Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, are building an AI assistant that aims to help you shop, and save. Also, Grammarly is renaming itself as Superhuman, after acquiring Superhuman email client in July Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Access Grid builds APIs that companies can use to manage digital key fobs directly within Apple and Google's wallet platforms. Plus, Taranjeet Singh has launched six companies, with some failing and others seeing varying degrees of success. His seventh, Mem0, could be his defining one. The startup starts with the premise that large language models can't remember past interactions the way humans do Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices