Startups
Inside The Private-Market Divide: EquityZen’s Phil Haslett On AI, SaaS And Secondaries
The market for private-company shares has become a much bigger part of the startup ecosystem.
Startups
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Startups
Why Bootstrapped Businesses Are More Relevant Than Ever
The traditional VC model funds a risky search for product-market fit, argues guest author Richard de Silva of Lateral Investment Management, while bootstrapped founders typically start with known customer problems, prioritize profitability and grow steadily from revenue rather than outside capital.
Startups
Startups Are Still Acquiring Startups, Led By Ultra-High-Valuation Unicorns
Amid fierce competition for an edge in the AI race, well-funded startups commonly find it’s simply faster to buy another company than try to build out certain technologies themselves.
Startups
NBC raises Peacock’s price for the fourth year in a row
NBC Universal has announced that Peacock will get yet another price hike, the fourth time in the platform’s history, which…
Startups
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Defense Tech, AI Tools And Infrastructure Lead The Way
The biggest financing of the week went to Castelion, a defense tech startup developing a hypersonic missile. Other sizable rounds went to companies developing AI inference technology, a video-creation platform, data centers and voice-to-text tools.
Startups
5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed: AI For Everything From Recycling To Breathing To Winning Construction Bids
This month’s installment of this column is all AI, though applications for the technology range widely, from two startups that apply AI to trash or recycling, to another that promises to help people breathe and sleep better, to a company that says its AI can help architects and builders spot…
Startups
From Humanities To AI: How Ali Hussain Built Fintech Tabs Into A $400M Startup
Our third in a series of articles about non-tech founders getting venture funding features Tabs founder Ali Hussain, who started the AI fintech after realizing pursuing a Ph.D.
Startups
These startups are chasing the next big thing in LLMs
MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here.
Startups
When Should A Board Consider Selling A Company?
The best boards continuously evaluate selling alongside scaling, pivoting, or staying independent, especially when the company is thriving, founder priorities are shifting, or strategic buyers begin showing interest, argues tech strategic adviser Itay Sagie.
Startups
Which Investors Have Backed The Most 2026 Unicorns?
So far this year, 250 companies have joined the unicorn ranks through Aug. 15, up from 2025’s 193 companies. Leading sectors included robotics, AI labs, healthcare and biotech, financial services, AI infrastructure, and AI deployment, among others.
Startups
VCs Pour Billions Into Physical AI As The Next Wave Of AI Investing Takes Shape
In the first half of 2026, global venture funding in the physical AI space totaled $47.4 billion across 521 deals, per Crunchbase data. That’s up dramatically — almost 4x — compared to the second half of 2025 when startups in the sector raised $12 billion across 470 deals.
Startups
Semiconductor Giants Are Busy Backing Startups This Year
Massive AI spending has helped push earnings and valuations for semiconductor industry leaders to record levels, prompting the sector’s giants to invest record sums in artificial intelligence and robotics startups.
Startups
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: Data, Neolab, AI Infrastructure, Defense And AI Coding Lead
Databricks is back raising another $5 billion, after it raised that amount just eight months ago. The largest fundings this week also went to an AI neolab, data center and electricity storage, defense, coding and biotech. Let’s take a look.
Startups
40 Companies Joined The Unicorn Board In July, The Highest Count In 4 Years
The sectors leading the herd to the Unicorn Board in July, by count, were financial services, robotics, AI orchestration, multimodal AI, energy and semiconductors, with the U.S. adding nearly half of the month’s newly minted unicorns.
Startups
How A Teenage Carpenter Became The Founder Of AI Construction Startup Trunk Tools
Our second in a series of articles about non-tech founders getting venture funding features Sarah Buchner, a “blue-collar worker by background” who set out to find a way to help construction companies manage their projects more efficiently using AI agents.
Startups
Exclusive: ClearJet raises $25M to build the ‘Uber of Cargo’
Austin-based ClearJet, an AI-enabled logistics technology startup connects shippers with unused cargo capacity on commercial flights, has raised a $25 million Edison Partners-led Series B, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively.
Startups
Sector Snapshot: Fitness Startup Funding Is Rebounding, But Investors Want AI And Data, Not Treadmills
Venture investors seem to be more upbeat than they have been in years about the future of fitness and wellness. Startup investment in those categories totaled more than $3.6 billion in the first half of this year, putting 2026 on pace to come in about a third higher than 2025.
Startups
The VC Firm That Helped Build Latin America’s Startup Scene Is Crossing Into Silicon Valley
Monashees, one of Latin America’s oldest and most influential VC firms, believes the next phase of the region’s startup ecosystem requires a permanent Silicon Valley presence, opening a San Francisco office last year.
Startups
AI-Native, Not AI-Sprinkle: Why AI Is A Business Change, Not A Technology Change
Companies unlock AI’s biggest productivity gains not by adding AI tools to existing workflows, but by redesigning teams, roles and daily work around AI.
Startups
Global New Unicorn Counts In The First Half Of 2026 Have Already Surpassed 2025’s Totals
A total 195 companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in the first half of 2026 — far surpassing counts seen since the second half of 2022. Already, H1 is above the new unicorn totals for all of 2025, when 193 companies were minted with that status.
Startups
The Biggest Consequence Of An AI IPO Isn’t The IPO Itself. It’s What Happens Afterward.
A wave of major AI IPOs could return significant liquidity to limited partners, fueling a new venture fundraising cycle rather than simply affecting public-market valuations.
Startups
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: A Big Week For Big Checks
Startups raised funding rounds with a lot of zeroes at the end this week, with three companies securing financings of $1 billion or more. Additionally, a robust lineup of companies in sectors including AI, e-commerce, cybersecurity, biotech and even mining also announced sizable new rounds.
Startups
No Summer Doldrums For Active Startup Investors In July
Active startup investors kept up the pace in July, with familiar names topping the ranks in several metrics including most prolific venture dealmakers, most active lead backers, biggest spenders and highest-volume seed investors.
Startups
The Return Of The Repeat Founder: Inside YC’s Growing Class Of Second-Timers
We analyzed a dataset of repeat founders who have gone through Y Combinator’s cohorts and found some very interesting insights. The dataset, shared with us directly from YC, consisted of 454 repeat founders through the program as well as 935 founder-company records spanning 2005 through 2026.
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