All episodes

Datadog veterans launch AI coding startup Niteshift on a bet against Big AI lock-in; plus, Zest launches a restaurant discovery app

Evotrex raises $30M to build the RV that doesn’t need a charging station; plus, so long FAANG and hello to MANGOS

Helion, the Sam Altman-backed fusion startup, raises $465M to build a power plant for Microsoft

Is Silicon Valley ready to put robots in people’s homes? Hello Robot is.

Brynn Putnam's Board raised $20M; plus, ZeroDrift raises $10M to protect AI models from themselves

Pacific Fusion’s latest prototype packs 440 gigawatts into an 80-nanosecond burst; plus, Rocket engine startup Impulse raises $500 million to hire people, not AI

Snap alums unveil Ghost Angels fund; Defense tech darling Mach Industries hits $1.8B valuation

This chip startup just raised $135M on a bet that AI’s biggest bottleneck isn’t compute — it’s memory; plus, Glean’s top line crosses $300M as AI budget-cutting becomes its major selling point

Corgi doubled in value in 3 weeks; plus, Anthropic raises $65 Billion, nears $1T valuation ahead of IPO

SOND, a sleep tech startup, exits stealth with $7M; plus, Airbnb-backed WeRoad raises $58M

Amazon fulfillment competitor Stord raises $250M at $3B valuation; OpenRouter more than doubles valuation to $1.3B in a year

Maka Kids is redefining kids’ screen time with a streaming app; also, Peec, one of Berlin’s rising startups, more than doubled ARR

This young startup is taking on a fragrance industry that hasn’t changed in almost half a century

Imperagen raises £5 million to use quantum physics, AI on enzyme engineering; plus, Beauty booking startup Fresha hits $1 billion valuation

Quartermaster is building a maritime hive mind; plus, NanoClaw creator turns down $20M buyout offer

Status AI raises $17M to turn social media into interactive entertainment; plus, Stilta helps companies rediscover the patents they forgot they had

South Korea’s LetinAR is building optics behind AI glasses; plus, Marketing operating system Nectar Social raises $30M Series A led by Menlo

Lovable just backed a company that’s looking to bring vibe coding to hardware; plus, Meridian Ventures launched $35M fund to back MBA-deferred founders

Khosla Ventures is betting $10M on Ian Crosby; plus, Cerebras raises $5.5B, then stock pops $108%

Clio’s $500M milestone arrives just as Anthropic ups the ante; plus, Anduril raises $5B, doubles valuation to $61B

Exaforce raises $125M Series B to build AI for catching and stopping cyberattacks as they happen

Riding an AI rally, Robinhood preps second retail venture IPO; plus, Korea’s biggest manufacturers back Config, the TSMC of robot data

Cowboy Space raised $275 million to build rockets for space data centers; plus what will the whisper-filled office of the future sound like

A 20-minute pitch wins Indian startup Pronto backing from Lachy Groom; plus, Khosla-backed robotics startup Genesis AI has gone full stack

Ethos raises $22.75M from a16z for its expert network with voice onboarding; plus, Altara secures $7M to bridge the data gap that’s slowing down physical sciences

OpenAI’s cozy partner Cerebras is on track for a blockbuster IPO; plus, Katie Haun raises $1 billion for new venture funds

Musely secures $360M from General Catalyst without giving up equity; Meta buys robotics startup

Legal AI startup Legora hits $5.6B valuation and its battle with Harvey just got hotter; also, Shapes brings humans and AI into the same group chats

Firestorm Labs raises $82M to take drone factories into the field; plus, BMW i Ventures has a new $300M fund

BCI startup Neurable looks to license its ‘mind-reading’ tech for consumer wearables

Two college kids raise a $5.1 million pre-seed to build an AI social network in iMessage

Beehiiv rolls out new creator tools; Also, another customer of troubled startup Delve suffered a big security incident

Cathie Woods’ ARK makes its first lead investment in startup Lucra — and it isn’t AI; Esther and Anne Wojcicki join new healthcare accelerator

SusHi Tech Tokyo isn’t a conference — it’s a deal room with 60,000 people; AI research lab NeoCognition lands $40M seed

SaySo is a new short-form video app that aims to restore users’ trust in news; plus, Loop wants to build supply chain AI that predicts disruptions

Amazon-backed X-energy files to raise up to $800M in IPO; plus, a simulation startup wants to be the Cursor for physical AI

Can AI judge journalism? A Thiel-backed startup says yes, even if it risks chilling whistleblowers

AI data center startup Fluidstack in talks for $1B round at $18B valuation

OpenAI has bought AI personal finance startup Hiro

Slate Auto raises $650M to fund its affordable EV truck plans

Ex-Tesla engineer’s startup taps Pronto to help automate a copper mine; plus, Collide Capital raises $95M fund to back fintech

TC's Julie Bort can’t help rooting for tiny open source AI model maker Arcee; plus, Databricks co-founder wins prestigious ACM award

AI startup Rocket offers vibe McKinsey-style reports at a fraction of the cost; plus, Hermeus raises $350M to build unmanned hypersonic fighters

Spain’s Xoople raises $130 million Series B to map the Earth for AI

Peter Thiel’s big bet on solar-powered cow collars; plus, Anthropic buys biotech startup Coefficient Bio in $400M dea

Beehiiv expands into podcasting; also, Gateway Capital announces first close of $25M Fund II

Commonwealth Fusion Systems leans on magnets for near-term revenue; plus the company behind ClassPass and Mindbody just got a lot bigger with a $7.5B merger

Exclusive: Runway launches $10M funExclusive: Runway launches $10M fund, Builders program to support early-stage AI startupsd, Builders program to support early-stage AI startups

ScaleOps raises $130M to improve computing efficiency amid AI demand; Qodo raises $70M for code verification as AI coding scales

Defense startup Shield AI lands $12.7B valuation; plus, Aetherflux reportedly raising Series B at $2 billion valuation

Conntour raises $7M to build an AI search engine for security video systems; plus, Lucid Bots raises $20M for its window-washing drones

Seattle's Brinc just launched a drone it says can replace police helicopters; Arinna raises $4M seed round to solve the space power problem

Startup Gimlet Labs is solving the AI inference bottleneck in a surprisingly elegant way; plus, Flighty gives you real-time alerts about airport disturbances

Sam Altman-backed fusion startup Helion in talks with OpenAI; plus, the SEC dropped its four-year-old investigation into EV startup Faraday Future

AI startups are eating the venture industry and the returns, so far, are good; plus, Delve accused of misleading customers

Geothermal startup Fervo catapults itself over the ‘valley of death’; K2 to launch its first high-powered satellite for space compute

Rebel Audio is a new AI podcasting tool aimed at first-time creators

H&M wants to make clothing from CO2 using this startup’s tech; plus, Niv-AI exits stealth to wring more power performance out of GPUs

Fuse wants to disrupt aging loan origination systems used by US credit unions; plus, Another deep tech chip startup becomes a unicorn: Frore hits $1.64B

The biggest AI stories of the year (so far)

A Chinese Brain-Computer Interface startup raised $21M just two months after launch; plus, Gumloop turns every employee into an AI agent builder

Rivian spin-out Mind Robotics raises $500M for industrial AI-powered robots

Canopii looks to succeed where past indoor farms have not; plus, Legora reaches $5.55 billion valuation as AI legal tech boom endures

Robinhood’s startup fund stumbled in NYSE debut, plus, AI network startup Eridu emerged from stealth, and ModRetro seeking funding at $1B valuation

Zeno raises $25M to speed up production of its battery-swap motorbikes; plus, Lio raised $30M from A16Z and others to automate enterprise procurement

Science Corp raises $230M as it races to bring its brain implant to market

Decagon completes first tender offer at $4.5B valuation; plus, three companies dominated the $189 billion in VC investments last month

Why AI startups are selling the same equity at two different prices?

Fig Security emerges from stealth with $38M to help security teams deal with change; plus, Cursor has reportedly surpassed $2B in ARR

MyFitnessPal has acquired Cal AI, the viral calorie app built by teens

Parade’s Cami Tellez announces new creator economy marketing platform, $4M in funding

Hardware Why China’s humanoid robot industry is winning the early market

Deepinder Goyal returns with a $54M brain-monitoring bet; plus, Ultrahuman bets on redesigned smart ring to win back U.S. market

Sophia Space raises $10M seed to demo novel space computers; plus,

Jest is challenging the app store status quo; plus, Self-driving truck startup Einride raises $113M PIPE

Y Combinator grad and AI insurance brokerage Harper raises $47M; plus, AI chip startup MatX raised $500M

Canva acquires startups working on animation and marketing; plus, Stripe, PayPal Ventures bet on India’s Xflow

Ukraine’s startups keep building

Particle’s AI news app listens to podcasts for interesting clips so you you don’t have to

Quantonation’s double-sized second fund shows quantum still has believers; plus. Ali Partovi’s Neo looks to upend the accelerator model

Nvidia deepens early-stage push into India’s AI startup ecosystem; plus, General Catalyst commits $5B to India

A startup called Germ becomes the first private messenger that launches directly from Bluesky’s app

Reload wants to give your AI agents a shared memory; plus, Mirai developing a framework for models to perform better on devices

Kana emerges from stealth with $15M to build flexible AI agents for marketers; plus, World Labs lands $200M from Autodesk

SpendRule raises $2M, emerges from stealth to help hospitals track spending; Mistral AI buys Koyeb; and Thrive raises $10B for new fund, its largest yet

African defensetech Terra Industries, founded by two Gen Zers, raises additional $22M in a month

Fusion startup Helion hits blistering temps as it races toward 2028 deadline

Eclipse backs all-EV marketplace Ever in $31M funding round

Score, the dating app for people with good credit, is back

Didero lands $30M to put manufacturing procurement on ‘agentic’ autopilot; plus, AI inference startup Modal Labs in talks to raise at $2.5B valuation, sources say

Complyance raises $20M to help companies manage risk and compliance; plus, Integrate raises $17M to move defense project management

Humanoid robot startup Apptronik has now raised $935M at a $5B+ valuation

Proptech startup Smart Bricks raises $5 million pre-seed led by a16z

Hauler Hero collects $16M for its AI waste management software

Anthropic closes in on $20B round; plus, Harvey reportedly raising at $11B valuation just months after it hit $8B

Gather AI, maker of ‘curious’ warehouse drones, lands $40M led by Keith Block’s firm

Sapiom raises $15M to help AI agents buy their own tech tools

Fundamental raises a Series A with a new take on big data analysis; plus, Stripe alumni raised a Series A for Duna

Peak XV says internal disagreement led to partner exits as it doubles down on AI

Exclusive: Positron raises $230M Series B to take on Nvidia’s AI chips; plus, Apeiron Labs gets $29M to flood the oceans with autonomous underwater robots