Jacob E. Robbins

1 week ago | pitchbook.com | Jacob E. Robbins

Kimberly White/Getty Images for WIRED Thinking Machines, the secretive AI startup founded by OpenAI’s former chief technology officer Mira Murati, has reportedly raised $2 billion at a $10 billion valuation. The round could be one of the largest seed rounds ever, another sign that VCs are increasingly focusing on AI investing at the earliest stages. The Financial Times reported that Andreessen Horowitz led the round into the four-month-old company.

2 weeks ago | pitchbook.com | Jacob E. Robbins |Nadine Manske

Despite notching a lower valuation than at its peak in the private market, Chime closed its first day of trading on the Nasdaq at $37.11, a 37% bump over its IPO price. The hotly anticipated fintech float shows growing comfort with a difficult reality for investors: the down-round IPO. “You just can’t hold on to those marks forever if that’s not where your business is going,” said Ryan Zauk, a fintech-focused investor at OMERS Ventures, which did not invest in Chime.

2 weeks ago | share.google | Jacob E. Robbins |Kia Kokalitcheva

Nearly half of the startups in Y Combinator‘s first-ever Spring cohort were companies building or designing tools to create AI agents, continuing the famed accelerator’s tendency to reflect the broader startup market’s trends. Of the 144 startups in the Spring 2025 batch, 67 are described as “AI agents” within the accelerator’s online database. That’s an uptick from YC’s last cohort, when 58 out of the 163 startups featured in its Winter 2025 batch were AI agent companies.

2 weeks ago | pitchbook.com | Jacob E. Robbins |Kia Kokalitcheva

Nearly half of the startups in Y Combinator‘s first-ever Spring cohort were companies building or designing tools to create AI agents, continuing the famed accelerator’s tendency to reflect the broader startup market’s trends. Of the 144 startups in the Spring 2025 batch, 67 are described as “AI agents” within the accelerator’s online database. That’s an uptick from YC’s last cohort, when 58 out of the 163 startups featured in its Winter 2025 batch were AI agent companies.

2 weeks ago | pitchbook.com | Jacob E. Robbins

Social media giant Meta is in talks to invest around $10 billion into the data labeling startup Scale AI, Bloomberg reported. It would be the latest big corporate venture check going into an AI startup. Corporate participation in AI funding rounds has been growing, going from 54.3% of all US VC AI deals in terms of transaction value in 2022 to 74.7% so far this year, according to PitchBook data.