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1 week ago | 
share.google | Theresa Loconsolo |Rebecca Bellan |Kirsten Korosec |Maxwell Zeff
AI investments hit $110 billion in 2024, and the funding landscape in 2025 is more competitive than ever. For early-stage startups, that means more money in the market, but also more pressure to stand out. At TechCrunch Sessions: AI, Rebecca Bellan sat down with three experienced investors: Jill Chase, partner at CapitalG; Kanu Gulati, partner at Khosla Ventures; and Sara Ittelson, partner at Accel.
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2 weeks ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
Meta just made a $14.3 billion bet on data-labeling company Scale AI, but it’s not a traditional takeover: Meta’s taking a 49% stake in the company and adding Scale’s co-founder Alexandr Wang to its team. The move signals Meta’s growing urgency to keep up in the AI race, even if its strategy for competing with heavyweights like OpenAI and Google is still a little confusing.
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2 weeks ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
Generative AI is reshaping the way people work, from full-time employees to freelancers. As coding copilots, design assistants, and AI-powered writing tools become more capable and accessible, creative and technical roles are starting to shift – if not become eliminated entirely. The pressure to adapt is growing across the board. Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufman isn’t sugarcoating it.
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3 weeks ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
If you’ve been following Anthropic, you’ll know it’s been a busy year for the AI startup. Back in March, the company announced that it raised $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion valuation in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Since then, it’s launched a blog for its Claude models and, according to Bloomberg reporting, partnered with Apple to power a new “vibe-coding” software platform.
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3 weeks ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
“One of the biggest vulnerabilities in companies is actually humans,” CrowdStrike co-founder and former CTO Dmitri Alperovitch told TechCrunch in this week’s episode of Equity.
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4 weeks ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
Elon Musk has officially announced he’s stepping down as a U.S. special government employee and the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE. The move follows Musk’s cooling relationship with the Trump administration and slumping Tesla sales tied to his political advocacy. Despite his announced departure, Musk gave a shout out to President Trump for the chance to tackle government waste, and he insisted that DOGE’s mission isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
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1 month ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
OpenAI just made its biggest acquisition yet, scooping up Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s secretive device startup, io, in a $6.5 billion all-equity deal. Ive, the legendary designer behind the iPhone and other iconic Apple products, will now lead creative and design work at OpenAI through his firm LoveFrom. The goal? To take AI “beyond the screen” and build a new generation of AI-powered consumer devices. Beyond the tech, there’s a clear narrative play here.
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1 month ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
“The only thing worse than being a public company CEO is being a private company CEO right now,” says Ali Kashani, co-founder and CEO of Serve Robotics. Access to capital, he argues, is everything in robotics. And in today’s “FOMO-driven” venture climate, securing funds is far from guaranteed. Backed by Nvidia and Uber, Serve recently raised $80 million to extend its runway through 2026.
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1 month ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
Databricks just snatched up another AI company. This week, data analytics giant announced a $1 billion acquisition of Neon, a startup building an open-source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres. It’s the latest in a spree of high-profile buys, joining MosaicML and Tabular, as Databricks positions itself as the place to build, deploy, and scale AI-native applications.
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1 month ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
Despite courtroom chaos, Rippling is still going full steam ahead. The HR tech startup at the center of an increasingly dramatic legal battle with rival Deel just raised a fresh $450 million in funding at a $16.8 billion valuation, and launched a new “Startup Stack” to woo early-stage companies—winning over Y Combinator as both an investor and a client.
