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Nscale, the UK-based AI data center startup, has appointed former OpenAI executive Fidji Simo to its board, joining a roster that already includes Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Decker and Nick Clegg. The appointment comes as the two-year-old company reportedly prepares for an IPO this fall and seeks up to $3.5 billion in pre-IPO financing.
Mark Wahlberg, the Oscar-nominated actor and serial entrepreneur, is set to appear at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where he will discuss his business ventures rather than his Hollywood career. He will join Keebeck Wealth Management founder and CEO Bruce K. Lee for a main stage fireside chat at the conference.
Proxima Fusion announced plans Wednesday to build a €140 million (US$162.6 million) factory to produce fusion-grade high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape, a critical component for its reactor design. The move is intended to reduce the startup's dependence on Asian suppliers, which currently dominate HTS tape production.
Defense tech startup Mach Industries has raised $600 million in a Series C extension, doubling its valuation to $3.7 billion in just three months, the company announced Thursday. The round follows a $300 million Series C in June that valued it at $1.8 billion, which itself represented a quadruple increase from a $470 million valuation in June 2025.
Google has agreed to buy 1 million carbon credits from Indian climate-tech startup Mitti Labs through 2030, in what the companies say is the largest publicly announced deal to date for credits generated from cutting methane emissions in rice farming.
Sequoia Capital is doubling down on Cymphony, a two-year-old startup that raises $30 million to help enterprises manage the security risks posed by AI agents that access sensitive corporate data. The Series A round, co-led by Sequoia and SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund, values the New York- and Tel Aviv-based company at over $100 million.
Fusionality, a Lausanne-based startup founded by former Google DeepMind researchers Federico Felici and Jonas Buchli, has raised $3.7 million (CHF 3 million) in a pre-seed round led by Founderful and Playfair. The company plans to develop standardised control systems and simulation environments for magnetic confinement fusion reactors, addressing what it says is a common need across the industry.
UK-based manufacturing software startup CloudNC announced a $20 million Series B extension on Wednesday, bringing its lifetime total raised to $128 million and signaling continued investor appetite for AI tools that automate CNC machining workflows.
Poseidon Aerospace has closed a $60 million Series A funding round led by TQ Ventures as the startup prepares for the first test flight of its uncrewed cargo aircraft, Egret, expected by the end of this year. The company, founded by David Zagaynov and Parker Tenney, is taking a deliberately unglamorous approach to air cargo—opting for fixed-wing combustion-engine planes rather than the vertical takeoff or electric powertrains favored by many advanced air mobility startups.
Venture capital firm EVP has launched a new program named 40x, designed to support software startup founders who are already generating revenue and scaling their businesses. The initiative aims to bring together up to 40 of Australia's most promising early-stage software founders as they prepare to raise capital over the next year.
Travis Kalanick's robotics startup Atoms is preparing to enter the robotaxi business, according to a Financial Times report, following a mammoth $1.7 billion funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz earlier this summer. The startup has discussed with Uber how the ride-hailing company could use its autonomous vehicle technology, and Uber has already invested $100 million in Atoms, a figure previously confirmed by TechCrunch.
XDOF, a startup that collects real-world teleoperation data for training general-purpose robots, is in late-stage talks to raise a Series B round at a valuation of about $1.2 billion, led by venture firm 8VC. The discussions come less than three months after the company emerged from stealth and announced a $70 million Series A in June 2026.
British AI infrastructure company Nscale, founded just two years ago, is reportedly seeking $3.5 billion in pre-IPO financing as it prepares for a potential public listing later this month. According to Bloomberg, the company is looking to sell $1.5 billion in convertible notes to a group of investors while also securing an additional $2 billion in financing from Nvidia.
South Korean gaming company Krafton, the publisher behind PUBG and Battlegrounds Mobile India, has announced plans to invest an additional $250 million in India over the next three to four years, expanding beyond gaming into artificial intelligence, robotics, and deep tech. The pledge brings Krafton's total planned investment in India to more than $500 million.
Fusion startup Realta Fusion announced a deal this week with Madison Gas and Electric to explore the construction of a 200-megawatt fusion power plant in Wisconsin, marking one of only a handful of utility-fusion partnerships globally as grid operators scramble to secure baseload power for an AI-driven energy surge.
Thinking Machines, the AI lab founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is in discussions to raise $1 billion at a valuation of at least $40 billion, according to a report from The Information. Existing backer Accel is in talks to lead the fundraise, sources told The Information and TechCrunch.
TechCrunch is calling for volunteers to help run its rebranded Boston event, the TechCrunch Founder Summit (formerly All Stage), scheduled for November 4th. Selected volunteers will gain behind-the-scenes event experience, a ticket to the summit, and a free pass to Disrupt 2027.
Venture capital investment surged 122% year-over-year in August, with global startups raising $42 billion across just over 1,500 deals, according to Crunchbase data, even as total funding dipped 25% from July’s blockbuster $56 billion.
Lyte, a Physical AI startup founded by three former Apple engineers and focused on sensing and perception technology for robots, has raised $165 million in Series C funding at a $1.6 billion post-money valuation, bringing its total raised to $272 million.
Indian edtech startup Unacademy has been acquired by rival upGrad in an all-stock deal valuing the company at approximately $206 million, a 94% drop from its $3.44 billion peak valuation in 2021, the companies confirmed Monday.
Ryan Breslow, the controversial co-founder and CEO of checkout startup Bolt, is raising a bridge round of up to $27 million from existing investors, structured as a convertible note with a punishing pay-to-play provision that threatens to dilute non-participating backers. Breslow personally committed $5 million to demonstrate his belief in the company, which once boasted an $11 billion valuation and now sits at $300 million.
Clipto, a San Francisco-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to index and search video, audio, images and other files stored on a user's computer, has raised $15 million in an all-equity round at a $250 million post-money valuation. The company, which also has teams in Singapore and Hong Kong, says it has attracted more than 30 million users since its 2023 launch and reached $15 million in annual recurring revenue at the beginning of 2026, while remaining profitable on a net-income basis.
Spanish startup Liux is banking on a sustainability-first approach to carve out a space in Europe's growing microcar market, a segment increasingly dominated by Chinese electric vehicles. Its upcoming model, the Liux Big, is small enough to park perpendicular to the curb but reflects what the company describes as oversized ambitions.
Andreessen Horowitz has launched a $1.1 billion “Machine Age” fund aimed at accelerating the physical infrastructure behind artificial intelligence, moving beyond the firm's traditional software focus to back chips, memory, data centers and robots.
Canva, once the darling of Australia's startup scene, has endured its most challenging year as soaring AI infrastructure costs, a $10 billion valuation markdown, and the indefinite shelving of its IPO plans have combined to slash $10 billion from its worth, according to a detailed report by David Swan published across Nine newspapers.
Blackbird Ventures, one of Australia's most prominent venture capital firms, has pushed back against market pressure, insisting its investors are willing to wait for a Canva IPO, even as rival Airtree comes under fire for failing to reduce its holdings enough.
Salem Robotics, a Y Combinator S26 alum, today announced the launch of software that enables existing mobile robots to autonomously perform complex inspection tasks like contamination surveys and leak detection in hazardous industrial environments. The founders, who bring over 15 years of combined experience in nuclear robotics from the University of Texas at Austin and Los Alamos National Laboratory, say their system bridges a persistent gap: while robot hardware has advanced significantly, making a robot reliably execute a full industrial procedure still demands extensive custom programming and manual intervention.
A startup founded by a former Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) engineer has raised $26 million in Series A funding to expand its underground mapping platform, which seeks to reduce bureaucratic delays and accidents in utility and construction work by creating a digital map of buried pipes, cables, and other infrastructure.
Identity verification and fraud prevention company Socure on Thursday announced a $156 million strategic growth investment valuing the firm at $5.2 billion, while also acquiring agentic AI startup Fravity to automate financial crime investigations. The company disclosed it ended the second quarter with $364 million in annual recurring revenue, up 63% year-over-year, and added 95 customers including Circle, Cox Automotive, MoneyLion, and Login.gov. Summit Partners led the round, with participation from Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Wells Fargo, and DocuSign, among others.
The Virginia-based startup Operation Bluebird launched its new social media platform, Twitter.now, on Monday, claiming that Elon Musk's decision to rebrand the former Twitter as X effectively abandoned the iconic name and logo, making them available for reuse. The launch marks the culmination of a months-long effort to revive the Twitter identity.
Flipboard has acquired Graze, a startup known for building customizable feeds on the Bluesky social network, in a move that brings privacy-friendly ad technology and creator monetization tools into Flipboard's open social web strategy. The acquisition, announced on August 26, 2026, underscores Flipboard's push to become a central hub for the federated social web, integrating Graze's technology to help creators and publishers earn revenue across decentralized platforms.
Generalist, a robotics startup specializing in physical AI, has reached a $3 billion valuation after closing a $200 million extension to its latest funding round, according to sources familiar with the deal. The round comes just months after the company was valued at $2 billion, marking a rapid ascent in the competitive embodied AI sector.
Self-driving truck startup Gatik has raised $200 million in its largest funding round to date, led by Qatar Investment Authority and Koch Disruptive Technologies, the company announced. The investment comes on the heels of a significant commercial partnership with PepsiCo, signaling growing confidence in autonomous middle-mile logistics.
Blackbird Ventures, one of Australia's leading venture capital firms, has raised a new $1 billion fund with significant backing from prominent US institutional investors, signaling growing international confidence in the Australian startup ecosystem and enabling the firm to target larger funding rounds and secondary share sale opportunities.
Flipkart’s quick-commerce division, launched two years ago, is now processing 1.1 to 1.2 million orders per day — nearly triple its November 2025 volume — positioning the Walmart-owned e-commerce giant as a serious contender in India’s hyper-competitive instant delivery space.
Rillet, an AI-powered accounting startup, secured $100 million in funding and achieved a unicorn valuation within 48 hours, after CEO Nicolas Kopp shared unexpectedly strong growth metrics during a routine board meeting. The rapid round, led by Iconiq and joined by Sequoia Capital and others, reflects surging investor appetite for AI-driven enterprise software.