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Startup news and venture capital
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Anthropic and OpenAI have each issued warnings to investors this week cautioning against purchasing their shares through unauthorised secondary market platforms, with Anthropic explicitly naming eight firms — including established players such as Forge Global and Hiive — as companies not sanctioned to offer access to their equity.
Robinhood, the retail trading platform best known for democratising stock market access, has filed confidentially for its second venture fund, targeting both growth-stage and early-stage startups as enthusiasm around artificial intelligence continues to drive investor appetite.
Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft chief executive and billionaire investor, has publicly condemned Joseph Sanberg, a startup founder he backed who pleaded guilty to fraud, writing in a sentencing letter that he felt deceived and embarrassed by the experience.
X-energy, a nuclear power startup developing small modular reactors, saw its shares jump 27% on its first day of trading on the Nasdaq on Thursday, April 24, following an upsized initial public offering that signalled robust appetite among investors for next-generation nuclear energy companies.
SpaceX derailed a nearly finalised $2 billion funding round for Cursor, the AI-powered coding assistant, this week by presenting the startup with a $10 billion 'collaboration fee' and a pathway to a $60 billion full acquisition, according to reporting by TechCrunch.
Blue Energy has secured $380 million in funding to construct grid-scale nuclear reactors using shipyard facilities, the startup announced Monday, arguing that the precision manufacturing environment of commercial shipbuilding can dramatically reduce the costs and financing risks that have long plagued the nuclear power industry.
Cursor, the AI-powered coding assistant developed by Anysphere, is in advanced discussions to raise more than $2 billion in a new funding round that would value the company at approximately $50 billion, according to sources familiar with the matter reported by TechCrunch. Returning investors Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Thrive Capital are expected to lead the round, reflecting strong confidence in the startup's surging enterprise growth.
Sequoia Capital has raised a $7 billion fund — its first major capital raise under new co-stewards Alfred Lin and Pat Grady — signalling the storied Silicon Valley firm's continued commitment to artificial intelligence investments as competition among top-tier venture funds intensifies.
X-energy, a nuclear energy startup backed by Amazon, filed to raise up to $800 million in an initial public offering on April 15, marking one of the most significant steps yet for an advanced nuclear company toward the public markets.
Slate Auto, the electric vehicle startup backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has secured $650 million in a Series C funding round to advance production of an affordable electric pickup truck expected to start in the mid-$20,000s, with first deliveries planned for later in 2026.
Global fintech startups raised $12 billion in the first quarter of 2026, marking a 5% increase from the previous year despite completing 31.5% fewer deals, according to Crunchbase data released Thursday. The trend signals a shift toward larger funding rounds concentrated among fewer companies, with late-stage deals accounting for $6.9 billion of the total.
A total of forty-seven seed and early-stage companies joined the unicorn ranks in the first quarter of 2026, putting the year on track to deliver the largest cohort of young unicorns in history, according to Crunchbase data.
SpaceX has filed confidentially for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, setting the stage for what is expected to be the largest IPO in human history. The company is reportedly targeting a valuation of approximately 1.75 trillion dollars and has assembled an unusually large roster of 21 banks to manage the offering, internally codenamed Project Apex.
The first quarter of 2026 delivered the largest venture capital investment quarter ever recorded, with investors pouring 297 billion dollars into 6,000 startups globally — up roughly 150 percent both quarter over quarter and year over year, according to Crunchbase data.
The largest seed funding rounds of the past six months have all gone to artificial intelligence companies, with at least 12 startups pulling in $100 million or more at the earliest investment stage, according to Crunchbase data.
Uber is acquiring Berlin-based premium chauffeur service Blacklane to strengthen its Elite tier offering. The deal represents a significant exit for Blacklane, which had raised more than $100 million from backers including Mercedes-Benz and Sixt.
Starcloud has raised 170 million dollars in a Series A round to build data centers in space, becoming the fastest Y Combinator startup to reach unicorn status just 17 months after its demo day.
Y Combinator's Winter 2026 Demo Day showcased an overflowing cohort with sixteen startups standing out from the crowd. The batch reflects the current obsession with AI agents, robotics, and consumer behaviour modification, spanning everything from doomscrolling interventions to humanoid robot training platforms.
Lucid Bots has raised 20 million dollars in new funding as demand accelerates for its fleet of window-cleaning drones and power-washing robots, carving out a niche in the unglamorous but massive building maintenance industry.
Indian food delivery startup Swish has raised 38 million dollars in its third funding round in just 18 months, more than doubling its valuation as its full-stack hyperlocal model gains traction in Bengaluru.
AI startups captured 41 per cent of the 128 billion dollars in venture capital raised by companies on Carta last year, marking a record-high annual share and cementing artificial intelligence as the dominant force in startup funding.
Salesforce, OpenAI, and Snowflake have emerged as the most prolific acquirers of venture-backed startups over the past three years, according to new Crunchbase data. A total of 79 companies acquired three or more seed- or venture-backed startups in that period, with six companies making six or more purchases each.
A total of 187 companies joined the Crunchbase Unicorn Board in 2025, up 61 percent from the previous year, with the surge driven overwhelmingly by the AI boom. Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz once again backed the most deals in the new billion-dollar cohort.
Travis Kalanick, the controversial co-founder and former CEO of Uber, has launched a new company called Atoms focused on robotics. His existing ghost kitchen venture CloudKitchens will be rolled into the new entity, which also plans to expand into mining and transport.
Two AI startups announced major funding rounds within hours of each other, collectively raising $200 million as investor appetite for enterprise AI automation shows no signs of cooling. Gumloop secured $50 million from Benchmark to build tools that turn every employee into an AI agent builder, while Wonderful closed a $150 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation — just four months after its $100 million Series A.
While OpenAI's record-shattering $110 billion raise at an $840 billion valuation dominated February headlines, it was hardware startups — six robotics companies and four semiconductor firms — that added the most new unicorns to the Crunchbase Unicorn Board last month.
Plaid, the financial data infrastructure company, has been valued at $8 billion in a recent employee share sale — a 31% jump from the $6.1 billion valuation it reached in April and a sign of renewed confidence in fintech infrastructure.
The AI startup boom is producing companies that reach $10 million in annual recurring revenue within just three months of launch, according to new data from Stripe. The payment processor's insights reveal this phenomenon is becoming increasingly common, not less.
Four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukrainian startups have done more than survive: they are still building, growing, and raising capital, defying expectations of an ecosystem that many predicted would collapse.
Code Metal, a Boston-based startup specialising in AI-powered code translation for the defense industry, has raised $125 million in its latest funding round. The company's pitch centres on modernising legacy software for defense contractors while maintaining verification that no new bugs are introduced in the process.
Ownwell, a startup that uses AI to automatically appeal property tax assessments on behalf of homeowners, has raised $30 million in Series B equity funding alongside $20 million in debt, bringing its total equity raised to $54 million.
Jack Altman, founder of HR software company Lattice and brother of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has joined Benchmark as a general partner at one of Silicon Valley's most influential and selective venture capital firms.
Just seven weeks into 2026, seventeen US-based AI companies have raised rounds of $100 million or more, with three crossing the billion-dollar threshold, according to TechCrunch's latest funding tracker.
Energy technology startup Tem has raised $75 million in funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to expand its AI-powered electricity trading platform to the United States and Australia.
Uber has agreed to acquire the food delivery arm of Turkish company Getir for $335 million, with an additional $100 million investment securing a 15% stake in Getir's grocery, retail, and water delivery business.