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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.