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This week once again brought us news about AI funding, as well as some warnings: some categories and stages are showing signs of overheating. Fortunately, we also spotted some interesting startups, literally.
The most interesting startup stories of the week
It may seem hard to believe, but OpenAI is still a startup, hence its recurring first place here. However, there were other interesting stories this week.
BillionsAI: OpenAI raised 6.6 billion dollars to a post-money valuation of $157 billion, in addition to securing a $4 billion revolving credit line and throwing a new interface. The company reportedly asked investors not to back rivals such as Anthropic and xAI, but OpenAI did not confirm this. Meanwhile, anthropic hired OpenAI co-founder Durk Kingma in a remote role.
attack of the clones: AND Combinator faced criticism for endorsing AI code editor PearAIwhose CEO apologized for cloning another YC-backed open source project without proper attribution and with a “failed” license.
Live streamed shopping: Livestream shopping app Whatnot said its annual gross merchandise volume (GMV) exceeded 2 billion dollars this yeara sign that there is still hope for the live trading business in the US.
This week's most interesting fundraisers
Some companies prefer to raise funds discreetly; others even operate underwater.
deep end: Poolside AI Coding Startup raised a $500 million Series B financing round led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from eBay and Nvidia. This allowed Poolside to bring 10,000 Nvidia GPUs online to train future models, said CEO Jason Warner.
cold water: Submer, immersion cooling startup based in Barcelona raised $55.5 million to get more customers for its solution, which is already used by hyperscalers, telcos and other large corporations.
11x meets a16z: 11x.ai, a startup that develops sales robots with AI, secured a Series B financing round of approximately $50 million led by Andreessen Horowitz, TechCrunch has learned.
Stealth financing: Cloud backup startup Eon came out of stealth and revealed that it has already reached a post-money valuation of $750 million after raising three rounds of funding, including a $77 million Series B.
Stealthier financing: Series, a generative AI game development platform, created quietly a $28 million Series A financing round from Netflix, Dell, a16z and others.
This week's most interesting venture fund and venture capital news
Trimming season: CRV, veteran venture firm returned 275 million dollars from its $500 million late-stage Select fund to investors, citing the overvaluation of mature startups. This follows a similar move by India's Peak XV, which reduced its fund size and fees amid signs of overheating.
Launch: Former Y Combinator CEO and Twitter executive Ali Rowghani is launching Maxqa new venture firm targeting $250 million for its debut fund.
Bullish New York: Index Ventures is looking for hire another New York-based investor with plans to add three or four new people to its local team over the next year, partner Shardul Shah told TechCrunch.
Last but not least
Speaking with TechCrunch Global Managing Editor Matt Rosoff ahead of this year's Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, New York tech investor and serial entrepreneur Kevin Ryan shared some insights on when and if founders should sell their company. His conviction: more should do it.
