[STARTUPS]

A criminal whistleblower complaint has been filed against battery startup Donut Lab over its solid-state battery claims, according to Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. The complaint raises questions about assertions the company made earlier this year.

DeepSeek is raising outside capital for the first time, targeting at least $300 million at a valuation of $10 billion or more. The funding round aims to strengthen the Chinese AI company's position in the competitive generative AI market.

Xanadu Quantum Technologies founder reached billionaire status within days after Nvidia announced support for the quantum computing startup, signaling major corporate backing for the emerging technology sector.

San Francisco-based Loop closed a Series C funding round led by Valor Equity Partners to develop artificial intelligence that predicts supply chain disruptions before they occur.

SaySo, a new short-form video platform, launches with a focus on delivering news from verified creators and journalists. The app addresses growing user frustration with misinformation and AI-generated content flooding social feeds.

geCKo Materials has progressed from Startup Battlefield competition to testing its adhesive technology aboard the International Space Station. The company, founded by Capella Kerst, develops gecko-inspired sticky products with real-world applications.

Iconiq Capital, the wealth management firm serving Silicon Valley's elite, is deploying billions into artificial intelligence companies. The firm recently facilitated meetings between AI leaders and sovereign wealth funds from Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

Pelgo, a new startup, is leveraging artificial intelligence to help workers find jobs faster and more affordably after being displaced by automation. The company claims its AI-powered placement services offer a more efficient alternative to traditional recruitment.

The promise of effortless earnings has misled countless entrepreneurs into pursuing unsustainable business models. A critical examination reveals how passive income culture created unrealistic expectations and wasted resources.

Hangzhou-based Manycore Tech raised $156 million in its Hong Kong IPO, with shares jumping 187% on the first day of trading. The company is pivoting from real estate data to AI training data for robotics manufacturers.

Upscale AI, an artificial intelligence networking infrastructure startup, is in talks to raise $180M to $200M at a $2 billion valuation. The funding round marks the company's third major capital raise in seven months.

OnlyFans is negotiating to sell less than 20% of the company at a $3 billion-plus valuation, a significant retreat from previous plans to offload around 60% at a $5.5 billion valuation, according to Financial Times sources.

Factory, a three-year-old startup building AI coding tools for enterprises, secured $150 million in funding led by Khosla Ventures, reaching a $1.5 billion valuation.

Nas.com, an AI platform founded by content creator Nas Daily, secured $27 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures. The platform helps solo entrepreneurs launch and manage online stores.

AI infrastructure company Upscale AI is in talks to raise capital at a $2 billion valuation, according to reports. The funding round marks the startup's third since its launch seven months ago.

The UK government has established a £500 million fund to invest in domestic AI startups, reducing reliance on foreign technology. The initiative's first investment goes to Callosum, a software company that enables different chips to work together.

Mercor, a startup founded by entrepreneurs in their twenties, has secured $10 billion in funding to develop AI systems capable of replicating professional work across knowledge industries.

Slash, a fintech startup founded by teenagers, has raised $100 million at a $1.4 billion valuation. The company now generates $300 million in annualized revenue, competing directly with Ramp in the corporate spending management space.

Upscale AI, backed by Tiger Global, is in talks to raise funding at a $2 billion valuation. The round would mark a significant milestone for the artificial intelligence startup.

Solidroad, an AI platform for evaluating customer service interactions, has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Hedosophia. The capital will support the startup's tools for identifying risk and skill gaps in customer-facing teams.

Antioch, a simulation startup, secured $8.5 million in seed funding to develop tools for physical AI and robot development. The company aims to position itself as essential infrastructure for the next generation of roboticists.

CoreWeave Inc., a cloud infrastructure provider focused on AI workloads, is issuing bonds in the US junk-debt market for the second time in a week, capitalizing on robust investor appetite.

Copenhagen-based Spektr, an AI agent platform for financial services compliance, secured $20M in Series A funding led by NEA. The round brings total funding to $26M.

German AI startup Synera has secured $40 million in funding to scale its agentic AI platform that automates computer-aided design and engineering workflows across Europe, the US, and Asia-Pacific.

China's investigation into Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus has spooked local founders and disrupted a common exit strategy. Several startups are now considering relocating operations or moving entirely out of the country.

LimX Dynamics' CFO Jesse Liu argues China's humanoid robotics industry lacks sufficient competition and talent investment, despite rapid growth in the sector.

European venture capital funding reached $17.6 billion in Q1 2026, up nearly 30% year-over-year. AI startups captured over half of all funding despite deal volume dropping 40%.

Nuclear startup X-energy launched its roadshow today to pitch investors on a planned initial public offering targeting up to $800 million in capital.

A wave of data labeling and reinforcement learning startups has surged in valuation and revenue, but industry observers question their long-term viability. These companies employ domain experts to create synthetic training data for AI models.

Caterpillar has acquired the assets of self-driving electric tractor startup Monarch Tractor, which raised over $200 million before struggling to transition to a software services model.

Objection, a new platform combining AI and expert analysis to evaluate claims in news stories, launched with backing from Peter Thiel and Balaji Srinivasan. The service charges $2,000 per evaluation.

Allbirds Inc. shares quadrupled after the struggling sneaker maker announced a dramatic shift to AI compute infrastructure. The company rebranded as NewBird AI following the sale of its footwear business.

Ayr Energy is capitalizing on a shortage of power conversion equipment by deploying older grid technology. The approach is opening opportunities in a market that has remained largely unchanged for decades.

Gizmo, an AI-powered learning platform, has secured $22 million in Series A funding while surpassing 13 million users.

New York-based Auctor secured $20 million in combined seed and Series A funding. The startup uses AI to streamline software implementation for enterprises.

Hightouch has reached $100M in annual recurring revenue, adding $70M ARR in just 20 months following the launch of its AI agent platform for marketers.

Skild AI has acquired Zebra Technologies' robotics automation division, expanding its footprint in the rapidly growing robotic learning software market.

Accel announced Tuesday it raised $5 billion in new capital dedicated to backing late-stage companies building AI products. The fund signals continued investor confidence in mature AI startups seeking growth capital.

Khosla Ventures-backed autonomous pod startup Glydways has secured $170 million in funding and is now in talks to raise an additional $250 million. The capital will fund three pilot programs launching soon.

India's vibe-coding startup Emergent has entered the AI agent market with Wingman, a tool that automates tasks through conversational interfaces on WhatsApp and Telegram.

Anthropic has turned down venture capital funding offers valuing the AI startup at $800 billion or higher, choosing to remain independent for now despite intense investor interest.

Airwallex, valued at $8 billion, is entering the physical payments market with a new point-of-sale product. The platform enables businesses to accept in-person payments across multiple countries through a single system.

Shoe maker Allbirds plans to pivot entirely to AI infrastructure, rebranding as NewBird AI. The company will seek shareholder approval on May 18 to transform into a GPU-as-a-Service provider.

Hilbert, an AI startup that unifies data across organizational teams, secured $28 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. The platform enables companies to make decisions from a single integrated system.

London-based edtech startup Gizmo secured a $22 million Series A led by Shine Capital, leveraging AI to transform students' notes into gamified learning materials. The platform has reached 13 million users.

Venture capital firm Accel closed a $5B fundraising round, bringing its assets under management to $36B. The new capital includes a $4B Leaders fund for large checks to late-stage startups globally and a $650M sidecar fund.

Parasail has raised $32 million in Series A funding to pursue tokenmaxxing—a strategy focused on optimizing token efficiency in AI models. The investment signals growing confidence in a fragmented future of specialized compute and models.

Artemis, a stealth-mode cybersecurity startup, emerged today with $70M in Series A funding led by Felicis Ventures. The company aims to replace traditional rule-based security systems with an AI-driven centralized platform designed to counter AI-powered attacks.

Three major chipmakers are investing in Wayve, a self-driving technology startup. The company's Series D funding round, announced in February, continues to expand with new backers.

Gitar, a startup using AI agents to review and secure code, has emerged from stealth with $9 million in funding. The platform addresses a growing security gap as AI-generated code becomes increasingly common in development workflows.

Gerard Williams, former Apple executive and semiconductor entrepreneur, has launched Nuvacore with backing from Sequoia Capital to develop next-generation CPUs optimized for artificial intelligence workloads.

Handshake, a 12-year-old job platform, has seen AI training revenue surge to nearly $1 billion annually, up from $550 million in January, as AI companies demand human contractors to grade model outputs.

Thinking Machines Lab has acquired Workshop Labs and hired its co-founders Rudolf Laine and Luke Drago. The one-year-old startup specialized in personalizing AI systems.

Asian startups raised $27.4 billion in the first quarter, a 93% year-over-year increase and the highest quarterly total in over three years. Chinese startups led the surge, capturing $16.5 billion of the total.

Mintlify, an AI platform for software documentation, closed a $45M Series B round led by a16z and Salesforce Ventures. The funding values the startup at $500M.

Lucid Motors has appointed a new CEO and expanded its robotaxi partnership with Uber, securing additional funding from the ride-hailing company and Saudi backers.

AI datacenter startup Fluidstack is in talks to raise $1 billion at an $18 billion valuation, months after reaching a $7.5 billion valuation. The funding round follows a major $50 billion infrastructure deal with Anthropic.

Fintech payments company SumUp is enlisting investment banks to arrange a potential initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange. The listing could rank among the UK capital's largest IPOs in recent years.

Robocar startup Glydways, backed by Sam Altman and Khosla Ventures, is in talks to raise $250 million at a valuation exceeding $1 billion. The funding round follows a Series C that netted approximately $170 million.

Bluefish, a platform helping brands manage their presence across AI systems like ChatGPT and Claude, closed a $43M Series B funding round. The raise brings the company's total funding to $68M.

Cloud-computing startup Fluidstack is in funding talks with Jane Street to raise approximately $1 billion at an $18 billion valuation. The funding round reflects growing investor confidence in the cloud infrastructure sector.

Vibe coding app Anything is developing a desktop companion application to support mobile development after being removed from Apple's App Store twice.

Michael Mignano, a prominent Lightspeed Venture Partners investor focused on consumer AI companies, is joining Union Square Ventures. The move reflects ongoing shifts in venture capital as firms compete for AI expertise.

Financial risk management platform Pillar has secured $20 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company aims to democratize institutional-grade hedging capabilities for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Sygaldry secured $34 million in seed funding and $105 million in Series A to develop data center servers combining quantum and classical computing hardware. The startup targets the growing intersection of AI and quantum computing infrastructure.

Cloud-computing startup Fluidstack is in talks to raise approximately $1 billion at an $18 billion valuation, more than doubling its value from $7.5 billion earlier in 2026.

Glydways Inc., the autonomous vehicle startup backed by Sam Altman, has completed a Series C funding round of approximately $170 million and is in talks to raise an additional $250 million. The funding reflects the significant capital requirements and technical challenges of developing closed-loop self-driving systems.

Lucid Motors has appointed Silvio Napoli, former head of Schindler Holding, as its new CEO. The company simultaneously announced $750 million in fresh investment from Uber and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.

Data labeling startup Handshake nearly doubled its gross annualized revenue to approximately $1B in recent months, up from $550M in January. Competitor Mercor also reached a $1B+ gross annualized revenue pace this year.

Despite anticipated IPOs from SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, public market investors have already missed significant AI growth, according to Peter Singlehurst, head of private companies at Baillie Gifford.

Uber and autonomous vehicle company Nuro are launching a premium robotaxi service in San Francisco, with Uber employees now able to hail Lucid-branded autonomous vehicles through the app.

Slate Auto secured $650 million in funding to accelerate production of its electric truck, which will launch in late 2026 starting at mid-$20,000s pricing.

Slate Auto, the Bezos-backed EV startup, raised $650 million in Series C funding to develop an affordable electric pickup truck priced around $20,000. First deliveries are expected later this year.

Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch indicated the company is prepared for a public offering, citing AI agent adoption as a driver of revenue growth during remarks at the HumanX conference.

Major tech and automotive companies are aggressively recruiting autonomous vehicle engineers and researchers, creating a competitive talent shortage in the sector.

Slate Auto emerged in April 2025 as a new electric vehicle startup backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The company joins a crowded EV market with plans to develop consumer vehicles.

Walmart-owned Flipkart's expansion into smaller cities and aggressive discounting is intensifying competition for India's quick commerce operators. Analysts warn the strategy poses significant risks to smaller players in the sector.

A developer has demonstrated how to operate multiple six-figure annual revenue companies using only $20 worth of monthly tools and services. The approach challenges conventional wisdom about startup infrastructure costs.

Ascend Elements, a major battery recycling company, has filed for bankruptcy amid challenges in the electric vehicle supply chain.

A select group of nuclear fusion companies have now secured over $100 million in funding as the race to commercialize clean energy accelerates.

Cirrus Labs, an AI research company, has agreed to join OpenAI in a significant expansion of the organization's technical capabilities.

SiFive, a chip design company backed by Nvidia, has achieved a $3.65 billion valuation as it develops open-source artificial intelligence processors.