TechCrunch Startup News
Listen to select TechCrunch articles on startups coverage—who's raising, who's exiting, who's changing the world.
Episodes
Anduril announced Tuesday that a fleet of its XL uncrewed undersea vehicle “Ghost Shark” will begin operations in Australian waters next year under a massive billion dollar contract. The five-year award structure is the defense-startup holy grail; it’s a program of record that essentially locks in recurring revenue by becoming a line item in the country’s defense budget.
Also, Perplexity, the AI-powered search startup that compete...
Mark as Played
September 11, 2025 • 8 mins
Arc announced Wednesday it has signed a contract of that value with Curtin Maritime, a tug and barge operator. The new hybrid-electric tugs are expected to hit the waters around the Los Angeles port in 2027. Curtin has ordered eight tugs — at around $20 million apiece — and Arc will build them in conjunction with Snow & Co. shipyard.
Also, it’s been a long road for the 20-year-old fintech Klarna to make it to an IPO. But on Wednes...
Mark as Played
Fabian Kamberi, CEO and co-founder of the Berlin-based AI gaming startup Born, thinks the current AI companions on the market are designed to be exploitative and geared towards isolating users through one-to-one relationships with AI chatbots.
Also, Clyx is a social platform that helps users find community events to join. Five years after its launch, the app today has 50,000 active users buying tickets for events, and more than 20...
Mark as Played
September 10, 2025 • 7 mins
SpaceX just fired off one of the biggest shots yet in the spectrum wars, agreeing to pay $17 billion to take over a massive chunk of wireless airwaves from EchoStar for Starlink’s Direct-to-Cell services.
The deal is the most aggressive signal yet that SpaceX wants to rule the satellite-to-phone market.
Also, Ramp answered any lingering questions as to why investors recently valued the expense management startup at $22.5 billion,...
Mark as Played
Nuclearn got its start when the founders were working at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station just west of Phoenix. They had been experimenting with ways to streamline various repetitive tasks first from a data science perspective then with more advanced AI models.
Also, ReOrbit, a Finnish startup focused on helping nations control their own sovereign satellites, has raised a record €45 million (about US $53 million) Series A...
Mark as Played
Deep Fission is proposing to build small, cylindrical nuclear power plants and lower them into 30-inch diameter holes drilled one mile down into the Earth. By burying the reactors, the company hopes to solve several problems that plague current reactors, including concerns over meltdowns and potential terrorist attacks.
Also, The corporate space world tired Bianca Cefalo to the point that she found it easier to literally start her...
Mark as Played
September 8, 2025 • 5 mins
Why is a startup that bills itself as the “Netflix of AI,” and that recently raised money from Amazon’s Alexa Fund, talking about remaking a movie that was first released in 1942?
Well, the company has built a platform that allows users to create their own cartoons with AI prompts — Fable is starting out with its own intellectual property, but it has ambitions to offer similar capabilities with Hollywood IP.
Learn more about y...
Mark as Played
September 8, 2025 • 5 mins
If you spend any time online, there’s a good chance you’ve seen plenty of ugly, AI-generated ads — but few to none when interacting with AI chatbots themselves. Koah co-founder and CEO Nic Baird argued that will inevitably change.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mark as Played
September 5, 2025 • 7 mins
Sodium-ion battery startup Natron ceased operations this week, ending the company’s 12-year quest to commercialize its technology in the U.S.
The company had $25 million worth of orders lined up for its Michigan factory, but it couldn’t deliver them until it had UL certification, according to Raleigh’s The News & Observer, which reported on the business’s closure because Natron had been planning to bring jobs to the state of North...
Mark as Played
AI logistics startup Augment raised massive $85M Series A; plus Mark Zuckerberg sues Mark Zuckerberg
September 5, 2025 • 6 mins
On Thursday, Augment announced that it raised an $85 million Series A led by Redpoint, with participation from 8VC, Autotech Ventures, and others. The massive round comes just five months after the startup launched out of stealth with a hefty $25 million seed round.
Also, Mark Zuckerberg, a bankruptcy lawyer from Indiana, has filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta.
Mark Zuckerberg the lawyer uses a commercial Facebo...
Mark as Played
Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian’s CEO and co-founder, said, ‘today’s browsers weren’t built for work; they were built for browsing. This deal is a bold step forward in reimagining the browser for knowledge work in the AI era.’
Also, Francesco Cacciatore is a self-proclaimed skeptic. Yet after spending two decades in the European aerospace industry and hitting, as he put it, a “crisis,” he made an undeniably optimistic bet: he star...
Mark as Played
September 4, 2025 • 5 mins
On Wednesday, Orchard Robotics announced that it raised a $22 million Series A funding led by Quiet Capital and Shine Capital, and with participation from returning investors, including General Catalyst and Contrary. Although the idea of using computer vision for specialty crops isn’t new, Wu says that the largest farms in the U.S. still rely on manual sampling to make critical decisions about farm operations.
Also, French AI star...
Mark as Played
September 3, 2025 • 7 mins
When congressional Republicans took a sledgehammer to the Inflation Reduction Act last summer, advanced geothermal startups were largely spared. Drilling for renewable energy appears to be one of the few things that engenders bipartisan support. Now, with the uncertainty settled, geothermal companies are announcing deals that promise to pave the way for broader deployment of their technology.
Also, Fizz, the college social app, is...
Mark as Played
AI firm Anthropic has raised a $13 billion Series F round that brings its post-money valuation up to $183 billion — funds the company says will be used to grow its enterprise adoption, deepen safety research, and support international expansion.
Also, OpenAI announced in a blog post on Tuesday that it agreed to acquire the product testing startup Statsig, and bring on its founder and CEO, Vijaye Raji, as the company’s CTO of App...
Mark as Played
Swedish buy-now, pay-later startup Klarna and its shareholders are reviving its initial public offering, hoping to raise as much as $1.27 billion in a listing that would value the company at up to $14 billion.
The company and some of its shareholders are together selling approximately 34.3 million shares between $35 and $37 each. That’s according to a company update earlier this week. Klarna would receive proceeds from about 5.6 m...
Mark as Played
September 2, 2025 • 5 mins
Reliance is launching a new subsidiary to drive India's AI ambitions, including a pending partnership with OpenAI.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mark as Played
September 1, 2025 • 5 mins
Khalid Ashmawy found it hard to send money home while studying in Europe. Now, he’s launched a startup to help other Egyptians with the same problem.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mark as Played
September 1, 2025 • 5 mins
Maisa AI is built on the premise that enterprise automation requires accountable AI agents, not opaque black boxes.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mark as Played
Framer, a no-code website builder that claims over half a million monthly active users,has reached a $2 billion valuation after raising a $100 million Series D funding round led by existing investors Meritech and Atomico.
Companies cancelled $5 billion worth of clean tech manufacturing projects in the U.S. in Q2, mirroring a pullback in the broader manufacturing sector.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/ad...
Mark as Played
Mitti Labs is working with The Nature Conservancy to expand the use of climate-friendly rice farming practices in India. The startup uses its AI to verify reductions in methane emissions. In other news, Assort Health now valued at $750 million, is one of three that recently raised funding to use AI agents for helping healthcare practices answer patient calls.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mark as Played
Popular Podcasts
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.
Charlie is America's hardest working grassroots activist who has your inside scoop on the biggest news of the day and what's really going on behind the headlines. The founder of Turning Point USA and one of social media's most engaged personalities, Charlie is on the front lines of America’s culture war, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of students on over 3,500 college and high school campuses across the country, bringing you your daily dose of clarity in a sea of chaos all from his signature no-holds-barred, unapologetically conservative, freedom-loving point of view. You can also watch Charlie Kirk on Salem News Channel
The Megyn Kelly Show is your home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures today. No BS. No agenda. And no fear.
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.