Channel: Startups & Ventures
Apple is in early talks to acquire Perplexity AI, the red-hot search startup reimagining how users find information with conversational AI. With a $14B valuation and rapid user growth, Perplexity could give Apple a serious alternative to Googleâand a leap forward in its AI push.
⢠Combines multiple LLMs (GPT-4.1, Claude, Gemini) for fast, cited answers
⢠Over 30M daily queries; ~20% monthly query growth
⢠Revenue from $20/month Pro plans and publisher rev-share
⢠Could slot into Safari and Siri to replace or complement Google Search
⢠Ongoing antitrust scrutiny has Apple seeking more control over search stack
⢠Also in talks with other AI search players for potential integration
⢠Internally led by Eddy Cue (Services) and Adrian Perica (M&A)
⢠Would be Appleâs largest-ever acquisitionâ4x the size of its Beats deal
⢠Move aligns with broader Apple Intelligence rollout and GenAI upgrades
Perplexity could help Apple reclaim searchâand stake a bigger claim in the AI race.
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Tensec, a Palo Alto-based fintech, has raised $12M in seed funding to modernize how global businesses move money. With a sleek, AI-powered platform, Tensec helps trading firms embed treasury, FX, and payments directly into their workflowsâwithout touching legacy banking rails.
⢠Offers instant KYB onboarding, smart compliance, and no-code FX infrastructure
⢠Built on real-time rails, with U.S. banking powered by Stearns Bank (FDIC member)
⢠Traders access hedging, multi-currency wallets, and real-time settlements out of the box
⢠Supporting ~$10B in trade volume with plans to scale to $30B+
⢠Targeting SMBs in physical goods tradeâ40% of a $25T market
⢠Positioned for APAC and EU expansion as global payments hit $250T by 2030
⢠Founded by ex-Rapyd, Goldman Sachs, and Meta execs with deep trade and fintech roots
⢠Backed by Costanoa, Quiet Capital, WillowTree, and Cambrian Ventures
⢠Aims to be the âStripe for cross-border B2Bâ by eliminating friction in trade flows
Tensec is giving modern exporters and traders the infrastructure big banks never builtâand doing it with speed, compliance, and scale.
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Pelico, the Paris- and Miami-based startup helping manufacturers respond to supply chain disruptions in real time, has raised a $40M strategic round led by General Catalyst. Its AI-powered platform connects factory teams with operational data to reduce parts shortages, cut lead times, and improve delivery performance.
⢠Transforms siloed data into real-time, actionable insights for planning, logistics, and shop-floor teams
⢠Cuts parts shortages by 40% and improves on-time delivery by 15%
⢠Fast 12-week deployments for global manufacturers like Airbus, Safran, and Daikin
⢠Used in 15+ countries by 1,000+ factories, with 300% YoY revenue growth
⢠Adopted by 5 of the top 10 global aerospace & defense companies
⢠North American revenue tripled in just 6 months
⢠Founded in 2019 by Tarik Benabdallah, Mamoun Alaoui, and Jonathan Hickson
⢠Backed by General Catalyst, 83North, Serena, and Microsoftâs M12
⢠Investing in âAgentic AIâ for intelligent supply chain self-orchestration
Pelico is becoming the nervous system for industrial opsâgiving manufacturers the agility to respond to disruptions before they cascade.
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Commure, the SF-based healthtech platform transforming hospital operations, has secured $200M in growth financing from General Catalystâs Customer Value Fund. The company is rolling out AI-powered tools across revenue cycle, clinical documentation, and practice managementâaiming to streamline how providers work from front desk to exam room.
⢠Automates the entire RCM stackâfrom intake to collections and posting
⢠Ambient AI captures clinical notes, codes visits, and reduces after-hours documentation
⢠Cloud-based platform powers intelligent scheduling, referrals, and patient engagement
⢠Serves 130+ health systems, with deployments at giants like HCA Healthcare
⢠Facilitates billions in RCM automations annually
⢠ARR has doubled three years in a row, now in the high hundreds of millions
⢠Led by CEO Tanay Tandon, a former Palantir product leader
⢠Designed to be the âatomic infrastructureâ of modern care systems
⢠CVF structure gives growth capital without equity dilution
Commure is fast becoming the nervous system for U.S. hospitalsâautomating the back office and bringing AI directly into clinical care.
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Vietnamâs leading financial institution SSI is going all-in on blockchain, with its tech arm SSID leading U2U Networkâs Series A to build the countryâs foundational digital infrastructure.
⢠SSI started in 1999 with 13 employees â now one of Vietnamâs biggest financial players with over $3B in assets
⢠SSID (SSI Digital) was spun out to focus on blockchain, AI, and digital transformation across finance, healthcare, education, and agriculture
⢠Runs a $200M+ venture arm with plans to co-invest up to $500M in Web3 and deep tech
⢠A Vietnam-built Layer-1 blockchain using DAG architecture and Subnet scaling
⢠Focused on real-world use: DePIN, RWAs, and enterprise adoption
⢠Already integrated with major exchanges (KuCoin, Bitget, Gate, etc.) and used by 1M+ users
⢠SSID built a massive retail education engine:
⢠262 episodes of âCafĂŠ Chᝊngâ, a finance TV show
⢠âMoneyverseâ project reaching 8,800+ young investors through talkshows and training
⢠Hosted 600+ global investor meetings with Citi, Goldman Sachs, and more
SSI isnât just investing in crypto â itâs helping architect Vietnamâs digital future from the ground up.
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Tadaweb, the Luxembourg-based open-source intelligence (OSINT) startup, has raised $20M in growth funding from Arsenal Growth, Forgepoint Capital, and Wendel. The platform helps security and intelligence teams rapidly turn public data into actionable insightsâfocusing on accuracy over volume.
⢠Extracts high-value âsmall dataâ from open sources to reduce analyst workload
⢠Fully auditable: users see what data was used, when, and how
⢠Trusted by national security, cyber, and enterprise users across Europe and the U.S.
⢠~120 employees with 30% revenue growth last year
⢠Total funding now $40M after an earlier round in 2023
⢠Used by defense, law enforcement, and threat intel teams in mission-critical environments
⢠Founded in Luxembourg with a growing U.S. and UK footprint
⢠Arsenal Growthâs Jason Rottenberg and Forgepointâs Damien Henault join the board
⢠New funds will go to hiring, product development, and international go-to-market
Tadaweb is redefining open-source intelligence by making it faster, more precise, and more accountableâexactly what modern security teams need.
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Snowcap Compute has raised $23M in seed funding to build superconducting chips that could dramatically outperform todayâs silicon-based AI hardware. The round was led by Playground Global, with participation from Cambium Capital and Vsquared Ventures. Their goal: solve AIâs growing power problem with a fundamentally different architecture.
⢠Uses niobium titanium nitride to enable near-zero resistance at cryogenic temps
⢠Promises up to 25à better performance per watt vs. current AI chips
⢠Designed to work in tandem with industrial cooling systems for total energy savings
đ Early momentum and heavyweight backers
⢠Led by former Cadence executive Michael Lafferty, with PhDs from Northrop and Imec
⢠Backed by Pat Gelsinger (former Intel CEO), now a GP at Playground
⢠First chip expected in 2026, with system builds to follow
⢠Targets hyperscale data centers strained by Nvidia-powered compute demand
⢠Compatible with 300mm fabsâeasing future manufacturing scale
⢠Materials sourced from Brazil and Canada to support global supply chain
Snowcap isnât chasing incremental gainsâitâs betting on a new paradigm where superconductors make AI compute radically faster and cleaner.
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Harvey, the AI startup transforming legal workflows, has raised a $300M Series E co-led by Kleiner Perkins and Coatue, with participation from Sequoia, OpenAI Startup Fund, DST, and others. The round doubles its valuation to $5B, reinforcing its lead as the go-to AI platform for legal professionals.
⢠Offers tools like Assistant, Workflows, Vault, and Knowledge for research, drafting, and document review
⢠Built on top of models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google
⢠Used by top global law firms and in-house legal departments to cut hours of manual work
⢠Run-rate revenue surged from $50M to $75M in just one quarter
⢠Headcount at ~340, with plans to double over the next 12 months
⢠Serves over 330 enterprise clients in law, corporate, and regulatory environments
⢠Now integrating legal research via LexisNexis and REV for deeper domain expertise
⢠Plans to expand product suite into accounting, tax, and compliance workflows
⢠New capital to fuel R&D, hiring, and global expansion
Harvey is quietly becoming the AI operating system for professional servicesâstarting with law, but scaling far beyond it.
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Atlanta-based Qualytics has raised a $10M Series A led by BMW i Ventures to scale its platform for augmented data quality. The startup helps enterprises monitor, validate, and trust their data in real timeâautomatically and at scale.
⢠Auto-generates thousands of quality rules across source systems, warehouses, and lakehouses
⢠Low-code workflows and anomaly detection help teams catch issues early
⢠Designed to empower both business users and data engineers with continuous observability
⢠5à revenue growth over the past year, with wins in financial services and healthcare
⢠Oversubscribed round with participation from Conductive Ventures, The Hill Fund, and others
⢠Trusted by companies that rely on real-time, high-integrity data pipelines
⢠Founded by Gorkem Sevinc and Eric Simmerman with deep roots in data infrastructure
⢠Funds will go toward scaling engineering, accelerating onboarding, and expanding enterprise go-to-market
⢠Positioned as a foundational layer for AI workflows and governed analytics
As businesses rush to adopt AI, Qualytics is tackling the invisible risk: dirty data. Their platform ensures the insights you build are only as good as the data behind them.
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Pangram, an AI startup founded by former Tesla and Google engineers, has raised a $4M seed round to detect AI-generated content. The companyâs active learning model outperforms traditional detectors like Turnitin and is already being used by Quora and NewsGuard.
⢠Uses a feedback loop to generate hard-to-classify examples for training
⢠Built on open-source models, offering better performance at lower cost
⢠Research shows a 38x error reduction vs. standard detection tools
⢠Clients include Quora and media verification firm NewsGuard
⢠Subscription pricing for individuals, pros, and developers (starts at $15/month)
⢠Raised from ScOp, Script Capital, Cadenza, Haystack VC, and others
⢠Founded by Bradley Emi and Max Spero, Stanford grads with stints at Tesla and Google
⢠Currently 8 engineers, aiming to grow post-funding
⢠Plans to expand beyond enterprise into consumer tools for AI integrity
As AI content floods the internet, Pangram wants to be the backbone of trustâquietly verifying whatâs real and whatâs synthetic.
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Abridge, a Pittsburgh- and San Francisco-based startup, has raised a $300M Series E led by Andreessen Horowitz to scale its AI that turns medical conversations into structured documentation. Now valued at $5.3B, Abridge aims to eliminate clinician burnout by automating the most tedious part of healthcare: note-taking.
⢠Transcribes and summarizes clinicianâpatient conversations using ambient AI
⢠Extracts structured data like ICD-10 and HCC codes at the point of care
⢠Integrated with EHRs like Epic to support billing, referrals, and medical orders
⢠Deployed in 150+ systems, processing over 50M conversations annually
⢠Covers 55 specialties and 28 languages; >90% clinician retention after onboarding
⢠Reduces documentation time by 60â70% across clinical workflows
⢠Founded by cardiologist Dr. Shiv Rao and backed by top-tier VCs including Khosla Ventures
⢠Now over 100 employees across engineering and clinical operations
⢠Expanding into inpatient settings and deeper EHR integrations post-funding
As hospitals face soaring admin costs and clinician burnout, Abridge is betting that listeningâthen writingâcan be the most valuable AI skill in medicine.
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Kalshi, the AI-powered prediction market platform, has raised a $185M Series C round led by Paradigm, with backing from Sequoia, Citadelâs Peng Zhao, Bond Capital, Multicoin, and Neo. The round pushes Kalshiâs valuation to $2B as it accelerates its mission to make event forecasting a mainstream financial instrument.
⢠Offers tradable contracts on events like elections, inflation, Fed decisions, and weather
⢠Fully regulated by the CFTC â a key differentiator from crypto-native prediction markets
⢠Targets individuals and institutions looking to hedge or profit from macro volatility
⢠Saw massive traction during U.S. midterms and 2024 election run-up
⢠Positioned as a data-rich alternative to polls and analyst forecasts
⢠Riding a wave of renewed interest in predictive markets, alongside players like Polymarket
⢠Founded by MIT alums Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara in 2018
⢠Recently won a major court battle vs. the CFTC to enable political event trading
⢠Paradigmâs backing signals confidence in Kalshiâs long-term regulatory defensibility
Prediction markets are evolving into serious financial infrastructureâand Kalshi is building the rails for institutional-grade forecasting.
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OpenRouter, the one-stop routing layer for large language models, has raised a $40M combined Seed and Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures, with backing from Sequoia and prominent angels. Now valued at $500M, OpenRouter is emerging as core infrastructure for multi-model AI development.
⢠Connects to models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, Google, Meta, and more via a single API
⢠Automatically routes requests based on latency, cost, or performance preferences
⢠Offers transparent pricing and usage tracking across providers with just a 5% platform fee
⢠$100M+ inference run rate as of May 2025 â up 10Ă since October
⢠Over 1M developers using the platform, handling trillions of tokens weekly
⢠Runs on 50+ cloud hosts with edge latency as low as 25ms
⢠Integrates with Zapier, VS Code, Cloudflare, PostHog, and more
⢠Partnered early with OpenAI for GPT-4.1 rollout and usage insights
⢠Offers enterprise-ready tools for routing, analytics, and failover protection
As the AI stack fragments, OpenRouter is stitching it back togetherâoffering developers and enterprises a unified gateway to the future of multi-model AI.
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Execo, a New York-based enterprise AI startup, has raised an undisclosed bridge round led by Unlock Partners to accelerate go-to-market growth and expand profitability. The company builds agentic AI systems for contract and supplier management, and now counts over 100 enterprise clients globally.
⢠Automates contract lifecycle management and supplier performance workflows
⢠Focused on risk mitigation, cost reduction, and supply chain resilience
⢠Combines generative AI with human-in-the-loop design for ROI and compliance
⢠500 employees across six countries, including teams in Europe and Asia
⢠Serving Fortune 500 and mid-market companies in procurement-heavy sectors
⢠Unlockâs Patrick Cao (ex-Tokopedia President) joins the board to support scaling
⢠Bridge funding supports GTM acceleration and revenue per employee expansion
⢠Positioning as âthe enterprise-grade AI layerâ for procurement operations
⢠Prioritizing sustainable growth before next institutional raise
Execoâs disciplined, applied approach gives it an edge in turning language models into enterprise utility.
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Clearspeed, the San Diego-based voice analytics startup, has raised a $60M Series D led by Align Private Capital, with participation from IronGate Capital, Bravo Victor, KBW Ventures, and retired General David Petraeus. The companyâs AI listens not to what you say, but how you say it â flagging risk across sectors from insurance to defense.
⢠Analyzes vocal stress, cadence, and hesitation in 60+ languages â without using speech content
⢠Classifies high- vs low-risk individuals in real time for claims, security, or fraud workflows
⢠Delivered as a lightweight API that integrates into existing calls and systems
⢠Trusted by U.S. military, insurers, banks, and government agencies
⢠Customers report 30à ROI, 2à faster claims decisions, and 40% more instant payouts
⢠Now active in over a dozen markets with growing demand in the UK, Middle East, and LatAm
⢠Originally built for defense vetting, now expanding to enterprise security and customer screening
⢠Alignâs Anna Nekoranec joins the board; Petraeus calls it âoutsized valueâ for vetting and ops
⢠Plans to double headcount, enhance real-time speed, and deepen commercial integrations
As AI moves beyond text, Clearspeed is turning voice into a trusted signal â helping organizations assess risk in seconds, not days.
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Digital Asset, the New Yorkâbased blockchain infrastructure firm, has raised $135M in a fresh funding round backed by Goldman Sachs, Citadel Securities, BNP Paribas, Virtu, and DTCC. The round was led by Tradeweb and DRWâs VC arm to accelerate adoption of the Canton Network, a privacy-preserving blockchain for regulated finance.
⢠Canton enables atomic settlement and tokenization of assets like bonds, repos, and funds
⢠Built for compliance and privacy â unlike public chains â using Digital Assetâs Daml smart contract language
⢠Positioned as a ânetwork of networksâ for interoperable, institutional finance
⢠Live since 2024, Canton supports trillions in tokenized assets across finance and trading
⢠Used by Tier 1 players including Goldman, Deutsche BÜrse, DTCC, and now Citadel
⢠Designed to allow asset managers, custodians, and banks to build compliant blockchain applications
⢠Digital Asset CEO Yuval Rooz says the raise âcements blockchainâs transformative promiseâ
⢠New funding to onboard more financial institutions and asset classes
⢠Strategic push as Wall Street shifts from blockchain pilots to production-scale adoption
Digital Asset is quietly becoming the plumbing layer for the next generation of financial markets.
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Senra Systems, a Redondo Beachâbased startup founded by ex-SpaceX engineers, has raised a $25M Series A to modernize wire harness design and manufacturing. The round was led by CIV (founded by Figmaâs Dylan Field) with backing from General Catalyst, Sequoia, Founders Fund, a16z, 8VC, and others.
⢠âAmpâ is Senraâs custom design platform replacing Excel, Visio, and PDFs in complex wiring workflows
⢠Enables rapid design, simulation, and error detection â built for high-regulation industries
⢠Paired with Senraâs assembly-as-a-service model to deliver harnesses 3Ă faster
⢠Already shipping to customers like Anduril and other defense, aviation, EV, and medical firms
⢠Automates critical wiring that powers planes, satellites, robots, and medical equipment
⢠U.S.-based manufacturing in Redondo Beach supports fast, secure turnaround for strategic sectors
⢠Founders Jordan Black and Ben Shanahan aim to modernize a $350B+ global harness industry
⢠Funding will expand factory capacity and launch Amp to more enterprise design teams
⢠Board and backers bring top-tier tech and defense experience to scale adoption
While others chase frontier tech, Senra is quietly modernizing a mission-critical backbone of hardware â and turning wiring into a software-native, on-demand service.
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Xona Space Systems, a Burlingame-based startup reinventing satellite navigation, has raised a $92M Series B after launching Pulsar-0, its first production-class satellite. The round was led by Craft Ventures with participation from Toyota Ventures, Seraphim, NGP Capital, and a $20M strategic award from the U.S. Space Forceâs SpaceWERX.
⢠Pulsar satellites broadcast encrypted signals 100Ă stronger than GPS â even in cities and indoors
⢠Delivers centimeter-level accuracy to standard receivers without bulky new hardware
⢠Designed to resist jamming and spoofing with military-grade authentication
⢠Pulsar-0 launched May 2025; full constellation planned for 2026â28
⢠Target customers: defense, autonomous vehicles, logistics, aviation, and finance
⢠Working with chipset and device makers to enable plug-and-play upgrades for existing systems
⢠Founded by aerospace engineers with DARPA and GNSS experience
⢠U.S. Air Force and Space Force backing signals national security alignment
⢠Craft Venturesâ Sky Dayton joins the board to support commercial expansion
As GPS hits its limits, Xona is building the resilient, high-precision satellite layer modern systemsâand geopoliticsâwill depend on.
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Bonx, a Paris-based startup building ERP software for mid-sized manufacturers, has raised an $8.6M (âŹ7.3M) Seed round to expand across Europe. The round was led by 9900 Capital with backing from Kima Ventures, Dynamo Ventures, Purple, and OSS Ventures.
⢠Built for mid-market industrial firms overlooked by legacy ERPs
⢠No-code setup and LLM-based customization enable fast onboarding without consultants
⢠Covers production, procurement, logistics, and qualityâintegrates with existing CRM/finance tools
⢠Early traction in France; now expanding into Italy and Spain
⢠Targets manufacturers that need flexible digital systems but lack IT teams
⢠Deployments go live in weeks, not yearsâkey differentiator vs traditional vendors
⢠CEO Alexandre Barroux built 8 industrial SaaS startups through OSS Ventures
⢠CTO RÊmi Bèges holds a PhD in electronics and has built 3 ERPs from scratch
⢠Bonx spun out of OSS Ventures, which specializes in industrial startup creation
Europeâs industrial SMEs are hungry for tech that fits themânot the other way around. Bonx is betting that fast, AI-powered ERP is the wedge to win that $100B+ market.
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Gemist, a Los Angelesâbased startup transforming how fine jewelry is designed and sold, has raised a $6M seed round to expand its white-labeled SaaS platform. The round was led by Entrada Ventures, with participation from Artemis Fund, Beechwood Capital, and others, bringing its total funding to $9M.
⢠Photoreal visualization engine lets customers design and preview jewelry in real time
⢠Covers dynamic pricing, e-commerce, and production management in one platform
⢠Requires no CAD expertiseâjewelers can launch with zero dev effort
⢠Retailers report 400% faster sales cycles and 300% higher average order values
⢠Over 14,000 custom pieces are designed weekly across web, mobile, and in-store
⢠Integrates seamlessly with existing commerce workflows
⢠CEO Madeline Fraser shifted Gemist from DTC to B2B SaaS in 2022 after seeing broader demand
⢠Founded out of personal frustration trying to customize a ring online
⢠Now focused on enabling small and mid-sized jewelers to compete with luxury digital experiences
As jewelry buyers demand personalization and transparency, Gemist is arming retailers with the tools to deliver bothâno showroom or 6-week CAD cycle required.
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