Startups

خلاصہ: Exclusive: Founded By Husband And Wife Team, Zed Raises $16.5M To Give Young Professionals In Asia Access to CreditZed , a Philippines-based startup building credit products for young professionals across the Asia-Pacific region, has raised $16.5 million in a Series A funding round, it tells Crunchbase News exclusively. Palo Alto, California-based Accel led the financing, which brings Zed’s total funding raised to $22.5 million. The startup’s latest round comes amid a robust period for fintech investment overall: Global venture funding to financial technology startups in 2025 has, as of Dec. 8, reached $48.7 billion across 3,498 deals, per Crunchbase data . That’s a 29.5% increase in dollars raised compared to the $37.6 billion raised across 4,588 deals during the same time period in 2024. An ‘aha’ moment Steve Abraham and Danielle Cojuangco Abraham. Courtesy photo. Founded in 2021 by husband and wife serial entrepreneurs Steve Abraham and Danielle Cojuangco Abraham , Zed’s initial market has been the Philippines. The pair stumbled upon the idea for Zed after selling their previous company, Symple , a B2B mobile payments network, to Feather in 2020. When traveling to the Philippines, where Danielle is originally from, the couple describes having an “aha experience.” After landing at the airport, they were going to meet Danielle’s brother at a bar three miles away. “It really should have taken only 15 minutes. But it ended up taking a full hour, because we realized it was payday Friday, where everyone’s rushing to the ATMs after work,” Danielle recalls. “They’re pulling out their entire paychecks and spending them all night because they’ve been waiting to shop with that cash that they’ve gotten that day.” When they got to the bar, the couple noticed that Danielle’s brother paid for refreshments in cash. They were confused why the young man — a lawyer at a prestigious firm — didn’t use a credit card. His response when asked? “I tried. I’ve gone to three banks, and they’ve all rejected me. I can’t get a credit card.” “That was the moment that Steve and I realized that we just had to dig into this, and learn more about this opportunity,” Danielle said. And so Zed was born. Regulation and risk management The co-founders/co-CEOs spent the first three years of Zed’s life acquiring the startup’s financial institution license from the Central Bank of the Philippines. They then launched Zed’s first product — a “modern” credit card that focuses on features for travel, online shopping and peer-to-peer payments — in mid-2024. “To get our license, we had to set up a compliance org and operations org and essentially pass all of the application checks that any bank would have to pass,” Steve told Crunchbase News in an interview. “That took a while — it was a beast of an effort. … In order to do this, we’ve had to reinvent the primitives that banks are built on.” Traditional banks, he said, rely exclusively on credit scores, which are based on factors that depend heavily on age — such as how long a person has had their accounts or how many credit lines they’ve ever opened. “So young people, like recent college graduates, with growing incomes, stable jobs and no negative marks in their files still can’t get credit cards because of low scores that are only a reflection of their age,” he added. “This leaves a huge segment of potentially prime customers unserved.” Zed uses foundational models to profile and underwrite the risk of customers based on transaction data, financial documents, and other structured and unstructured data sources. That way, the pair said, Zed can serve young professionals with signals of low risk across data sources such as stable cash flows, responsible spending and saving patterns, and other factors. “This approach unlocks massive opportunity across a region where less than 50% of the population is under 30 and where current credit card penetration is sub-15%, excluding China and Singapore,” Danielle said. Targeting a younger customer base Zed’s biggest competitors are long-established, incumbent banks that are more focused on older and wealthier customers, the pair said. They’ve intentionally designed Zed’s credit card to have features that are geared toward the young professional, including zero FX fees and zero FX markup; the ability to create single-use or 24-hour cards that automatically close themselves, and the ability to send each other money “as easily as using Venmo but with the flexibility of settling when their card statement is due.” For now, Zed is still in the invite-only launch period. Its waitlist has attracted nearly 200,000 sign-ups “strictly through word of mouth.” The company says its customer base has grown by 10x, and its monthly gross merchandise value (monthly spend) has grown by about 500% since the beginning of 2025. The startup generates revenue from interchange fees and interest on purchases made by customers using its credit card. “The vast majority of our waitlist has yet to be invited,” Steve said. Presently, Zed has 13 employees across San Francisco and Manila. Operations are headquartered in Manila, while product and design employees work out of San Francisco. The startup in March 2021 raised $6 million in a seed round that was led by Valar Ventures and included participation from Mercury CEO and founder Immad Akhund , along with Dalton Caldwell , Kunal Shah and other angels. Looking ahead, Zed wants to expand throughout the APAC region, including markets such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and India. “Eventually, our plan is to expand globally and connect young people who share a common lifestyle and financial goals, wherever they may be, from Asia to North America,” Danielle said. Accel Partner Nafis Jamal , who previously worked as head of consumer payments at fintech giant Circle , told Crunchbase News via email that he believes Zed has potential because “very few people” have access to credit despite the fact that the Philippines is one of the youngest, fastest-growing markets in the region. The firm was also drawn to the co-founding team’s experience....

خلاصہ: Nuclear Fission Shows Continuing Popularity (With VCs, At Least)At first glance, nuclear fission power doesn’t seem like the most obvious area for U.S. venture capital to cluster. After all, the last big boom for building American nuclear power plants was in the 1970s. Not long after that, environmental and safety concerns, project cost and broader availability of other affordable power options, among other factors, effectively brought new installations to a halt. In VC portfolios and IPO pipelines, however, nuclear has been making a comeback. So far this year, investors have poured close to $2 billion into an assortment of companies across stages working on nuclear power offerings outside of the fusion space 1 curated using Crunchbase data. The funding influx coincides with public market offerings activity as well. Notable funding recipients For a sense of who’s getting funded, we put together a list of 16 good-sized rounds that closed this year for nuclear-focused startups. The largest round is also one of the most recent: a $700 million Series D in late November for X-energy , a developer of advanced nuclear reactor and fuel technology. Jane Street Capital led the financing for the Rockville, Maryland-based company, which is looking to build small modular reactors. For X-energy, it helps that the 16-year-old company has attracted some high-profile partners. Currently, it has projects mapped out with Dow Energy and Amazon . The startup says it plans to use some Series D funds toward beefing up its supply chain TerraPower , one of the most recognized names among nuclear startups, also landed a huge follow-on financing this year. The Bill Gates -founded startup picked up $650 million in fresh funding this summer, with Nvidia ’s NVentures as a backer. The Bellevue, Washington-based company touts its Natrium technology, which it describes as an advanced nuclear reactor paired with gigawatt-scale energy storage. It began preparatory construction activities on the site of the first plant last year and says it expects regulatory approval for the nuclear reactor next year. We’re also seeing early-stage activity. Just this month, Antares , a 2-year-old startup focused on building compact nuclear microreactors for remote locations, announced that it closed on a $96 million Series B round. Valar Atomics , founded in 2023, has also been a fast serial fundraiser. The El Segundo, California, company, focused on building nuclear reactors for grid-independent projects, raised $130 million a month ago in a Series A led by Day One Ventures , Dream Ventures and Snowpoint Ventures and joined by backers including Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey . Valar is also known for being one of the parties suing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the licensing process for small reactor designs. Exits too Interestingly, nuclear is also an area where we are seeing both planned and actualized public-market debuts. In the actualized category, the standout is Oklo , which develops nuclear reactors and went public last year through a merger with a SPAC launched by Sam Altman . It’s a pre-revenue company and had a recent market cap around $16 billion. It’s a pretty big-number outcome, which might help explain why other SPAC deals have also popped up: One Nuclear Energy , which wants to develop energy parks with small modular reactors to meet data center demand, announced plans in October to go public through a merger with the blank-check acquirer Hennessy Capital Investment Corp VII. Hadron Energy , a developer of light-water micro-modular reactors, announced plans in September to go public through a merger with a SPAC, GigCapital7 Corp., in a $1.2 billion deal. Terrestrial Energy , a developer of small modular nuclear plants, completed a SPAC merger in October and trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol IMSR. The ’70s boom, redux? For those putting their money behind expectations of a nuclear power development renaissance, it helps that the political winds are turning in their direction. In May, President Trump signed executive orders intended to greatly increase domestic production of nuclear power in the next 25 years. The act aims to speed up approvals of new projects. These won’t mimic 1970s installations in form or purpose. They’ll likely be smaller, not always grid-connected, and conceived with an eye toward feeding the power demands of artificial intelligence. However, the hope among investors is that in terms of the quantity of power generated and new installations built, we will enter another boom era. Related Crunchbase query: Nuclear Energy-Related Recent Funding Rounds Related reading: Fusion Startup Helion Powers Up With $425M Series F Illustration: Dom Guzman We are excluding fusion-related investment in this piece, which we have covered periodically as an investment category. This is in part because fusion has more of the characteristics of the classic venture-backed sector featuring something that has not been commercially deployed before. By contrast, while fission startups are of course also innovating in new ways, the core technology is not new. ↩Source InformationPublisher: CrunchbaseOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Hollywood Legend Turned Startup Investor Jeffrey Katzenberg On Where He’s Placing His AI BetsWhen Jeffrey Katzenberg sold DreamWorks Animation in 2016, he knew his next venture would be technology related. Soon after the sale, he teamed up with former NEA principal Sujay Jaswa in 2016 to found WndrCo , a holding company and venture capital firm “reimaginging how people live and work.” With $2.8 billion in assets under management, the firm has invested in companies including Writer AI , 1Password , Abridge , Airtable , Alembic , Aura , Cursor , Databricks , Figma , Point Wild and Super Unlimited . Film producer to tech investor may not seem like the most natural of evolutions. But for Katzenberg, it wasn’t a stretch. Before DreamWorks, he was chair of Walt Disney Studios , which during his tenure, produced films such as “Aladdin,” “The Lion King,” and “Beauty and the Beast.” He was also previously president of Paramount Pictures . Over the course of his illustrious and legendary career, Katzenberg experienced firsthand how technology could impact the film industry — from Steven Spielberg building a big shark out of plastic and dragging it behind a motorboat as a “special effect” to the “transformative” power of animation. Jeffrey Katzenberg “I always saw tech as a competitive advantage in storytelling,” Katzenberg told Crunchbase News in an interview. The introduction of computer graphics and CGI didn’t evolve animation, he said, but “revolutionized” it. And that, he said, is somewhat analogous to what’s going on with AI today, and not just in media, but “writ large.” “It’s actually a fantastic, interesting use case of where you can see not only total and complete reinvention and disruption, but the ultimate outcome of something bigger and better,” Katzenberg said. “It displaced every job, but it did not eliminate jobs. And that’s where I actually have a slightly more optimistic point of view about what is coming our way .” Justin Wexler Today, Katzenberg and WndrCo general partner Justin Wexler lead the firm’s enterprise AI investing practice and work with portfolio companies to secure big customer wins, helping them land deals with brands like Nike , Delta , NBA and Disney . WndroCo Holdco, the firm’s company-building arm, has incubated eight companies with a total of a combined $1.25 billion in top-line revenue and $250 million in EBITDA. Through this strategy, WndrCo partners with founders and CEOs, often acquiring controlling stakes in “underappreciated” tech companies in an effort to turn them into category leaders. Crunchbase News conducted a video interview with the pair to get their thoughts on what’s next when it comes to enterprise AI and how storytelling can be a competitive advantage. The interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Where are we exactly in the enterprise AI cycle? Katzenberg: We are of the school that the world is being revolutionized, not “evolutionized,” by the introduction of AI on the third anniversary of ChatGPT and all of the amazing things that have happened since then. There are many ways to look at AI. It’s such a giant umbrella … and it has so many verticals in it … and so many layers, some of which are out of our realm. We’re not in the hyperscaler business. We’re not in the LLM business. We’re not in the infrastructure side of it. … We are most excited about the simplest applications that actually change how people go about their lives, be it at work or at home in their professional lives or on the consumer side of it. The overarching category would be the consumerization of software. So we’re trying to stay very focused on this idea that if you actually just took what has already been created with these large language models, and where we are in January 2026, the value that can be built today with the tech that has already been created and is deployable, could be bigger than everything that has come before it. Wexler: We’re in a pretty unique role in this ecosystem that we have a lot of pride in. Jeffrey has built so many relationships over decades, and a lot of folks admire the transformation he had to go through in animation. So we just try to be a really close partner to a lot of Fortune 500 execs, as they’re thinking about, “There’s this totally game-changing technology with generative LM AI and agentic AI. How do I deploy it to transform my part of the organization?” …Getting deployments at scale that are successful is hard to do, and it’s hard for many reasons. There’s a lot of confusion in a lot of these organizations on how best to set up AI for a lot of success. It’s hard for a startup alone to try to be learning about an organization while selling and while competing with a lot of other noise in the market. … One thing that we spend a lot of time with the founders we work with is helping them navigate that … because if you can prove success, then you can really scale. It’s also a huge unlock for enterprise. But to date, there’s been a lot of deployments that, because you don’t have that alignment, it’s a lose-lose for everybody. We actually counted one company that did like 200 meetings with a startup, and it went nowhere because the alignment wasn’t there. The technology could have been very impactful to them, but they didn’t have that organizational alignment. So that ingredient is so important. We’ve tried to play that role. Katzenberg: I think that’s where our role is becoming more important and valuable, and that can be summed up in a simple word: trust. We’ve now been doing this long enough that we have built out a pretty extraordinary network of relationships with the Fortune 500 companies and the C-suites there, and we have brought multiple products to them over the past couple of years, each one of which has actually delivered on...

خلاصہ: Sector Snapshot: Defense Tech Funding Hits Record HighGlobal defense spending is on the rise, and startups are vying for a larger share of the outlays. Looks like there’s plenty of capital to go around too. Last year, world military expenditures rose 9% to top $2.7 trillion, per think tank Sipri’s estimate. It was the sharpest rise in more than 30 years. Meanwhile, in startup-land, defense tech is also sizzling. This applies to virtually every metric, including total spending, round counts, large deals and unicorn creation. In fact, global investment in defense tech has already hit a record high this year. The numbers: Funding to VC-backed startups in defense — defined here as the industries of military, national security and law enforcement — hit $7.7 billion across close to 100 deals in 2025, per Crunchbase data. That’s already well over double last year’s investment tally, as charted below, and marks an all-time high for investment in the space. Noteworthy recent rounds: Ultra-large rounds were key in boosting the totals. So far this year, at least 10 rounds of $200 million or more have gone to companies in defense categories, per Crunchbase data. Anduril Industries, probably the most famous defense tech startup, was also this year’s top fundraiser. The Costa Mesa, California-based company closed a $2.5 billion Series G round this summer. Founders Fund led the financing, which more than doubled 8-year-old Anduril’s valuation to $30.5 billion. Defense and critical infrastructure tech startup Chaos Industries, was another investor favorite. The Los Angeles-based startup locked up a $500 million Series D this month, just six months after closing a $275 million Series C. Founded in 2022, Chaos specializes in advanced detection, monitoring and communication for the defense and commercial sectors. The company develops a radar system that provides early warning and tracking capabilities against drones, missiles and aircraft. Meanwhile, Austin-based Saronic has closed on considerable capital to develop autonomous surface vessels for naval and maritime use. The 3-year-old startup picked up $600 million in Series C funding early this year. Europe is also upping its defense spending considerably, with EU expenditures reaching record levels in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine. In tandem, defense-related startups in the region are attracting big checks. The frontrunner here is Munich-based Helsing, a startup focused on applying software to modernize and improve defense capabilities, which raised $694 million in Series D funding this summer. Software is eating the military: Defense-focused investors are optimistic that the recent spike in startup funding to the space is an indicator of much more to come. In an overview this year, Point72 Ventures, a venture investor with defense among its core focus areas, opined that in coming years “AI, autonomy, and software-first systems will redefine modern conflict with their prioritization of agility over mass and scale.” Per Point72, much of the defense sector’s industrial base was designed for a different era, in which six- to eight-year timelines and “hardware-first thinking” were the norm. Today, it says, “that’s not going to cut it.” Recent conflicts have shown there’s an urgent need for new technologies including autonomous systems, electronic warfare and advanced manufacturing. While we at Crunchbase News lack the expertise to opine on the demands of a modern military, we can say something about what venture checkbooks indicate about the space’s momentum. In this area, it’s clear that investors’ interest is on the rise. Given the relative youth of much of the defense startup pipeline, there’s also a high likelihood of bigger checks to come. Related Crunchbase queries: Global Defense Tech Funding Defense Tech Rounds Of $200M Or More, 2025 Related reading: Defense Tech Unicorn Anduril Powers Up With $2.5B At $30.5B Valuation Defense Tech Startup Chaos Industries Hits $2B Valuation Illustration: Dom Guzman Source InformationPublisher: CrunchbaseOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Edtech-Specific Startup Funding Stays LowFunding to startups specifically focused on education technology remains at depressed levels relative to a few years ago. However, the tallies —  which exclude general-purpose AI platforms popular with educators, students and investors alike — may understate enthusiasm at the intersection of tech and education. So far this year, global edtech-focused startups have raised around $2.8 billion in seed- through growth-stage funding, per Crunchbase data. That’s roughly flat with 2024 levels, pointing to stabilizing investment, albeit at a fraction of the peak a few years ago. In the U.S., this year’s funding numbers are a bit stronger relative to 2024, with $1.2 billion invested in edtech startups so far. While still far off of the pandemic-era highs, 2025’s funding figures puts this year roughly on par with 2023. What’s in and what’s out Edtech is a vast space, covering everything from preschool lesson-planning to corporate upskilling. Given this, it’s not uncommon to see a downturn in one subcategory while another remains a funding favorite. If we were to generalize trends looking at this year’s larger rounds and exits, it appears investors are particularly keen on opportunities in healthcare education and training. At the K-12 level, VCs are also backing startups deploying AI tools to customize lessons for individuals and free up teachers from routine, repetitive tasks. As for what’s not hot, we’ve seen a movement away from coding academies and teaching platforms, with the rise of coding automation tools. We’re also seeing a paucity of jumbo-sized funding rounds and not a lot of deals that look like pre-IPO financings. What the biggest rounds tell us So who is getting funded? Amboss, a Berlin-based startup offering a tool to learn about and research medical information, raised the largest round, securing nearly $260 million in a March financing. The company started with a focus on medical students but now also markets to practitioners. Lingokids, a provider of content and online learning activities for young children, secured the next-biggest funding, a $120 million September round led by Bullhound Capital. Other larger rounds this year include an $80 million financing for EdSights, developer of a chatbot to help students navigate college life and boost retention, and a $45 million Series B for MagicSchool AI, a provider of AI-enabled time-saving and productivity-enhancing tools for educators. For a slightly broader view, below we put together a list of eight of the larger funding recipients in the education sector this year. Buyers too Edtech is also seeing some exit activity. This is coming in the form of M&A, as the IPO market has been quiet this year. Most recently, CareAcademy, a platform for healthcare workers to learn new skills and obtain certifications, sold to Activated Insights, a software platform for senior living and home care providers, for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2013, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Care Academy previously raised at least $33 million in known venture funding. The company, founded and led by Harvard-trained educator Helen Adeosun, carved out a niche offering upskilling opportunities to health workers like home care aides and nursing home staffers, opening a path to advancement for what are typically lower-paid positions. Also in the health sphere, OnlineMedEd, an Austin startup focused on online learning tools for medical students and educators, sold this spring to exam prep provider Archer Review, a portfolio company of private equity firm Leeds Equity Partners. Previously, 11-year-old OnlineMedEd had raised at least $30 million in venture funding. And in the post-secondary education space, Modern Campus, a Toronto-based provider of software tools for colleges to attract and retain students, sold a majority stake to PE firm Providence Equity Partners in August. The optimist case Looking ahead, the optimist case is that founders, investors and acquirers alike will find plenty of appealing opportunities in ed tech. Longtime education startup investor Owl Ventures considers the education and training market to be one of the fastest-growing sectors in the global economy. In its 2025 report, the firm projects the global education market is on track to surpass $10 trillion by 2030. In terms of growth, Owl unsurprisingly points to AI as the largest ed tech driver. In recent years, the report notes, AI in the classroom has moved beyond the experimentation stage and is already proving vital in saving educators hours of work, providing personalized tutoring to students, and helping craft compelling lesson plans. Eventually, it’s likely we’ll see the impact of AI innovation in edtech also showing in the form of more funding for startups in the space. Related Crunchbase queries: Edtech And Education-Related Funding, 2025 Notable Education-Related Startups Funded In 2025 Related reading: Cursor’s $2.3B Financing Reminds Us: Coding Automation Is Still Ultra-Hot Illustration: Dom Guzman Source InformationPublisher: CrunchbaseOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Innovation Policies: The Australian Lesson Focusing Startup Investments On A Few Strategic SectorsBy Alberto Onetti For some time now, I’ve been pointing out how Australia has been making significant progress, positioning itself as a strong competitor among the innovation ecosystems of the Asia-Pacific region. The Scaleup Summit Australia, which Mind the Bridge organizes every October with the support of Investment NSW, offers a good opportunity to take stock — also thanks to the data and analysis from the “Tech Scaleup Australia 2025” report, published with the support of Crunchbase and Acciona. The numbers Australia is home to 1,582 scaleups —  almost six scaleups per 100,000 inhabitants, a remarkable number considering the country’s relatively small population — that have collectively raised more than $36 billion in capital (around 2% of national GDP). Aside from the major Asian economies (the 2 billion-plus-people nations of China and India, which play in a different league with 12,403 and 4,112 scaleups respectively), Australia’s numbers are not far behind South Korea (2,127) and Japan (2,268), roughly on par with Singapore (1,660), and 3x larger than emerging ecosystems like the UAE (503). Notably, Australia also stands out as fertile ground for large tech companies — what we call scalers. We identified 71 Australian scaleups that have each raised over $100 million, a number comparable to Japan (86) and South Korea (96). This can be explained by the relative isolation of the Australian ecosystem, which has encouraged the creation of national champions in strategic sectors for the continent such as construction, mining and energy — collectively referred to as “infratech.” Infratech: Australia’s house specialty A closer look at the infratech landscape shows steady growth over the past five years, with venture capital investments rising from $100 million in 2020 to nearly $500 million in 2025. Among Australian scaleups, about 1 in 10 (107) operate in this vertical, covering the entire value chain: from critical resources (21%) to construction (57%) and energy systems (22%). Australia’s dominance in mining AI As highlighted in the “Unlocking the Future of Mining” report developed by Mind the Bridge with support from BHP, Austmine and Hub de Innovación Minera del Perú, and based on dozens of interviews with mining industry experts, large infrastructure projects promoted by local and international corporations (including ACCIONA, BHP and Rio Tinto) are increasingly integrating new technologies such as AI, advanced robotics, computer vision and digital twins. Therefore, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Australia leads globally, accounting for nearly three quarters of all investments in AI for mining, far ahead of China (12%) and the United States (9%). Australia’s dominance in mining AI reflects structural strengths that are tough to match. The country combines large-scale mining operations, supportive regulations and a mature ecosystem of mining tech vendors and talent — which made it the global hub for mining innovation. For companies abroad, this means access to mining AI capabilities now largely depends on partnering with Australian platforms and experts. Investment landscape: industrial roots, corporate muscle Investors are also moving into tech areas like space tech, UAVs, drones and autonomous mobility, especially when these intersect with construction and mining applications. Although Australia’s investor landscape is broad — with 491 active VCs and CVCs currently managing around $32 billion of dry powder available for local scaleup investments (see map on MTB Ecosystem) — it remains largely focused on seed- and early-stage funding (the majority of funds — 73% — are under $50 million). However, what’s particularly interesting — and consistent with the industrial drive of the Australian ecosystem — is that most of the mega funds (over $1 billion) are corporate venture capital vehicles. Leading examples include Rio Tinto, as well as banks like Macquarie Group, ANZ, National Australia Bank and Commonwealth Bank of Australia. Specialization attracts international players, dispersion does not The Australian strong specialization in specific verticals is attracting the interest of global corporates: 26 large international companies have set up innovation outposts Down Under (map available on MTB Ecosystem). This sends a powerful message in today’s innovation world, where the concentration of investments in a handful of major ecosystems has effectively reduced the visibility of nearly all others, pushing them toward marginalization and irrelevance. Specialization, whether in technological domains or industrial applications, can help some of these ecosystems stand out and claim their space on the global innovation map. For more insights on startup and scaleup ecosystems, see Mind the Bridge’s reports (available for free download here).   Alberto Onetti is chairman of Mind the Bridge and a professor at University of Insubria. He is a serial entrepreneur who has started three startups in his career, the last of which is Funambol, among the five Italian scaleups that have raised the largest amount of capital. He is recognized among the leading international experts in open innovation and has wide experience in setting up and managing open innovation projects — venture clients, venture builders, intrapreneurship, CVCs — with large multinational companies, as well as advising and training on this subject. Onetti has a column on Sifted (Financial Times) and several other tech blogs. Related reading: A Strategic Bridge Between Africa And Europe: Tunisia’s Role In The Innovation Ecosystem  Startups, This Is Why Japan Can’t Be Ignored 10x In 10 Years: Korea’s Startup Ecosystem Comes of Age Spain’s Startup Economy: Sustainable Model or Achilles’ Heel? The Dual-Use Tech Surge: Innovation’s Double-Edged Sword AI Is Gorging On Venture Capital. This Is Why ‘Physical AI’ Is Next Illustration: Li-Anne Dias Source InformationPublisher: CrunchbaseOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: The Patience Gap In Healthcare AI, And What To Do About ItBy Jonathan Kron Healthcare funding is surging again. Crunchbase data shows investors put an estimated $10.7 billion globally into startups in AI-powered health tech categories so far this year — already 24% higher than 2024’s full-year total. But what funders are failing to understand is that in this sector, adoption happens in regulatory cycles instead of viral ones. Their impatient push for hockey-stick growth is quietly suffocating the kind of systemic change that healthcare actually needs. Bessemer Venture Partners’ 2025 Healthcare AI Adoption Index found that while most health systems are running pilots, only 3 in 10 projects reach production. This shows that venture speed keeps outpacing the system’s ability to absorb it. When investors push for short-term traction, founders are forced to chase momentum instead of integration. They pivot to whatever metric looks good on a dashboard, even if it drags them further from clinical adoption. Some health tech startups start building out infrastructure that could reshape the system, but end up building features that fit pitch decks. The result is predictable: high burn, high noise and very little real change. This is not a problem of bad intentions. It is a problem of mismatched time horizons. In consumer tech, speed is a moat. In healthcare, it’s often a mirage. Trust, validation and interoperability are what compound value here, and those take years. The biggest returns in healthcare don’t come from the first wave of hype. They come from the infrastructure that everyone else eventually depends on. But that kind of staying power requires patient capital, not tourist capital. Why healthcare resists ‘move fast’ culture Healthcare AI is entering a defining moment. The same ingredients that fueled the crypto boom are all here. Rapid innovation, speculative funding and a flood of new entrants. If the sector keeps overpromising and underdelivering, a correction is inevitable. The antidote is integration. The companies that will last are the ones building with clinicians and health systems, not around them. They are teams that understand data standards, compliance and workflow realities. If AI companies in healthcare focus on solving grounded, verifiable problems rather than chasing headlines, they can avoid the crash cycle and deliver real transformation. The bubble no one wants to name There is also a valuation gap worth watching. The “AI wellness” segment has exploded because it is fast to market, light on regulation and easy to pitch. Engagement metrics are plentiful, while validation is optional. Meanwhile, the “AI clinical” space, focused on diagnostics, decision support and infrastructure, is slower and harder. Yet, it is where the defensible IP, regulatory moats and long-term value live. Five years from now, the speculative wellness valuations will likely correct downward while clinically grounded AI platforms quietly underpin global health systems. Founders who win play the long game For founders, the path forward begins with alignment. Not every investor understands healthcare, and that is fine. The goal is to find those who do. It is a waste of energy to educate fast-turnover capital. In this regard, it is wise to design for adoption, not hype. A technology that fits neatly into an existing workflow will outlast dozens of flashier competitors. Founders who anchor their story in outcomes and compliance, not features, will earn the trust that drives longevity. Patient investors will own the future Investors have a role to play, too. If they want meaningful change, they need to fund patient trust, not just fast algorithms. A model can be brilliant and still fail if it never earns clinical confidence. They should back integration-first models and think in decades, not quarters. Healthcare transformation doesn’t follow startup speed, and it never will. The investors who accept that and stay committed through early friction will own the platforms everyone else eventually builds on. At its best, the real compounding advantage of investing in healthcare AI is about underwriting the next operating system for global health. Those who understand that difference will not only create impact but will also capture the kind of returns that only compound when you have the patience to wait. Jonathan Kron is  the CEO of BloodGPT, an AI-powered platform for diagnostic laboratories and clinics that interprets blood test results in seconds. He is a healthcare strategist and entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience building and scaling healthcare ventures. Before joining BloodGPT he founded and exited Med24, a London-based clinic (raised £5 million, exited 2022), co-founded PCG, a Monaco-based healthcare-at-home startup that secured $1 million-plus in contracts on a $500,000 seed budget, and has advised digital health ventures including Klarity and LIPS Healthcare on major fundraising and growth. Illustration: Dom Guzman Source InformationPublisher: CrunchbaseOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: 5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed: Robotic Hands, An Artificial Retina Developed In Space, A GenAI Sticker Printer For Kids, And MoreThis is a monthly column that runs down five interesting startup funding deals every month that may have flown under the radar. Check out our September entry here. Many months, this column is dominated by AI-related startups of the software variety. That’s not too surprising, given that those companies receive the bulk of venture funding these days. Still, for this month’s edition of 5 Interesting Startup Deals, all the funded companies that caught our eye were hardware-centric, from a medical device for at-home acne treatment, to an artificial retina developed aboard the International Space Station. Here’s a closer look. $25M for in-home injectable acne care Just a few short years ago, the idea that one would get a prescription without ever stepping into a doctor’s office, then administer said treatment oneself, at home, by injecting oneself with a needle seemed … far-flung, to say the least. But that was then, and this is now. In 2025, millions of Americans have grown accustomed to getting prescriptions for injectable medications such as Ozempic online, with a few clicks of a button, and then administering those treatments to themselves in the comfort of their own homes. One of the platforms that led the way in online healthcare is Hims & Hers, which started in 2017 by prescribing and selling men’s products such as generic Viagra and hair-loss treatments online, and now operates a fully fledged telehealth network offering everything from birth control medications to GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. Now, an alumnus of Hims has started a similar business, but for acne care. Hims & Hers co-founder Jack Abraham’s new startup, Indomo, recently emerged from stealth with $25 million in funding. The startup, which is still in clinical trials, says it aims to be the first and only company to bring prescription corticosteroid injections for acne straight to consumers in their homes, via its ClearPen microneedle device. “ClearPen will be the first big innovation in acne care since Accutane,” Abraham, who also serves as managing partner at Atomic, said in a statement. “For too long, people have had to choose between ineffective surface treatments or waiting weeks for a dermatologist. ClearPen will provide patients instant access to a corticosteroid microneedle injection right in their bathroom cabinet.” Along with Atomic, investors in Indomo include Foresite Capital and Polaris Partners. The company said it will use its capital to support Phase 2 clinical trials and the development of its device platform. Long-term, it aims to use its ClearPen technology to address other skin conditions beyond acne. “We look for teams that marry scientific rigor with practical impact,” Foresite partner Hyung Chun said in a statement. “Indomo applies proven dermatology science in an accessible, patient-friendly format — with an emphasis on precision and patient safety during development. That combination is rare.” Related Crunchbase query: Venture Funding To Telehealth Startups Just the hands, please: $16M for humanoid robotic limbs If you’ve been following the robotics sector, you’re likely aware that there’s something of an ongoing debate in the industry: To be humanoid, or not to be humanoid? For Zurich-based Mimic Robotics, the answer is: Both, sort of. The Swiss company earlier this month announced $16 million in new funding to develop its industrial robotic limbs, which sport human-like hands and are designed to sit on a rolling table top in a factory or retail setting. “Humanoids are exciting, but there aren’t many industrial scenarios where the full-body form factor truly adds value,” Stephan-Daniel Gravert, co-founder and CPO at Mimic, said in a statement. “Our approach pairs AI-driven dexterous robotic hands with proven, off-the-shelf robot arms to deliver the same capabilities in a way that is much simpler, more reliable and rapidly deployable.” That’s a similar approach to MicroFactory, a San Francisco-based startup that we featured in last month’s edition of this column. That company, too, eschewed the full-body bot approach to focus only on the appendages needed for a particular task, though the Bay Area company’s robotic arms featured various tool attachments rather than humanoid hands and fingers. Mimic has raised $20.8 million to date, per Crunchbase. Its latest round was led by Elaia, alongside Speedinvest. Other investors in what the company described as a “heavily oversubscribed” seed round were Founderful, 1st kind, 10x Founders, 2100 Ventures and Sequoia Scout. Overall, robotics funding — for both humanoid and non-humanoid designs — has been on a tear this year, Crunchbase data shows. In fact, investment to robotics-related startups in 2025 is on track to hit the highest total since 2021 as companies including Figure and The Bot Co. raise large rounds. Related Crunchbase query: Robotics Startup Funding $7M for a blindness treatment developed in low-earth orbit It takes a lot for a funding round to land on this list, given the steady flow of intriguing deals that cross our desk in any given month. But a startup making artificial retinas aboard the International Space Station certainly crosses that high bar. LambdaVision is a startup working on developing an artificial retina in the microgravity environment on the ISS’ orbiting laboratory. The Farmington, Connecticut-based company earlier this month closed a $7 million seed funding round to continue work on developing a protein-based artificial retina for people with retinal degenerative diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration, which cause partial or complete blindness for millions of people worldwide every year. The startup is working to develop highly uniform, 200-layer protein thin films for artificial retinas in the microgravity environment aboard the ISS, since the process is challenging to do on Earth, according to the company. Its new funding will be used to advance preclinical development and scale up space-enabled manufacturing of the retina. “The round underscores the growing recognition of the potential for space-based biomanufacturing to accelerate the development of life-changing therapies on Earth,” LambdaVision CEO Nicole Wagner said in a statement. “This seed round funding will help bring us closer to clinical trials and continue to pioneer scalable production of our artificial retina, including manufacturing techniques implemented in low-Earth orbit.” Its...

خلاصہ: Cursor’s $2.3B Financing Reminds Us: Coding Automation Is Still Ultra-HotCoding automation platform Cursor announced today that it has raised $2.3 billion in Series D funding at a $29.3 billion post-money valuation. That valuation is more than 3x higher than what Cursor parent company Anysphere secured just six months ago, an indication that investors 1 see both lightning-fast growth and enormous potential for more to come for startups in the coding automation space. Cursor has certainly signed on to that vision as well. The San Francisco-headquartered company, founded in 2022, now has a team of more than 300 and touts ambitious plans to extend its footprint. The company also said it now has over $1 billion in annualized revenue. Other investor favorites But Cursor is far from the only startup attracting considerable attention and big checks from venture investors lately. Using Crunchbase data, we put together a sample of a dozen companies working on AI-enabled coding and software development tools that raised sizable rounds in the past several quarters. AI coding startup Cognition is another investor favorite. The San Francisco company, known for its AI software development platform Devin, secured $400 million in a September round led by Founders Fund at a $10.2 billion valuation. Replit, an agentic platform for app development, also scored big, landing a $250 million Series C this summer. And Lovable, a Swedish startup offering AI-enabled app and website development, pulled in $200 million in a July financing. Exits too Coding automation is also an area where acquirers are active. This includes Cursor. OpenAI reportedly made overtures to acquire the company last year, but a deal did not come to fruition. Cursor parent Anysphere has also been an active buyer, acquiring fellow startups Koala and Supermaven in roughly the past year. Cognition is also an M&A player, having announced in July that it was acquiring definitive agreement code automation provider Windsurf. Just prior to that, Google hired away Windsurf’s CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and research leaders in a $2.4 billion tie-up. Given that the most heavily funded companies in the AI coding space are mostly relatively youthful startups, we’ve yet to see activity on the IPO front. But if things keep progressing at the current pace, that might not be far away. Related Crunchbase query: Recently Funded Startups Related To AI Coding Related reading: AI Talent Wars Heat Up As Cognition Scoops Up Windsurf After OpenAI Deal Falls Apart Illustration: Dom Guzman Existing backers Accel, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and DST participated in the latest round, along with new investors Coatue, Nvidia and Google.↩Source InformationPublisher: CrunchbaseOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Accel’s Report Outlines The Race For Compute Amid Surging ValuesPhilippe Botteri, a partner at Accel, launched the firm’s GlobalScape report on the mainstage at WebSummit in Lisbon, Portugal, with the report highlighting the extent to which value on the public markets has concentrated in a small group of elite companies and how a new generation of native AI companies is rapidly accelerating. Accel is one of the top three most-active investors on The Crunchbase Unicorn Board. The Silicon Valley firm has invested in 17 companies that have joined the board in the AI boom this year, according to Crunchbase data. Its GlobalScape report, centered on the U.S., Europe and Israel, analyzed the surge in values in public and private AI-driven companies and the capex buildout required to keep growing in the next five years. Here are some key takeaways from the report, which Botteri presented on stage in Lisbon, where Crunchbase News was also in attendance. Public market concentration The “Super Six” group of companies — Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta — represent close to half of the current Nasdaq market cap as of October 2025. Altogether, that totals $20.7 trillion. “I don’t think we have ever seen such a high concentration in the industry,” Botteri said. These six companies added $4.9 trillion in market capitalization between October 2025 and a year earlier, and showed $600 billion of operating cash flow in 2024. Public cloud is up 25% The public cloud index, a select list of U.S.-, Europe- and Israel-based companies built on the prior cloud wave, including UiPath, GitLab, Palantir Technologies and Figma was up 25% year over year as of October. Those companies are all adding agentic capabilities to their products, Botteri said. However, it’s still early. “The models are probabilistic, so if you run a model 10 times in a row, given the probability nature of it, after 10 actions, you have a divergence.” Botteri anticipates that we are 12 to 24 months from these tool capabilities delivering improved outcomes with advances in governance and security. New generation of native AI On the model and infrastructure front, notable investments for Accel include generative AI company Anthropic, small model developer H Co., and publicly traded AI infrastructure provider Nebius Group, along with numerous investments on the application side. The U.S. dominates on the foundation model side of AI, but there are also more specialized models — which don’t require tens of billions of dollars to be developed — where Europe can contribute, said Botteri, citing portfolio company H, which has developed a computer-use model to take actions on the computer on behalf of a user. “On the application , it’s very much a level playing field,” he said. The firm’s report claims that European and Israeli AI and cloud investments are two-thirds the size of the U.S. investment market, excluding model companies. A new generation of native AI applications are growing at an unprecedented rate. Botteri named a few AI native Accel portfolio companies, including coding company Anysphere, maker of Cursor; AI search engine Perplexity; Stockholm-based vibe coding startup Lovable;  Berlin-based business automation platform n8n; Synthesia, which offers AI video creation for the enterprise; and Israel-based security company Cyera. Energy shortfall The report also outlined the energy shortfall to deliver AI over the next five years — around 117 gigawatts — the equivalent to powering Italy, Spain and the U.K. combined, said Botteri. For context to understand the buildout required, a nuclear power plant creates 1 to 2 gigawatts of power. The Super Six group of companies, who are investing in much of this infrastructure buildout over the next five years, are expected to generate around $5.5 trillion in operating cash flow. That operating cash flow along with the debt markets, will go a long way to addressing the $4 trillion required to build out this capacity, Boterri said. For this infrastructure buildout, the report estimates the revenue payback should be $3.1 trillion, an increase of 1% to 2% of compound average GDP growth per year. “If you don’t think that GenAI is going to generate a 1%-2% increase in the global GDP,  then I’m not sure why we’re doing all this,” said Botteri. Source InformationPublisher: CrunchbaseOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Exclusive: BoomPop Books $25M To Help Companies Plan Events And Offsites Using AIBoomPop, an AI-powered event planning platform, has raised $25 million in equity funding, the company tells Crunchbase News exclusively. The startup has also secured $16 million of debt and credit via Silicon Valley Bank. The equity portion of the raise was led by Wing VC. Other participants included Atomic, Acme Capital, Four Rivers Group, Thayer Investment Partners (which counts large hotels as LPs), the Fund of Operators Guild, and Gaingels. Several individual investors also wrote checks into the round, including MLB All-Star Alex Rodriguez, former DoorDash President Christopher Payne, and other Silicon Valley founders. With the latest financing, San Francisco-based BoomPop has raised a total of just under $56 million in funding since its 2020 inception. The company declined to reveal valuation, saying only that it was a “good up round.” BoomPop started as a research entity called BoomBox during the COVID pandemic, planning virtual events, before transitioning into its current iteration in 2023. It was born out of the Atomic venture studio. The startup essentially aims to function as a “trusted event planner,” making it easier for companies to plan offsites and events for employees. “Most people don’t realize that when it comes to corporate travel, almost 60% of it involves groups,” said CEO and co-founder Healey Cypher in an interview. “And most people don’t know that if you need to book more than 10 hotel rooms, you cannot do that online.” The demand is apparently there. BoomPop said it has more than 450 clients, including Netflix, Google, Dropbox, Hims & Hers and Anaconda, and has seen impressive growth. It ranked No. 115 on the most recent Inc. 5000 list, reporting 3,073% three-year growth. It currently has a revenue run rate of over $75 million. Cypher projects the company should cap just over $100 million in total gross revenue this quarter. (The company makes 12% to 14% of gross for net revenue, he said.) BoomPop’s raise is one of the largest so far this year for events-related startups, Crunchbase data shows. All told, startups in the category globally have raised just under $252 million year to date, including BoomPop’s funding deal, marking a down year for the sector. That compares with more than $361 million in all of 2024, $435.6 million in 2023 and $2.1 billion in the peak year of 2021. How it works BoomPop is powered by AI, but it operates on the premise that “nothing replaces authentic human connection,” Cypher told Crunchbase News. It works as a companion to employees working to plan offsites or events for a company, with both self-serve and full-service options. For those who want more hand-holding, BoomPop employs a 35-person professional planning team that handles planning and on-site support “for higher end, more complex events,” according to Cypher. Presently, BoomPop has about 110 employees. A staffer could tell BoomPop that his or her company wants to plan a 100-person founder summit within a three-hour drive from San Francisco with a lot of fun activities. The system would then analyze “millions” of data points in real time, such as weather, hotel and venue pricing, flights, citywide events that might also be taking place, and past itineraries. It would then offer event options, with a range of variations. Based on preferences, the AI then takes over execution, booking “vetted” vendors, reviewing contracts, building event websites, managing RSVPs and coordinating directly with hotels “to ensure guest preferences — such as dietary restrictions — are met.” The company claims that its AI can accomplish tasks in minutes that “once required entire teams weeks to complete.” BoomPop’s AI is trained on a proprietary database of curated, vetted vendors, including hotels, spaces, restaurants, activities, facilitators, caterers and photographers. It can do things like message employees if there’s a last-minute change in dinner venues. It can also get sizes for any swag and compile any dietary restrictions, in addition to planning minute-by-minute itineraries, among other things. To date, BoomPop has helped book over 60,000 hotel nights for its customers. Its fastest-growing segment is company offsites and retreats. Interestingly, the startup doesn’t just help plan events for employees. It also helps them plan events for clients. “I did deep research and found that the number one marketing channel for the scaled AI companies is client events,” Cypher said. Making group events scaleable Gaurav Garg, founding partner at Wing Venture Capital, notes that in a post-pandemic world with more remote and hybrid work models, companies are investing more resources into bringing their employees together. But the process behind planning and executing these gatherings “is still painfully manual,” in his view.“BoomPop brings together what used to be a patchwork of tools into a single intelligent product,” he told Crunchbase News via email. “At Wing, we believe the next generation of enterprise software will be AI-native: deeply intelligent, vertically focused, and obsessed with user experience. BoomPop embodies that thesis perfectly. It’s transforming an outdated, service-heavy industry into a digital, automated ecosystem that’s built for the way modern teams actually work and travel.” BoomPop makes money in several ways. For one, it charges what Cypher described as a “relatively low” SaaS fee for its offering that allows internal staffers to plan events. It also offers an optional premium product, which acts as a boutique agency to help plan events or offsites, that are billed per attendee, per event. BoomPop primarily makes its money from vendors who pay it a finder’s fee. In late September, Brex also announced a partnership with BoomPop that allows companies to book private dining and sports suites using Brex points. Related Crunchbase query: Venture Funding To Events-Related Startups Illustration: Dom Guzman Source InformationPublisher: CrunchbaseOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Crunchbase Sector Snapshot: It’s Been A Down Year For E-Commerce FundingConsumers and businesses are projected to spend more than $6 trillion on e-commerce retail platforms this year. Nonetheless, startup investors are finding fewer deals they like in the space. The broad trend: While investors are still backing some big rounds, overall funding to e-commerce startup categories has declined in 2025. Even so, we are seeing some bright spots, including quick delivery, livestream shopping and AI-enabled e-commerce. The numbers: So far in this year, investors put around $7.3 billion into global e-commerce-related startup funding rounds. That puts 2025 on track to deliver the sector’s lowest investment tally in years. Funding remains stuck at a fraction of its peak four years ago, and deal counts are also way down. To illustrate, we charted investment for the past six calendar years below. U.S. e-commerce funding, by contrast, looks on track to be relatively flat year over year. Even so, investment is down more than 80% from the peak. Noteworthy recent rounds: Food and grocery delivery continue to be major themes for e-commerce funding. In the U.S., the largest financing along these lines went to New York-based Wonder, a food takeout and delivery startup that raised $600 million in May at a reported $7 billion valuation. A sort of modernized version of the food court, Wonder lets customers order a selection of different cuisines from a single location. Indian e-commerce unicorn Zepto, which offers quick deliveries of groceries and household supplies, also did well, snagging $450 million last month at a $7 billion valuation. Live shopping platform Whatnot was also a venture favorite, securing $225 million in an October Series F. The San Francisco-based company said it has surpassed $6 billion in live sales this year. Below, we look at nine of the leading e-commerce fundraisers of 2025. The broad takeaway: A mature space, but newcomers can still find niche markets. Early adopters have been buying stuff online for roughly three decades now, and early entrant Amazon is now a $2.6 trillion company. Suffice it to say, e-commerce is a fairly mature space, leaving limited new addressable markets for startups. That said, we haven’t reached the zenith of on-demand commerce, and, as Whatnot’s rise exemplifies, buyers are always looking for a compelling new shopping experience. As AI technology advances, we’re also likely to see more startups finding innovative ways to apply it to e-commerce. Related Crunchbase queries and lists: E-Commerce Startup Funding, 2025 Notable E-Commerce Funding Rounds Of 2025 Related reading: Whatnot Lands $225M Series F, More Than Doubles Valuation to $11.5B Since January Source InformationPublisher: CrunchbaseOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Crunchbase Sector Snapshot: Funding To AI-Related Healthcare Startups Is Robust This YearStartup investment has been on the rise this year, but some industries have benefited more than others. AI-related healthcare is one of the spaces that have seen a significant rise in funding globally, Crunchbase data shows. Overall funding to the space is up this year, as more startups are tackling high-pain and high-cost parts of the healthcare system. The broad trend: Venture investment in healthcare and biotech companies that have an AI bent has been on an upward trajectory in recent years. This year is on track to be another up one, with 2025’s funding totals already topping 2024’s full-year tallies. It’s not entirely surprising why: Many healthcare organizations still operate with outdated tech, and the need for innovation is massive. (As one personal example, I was given a CD with X-ray imaging at a recent ER visit.) The numbers: Investors put an estimated $10.7 billion into seed- through growth-stage funding to companies in AI-powered health tech categories so far this year, Crunchbase data shows. That means that 2025 funding is already 24.4% higher than the $8.6 billion raised in all of 2024. Investment hit a high point in Q1 of this year, with a drop in the subsequent two quarters, per Crunchbase data. Interestingly, a recent report from Menlo Ventures about AI and healthcare outlines the factors that are likely contributing to heightened investor interest. The report surveyed more than 700 health systems, outpatient, payer and life sciences leaders. Some of its findings include: AI adoption in healthcare — a $4.9 trillion industry — is now 2.2x faster than the broader economy. The industry, according to Menlo, represents one-fifth of the U.S. economy but only 12% percent of software spend. Startups are capturing the vast majority of spend, while legacy vendors struggle to keep up. Specifically, the survey found that 85% of all generative AI spend in healthcare currently flows to startups rather than incumbents. According to the firm’s research, 22% of healthcare organizations have implemented domain-specific AI tools, a 7x increase over 2024 and 10x over 2023. Medical documentation and back-office RCM, or revenue cycle management, comprise nearly 60% of all healthcare IT spending. Larger rounds This year has seen multiple megarounds in the health care space. The largest AI-related healthcare/biotech venture round of the year closed in March. That’s when Isomorphic Labs, a Google spinoff that provides AI-driven solutions for drug discovery and development, raised $600 million in a funding round led by Thrive Capital. The financing marked the company’s first external funding round as it looks to apply artificial intelligence to the drug development process. Other investors included GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Alphabet. Notably, more than one company in the space raised multiple rounds this year: Lila Sciences, a 2-year-old startup working on what it calls a “scientific superintelligence platform” for life sciences, chemistry and materials science, announced three funding rounds in seven months’ time: a $200 million seed round in March; a $235 million Series A in September and a $115 million Series A extension at a $1.3 billion valuation in October — for a total of $550 million raised in 2025 alone. Investors in the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company include General Catalyst, Alumni Ventures, Catalio Capital Management, Flagship Pioneering and NVentures. Abridge, a 7-year-old AI-driven platform that turns patient-clinician conversations into “structured” clinical notes for healthcare industries, raised a $250 million Series D in February and then a $300 million Series E just over four months later, valuing the  Pittsburgh-based company at $5.3 billion. Backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Elad Gil, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and IVP. OpenEvidence, which provides AI-powered medical search and clinical decision support, raised three rounds in just over eight months’ time. In February, the 4-year-old Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup became a unicorn with a $925 million Series A raise led by Sequoia Capital. Then in July, it raised a $210 million Series B financing co-led by Kleiner Perkins and GV at a $3.5 billion valuation. Finally, in October, GV doubled down on its investment by leading a $200 million Series C financing at a $6 billion valuation. Other rounds There were many other interesting rounds raised in 2025 that caught our attention. In early October, Duos, an AI-powered digital health platform for member activation and benefits execution, raising a $130 million strategic growth equity investment led by FTV Capital. Also in October, DeepMind alumnus Domenic Donato raised $13 million for his startup, Attuned Intelligence, a developer of hospital call center AI agents. (The company told Crunchbase News that it was already processing thousands of calls daily. Attuned says it went live in 10 days at Lowell Community Health Center, handling every mainline call 24/7, and that it was working toward automating up to 70% of interactions across multiple languages. Honey Health also recently emerged from stealth with $7.8 million in seed funding led by Pelion Health Partners. The company says its AI agents log into existing EHRs, or electronic health records, and autonomously complete full workflows end-to-end with the goal of cutting millions of dollars in administration overhead. And in September, Hello Patient, a 1-year-old Austin-based conversational AI company aiming to “reinvent” patient communications, announced a $22.5 million Series A financing led by Scale Venture Partners. For a bigger-picture view, below we put together a list of 10 of the year’s largest AI-related healthcare and biotech financings. The broad takeaway: It’s clear that the overall AI investment boom has funneled more capital into healthcare as one of the sectors where AI can have a large, measurable impact. Funding is climbing because the technology is better, the need in healthcare is urgent, more providers are starting to adopt AI solutions, and investors are now seeing clearer paths to scale and profit. Related Crunchbase queries:  Global Funding To AI Health Tech Companies In 2025 Leading AI Health Tech Companies Who Raised More Than $150M In 2025 YTD Illustration: Dom Guzman Source InformationPublisher: CrunchbaseOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Fast Growth, Fragile Foundations: How High-Growth Startups Can Build Financial ResilienceBy Julio Martínez When a startup takes off, it’s easy to mistake momentum for stability. MRR is climbing, new markets are opening, and hiring never stops. But for every early-stage business reaching new heights, there’s another quietly struggling to keep its financial foundations intact. Scaling can expose weaknesses previously hidden within a smaller operation. Cash flow becomes harder to track, hiring becomes reactive, investments that once felt bold now look risky without a clear link to outcomes, and the same speed that fuels growth can also spark internal chaos. This is where finance leaders come in. Their role isn’t to simply report numbers — it’s to bring clarity, consistency and control to a business moving too fast for its own good. The startups that survive this scaling mayhem are those that treat financial discipline as a growth enabler, not a constraint. Seeing the full financial picture Visibility is the foundation of resilience. You can’t navigate what you can’t see. As companies grow, financial data often lives in scattered spreadsheets or disconnected systems. That lack of clarity not only makes cash flow management harder, it also means leaders are blind to problems before they escalate. Fixing this doesn’t have to be complex. Reconcile accounts, categorize spending and track the basics: recurring revenue, outstanding invoices and payments in progress. Even assigning one person to chase late invoices can free up cash and improve forecasting pretty much overnight. Then build a rolling three-month projection with best- and worst-case outcomes. It’s not about predicting the future but rather about being ready to react quickly when it changes. Finding the real drivers of growth When growth goes wild, it’s easy to lose sight of where success really comes from. Headline metrics like total revenue or customer count rarely tell the whole story. The best finance teams dig deeper and break down performance by region, product and channel to see which areas are truly pulling their weight. Numbers alone, though, don’t necessarily explain why something works. Finance leaders need to speak to sales, product and marketing to understand what’s behind the trends. Are conversions dropping because of pricing? Is churn higher because onboarding takes too long? Blending financial data with real-world insight is where the smartest growth decisions happen. Turning retention into predictability Sustainable revenue doesn’t just come from selling faster, but also from retaining customers for longer. As companies scale, customer success becomes a cornerstone of financial stability. Mapping the customer journey helps identify weak points that cause churn. Some of the most effective teams use a simple, visible customer health score. If an account shows signs of risk, it triggers action across departments before it’s too late. This shared visibility makes revenue more predictable and helps everyone see how their work directly impacts financial performance. Making every investment count In high-growth companies, speed often outpaces structure. Budgets expand, projects multiply, and suddenly it’s unclear whether spending is strategic or simply habitual. To stay grounded, link every major investment to a measurable business outcome. For product and engineering teams, that might mean connecting roadmap decisions directly to revenue from expansion, retention or cost efficiency. Keep this alignment in check with regular reviews and avoid quarterly scrambles. The best finance leaders ask why expenditure mattered, not what was spent. Using talent data as a forecasting tool Headcount is one of the biggest line items in any scaling business, as well as being one of the richest sources of insight. By linking hiring data with performance metrics, finance and HR teams can spot productivity patterns early. If certain functions consistently deliver above or below expectations, that informs future resourcing decisions. Aligning incentives with company performance matters too. When bonuses and rewards are tied to shared business goals, accountability flows naturally. The result is an organization that grows in sync, not in silos. A faster path to financial maturity A financial transformation doesn’t need to take a year. In fact, 60 days is enough to create real change. Start with the foundations: clean data, consistent reporting and real-time visibility into cash and expenses. Then move to improvement by standardizing processes, identifying inefficiencies and linking operational data to financial outcomes. Once systems run smoothly, embed them into daily workflows. Consistency is crucial as too many initiatives lose momentum just as they start to deliver results. The bottom line Fast growth is both a privilege and a pressure test. The startups that thrive evolve their financial practices just as quickly as their products. It’s not about choosing between discipline and growth. Financial discipline is what enables growth to continue. By maintaining visibility, linking decisions to outcomes, and embedding accountability at every level, startups can turn fragile foundations into lasting strength. Julio Martínez is the co-founder and CEO of Abacum, a company specializing in financial planning and analysis software for mid-market firms. Abacum’s all-in-one platform enables CFOs to forecast revenue, plan headcount and account for unseen financial circumstances amidst tough macroeconomic headwinds. Under Martínez’s leadership, the company has expanded internationally, with its headquarters in New York City, and offices in London and Barcelona. Before co-founding Abacum, Martínez had a career in finance and technology. In 2018, he attended the Stanford Executive Program at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Related reading: Want A Team That Thinks Like Owners? Variable Compensation Is The Answer 4 Reasons Every High-Growth Startup Needs A Founder’s Office Illustration: Dom Guzman Source InformationPublisher: CrunchbaseOriginal Source: Read more

خلاصہ: Startups Are Serving Up Drinks With Protein, Caffeine And A Shot Of WellnessStuff it with protein. Add a kick of nutrients and caffeine. And please, stay away from sugar. Those, in obnoxiously overgeneralized terms, are the basic tenets of launching and scaling a beverage startup targeting the modern consumer. Per an analysis of Crunchbase data, recently funded companies in the drinks space typically check one if not all of those boxes. These are not especially shocking findings. Consumers willing to pay handsomely for a container of liquid are commonly looking for health and wellness benefits, as well as an energy boost, if not a buzz. That’s reflected in our sample list of 26 noteworthy beverage startups funded this year. Standouts include such potable offerings as protein soda, botanical tonics and sugar-free energy drinks. We take a closer look at where the money is going by focusing on a few top investment themes. Protein everywhere First off, it seems safe to say protein is officially the macronutrient of the year. This is evident in the beverage space, where startups and established brands alike are competing to stuff more protein into everything from sodas to lattes to flavored waters. Below, we assembled a list of four startups along these lines funded this year. Dutch startup Vivici, which produces dairy proteins through precision fermentation, picked up the biggest recent round, landing $37 million in a February Series A. The company makes a whey protein that’s been used for clear drinks, powder mixes and snack bars. Slate Milk, which makes high-protein milk shakes and iced coffees, is also poised to scale, having secured a $23 million Series B in September. More than three-fourths of the calories in its drinks come from protein. For those seeking something fizzier, Don’t Quit is another option. The Los Angeles-based company sells canned sodas that feature 15 grams of whey protein. Energy Of course, what use is all that protein if one isn’t awake or alert enough to appreciate it? Enter our next favored funding category: energy-boosting drinks. Using Crunchbase data, we assembled a sample list of five such startups funded this year. One continuing trend is the incorporation of caffeine into drinks that traditionally don’t contain the stuff. Gorgie, for instance, markets a sparkling pink lemonade with more caffeine than many cups of coffee. Lucky Energy, meanwhile, sells a lineup of even more caffeinated fruity-flavored drinks. We’re also seeing startups straddling multiple hot beverage niches. Concentrated coffee purveyor Jot, for instance, sells a protein latte. And Atomo Coffee makes products with added ingredients offering nutritional and health benefits. Wellness Drinks for health and fitness buffs are also attracting investors. To illustrate, we assembled a list of five startups funded this year that meet this criteria. Hiyo, a maker of fizzy tonics crafted with potentially mood-boosting plant ingredients, scored one of the more high-profile rounds, selling a minority stake to the venture arm of spirits maker Constellation Brands early this year. The Southern California startup promotes itself as a festive alternative to alcoholic beverages. Venice, California-based Magic Mind also picked up a venture round, per a securities filing, as it scales up its offerings of drinkable shots crafted to augment mental performance. Anything but tap water It’s a good thing for startups that consumers are accustomed to paying up to quench our thirst with basically anything other than tap water. But given the plethora of options already out there, newcomers are playing in a crowded field. “The big question starting to emerge is: How big can the shelf get and how many options can consumers truly absorb?” research and accounting firm Ernst & Young posited in a recent report on beverage industry trends. The firm sees certain categories as better poised to cut through the clutter, with wellness drinks having a particular edge. Sugar-free or low-sugar drinks also appear to be on the rise, at least looking at funded startups, with a sizable chunk of this year’s investment recipient boasting this attribute. It’s not just zero-calorie drinks either. In fact, both startups and established brands are increasingly pushing the envelope on the notion that a drink can be both sweet and protein-rich enough to sub for a steak. Now that brands have made such strides in the nutritional profile of drinks, the next step will be to see which ones consumers believe actually taste good. Related Crunchbase list: Beverage Startups Funded In 2025, Sample List Illustration: Dom Guzman Source InformationPublisher: CrunchbaseOriginal Source: Read more