Startups
12 pieces on Startups.
News & Analysis
Instinct Raises $250M Series B at $2.5B Valuation Before Public Launch
Spear Street Technology's Instinct closes a $250M Series B co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark, hitting $350M total raised at a $2.5B valuation — still in private beta.
Keenable Raises $26M to Build a 100B-Document Search Index for AI Agents
Accel-backed Keenable exits stealth with $26M and a 100B-document index built for AI agents, as Google and Microsoft wind down open search APIs.
Etched Raises $700M at $21B Valuation After Jane Street Deploys Its Hardware
Etched's valuation doubled from $10.3B to $21B in a month after quant firm Jane Street tested its inference chips and deployed a rack in its own datacenter.
Wispr Raises $280M at $2B Valuation, Targets Meeting Transcription
Wispr closes a $280M Series B at a $2B valuation, launches speech model Canto to cut error rates from 30% to under 10%, and enters meeting notes.
Kog Bets Deep GPU Engineering Can Deliver 10x LLM Speed
French startup Kog hit 3,000 TPS with a 2B-parameter model. Now it needs to prove the same approach works on production LLMs by September.
Kog Targets 10x LLM Speed With Assembly-Level GPU Tuning
French startup Kog hit 3,000 TPS on Laneformer 2B and is targeting a first major LLM at 10x speed by September 2026.
Kog Bets Software Can Unlock 10x Faster LLM Inference on Existing GPUs
French startup Kog hit 3,000 TPS on a 2B-parameter model. Now it must prove the same approach scales to production LLMs by September 2026.
Kog Targets 10x LLM Speed by Exploiting GPU Memory Bandwidth
French startup Kog hit 3,000 TPS on its 2B-parameter Laneformer model and aims to prove 10x speed on a major LLM by September.
Kog Bets Software Can Unlock Stranded GPU Bandwidth for Inference
French startup Kog hit 3,000 per-request TPS on AMD MI300X and Nvidia H200 GPUs with a 2B-param model. A full LLM target follows in September.
Lovable Raises $400M Series C at $13.3B Valuation
Lovable closes a $400M Series C at $13.3B, doubling its valuation since December, after hitting $500M ARR and 900M monthly visitors.
OpenAI Acquires Presentation Startup NextSlide
OpenAI has acquired NextSlide, whose product converts prompts, notes, documents, and research into editable presentations, with the team now working on ChatGPT.
Situational Awareness Puts $400M More Into Chip Startup Source Foundry
The embattled AI hedge fund's total commitment to the Stanford-founded chip startup now stands at $500M, even as its AUM halved to $10B.