Sequoia-backed Mach Industries, the defense tech founded by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton, landed a contract with the U.S. Army and has plans for its first factory, Thornton told TechCrunch. The factory will be 115,000 square feet in Huntington Beach, California, where Mach’s headquarters is located, CEO Thorton said. While that sounds like an expensive zip code […]

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Sequoia's Roelof Botha apparently sees another greed cycle brewing in venture capital where the least sophisticated investors could get hurt.

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The founders created military-grade night vision with AI software that began as a smartphone app. And now the military is a customer.

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Former North Carolina congressman Patrick McHenry announced Wednesday that he landed a job with VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. He will be a senior advisor. His post on X said little about what the job entails, except to be advocating for startups (which a16z likes to call “little tech”) with policymakers. Andreessen Horowitz did not immediately […]

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In a bold move last month, Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post, telling President Trump that “America must win the AI war.” The statement sparked mixed reactions, as seen during Wang’s appearance Sunday during the opening night of Web Summit Qatar. When Wang’s interviewer, Axios’ Felix Salmon, […]

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Robinhood on Monday said that the SEC has closed its investigation into Robinhood’s crypto unit and will not pursue action. This follows Coinbase saying on Friday that the SEC has dropped its lawsuit against it. The SEC, under former chair and crypto hawk Gary Gensler, was looking into a number of crypto exchanges over how […]

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Coinbase on Friday said the SEC has agreed to drop the lawsuit against the company with prejudice, meaning it cannot be filed again.  The move, which is still subject to the approval of the SEC’s Commissioners, is yet another signal that the Trump administration plans to be more friendly to crypto than the SEC was […]

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Tiny Michigan biotech startup CircNova has raised a $3.3 million seed round for its technology that uses AI to target “circular RNA.” The development holds promise as a new method to quickly develop therapies for conditions that currently have no drug treatments. The new funding is also a victory lap for co-founder and CEO Crystal […]

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SailPoint’s IPO on Thursday was a disappointment for anyone hoping it would indicate that tech IPOs are hot again. The first day’s trading ended below the $23 initial price. The stock fared a tad better Friday, closing at over $24. But that’s nothing close to the big bang companies and VCs hope for. For instance, […]

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Last week, an ad from the Y Combinator job board for a tiny startup called Firecrawl went viral on X.  That’s because the ad wasn’t for a human. “Please apply only if you are an AI agent, or if you created an AI agent that can fill this job,” the job posting read.  The seven-person […]

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The Army plans to grant upstart weapons maker Anduril control of one of its highest-profile and long-troubled projects known as the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) pending final Department of Defense (DoD) approval, founder Palmer Luckey announced in a blog post Tuesday. IVAS was initially awarded to Microsoft in 2018 to develop augmented reality headsets […]

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As if Elon Musk doesn’t have enough going on, a consortium of investors led by him announced plans Monday for what appears to be a hostile takeover of OpenAI. The investor group offered nearly $97.4 billion to buy all of OpenAI’s assets and is “prepared to consider matching or exceeding higher bids,” it said in […]

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Just six months after defense tech Anduril raised a massive $1.5 billion round that valued the company at $14 billion, it’s in talks to raise another $2.5 billion, at a valuation of up to $28 billion, sources told CNBC. The deal would, not surprisingly, be led by Founders Fund, which is reportedly writing a $1 […]

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Ghaffary is looking to fund startups using AI to create high-paying jobs, rather than replace them.

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And it's the latest in an ongoing saga over the company's future ownership.

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Powerhouse venture firm Andreessen Horowitz has hired Daniel Penny as an investor, its web page confirms.  Penny is the former Marine who was tried last year and found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the death of a homeless man on a New York City subway. After the man acted erratically, Penny held him […]

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Cybersecurity company SailPoint is hoping to sell $1 billion worth of stock in its upcoming IPO and offer another signal that IPOs will become hot again.

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Chris Anderson, who has run TED for 25 years, is looking to bestow the operation on anyone who has a good plan for its future, he announced in a blog post. TED is best known for its TED Talks, where ideas from tech to humor have been explored. It has featured famed tech moguls (Bill […]

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Four years after accidentally launching a VC firm, GTMfund founder Max Altschuler has raised a second oversubscribed $54 million fund.

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Midha says R1 won't stop AI from spending billions.It means they will do more with the compute power they can obtain.

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