Entrepreneurship
Fraud Prevention Draws $156M as Socure Buys Fravity
A quiet corner of financial infrastructure just repriced, because Socure raised $156 million at a $5.2 billion valuation and acquired an AI startup on the same day. Summit Partners...
Agentic Commerce: 5 Ways to Get Picked by AI Agents
Shopping agents stopped being a demo this year, and Google now completes checkout on merchant sites for shoppers through Search, AI Mode and Gemini. A buyer sets size, color...
AI CRM Shifts as Salesforce and Anthropic Ship Claudeforce
Salesforce and Anthropic have deepened an existing relationship, and the two companies announced Claudeforce on August 26. The arrangement runs in both directions, putting Claude inside Salesforce products and...
Small Business Grants for Women Reopen With $45K Each
Applications opened this week for a program worth watching, because H&R Block reopened its Fund Her Future grant for women-owned small businesses on September 1. Four recipients will each...
AI Agent Security Draws $50M as AIR Exits Stealth
Six months after two former military cyber operators founded the company, AIR left stealth with a $50 million round led by Sequoia Capital and Greenoaks. Swish Ventures and Netz...
CEO Succession Planning: What Apple’s Handoff Shows
John Ternus becomes chief executive of Apple today, completing a transition the company announced back on April 20. Tim Cook moves to executive chair, and Art Levinson, previously chair...
Vendor Lock In Bites as OpenAI Cuts Off Cursor
OpenAI said it will end Cursor’s direct access to its models on November 12, roughly two weeks after SpaceX completed its $60 billion purchase of Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere,...
AI for Small Business Draws a $240M Bet on Owner
Owner raised $240 million in a Series D led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives on August 28, a round that values the company at $2.3 billion. Meritech, Redpoint, Headline and...
Venture Capital Funds: 5 Signals in a16z’s $1.1B Bet
Andreessen Horowitz announced the Machine Age Fund on August 28, a $1.1 billion vehicle aimed at founders building chips, memory, networking, systems software, power and the machines that push...
Non Dilutive Funding: Lambda’s $926M Debt Lesson
Lambda, Inc. closed a $926 million senior secured term loan B facility on August 27, capital earmarked for GPU hardware that a customer has already committed to using. The...
