16 stories
As the AI startup boom progresses, investors appear to be leaving few niches unfunded. That was apparent in this week’s lineup of large funding rounds, which featured AI infrastructure providers, a foundational model developer, a content protection platform for the AI age, and other AI-focused…
Active startup investors largely kept up or increased their dealmaking pace in the third quarter, even as overall venture funding declined with the absence of new record megarounds for AI leaders.
AI companies can build durable moats by embedding their products in essential customer workflows, explains tech adviser Itay Sagie, who shares why founders should prioritize measurable customer dependence, while investors and acquirers should assess how integrations, trusted relationships and…
European startup funding reached $25 billion last quarter, well above the $14 billion invested in Q3 2025 and up slightly from the $24 billion invested in Q2. Quarterly funding was up 77% year over year, per Crunchbase data.
Some of the AI industry’s fastest-growing startups are becoming serial acquirers, buying smaller companies to fill product gaps, enter new markets and bring specialized teams in-house, a review of Crunchbase data shows.
Global venture funding totaled $159 billion in Q3 2026 with close to 6,000 startups funded, Crunchbase data shows. And while the third quarter was the lowest for startup investment so far this year, it still exceeded every other quarter since Q2 2022. We take a look at where the funding went.
This week’s list of the largest U.S. startup funding rounds was pretty much all about AI. That includes the biggest financing — a $1 billion round for Instinct, a developer of AI assistants for everyday tasks — as well as most of the rest of the Top 10.
Over the past year, venture backers have poured close to $3 billion into good-sized rounds for marine-related startups in sectors ranging from defense tech to clean energy, per Crunchbase data.
So far in 2026, investors have poured more than $6 billion into companies focused on developing both fission and fusion nuclear energy technology and infrastructure, per Crunchbase data. That’s far ahead of any comparable period, including last year, the prior record-setter.
Over 127,000 workers at U.S.-based tech companies were laid off in mass job cuts in 2025, per a Crunchbase News tally, and the layoffs have continued into 2026. See the latest companies to cut roles.
Although Oura has postponed its planned offering that could have raised as much as $2.2 billion, Anthropic is still making a move toward the public markets along with AI cloud provider Nscale and other companies lining up potential fourth-quarter listings.
This week delivered a bountiful supply of big startup funding rounds, led by two $400 million financings for cybersecurity unicorns and large financings for startups across hot sectors, including foundational AI, drug discovery, neurotech, and even rainmaking.
So far this year, companies in the gaming space have raised around $2 billion in seed- through growth-stage funding. That's already ahead of the 2025 full-year total, driven in large part by big rounds for companies at the intersection of AI and gaming.
So far this year, global startups have secured at least 114 Series A rounds of $100 million or more, per Crunchbase data. That’s the highest annual total in years and on track to top the all-time peak. We take a look at where the money is going.
As AI agents gain access to enterprise data, systems and tools, they are emerging as a new class of active identity requiring specialized permissions, monitoring and governance, writes guest author Itay Sagie.
In an interview with Crunchbase News, Van Espahbodi, general parter at Generational Partners, discusses how AI is changing hardware economics, why software investors are rushing into industrial technology, and what he believes many of them misunderstand about the sector.
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