AI investments surged 62% to $110 billion in 2024 while startup funding overall declined 12%, says Dealroom

March 13, 2025

Y Combinator’s police surveillance darling Flock Safety raises $275M at $7.5B valuation

Flock Safety and one of its long-time VCs, Bedrock Capital, announced Thursday that the startup raised a fresh $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation. Flock makes computer vision-enabled video surveillance technology used by law enforcement as well as businesses, property management companies, and so on. It’s best known for its automatic license plate recognition […]

February 11, 2025

Venture capitalists are gobbling up term sheets for startups peddling artificial intelligence, even as they remain picky when it comes to funding the wider spectrum of technology. According to new figures from analytics firm Dealroom, AI startups raised $110 billion in funding last year, up 62% on the year before. At the same time, privately-backed […]

Ghanaian fintech Affinity bags $8M to scale digital banking in a mobile money-driven market

February 11, 2025

Africa’s top digital banking platforms typically come from high-growth, populous markets like Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt. But Affinity Africa, an upstart from Ghana, wants to join the conversation. The startup has raised $8 million in seed funding to expand its financial products further across the country, where mobile money is the dominant financial tool. […]

Can AI help DOGE slash government budgets? It’s complex.

February 11, 2025

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. No tech leader before has played the role in a new presidential administration that Elon Musk is playing now. Under his leadership, DOGE has entered offices in a half-dozen agencies and counting,…

The dream of offshore rocket launches is finally blasting off

February 11, 2025

Want to send something to space? Get in line. The demand for rides off Earth is skyrocketing, pushing even the busiest spaceports, like Florida’s Kennedy Space Center, to their operational limits. Orbital launches worldwide have more than doubled over the past four years, from about 100 to 250 annually. That number is projected to spiral…

Instagram is introducing teen accounts with new safety features in India

February 11, 2025

Instagram said Tuesday that the platform is introducing its teen accounts feature, which has extra protective measures for safety for users in India, one of its biggest markets with over 350 million users. The company introduced Teen Accounts last year in The U.S., U.K, Canada, and Australia. Meta migrated accounts of Instagram users who are […]

EU looks to the private sector to help fund ‘AI Gigafactories’, eyeing the frontier AI race

February 11, 2025

The European Union is courting the private sector as it looks to step up compute capacity for training large AI models. Giving a speech at the AI Action Summit in Paris on Monday, the EU’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, talked up the potential of homegrown AI startups but said the region’s developers must have […]

QED leads $11M investment in Nigerian fintech Raenest

February 11, 2025

As Africa’s tech ecosystem booms, more local talent is landing remote jobs with Big Tech firms and global startups. But getting paid remains a challenge for many of these freelancers and remote workers. They struggle to open accounts that accept US dollars, with foreign employers using incompatible payment platforms, and face slow invoicing and payment […]

Two senior partners are leaving Peak XV amid strategy shift

February 11, 2025

Two senior partners are leaving Peak XV, the largest India-focused venture capital firm, four sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Shailesh Lakhani, a 17-year veteran of the firm, and Abheek Anand, who co-led Southeast Asian investments, are departing, said the sources, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. The exits follow Peak […]

Google changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on Maps

February 11, 2025

Google Maps officially updated the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on Monday. Among many other executive orders, President Donald Trump decreed on the day of his inauguration that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the Gulf of America. This executive order also reverses an Obama-era move to rename […]

Zeta valued at $2B in new funding

February 11, 2025

Zeta, a provider of banking software to banks and fintech startups, has raised $50 million from a strategic investor at a $2 billion valuation. The new investment from American healthcare company Optum marks a 70% increase in the Bangalore-based startup’s valuation from the $1.15 billion price tag (pre-money) it earned in 2021, when it raised […]

Y Combinator’s police surveillance darling Flock Safety raises $275M at $7.5B valuation