#ai-startups

#ai-startups

Fast growth is exhilarating. It is also unforgiving. Especially in AI, many companies are seeing hyper-growth, changing the leadership job faster than many founder-CEOs expected. What once required deep personal involvement suddenly demands scale and breadth. The question for leadership is how to adapt without losing the mission, or the magic, that made the company take off in the first place.

The DeepMind cofounder and CEO said in an episode of "Google DeepMind: The Podcast" published Tuesday that there are likely "bubbles" forming in today's AI funding frenzy, particularly among early-stage startups raising money at huge valuations. Some startups "basically haven't even got going yet," he said, yet are raising at "tens of billions of dollars valuations just out of the gate."

Jeff Bezos last month went public with his new AI firm, which is currently being called Project Prometheus. The effort had been in development for a while, but is still relatively secretive. There's no website and only a sparse LinkedIn page describing itself as "AI for the physical economy." The $6.2-billion startup may be facing lots of competition from other AI companies, including giants like Microsoft and OpenAI.

Driving the news: A number of towering figures in the field have grown dissatisfied with their Big Tech jobs and opted to start up their own ventures. Meta AI chief scientist Yann LeCun - who has clashed with Meta leadership over research direction - is the latest star heading for the exits. Meta says it plans to partner with LeCun's new startup, which will focus on models with real-world reasoning.

While the 996 parlance and laser focus on AI may be new, hustle culture has always been embedded in Silicon Valley to some degree. Some business leaders, perhaps most famously Elon Musk, have long demanded those hours from their employees: "There are way easier places to work, but nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week," he once said of the "hardcore" work ethic promoted at his companies.

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Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos seems to be getting his hands dirty once again: the billionaire is partly backing a new AI startup called Project Prometheus that has raised $6.2 billion in funding, and will take on duties as co-chief executive of the new venture, the New York Times reported, citing several sources familiar with the project. Bezos will share the position with Vik Bajaj, who previously led and co-founded Google's life sciences division.

The Weekly Notable Startup Funding Report takes us on a trip across various ecosystems in the US, highlighting some of the notable funding activity in the various markets that we track. The notable startup funding rounds for the week ending 11/8/25 featuring funding details for Armis, Billd, Ruli, and fourteen other deals representing $4.8B in new funding that you need to know about.

From the start, Nicholas and his team focused on solving real problems rather than chasing hype or inflated valuations. He is a firm believer that conviction should come from customers, not VCs, and that once Forethought delivered tangible value to real users, the hype and valuations naturally followed. His "7-Failure Rule" urges founders to embrace iteration over perfection and to expect a few misses before finding what truly clicks.

Emily Kramer has identified a pattern in how top AI (and non-AI) startups are able to break through the noise and grow unlike at any other time in history. Once you see it, you immediately rethink your growth strategy. I did! After reading the first draft of this post, I got a whole new level of understanding for why my product pass has been

When I went to college in 2017, I already knew I wanted to work in startups and make a difference in the world. After my freshman year at the University of Michigan, I switched majors from business to computer science, which I felt would be more useful for running an early-stage company. But in late 2018, at age 19, I dropped out of college for a full-time job.

If you believed AI startups and the world's greatest AI-forward tech companies are just hiring engineers, data scientists, and developers, you're clearly missing out. Behind tech powerhouses and AI house names like OpenAI, Anthropic, and other smaller AI startups from Silicon Valley to Europe, there are three skills that repeatedly show up on these companies' career pages and are evidently in strong demand.

After spending roughly three yearsas a consultant at Deloitte, I was feeling hollow. Due to the nature of consulting, I never got to see the value of my work because I would move on to the next project before my suggestions were implemented. I decided to pivot into tech. In 2021, in my mid-30s, I moved from India, where I' m from, to Seattle for a master's degree in business analytics at the University of Washington.

As a journalist who covers AI, I hear from countless people who seem utterly convinced that ChatGPT, Claude, or some other chatbot has achieved "sentience." Or "consciousness." Or-my personal favorite-"a mind of its own." The Turing test was aced a while back, yes, but unlike rote intelligence, these things are not so easily pinned down. Large language models will claim to think for themselves, even describe inner torments or profess undying loves, but such statements don't imply interiority.

Roy Lee, CEO of AI tech startup Cluely, which makes software for job interviews and work calls, told The New York Times that he leased eight apartments for employees in a recently-built luxury complex situated just a one-minute walk away from the office. The rents in the 16-story building range from $3,000 to $12,000 a month. "Going to the office should feel like you're walking to your living room, so we really, really want people close," Lee told The Times on Thursday.

Wabi will enable users to create their own mini-apps without any coding. "It's a platform to discover, remix, and share, create mini apps for daily life," Kuyda said. "We'll tell a little bit more when we launch publicly. Right now, it's a very close private beta." Wabi is a 10-person team, Kuyda said, and plans to launch its product "soon." The idea for Wabi, a "personal software platform," led Kuyda to step away from Replika, she said.

It's likely safe to say-creative accounting's been around for as long as accounting itself. In 1494, for example, mathematician and 'father of modern accounting' Luca Pacioli wrote of Venetian merchants willfully rendering their ledgers illegible. In the Gilded Age, inflating assets and understating liabilities was standard practice across a booming system. And who can forget the "channel stuffing" of the 2000s?

In less than three years, Midjourney's ARR went from zero to $200 million. In 20 months, ElevenLabs, a voice AI startup, saw its ARR soar from zero to near $100 million. In three months, vibe coding darling Lovable went from zero to $17 million in ARR, this summer hitting $100 million in ARR. In its first six months, Decagon hit "seven figures" in ARR, the company reported.

From model infrastructure to niche applications, AI is producing a new breed of founders and a new set of investor expectations. In this candid conversation on the , at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 - taking place on October 27-29 in San Francisco - top VCs will share what's catching their eye (and what's not), how they're thinking about defensibility in a world of AI monopolies, and what founders need to show to get that next term sheet.

For years, Big Tech CEOs have touted visions of AI agents that can autonomously use software applications to complete tasks for people. But take today's consumer AI agents out for a spin, whether it's OpenAI's ChatGPT Agent or Perplexity's Comet, and you'll quickly realize how limited the technology still is. Making AI agents more robust may take a new set of techniques that the industry is still discovering.