Technology

AI startup Modal Labs is in talks to raise its valuation to $2.5 billion, sources say

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✨ Discover this trending post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,Enterprise,Startups,Exclusive,General Catalyst,inference,Modal Labs ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: Modal Labs, a startup specializing in artificial intelligence inference infrastructure, is raising a new round worth about $2.5 billion, according to four people familiar with the deal. If the deal is completed on these terms, the financing round will double the company's valuation of $1.1 billion, which was announced less than five months ago. General Catalyst is in talks to lead the round, the people told TechCrunch. Modal's annual revenue run rate (ARR) is around $50 million, our sources said. Discussions are still…

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XAI puts interplanetary ambitions within everyone’s reach

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🔥 Check out this must-read post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,TC,Elon Musk,xAI 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: On Wednesday, xAI took the rare step of posting a full 45-minute video of a group meeting on X, making it publicly available. Details of Tuesday night's meeting were previously reported by The New York Times, which may have influenced XAI's decision to post the video online. The full video reveals important new details about Musk's plans for the AI ​​Lab, including the product roadmap and its ongoing ties to the X platform. The most pressing revelation concerned a series of employee departures,…

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OpenAI is dissolving the Mission Alignment team, which focused on developing “safe” and “trustworthy” AI.

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✨ Explore this trending post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,ai safety,ChatGPT,OpenAI ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: OpenAI has disbanded a team that focused — as the company described itself — on ensuring its AI systems are “safe, trustworthy, and consistently aligned with human values.” Meanwhile, the team's former leader has been given a new role as the company's 'chief futurist'. OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch that team members have now been hired for other roles. The news was first reported by Platformer. The disbanded team, which appears to have been formed in September 2024, was the startup's internal unit dedicated to…

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How to join a16z’s ultra-competitive Speedrun startup accelerator program

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✨ Check out this trending post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: Startups,Venture,a16z,speedrun 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: Without a doubt, one of the hottest new startup accelerators in tech right now is Andreessen Horowitz's Speedrun program. Launched in 2023, the accelerator has an acceptance rate of less than 1%. In a January blog post, the program said more than 19,000 startups pitched their ideas and less than 0.4% were accepted into the final group. The program was focused on gaming startups, then expanded to include entertainment and media, and is now a “horizontal program,” Joshua Lu, general manager of the program…

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Activist investor Ancora publicly opposes the WBD-Netflix deal

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🚀 Check out this trending post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: Media & Entertainment,Mergers and Acquisitions,Netflix,Paramount,Warner Bros Discovery 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: Netflix's $82.7 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Big new resistance. Investment group Ancora Holdings announced it has bought $200 million of WBD stock and opposes Netflix's bid. Instead, Ancora is throwing its support behind a competing bid from Paramount. The Wall Street Journal had the exclusive. In a press release on Wednesday, Ancora joined Paramount's arguments: It claims the Netflix deal is inferior, involves more regulatory risk, and does not provide the same amount of…

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Why are the economics of orbital AI so brutal?

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✨ Explore this insightful post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,Space,data center,Google,planet,Project Suncatcher,SpaceX,Starcloud 📌 **What You’ll Learn**: In a sense, this whole thing was inevitable. Elon Musk and his cohorts have been talking about artificial intelligence in space for years, especially in the context of Ian Banks' sci-fi series about a far-future world where sentient spaceships roam and rule the galaxy. Now, Musk sees an opportunity to realize a version of this vision. His company SpaceX has requested regulatory clearance to build solar-powered orbital data centers, distributed across up to 1 million satellites, that could transmit up to 100 gigawatts…

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Senior engineers, including co-founders, exit XAI amid controversy

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✨ Read this trending post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,Elon Musk,Exclusive,X,xAI 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: At least nine engineers, including two of the founders, publicly announced their departures from xAI last week — though two of those exits appear to have occurred a few weeks ago. Neither xAI nor Elon Musk have commented publicly on the departures. While attrition is common in startups, co-founder departures are much less common. More than half of xAI's founding team has now departed, and the fact that several employees followed within days has intensified scrutiny over the company's stability. Three of the departing…

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Upside Robotics is working to reduce fertilizer use and waste in corn crops

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✨ Explore this trending post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: Startups,Climate,Robotics,robotics,Exclusive,AgTech,startup fundraising ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: The founders of Upside Robotics met in 2023 because they were looking to build an impactful company that touched climate and agriculture. Less than a year later, they were sleeping in a wagon on the side of a Canadian cornfield while building their robotics startup. Upside Robotics, based in Waterloo, Ontario, builds lightweight, solar-powered autonomous robots that deliver just the right amounts of fertilizer and nutrients to crops when they need them. The company's software runs on proprietary algorithms to decipher when and how…

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Build a pipeline and close deals with the demo table at Disrupt 2026

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💥 Discover this awesome post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: TC,Startups,Space,Hardware,Crypto,Climate,Fintech,Biotech & Health,Media & Entertainment,AI,Apps,Robotics,Fundraising,TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 💡 **What You’ll Learn**: From October 13-15 at Moscone West in San Francisco, more than 10,000 founders, investors, operators and decision-makers will gather for... TechCrunch disabled 2026. This is not just an event. It's three days of concentrated trade flow. The supply schedule turns that energy into measurable business growth. Your startup doesn't need more "awareness." It needs customers, investors and strategic partners. Reserve your Disrupt Expo table today and explore full program details. How Disrupt Demo Drives Real Growth Image credits:Photography by…

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Meridian raises $17 million to rebuild proxy spreadsheet

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✨ Read this insightful post from TechCrunch 📖 📂 **Category**: AI,excel agents,Exclusive,Funding ✅ **What You’ll Learn**: The battle to tame spreadsheets with AI is far from over. A new company called Meridian has emerged from obscurity with a more comprehensive IDE-based approach to proxy financial modeling — and a lot of funding to build it. The company on Wednesday announced $17 million in seed funding at a post-money valuation of $100 million. “Our goal is to make financial models and spreadsheets more predictable and auditable,” CEO and co-founder John Ling told TechCrunch. “How do you take a process that would…

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