VC Kara Nortman bet early on women’s sports, and now she’s creating the market

When its season ended early this month, Angel City FC finished 11th out of 13 teams, a disappointing result for the Los Angeles soccer franchise that venture capitalist Kara Nortman co-founded in 2020. But the season’s struggles tell only part of a much larger story that’s reshaping how investors think about women’s sports. Despite its … Read more

Supabase hit $5B by turning down million-dollar contracts. Here’s why.

Vibe coding has taken the tech industry by storm, and it’s not just the Lovables and Replits of the world that are winning. The startups building the infrastructure behind them are cashing in too.  Supabase, the open-source database platform that’s become the backend of choice for the vibe-coding world, raised $100 million at a $5 billion valuation just months after closing $200 million at $2 billion. But co-founder and CEO … Read more

SoftBank stays in as Meesho $606M IPO becomes India’s first major e-commerce listing

Meesho, an Indian e-commerce rival to Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart, is set to launch a roughly $606 million IPO marked by token sell-downs from early backers and no sales from big names such as SoftBank and Prosus, signalling investor conviction in India’s booming online retail market at a time when tech shareholders globally have been … Read more

Glīd won Startup Battlefield 2025 by building solutions to make logistics simpler, safer, and smarter

Build Mode is back with a holiday bonus episode. This week, Startup Battlefield editor Isabelle Johannessen is joined by the winner of this year’s competition, Kevin Damoa, the CEO and founder of Glīd, a logistics infrastructure company that aims to streamline the complex container shipment process. Damoa first discovered the challenges of shipping larger cargo … Read more

Here are the 49 US AI startups that have raised $100M or more in 2025

Last year was monumental for the AI industry in the U.S. and beyond.  There were 49 startups that raised funding rounds worth $100 million or more in 2024, per our count at TechCrunch; three companies raised more than one “mega-round,” and seven companies raised rounds that were $1 billion in size or larger.  How will 2025 compare? As we enter … Read more

The future will be explained to you in Palo Alto

On Wednesday evening at PlayGround Global in Palo Alto, some very smart people who are building things you don’t understand yet will explain what’s coming. This is the final StrictlyVC event of 2025, and truly, the lineup is ridiculous. The series has bounced around the globe under the auspices of TechCrunch. Steve Case rented a … Read more