How Ricursive Intelligence raised $335M at a $4B valuation in 4 months

The co-founders of startup Ricursive Intelligence seemed destined to be co-founders. Anna Goldie, CEO, and Azalia Mirhoseini, CTO, are so well-known in the AI community that they were among those AI engineers who “got those weird emails from Zuckerberg making crazy offers to us,” Goldie told TechCrunch, chuckling. (They didn’t take the offers.) The pair … Read more

African defensetech Terra Industries, founded by two Gen Zers, raises additional $22M in a month

Just one month after raising $11.75 million in a round led by Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC, African defensetech Terra Industries announced that it’s raised an additional $22 million in funding, led by Lux Capital. Nathan Nwachuku, 22, and Maxwell Maduka, 24, launched Terra Industries in 2024 to design infrastructure and autonomous systems to help African nations … Read more

As AI data centers hit power limits, Peak XV backs Indian startup C2i to fix the bottleneck

Power, rather than compute, is fast becoming the limiting factor in scaling AI data centers. That shift has prompted Peak XV Partners to back C2i Semiconductors, an Indian startup building plug-and-play, system-level power solutions designed to cut energy losses and improve the economics of large-scale AI infrastructure. C2i (which stands for control conversion and intelligence) … Read more

OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger joins OpenAI

Peter Steinberger, who created the AI personal assistant now known as OpenClaw, has joined OpenAI. Previously known as Clawdbot, then Moltbot, OpenClaw achieved viral popularity over the past few weeks with its promise to be the “AI that actually does things,” whether that’s managing your calendar, booking flights, or even joining a social network full … Read more

What the Epstein files reveal about EV startups and Silicon Valley

After the Justice Department released a trove of new documents tied to infamous sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, journalists digging through them have found extensive connections to Silicon Valley. TechCrunch’s Sean O’Kane examined how a mysterious businessman named David Stern built a relationship with Epstein and pitched him investments in multiple electric vehicle startups, including Faraday … Read more

The great computer science exodus (and where students are going instead)

Something strange happened at University of California campuses this fall. For the first time since the dot-com crash, computer science enrollment dropped. System-wide, it fell 6% this year after declining 3% in 2024, according to reporting this past week by the San Francisco Chronicle. Even as overall college enrollment climbed 2% nationally — according to … Read more

Is safety ‘dead’ at xAI?

Elon Musk is “actively” working to make xAI’s Grok chatbot “more unhinged,” according to a former employee who spoke to The Verge about recent departures from Musk’s AI company. This week, following the announcement that Musk’s SpaceX is acquiring xAI (which previously acquired his social media company X), at least 11 engineers and two co-founders … Read more

Homeland Security reportedly sent hundreds of subpoenas seeking to unmask anti-ICE accounts

The Department of Homeland Security has been increasing pressure on tech companies to identify the owners of social media accounts that criticize Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to The New York Times. This echoes other recent reporting, with Bloomberg pointing to five cases in which Homeland Security sought to identify the owners of anonymous … Read more

India doubles down on state-backed venture capital, approving $1.1B fund

India has cleared a $1.1 billion state-backed venture capital program that will channel government money into startups through private investors, doubling down on its effort to finance high-risk areas such as artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and other sectors broadly referred to by the industry as deep tech. First outlined in the January 2025 budget speech … Read more