Google closed its $32 billion acquisition of cybersecurity company Wiz this week — the biggest acquisition in Google’s history, as well as the largest ever acquisition of a venture-backed startup. On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan, Sean O’Kane, and I were joined by Shardul Shah, a …

Unacademy, once a one of India’s most valuable edtech startups, is set to be acquired by rival upGrad in an all-stock deal that would bring together two major online learning platforms in the country. On Sunday, Unacademy co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal said in a post on X that the …

Many artificial intelligence startup ideas are still little more than superficial “wrappers” built on top of existing models. But as the AI model makers add more features, investors are wary of startups that could become so easily unnecessary. Case in point: when reviewing more 4,000 applications for the joint AI …

According to Index Ventures Partner Shardul Shah, cybersecurity startup Wiz sits “at the center of three tailwinds: AI, cloud, and security spend. ” Those tailwinds powered what just became the largest venture-backed acquisition in history — Google’s $32 billion deal, finalized after a declined 2024 offer, antitrust review on both …

AI agents are expected to soon start making autonomous purchasing and scheduling decisions on behalf of humans. But Michael Fanous, a UC Berkeley computer science graduate and former machine learning engineer at CareRev, argues that these agents are currently missing a critical piece of the puzzle: the full context required …

Digg — Kevin Rose’s reboot of his once-popular link-sharing site — is laying off a sizable portion of its staff, the company announced on Friday. The startup is not closing, however, Digg CEO Justin Mezzell said. Instead, Rose will return to work on Digg full-time as the company tries to …

When Max Brodeur-Urbas co-founded Gumloop in mid-2023, his vision was to help non-technical employees automate repetitive tasks using AI. At that time, the concept of AI agents was still largely experimental and prone to errors. As AI technology has matured, so has Gumloop’s offering. The company claims that it now …

Robotics company Sunday has raised a new funding round that has valued the company at unicorn status, meaning over $1 billion, it announced on Thursday. Sunday says it has raised $165 million at a $1. 15 billion valuation in a Series B round led by Coatue Management. Other investors in …

Rox, a startup developing autonomous AI agents to boost sales productivity, has raised a new funding round valuing the company at $1. 2 billion, according to multiple sources. The funding included a lead investment from returning backer General Catalyst, two of the people said. Rox and General Catalyst did not …

Eighteen months after selling his startup to chipmaker AMD for $665 million, Finnish entrepreneur Peter Sarlin has left his role as CEO of the unit now known as AMD Silo AI. He is now chairman at two new ventures: physical AI lab NestAI, and QuTwo, an AI startup aimed at …