Exclusive: Scripbox Plans Rs 170 Cr Debt and Equity Raise; Gears up for IPO
Bengaluru‑based wealth‑tech platform Scripbox announced plans to raise up to Rs 170 cr (≈$20 million) through a mix of equity and debt. The equity tranche of Rs 60 cr (≈$7.2 million) will come from friends‑and‑family investors, while Rs 110 cr (≈$13.3 million) of debt is earmarked to finance the acquisition of a Delhi‑based IFA’s mutual‑fund distribution business. Proceeds also support an accelerated growth plan and preparation for a targeted IPO. The company posted FY25 profit of Rs 12.7 cr (≈$1.5 million) on revenue of Rs 107.2 cr (≈$12.9 million), bringing its valuation to roughly Rs 1,150 cr (≈$137 million).
Avnet and HKSTP Unveil DfMA Launchpad
Avnet, Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks (HKSTP) and the EMUS Lab have launched a 12‑month DfMA Launchpad for AI Minimum Marketable Product (MMP) aimed at accelerating AI hardware commercialization. The program focuses on edge AI, physical AI and high‑performance...
Shyld AI Snags $13M for Device that Disinfects Hospital Rooms Autonomously
Shyld AI announced a $13.4 million seed round led by Aulis Capital to scale its AI‑enabled UV disinfection devices for hospital rooms. The system autonomously detects occupancy, triggers targeted UV exposure, and logs cleaning activity, cutting pathogen levels by 93 % in...
Cerebras Stock Nearly Doubles on Day One as AI Chipmaker Hits $100 Billion — What It Means for AI Infrastructure
Cerebras Systems went public on Nasdaq at $350 per share, nearly double its $185 IPO price, instantly achieving a $100 billion market value. The company sold 30 million shares, raising $5.55 billion, the largest U.S. tech IPO since Uber in 2019. Its wafer‑scale...
How AI Is Speeding New Business Creation, Especially Among Gen Z Entrepreneurs
AI is accelerating new business creation, especially among Gen Z entrepreneurs, according to a recent NPR report. A Gusto survey of 1,000 founders who launched in 2025 found that more than 70% of Gen Z entrepreneurs relied on AI tools to streamline...
He Created a Tool That Lets Anyone Start Their Own Business With Just an Image — And It Has Minted...
Nuseir Yassin, the creator of the Nas Daily video brand, launched Nas.com, an AI‑powered platform that lets solo entrepreneurs build a storefront, generate marketing content and run ads from a single product photo. The startup has raised $40 million—$27 million in its...
To the Abyss and Back: How Fintech Firm Flyhomes Survived a Boom-Bust Housing Cycle
Flyhomes, the Seattle‑based fintech that pioneered a "buy before you sell" mortgage, weathered the pandemic boom, a rapid rise in interest rates and a sudden freeze in venture capital. Facing soaring customer‑acquisition costs, the company shut down its own lending...
ZenBusiness Launches AI-Ready Infrastructure for Business Formation and Compliance
ZenBusiness announced an expansion of its ZenBusiness Enterprise platform, adding AI‑ready API infrastructure that lets partners embed business formation, licensing and compliance workflows directly into their customer experiences. The new APIs pull data from ZenBusiness’s decade‑long repository on nearly one million...
They Built a $50 Million Business Before GLP-1s Became Mainstream. Now They’re Eyeing This New Health Frontier
Josh and Katy Whalen turned personal hormone challenges into Joi + Blokes, a bootstrapped telehealth firm that now exceeds $50 million in annual revenue. The company rides the wave of GLP‑1 and longevity treatments, offering lab‑driven hormone optimization and weight‑loss plans. Regulatory scrutiny...
What Was Nintendo's First Ever Product (Back in 1889)?
Nintendo was founded in September 1889 in Kyoto as Nintendo Koppai, a maker of handmade hanafuda playing cards. Under Hiroshi Yamauchi, the company shifted to mass‑produced plastic cards and, in 1959, sold 600,000 Disney‑licensed packs, prompting a public listing in 1962....
High Expectations Require New Approaches: What Africa’s Social Innovators Need to Scale — And Why Support Systems Must Evolve
Across Africa, social innovators are tackling food insecurity, youth unemployment and climate challenges, yet most struggle to scale beyond early traction. LEAP Africa’s recent assessment of 89 ecosystem actors in 18 countries found funding to be the primary obstacle, with...
The Rebuild That Took Our Family Business From Shutdown To $80 Million
A family‑owned accounting firm faced total shutdown during the pandemic but rebuilt itself as an AI‑first powerhouse, now generating roughly $80 million in annual revenue. Leveraging Aprio’s AI‑driven platform, the company streamlined bookkeeping, reduced labor costs, and accelerated client onboarding. The...
DDD Invoices Nets €1.31m to Tackle E-Invoicing Compliance
Slovenian e‑invoicing compliance platform DDD Invoices closed a €1.31 million seed round—about $1.43 million—led by Fil Rouge Capital and 500 Global. The capital will fund expansion into additional countries, deeper integration with existing software stacks, and hires across product, engineering, and go‑to‑market...
Nectar Social Raises $30M Series A to Build the Agentic Operating System for Modern Marketing
Nectar Social announced a $30 million Series A round led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from True Ventures, GV and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Kinship Ventures. The funding will accelerate the launch of Nectar Agent, an autonomous AI agent designed to manage brand conversations...
Synthetic Raises $10M Seed Funding For AI Bookkeeping Platform
Synthetic, a San Francisco AI bookkeeping startup founded by former Bench co‑founder Ian Crosby, closed a $10 million seed round led by Basis Set Ventures with participation from Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and Opendoor’s Kaz Nejatian. The funding will accelerate development...
The Diamond Podcast for Financial Advisors: Ex-Edward Jones Advisor on Building Beyond $1B
Ricky Smith, a former Edward Jones advisor, launched Inspired Wealth Planning with Kestra Private Wealth Services in March 2023 and grew the firm to over $1.25 billion in assets across seven locations within 15 months. His departure from the wirehouse was the result...
Outmarket AI Raises $17M To Scale Insurance Workflow Automation
Outmarket AI announced a $17 million Series A round led by Permanent Capital Ventures, bringing its total capital to roughly $21.7 million. The funding will accelerate the rollout of its AI‑driven intelligence layer that automates core insurance brokerage workflows. The platform now integrates...
Iceotope Raises $26M to Advance Cooling for Next-Generation AI Infrastructure
Iceotope Group, a UK‑based provider of precision liquid cooling for data centres and edge AI workloads, announced a $26 million Series B round. The financing was led by Two Seas Capital and Barclays Climate Ventures, with participation from existing backers including Edinv...
How to Launch a Successful Drone Service Business: Advice From Operators Who've Done It
Commercial UAV News hosted a webinar where seasoned operators—Robert Hart of Lidar Drone Services, Dan Tartaglia of DroneAbility LLC, and Matt Young of Aerial Ashes—shared a step‑by‑step playbook for launching a profitable drone service business. The panel emphasized four pillars:...
Meet the 3D Printing Startup that Spent Five Years Not Selling Its Technology
Caracol, an Italian‑founded advanced manufacturing startup, spent five years operating as a service bureau to certify its large‑format additive manufacturing (LFAM) technology before launching commercial sales in 2022. By marrying industrial robotic arms with 3D‑printing processes, the company can produce...
Behind The Raise: Peripear
Peripear, founded by former midwife Nina van Schaick, has built a hands‑free wearable that delivers therapeutic warmth to the perineum during crowning, reducing severe tears by up to 50 %. The device targets hospital labour units, with MOUs in Singapore covering...
White Circle’s AI Control Platform Closes $11M in Funding From Industry Giants After Founder Goes Viral for Exposing Safety Flaw...
White Circle, an AI monitoring and safety platform, closed an $11 million seed round backed by executives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, Hugging Face, Datadog and other AI heavyweights. The company, founded by Denis Shilov—who went viral in 2024 for bypassing safety...
Figure Founder: F.04 Robot Initiates Component Delivery Process
Figure AI founder Brett Adcock announced on X that the design of the F.04 humanoid robot is finalized, triggering the start of component deliveries. The F.04 is billed as the biggest generational leap for the company, following the launch of...
As Coffee Prices Rise, Prefer Bets on a Hybrid Future
Prefer, a Singapore‑based food‑tech startup founded in 2022, uses fermentation to turn rice and chickpeas into coffee and cocoa extenders that can replace up to 40% of traditional beans without altering flavor. The company aims to keep everyday coffee affordable...
ANAV 3D Startup Delivers Large-Scale LFAM Ecosystem to India
Advanced New Age Ventures 3D (ANAV 3D) launched in Mumbai to build India’s largest large‑format additive manufacturing ecosystem, offering turnkey LFAM machines, robotic integration, and full‑service support. Backed by CEAD’s composite printers, the company targets aerospace, defense, marine, automotive and...
Origin Lab Raises $8M to Help Video Game Companies Sell Data to World-Model Builders
Origin Lab announced an $8 million seed round led by Lightspeed Ventures to create a data marketplace linking video‑game assets with AI labs building world‑models. The startup will license high‑quality game footage and 3‑D assets, converting them into training data for...
UK AI Chip Startup Fractile Raises $220M to Tackle the Growing Inference Bottleneck
UK AI‑chip startup Fractile announced a $220 million Series B round to accelerate its next‑generation inference hardware. The funding, led by Accel, Factorial Funds and Founders Fund, backs Fractile’s effort to cut the time and cost of producing massive token outputs for...
Five ID Raises $6M to Scale Palm Biometric Payments
London‑based Five ID has secured an additional $6 million seed round, bringing total capital to $8.5 million and valuing the company at $26 million post‑money. The startup’s palm‑vein biometric terminals, now deployed at roughly 80 locations across the UK and Ireland, have processed...
France’s Mantle8 Raises €31 Million to Fund the World’s Most Advanced Natural Hydrogen Exploration and Drilling Campaign
Mantle8, a Grenoble‑based natural hydrogen explorer, closed a €31 million (≈$33.5 million) Series A round, bringing total capital to €37 million (≈$40 million). The funding, led by Sandwater and backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Bpifrance’s Ecotechnologies 2 fund, IP Group, Wind Capital and Calderion, will finance...
How Do You Sell When You Have No Customers, No Reputation, and No Sales Experience in a Crowded Market? (Ask...
Robert Cekay, a developer of a home‑service CRM, faced the classic startup dilemma of selling with no customers, reputation, or sales experience. He was advised to ignore established platforms like Jobber and ServiceTitan and instead target owner‑operators who have never...
This $250 Million Startup Tracks How Cancer Reacts To Treatment In Real Time
NVision Quantum Technologies announced a $55 million financing round, including $38 million led by diagnostics giant Abbott, to commercialize its metabolic MRI platform that amplifies sugar signals 10,000‑fold for real‑time tumor monitoring. The German‑based startup, valued at over $250 million, plans to roll...
Corti Launches No-Equity Accelerator for Healthcare AI Startups
Healthtech startup Corti has launched a grant‑funded Startup Acceleration Program that gives healthcare AI founders free access to its clinical‑grade Symphony model and up to $5,000 in credits, without taking equity. The initiative also provides regulatory guidance for navigating the...
The Talent Profile Europe's Top AI Scaleups Are Chasing
European AI scaleups are actively recruiting "Promethean founders"—individuals who have previously launched or failed at startups—to inject founder‑level resilience and speed into their teams. Research from EQT Ventures shows 75% of their founder pool scores extremely high on risk tolerance...
Egypt-Born Proptech Byit Expands Into UAE
Egypt‑born proptech startup Byit announced its entry into the United Arab Emirates, launching a new suite of AI‑powered real‑estate tools. The expansion follows a $1.1 million funding round backed by A15, Beltone Holding and angel investors. Byit’s agent‑first model lets freelance...
Sam Altman May Start a New Compute Company
Sam Altman is reportedly considering the launch of a new artificial‑intelligence compute company. The venture would be primarily funded through a fresh fundraising round and would be majority‑owned by OpenAI while operating independently of its core product line. Sources say...
Star Catcher Industries Nabs $65M Series A
Star Catcher Industries announced a $65 million Series A round, led by B Capital with co‑leadership from Shield Capital and Cerberus Ventures. The new capital brings the company’s total funding to $88 million. Star Catcher is developing the first space‑based power grid that...
He Left a Top Job at Bank of America to Build 2 NASDAQ Companies. His Secret? 1 Simple Framework for...
Sam Tabar, a former Bank of America Asia‑Pacific capital strategist, left his high‑profile role to found two companies that have since gone public on NASDAQ. His career trajectory—from a prestigious law firm to a Japanese hedge fund and then corporate...
Why Great Founders Know When to Step Back
Great founders often step back sooner than expected, recognizing that sustainable growth hinges on strong teams. Sam Calagione, founder of Dogfish Head, attributes the brewery’s rise to hiring complementary talent and granting them autonomy. The article argues that early delegation...
I Left My Job to Become a Chocolatier. It Was the Right Choice, but There Are Things I Miss About...
Meredith Whitely quit a well‑paid corporate role in London after a redundancy in 2015 and launched a chocolate‑focused business that now blends confectionery with meditation. Over ten years she built the brand from part‑time tour guiding to a full‑time solopreneur...
White Circle Raises $11M to Help Companies Secure and Monitor AI Model Behavior
White Circle, the rebranded Pumpkin Intelligence, announced an $11 million seed round backed by AI heavyweights including OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind alumni, and DataDog co‑founder Olivier Pomel. Founder Denis Shilov went viral in 2024 after demonstrating a single‑prompt jailbreak that could bypass safety controls...
Olivia Jade Launches Her Beauty Brand, O.Piccola After 5 Years of Formulation, Testing, and a Major Product Overhaul
Olivia Jade, a 26‑year‑old influencer with over four million followers, spent five years developing a cosmetics line after a failed partnership with a California manufacturer. The setback led her to a South Korean factory, where she spent three additional years...
Kevin Hart’s $650 Million Media Empire Is Shrinking — Here’s What Went Wrong
Kevin Hart’s media venture Hartbeat, once valued at $650 million in 2022, is now being bought out by the comedian as investors exit. The company expanded to New York, Atlanta and a 40,000‑square‑foot West Hollywood office, but a slump in Hollywood...
Spinout Scores Funding for Clean Data Centre Energy Tech
H2CHP, a Durham University spinout, has secured a £1.5 million (~$1.9 million) investment round backed by Innovate UK, Blackfinch Ventures and Northstar Ventures – the first Durham spinout funded by the £22.5 million (~$28.8 million) North East Spinout Inspire Fund. The company’s free‑piston linear...
Paymentology Raises $175M to Expand Global Payments
Paymentology announced a $175 million financing round led by Apis Partners and Aspirity Partners, marking one of the year’s largest infusions into payment infrastructure. The capital will accelerate the company’s cloud‑native issuing platform across the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and...
Italian AI Company Webidoo Secures €21 Million to Scale SMB-Focused Automation Platform
Italian AI firm Webidoo announced a €21 million ($25 million) Series A led by IXC3, the Azimut Group’s fund. The capital will accelerate its AI‑driven platform that stitches together the average 20 disconnected tools used by small and medium‑size businesses. Webidoo reported €15 million...
Engineer Brothers Launch Automata Studio, an AI-Native Software and Marketing Agency
Engineer brothers Marc and Ralph Ghannam have launched Automata Studio, a Boston‑based agency that combines custom software development, website creation, and full‑funnel growth marketing under one roof. Leveraging 14 years of AI, blockchain, and MIT‑backed startup experience, the firm promises...
How Nimble Fox Games Is Building a Hybridcasual Studio Around Speed, but Not Chaotic Speed
Nimble Fox Games, a six‑person studio in Riyadh, is releasing a new hybrid‑casual mobile title every three weeks, using rapid experiments to build a repeatable hit‑finding system. The studio aims to test 20 concepts and identify one or two keeper...
Brain Food Startup Mosh Closes $13M Series A as Cognitive Wellness Goes Mainstream
Mosh, a brain‑food brand co‑founded by Maria Shriver and Patrick Schwarzenegger, closed a $13 million Series A led by Main Street Advisors. The raise comes as the global cognitive‑health food market, valued at $18.1 billion, is projected to reach $40.3 billion by 2030. Mosh’s...
Greenboard Raises $15.5 Million to Keep Compliance From Slowing Down Business in the AI Era
Greenboard announced a $15.5 million Series A round led by Base10 Partners, with participation from Y Combinator, General Catalyst, Commerce Ventures, Transpose Platform and Liquid2 Ventures. The AI‑driven compliance platform now serves more than 500 financial institutions and has introduced a conversational tool...
Charms Closes $1.5M Pre-Seed to Launch the AI Character Economy
Charms Interactive announced the launch of Charms.ai and closed a $1.5 million pre‑seed round to fund its creator‑centric AI character platform. The app lets users build characters with memory, personality, voice and a built‑in economy that rewards both creators and the...