🎯Today's Venture Capital Pulse
Updated 1h agoWhat's happening: Machina Labs lands $124M Series C to build AI‑driven intelligent factory
Machina Labs closed a $124M Series C round led by Woven Capital, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Balerion Space Ventures and the Strategic Development Fund. The funding will finance its first 200,000‑square‑foot Intelligent Factory in the United States, featuring up to 50 RoboCraftsman cells for defense, aerospace and automotive customers.
Also developing:
By the numbers: OpenAI secures $110B corporate funding
News•Nov 19, 2025
European Tech Gets Political
Atomico’s 2025 State of European Tech report shows rising venture investment and marks a shift toward organized lobbying by European startups and investors. The report, authored by partner Tom Wehmeier, puts forward four policy recommendations—Fix the friction, Fund the future, Empower talent, and Champion risk—aimed at harmonising regulations, boosting funding, and improving talent pipelines, echoing EU‑INC’s proposed “28th regime” for a pan‑European company structure. The document features a quote from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen emphasizing AI made in Europe, underscoring high‑level political attention. Industry leaders like Synthesia’s Alexandru Voica note that enhanced communications and policy work are now essential to counter public distrust and manage risk.
By TechCrunch Venture Feed
Social•Nov 19, 2025
IPO Peaks Fade: Patience Beats Day‑One Hype
What happened in 2025 IPOs if you bought near the peak: Figma (FIG): -74% 📉 Circle (CRCL): -73% 📉 CoreWeave (CRWV): -58% 📉 Klarna (KLNA): -38% 📉 Omada (OMDA): -31% 📉 Chime (CHYM): -30% 📉 Hinge Health (HNGE): -27% 📉 eToro (ETOR): -21% 📉 Average decline from peak: -44% The...
By Jason Lemkin
Social•Nov 19, 2025
Successful Exits Begin Long Before the Sale
A life changing exit doesn’t start at the finish line. It starts long before you’re ready to sell. Seun Oshinaike (@SeunOshinaike) knew that. He sold Street Tag on @acquiredotcom to a strategic buyer, taking the company even farther. Full interview: https://t.co/TLnv3EpAHp https://t.co/jAzRoJCjoJ
By Andrew Gazdecki
Podcast•Nov 18, 2025•39 min
Retail’s Biggest Scam: Deductions Ft. Akash Raju
In this episode, Mike Gelb talks with Akash Raju, CEO of Glimpse, about the hidden cost of retail deductions that can drain up to 5% of a CPG brand’s revenue. Akash explains how the complex deduction ecosystem works, why it’s...
By The Consumer VC
Social•Nov 19, 2025
Spatial AI Releases Massive Egocentric Dataset for Robot Learning
Spatial AI (https://t.co/qQyv8FngL6) is building large real-world datasets to teach robots how to navigate the world and complete tasks. Their first open source dataset, SEA (Spatial Everyday Activities), is the largest curated egocentric dataset of people carrying out real tasks, with...
By YCombinator
Social•Nov 18, 2025
New Opportunities Unlocked: Gates Now Open
THE GATES HAVE BEEN OPENED https://lnkd.in/gQVHdHtu
By Hunter Walk
News•Nov 18, 2025
‘Our Funds Are 20 Years Old’: Limited Partners Confront VCs’ Liquidity Crisis
Limited partners (LPs) are confronting a venture‑capital liquidity crunch as fund lifespans have stretched to 15‑20 years, leaving billions of dollars locked in under‑performing startups. LPs are revising allocation models, extending fund‑life assumptions to 18 years, and turning to the...
By TechCrunch Venture Feed
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Big AI Firms Threaten Startups, Driving Shift to Chinese Open-Source
Are the largest AI model-makers a threat to smaller startups? On TWiST, I note that the competition for AI startups doesn't just come from rivals in their space, but the companies that designed the LLMs upon which they're building their apps....
By Jason Calacanis
Social•Nov 18, 2025
AI Threatens White‑collar Jobs; Self‑reliance Is Essential
Even if we believe AI job displacement is real… what can we actually DO? Alex Wilhelm and I discuss the very real possibility — as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei suggests — that AI-related advances in productivity are leading us straight into...
By Jason Calacanis
Podcast•Nov 18, 2025•49 min
VC10X - Building OLX, 350+ Exits, Top Marketplace Investor - Fabrice Grinda, Founding Partner, FJ Labs
In this episode, Fabrice Grinda, founding partner of FJ Labs and creator of OLX, recounts his leap from McKinsey to building a global classifieds empire, detailing the aggressive "spaghetti on the wall" rollout that took OLX to 100+ countries and...
By VC10X
Social•Nov 18, 2025
AI Agent Handles 77 Conversations, Amplifying Small Team Power
Our general AI Agent ("Digital Jason") handled 77 conversations and 203 messages yesterday. Most were pretty good, I am sure. But the real point is I couldn't have done it. Nor could our tiny team. This is some of the biggest leverage...
By Jason Lemkin
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Jiga Secures $12M Series A to Accelerate AI-Driven Parts Manufacturing
Congrats to @Jiga3d on their $12M Series A! They're building the custom parts manufacturing platform for AI-era speed. Engineers upload drawings and get routed to vetted suppliers with direct communication, while Jiga automates the administrative grunt work and keeps humans in...
By YCombinator
News•Nov 18, 2025
Hummink Raises €15M in Funding
Paris‑based Hummink, the spin‑out that commercialises High‑Precision Capillary Printing (HPCaP) technology, closed a €15 million funding round co‑led by KBC Focus Fund, Cap Horn and Bpifrance, with participation from Elaia Partners, Sensinnovat and Beeyond. The capital will fund the rollout of...
By FinSMEs
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Infracost Raises $15M to Embed Cloud Cost Checkout
Congrats to @infracost on their $15M Series A! They’ve built the checkout screen for cloud—right inside GitHub/GitLab so engineers can see the cost of infra changes before deploy and how to optimize them. Already used by 3,500+ companies, including 10% of the...
By YCombinator
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Poolside AI Acquires Fern Labs, Forming Full‑stack Frontier AI Powerhouse
news! @poolsideai has acquired @fern_labs, in which @airstreet was the first and sole investor - and a first investor into poolside as well. i met @ashedwardst in late 2024 before fern had a name or team. his technical depth, product taste...
By Nathan Benaich
Podcast•Nov 18, 2025•29 min
AI: The New Frontier for Mental Health Support?
In this episode, host Bob Safian discusses the contentious link between AI and mental health with Ellie Pavlick, director of Brown University's new AI‑mental health institute, and venture capitalist Soraya Darabi, an early backer of mental‑health AI startups. They examine...
By Masters of Scale
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Sphere Secures $21M Series A for AI Tax Automation
Congrats to @nrudder_ and @get_sphere on their $21M Series A! Sphere helps companies stay in compliance as they scale across borders. Their AI native tax engine collects, codifies, and monitors tax law globally, and their 100+ local rails into tax authorities...
By YCombinator
Social•Nov 18, 2025
AI-Powered Marketplace Unlocks Previously Untapped Offline Market
.@arthur_leopold and Jonathan are a force. Ambitious, focused, hungry, hard working, insightful, and obsessed with their customers. Classic right founders + right timing, leveraging AI to crack open an offline, friction-ful market that has eluded automation. We've learned many times...
By Sarah Tavel
Podcast•Nov 18, 2025•39 min
E652 | Lea Strumberger, KfW Capital: How Europe’s Largest Public LP Thinks About Opportunity Funds
Welcome back to another episode of the EUVC Podcast, where we bring together Europe’s venture family to share the stories, insights, and lessons that drive our ecosystem forward. Today we dive into one of the most under-discussed — yet increasingly important...
By The European VC (EUVC)
Social•Nov 18, 2025
2025 IPO Pricing: Unpredictable, No Clear Pattern
Why the Hell Is It So Hard to Price an IPO in 2025? In 2025, day one IPO performance feels like a total crapshoot. Figma went parabolic (but now sits at the failed Adobe acquisition price), CoreWeave was flat out the gates...
By CJ Gustafson
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Curate People: Hire the Best, Not Just Anyone
New podcast on recruiting (full episode). Links below. Curate People 0:00 The Best Only Want to Work With the Best 3:49 You'll Never Be Able to Hire Anybody Better Than You 6:45 Break Every Rule to Get the Best People 10:19 It Just Takes a...
By Naval Ravikant
Podcast•Nov 17, 2025•0 min
The First $100,000,000 ARR at Datadog: How Founder CEO Olivier Pomel Built a Customer-Centric Observability Giant
In this episode, Datadog founder‑CEO Olivier Pomel recounts how the company reached its first $100 million ARR by obsessively prioritizing genuine customer insight over sales or engineering shortcuts. He explains why closed alphas and annual contracts stifle learning, why enterprise SaaS...
By Jason Lemkin
Social•Nov 18, 2025
AI Startups Outpace SaaS Growth Tenfold, Investors Must Choose
Why are AI companies growing SO MUCH FASTER than their SaaS counterparts? On average, AI companies are growing at about 10 times the speed as startups pursuing software-as-a-service business models. Investors now face a choice… "Bet on the past" by backing...
By Jason Calacanis
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Negative Sentiment Threatens AI More Than Any Bubble
How negative sentiment could be a more pressing concern for AI than any bubble… In this TWiST highlight, I consider the recent backlash against AI apps and related technologies. Pushback and cynical takes around AI are coming from a number of...
By Jason Calacanis
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Bezos Co‑Leads Secret ‘Physical AI’ Startup Project Prometheus
What is Project Prometheus and why is Jeff Bezos going to (co-)run it? On TWiST, Alex Wilhelm and I do a little digging on $AMZN founder Jeff Bezos' latest project, the secretive AI startup Project Prometheus. We know they're doing something...
By Jason Calacanis
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Federal AI Law Needed to Stop State Patchwork Killing Startups
The President is right. A 50-state patchwork is a startup killer. Federal AI legislation is essential. There’s no bigger issue for Little Tech — the builders who create the future, for America.
By Marc Andreessen
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Frugal Founders in Booming Markets Ignore Abundant Funding
Startup founders building in rapidly expanding markets who optimize their burn rate, while competitors are raising $100M, remind me of people who count calories at an all you can eat buffet.
By Niko Bonatsos
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Treating SAFEs as Credit Cards Erodes Real Equity
Startup founders who treat SAFEs and convertible notes like credit cards until the Series A closes... and then realize they have been playing Monopoly with real equity.
By Niko Bonatsos
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Goldbridge's Ramp Boosts Property Values 20% in Three Months
Goldbridge (@trygoldbridge) is building Ramp for Real Estate. It's an all-in-one financial platform for real estate owners that can increase their property values by 20 percent in less than three months. Congrats on the launch, @alvinsalehi_ & Greg! https://t.co/esEgdymet5 https://t.co/rv1JcBxDkv
By YCombinator
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Explore Top B2B AI VCs with SaaStr Research
Want to learn more about top VCs in B2B + AI? Browse our new SaaStr AI Research VCs -> https://t.co/3JyImX3jMX We'll even help pick the best ones for you (and much more to come) https://t.co/rG7K5x5YYU
By Jason Lemkin
Social•Nov 18, 2025
JPMorgan Accelerates Stealth Startup's Bold Market Entry
This is how America wins🇺🇸 A public shout @jpmorgan + our partners Doug Petno (co CEO commercial + inv bank) + John China (co head innovation banking) Lux stealth seeded serial founder w/big audacious plan + tech to match in non-obvious market JPM...
By Josh Wolfe
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Cellbyte Secures $2.75M Seed to Accelerate Global Drug Launches
Congrats to Cellbyte on their $2.75M seed! Cellbyte helps pharmaceutical companies launch new drugs worldwide. Their platform streamlines pricing, market access, and regulatory workflows for drug launches by automating data extraction and insight generation, enabling faster, more efficient decision-making across global...
By YCombinator
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Investors Back Cloudflare Rivals to Prevent Single
resilience investors won’t be mincing their words either when they start funding a bunch of cloudflare competitors can’t have the internet crash bc of this single point of failure ey
By Nathan Benaich
Social•Nov 18, 2025
Rapid Growth, Not Just Features, Defines an AI Native
How to know if you are an “AI Native” start-up: 🚀 You are growing much, much faster than last year Otherwise, you just have AI Features
By Jason Lemkin
Social•Nov 17, 2025
Production AI Teams Favor Open‑Source Models and Database‑Backed Agents
70% of production AI teams use open source models. 72.5% connect agents to databases, not chat interfaces. This is what 375 technical builders actually ship - & it looks nothing like Twitter AI. 70% of teams use open source models in...
By Tomasz Tunguz
Social•Nov 17, 2025
Acquisitions Close Quickly, but Relationships Take Years
If you want to potentially get acquired — start now. It often really, quietly takes years. What do I mean? Well for sure, acquisitions themselves technically often happen very quickly. The acquiring CEO reaches out, they meet up...
By Jason Lemkin
Social•Nov 17, 2025
Investors Chase Metrics; Strategics Chase Product Fit
Is the process the same for M&A vs. a capital raise? While the process is largely the same, there are some differences. The biggest difference: investors tend to be hyper focused on metrics, while strategics tend to be more focused on...
By Michael Lyon
Social•Nov 17, 2025
Founder University Expands to Japan After Global Success
After the success of Founder University in both America and Saudi Arabia, we’re expanding to Japan! We’re hiring a researcher to help us discover the most promising startups in the region. It’s a huge opportunity to learn, grow, and get deep...
By Jason Calacanis
Social•Nov 17, 2025
Join Founder University Japan: Research Top Startups
Wanna come work with me? LAUNCH is bringing Founder University to Japan, and we're looking for a sharp, curious researcher to help us discover the most promising startups in the region! It's a huge opportunity to learn, grow, and get deep...
By Jason Calacanis
Social•Nov 17, 2025
Compute Scarcity and Geopolitics Define AI's Future
“In my career working in AI, I have yet to meet a single AI person that ever felt like they had enough compute.” “Open-weight models is a tremendous source of geopolitical influence” “When China’s government makes an all-nation commitment, it’s a very...
By Harry Stebbings
Social•Nov 17, 2025
AI Coding's VC Subsidy Mirrors Early Food Delivery Boom
Is AI Coding Like Food Delivery: VC Subsidised and Unsustainable: " I remember the early days of food delivery, it was VC subsidized. We're seeing that right now with AI coding. This can't go on forever... there will be some very valuable businesses...
By Harry Stebbings
Social•Nov 17, 2025
Even Disney+ Struggled: Forecasting New Brands Is Guesswork
5 learnings from launching (and attempting to forecast) Disney+ ... Forecasting a brand-new product, even one with Disney's IP library behind it, is a leap off a cliff. As Vanna Krantz, former CFO of Disney Streaming, told me: "We beat our Year...
By CJ Gustafson
Social•Nov 17, 2025
OpenAI Lacks Platform Power Without Network Effects
Posit: OpenAI’s fundamental problem is that it cannot become a platform company as long as the models it wants to use as a platform have no network effects and remain pure commodities. People had to use Windows, but there is...
By Benedict Evans
Social•Nov 17, 2025
Get Instant Funding Verdict by Uploading Deck
Wondering if you can get funded ... or not? Wonder no more Upload your deck to SaaStr AI VC and we'll tell you -> https://t.co/S5UFYzoN7a https://t.co/VLRaBqjNa3
By Jason Lemkin
Social•Nov 17, 2025
Reelables Secures $10.4M to Scale Printable Smart Labels
Congrats to @ReelablesHQ on their $10.4M Series A! They've created the first printable smart label—paper-thin Bluetooth/5G trackers that work with standard barcode printers. They grew 200% this year and are scaling to 100M labels/yr to improve supply chain visibility. https://t.co/7GWxq3Trfm
By YCombinator
Social•Nov 17, 2025
20VC: Europe’s Only Fund Embracing 996 Culture
20VC crushing the 996 London life. Only fund in Europe that works this. 🤷♂️ https://t.co/RkVTlQhcTW
By Harry Stebbings
Social•Nov 17, 2025
Deedy Das and Jay Eum Join VC Roundtable
Deedy Das and Jay Eum Join the VC Roundtable! https://t.co/GLAHbFKopV
By Jason Calacanis
Social•Nov 17, 2025
Faire’s $5.2B Offer Highlights Public‑Company Worth
Long Faire 🚀 Long indie retail, long local communities, long craft, quality products. The $5.2B tender offer led by crossover investor WCW signals Faire has the attributes of a public company and has built a lasting, category-defining business. https://t.co/nYvdMAxuXG
By Kirsten Green
Social•Nov 17, 2025
Voize Raises $50M to Free Nurses From Admin
Congrats to voize on their $50M Series A! voize frees nurses from admin so they can focus on what truly matters: people. Today, more than 75,000 nurses in 1,100+ care facilities use voize to document care through natural speech, right at the...
By YCombinator
Social•Nov 17, 2025
AI Teammates Automate Insurance Paperwork, Freeing Agents for Clients
Acolite builds AI teammates for insurance agencies so teams can spend more time with clients. Forward an email or delegate from your AMS, and Acolite issues COIs, pre-fills ACORDs, and cleans SOVs — fast, accurate, secure, with humans in the loop. https://t.co/MUONLogKx6 Congrats...
By YCombinator