Start-ups

A new report showcases the 20 top-trending open source startups around the world, more than half of which are closely aligned with AI. The report is the handiwork of European venture capital firm Runa Capital, which has operated the Runa Open Source Startup (ROSS) Index since 2020. The Index serves quarterly updates on the fastest-growing projects in terms of GitHub “stars” — a metric that’s something akin to a “like” on social media. Beginning in

Factories are all the rage in defense tech: Anduril announced a billion-dollar “megafactory” in Ohio earlier this year, while Saronic said last month it’s planning its own factory to mass-produce autonomous warships. Now, Anduril is considering building a factory in the U.K. as it expands beyond U.S. defense contracts. “If we get enough orders, absolutely we are planning to open a facility in the UK,” Rich Drake, Anduril’s general manager for U.K. and Europe, told

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. It’s rare to report on an 11-figure startup acquisition, let alone multiple high-value deals in a single week. And there are more subtle signs that things are looking surprisingly upbeat in startup land. Most interesting startup stories from the week Image Credits:Kimberly White/Getty Images / Flickr (opens

Wayve co-founder and CEO Alex Kendall sees promise in bringing his autonomous vehicle startup’s tech to market. That is, if Wayve sticks to its strategy of ensuring its automated driving software is cheap to run, hardware agnostic, and can be applied to advanced driver-assistance systems, robotaxis, and even robotics.  The strategy, which Kendall laid out during Nvidia’s GTC conference, begins with an end-to-end data-driven learning approach. This means that what the system “sees” through a

Norwegian robotics startup 1X plans to start early tests of its humanoid robot, Neo Gamma, in “a few hundred to a few thousand” homes by the end of 2025, according to the company’s CEO, Bernt Børnich. “Neo Gamma is going into homes this year,” Børnich told TechCrunch in an interview at Nvidia GTC 2025. “We want to invite early adopters in this year to help us develop this system. We want it to live and

It was on, then off, and welp, now it’s on again — and this time for a lot more money. Yep, the Equity podcast dug into Google’s $32 billion acquisition of cloud security startup Wiz. There was a lot to unpack: the why, the how, what it means. And of course, there was the “who wins” part. Sequoia takes home the VC prize for total payout. But another plucky VC out of Israel called Cyberstarts

Germany’s Munich Re has signed a definitive agreement to acquire digital insurance company Next Insurance for $2.6 billion, the firms announced on Thursday. Founded in 2016, Palo Alto-based Next Insurance is focused on providing insurance to small-to-medium-sized businesses. It was last valued at $2.5 billion in late 2023 when it raised $265 million. Next Insurance’s backers include Group 11, Allstate, Allianz X, Battery Ventures, Capital G, Redpoint Ventures, Nationwide, Amex Ventures, Ribbit Capital, and others.

CoreWeave said on Wednesday that it hopes to sell its initial public shares between $47 and $55 per share, putting the money it may raise between about $2.2 billion and $2.6 billion. Word on the street is that CoreWeave wanted to raise at least $3 billion and possibly over $4 billion. But price range announcements are always a bit of a game. The announced range is often lower than the bankers think the company can

Open source data movement company Airbyte is launching additional connectors to help enterprises better utilize their data in the age of AI without compromising data sovereignty. The San Francisco-based startup announced on Thursday that it’s releasing a host of new capabilities designed to enable customers to securely move corporate data without tapping SaaS applications. The new features include support for transferring unstructured data out of applications like Google Drive and SharePoint and compatibility with Apache

TechCrunch Sessions: AI kicks off on June 5 at Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley — and you have the power to decide who you want to see lead an impactful breakout session. We have narrowed down the impressive number of speaker applications to six incredible finalists. Now, it’s up to you to choose who you want to see share their wisdom with 1,200 fellow AI leaders and enthusiasts! You can take part in Audience Choice