Start-ups

China appears to think homegrown AI startup DeepSeek could become a notable tech success story for the country.  After DeepSeek’s sudden rise to fame in January with the release of its open “reasoning” model, R1, the company is now operating under new, tighter government-influenced restrictions, according to The Information. Some of the company’s employees have been prevented from traveling abroad freely, and the Chinese government is now playing a role in screening potential investors, according

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. This week showed more optimism among startups than in other corners of the world, with entrepreneurs feeling confident enough to acquire other companies, raise fresh funding, and even say no to more money. Most interesting startup stories from the week Image Credits:Hinge Health Not quite four weddings

AI company Sesame has released the base model that powers Maya, the impressively realistic voice assistant. The model, which is 1 billion parameters in size (“parameters” referring to individual components of the model), is under an Apache 2.0 license, meaning it can be used commercially with few restrictions. Called CSM-1B, the model generates “RVQ audio codes” from text and audio inputs, according to Sesame’s description on the AI dev platform Hugging Face. RVQ refers to “residual vector quantization,”

Flock Safety and one of its long-time VCs, Bedrock Capital, announced Thursday that the startup raised a fresh $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation. Flock makes computer vision-enabled video surveillance technology used by law enforcement as well as businesses, property management companies, and so on. It’s best known for its automatic license plate recognition tech, but Flock also makes gunshot detection tech marketed to schools, and recently acquired public safety drone company Aerodome. Flock

Light, the maker of a minimalist phone designed to help consumers disconnect from smartphone distractions and social media, will launch its newest model, the Light Phone III, on March 27. This version of the device, like its older counterpart, offers a simple black-and-white display and necessary features like support for calls, texts, navigation, alarms, hotspots, a calendar, and more, including music. However, the upgraded device now ships with a 3.92-inch AMOLED display instead of an

One of Silicon Valley’s most storied startup accelerators, Y Combinator, held its Winter 2025 Demo Day on Wednesday, showcasing what its latest batch of 160 startups are cooking up. Some of Silicon Valley’s most successful startups — including Stripe, Airbnb, and Reddit — started out in a YC batch. Today, YC’s newer startups are focused on building the next big thing in AI. In this batch, we noticed a surprising number of startups creating tools

TechCrunch All Stage (formerly Early Stage) returns to Boston on July 15, and the agenda for our tentpole East Coast founder event is almost complete. We’re excited to share this sneak peek at some of the fantastic speakers and sessions we have on tap.  For builders who are just starting on their founder journey, our Foundation Stage is absolutely the place to be. We’re enlisting a stellar cast of leading investors and entrepreneurs to dig deep

Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei is worried that spies, likely from China, are getting their hands on costly “algorithmic secrets” from the U.S.’s top AI companies — and he wants the U.S. government to step in. Speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations event on Monday, Amodei said that China is known for its “large-scale industrial espionage” and that AI companies like Anthropic are almost certainly being targeted. “Many of these algorithmic secrets, there are $100

Food delivery startup Wonder is acquiring media company Tastemade for around $90 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. Founded in 2012, Tastemade produces food, travel, and home videos and operates several free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels. The acquisition gives Wonder access to a content studio, production company, and advertising business. Wonder will leverage all of these assets to promote its brands to a wider audience, the company says. The deal marks Wonder’s latest

Since Donald Trump Jr. joined VC firm 1789 Capital after his father won the election, he’s been busy monetizing the Make America Great Again (MAGA) ecosystem. He’s been making bets in media, pharmaceutical, guns, and crypto while pushing against environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the Financial Times reported. The VC firm was co-founded by Trump donor Omeed Malik (who is also a backer of Substack) and has support from