Markets
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What drones and drug discovery have in common
What do weapons and drug discovery have in common? Over the last 24 hours, billions of dollars and a lead investor. In quick succession, Demis Hassabis’s Isomorphic Labs announced it had raised a $2.1 billion Series B, and very early today, Anduril announced it had closed its $5 billion Series H at a $61 billion
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Exclusive: Roadrunner raises $27 million from Kleiner Perkins and Founders Fund
Joubin Mirzadegan will straight-up tell you: it’s boring—and that’s the point. Mirzadegan’s startup Roadrunner builds AI-native, natural-language “configure, price, quote” (or CPQ) software. And before you keep scrolling, consider: The CPQ process—the software companies use to configure what they’re selling, set the right price, and generate a quote—quietly controls how fast and how well they
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Exclusive: Index Ventures backs Frame’s $50 million bet that employees are still cybersecurity’s weakest link
I used to think I’d never fall for a phishing scam. Now I’m not so sure. A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine received a text from our editor, or so they thought. It turned out to be completely fake. Scams like this, apparently, are becoming the new normal. That’s the bet behind Frame
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Brian Schimpf has been quietly running Anduril since its earliest days. And once he’s talking, he has a lot to say
In 2017, Brian Schimpf was in the California desert with an engineering problem to solve. The place was Apple Valley, expansive, sandy, and surreal. Schimpf—CEO and cofounder of Anduril, then a startup in the truest sense of the word—had been there for a while, building the defense tech company’s first product: autonomous, solar-powered surveillance towers,
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Exclusive: Gusto crosses $1 billion in 12-month trailing revenue
After closing, a San Francisco flower market isn’t exactly idyllic. But in 2012, Eddie Kim and Tomer London, cofounders of HR software startup Gusto, were there to see Christina Stembel. The owner of Farmgirl Flowers, Stembel needed to hire her first employee and, accordingly, had to set up payroll for the first time. She’d been
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District, founded by three Snapchat alumni, raises a $14.7 million seed round to help independent sellers build community-driven marketplaces
Eddie Koai, Patrick Mandia, and I are watching Crazy Lamp Lady on someone’s computer. It’s a town hall of sorts. Crazy Lamp Lady is actually a big deal—her real first name is Jocelyn, but as Crazy Lamp Lady, she has more than 800,000 followers across platforms and an online marketplace attracting thousands. She’s reassuring her
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Sequoia-backed Astrocade raises $56 million to let everyone build games
I’ve been playing this online dinosaur game called Apex Predator. It works much as you’d expect: You start off as a small, feathery compsognathus, and work your way up to velociraptor status (and beyond) by, well, being the apex predator. I know it sounds gruesome, but it actually evokes “Pacman with dinosaurs” and is even
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VC firm Ethereal has avoided the spotlight for 5 years—now it’s telling its story
Good morning, Jeff John Roberts here. Happy Star Wars Day to those who celebrate. The venture capital crowd, in my experience, is not shy when it comes to telling their story to the media. So it was a surprise to encounter Ethereal Ventures, a firm that has been around since 2021, but has chosen to
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The fruit fly cancer researcher who built his first prototype out of lollipop sticks and straws
By the time most of us notice fruit flies, something’s rotting. Or perhaps those fruit flies are crowding a fermenting sourdough starter, or swarming a banana that’s about to become an unwanted mush pile. But, for biomedical scientist Caíque Costa, fruit flies aren’t meant to be swatted—when studied, they’re where cancer breakthroughs may begin. “When
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The startup that wants to give surgeons X-ray vision
“Have you ever seen a spine surgery before?” Over Zoom, James Hu asks me this sincerely, standing in the middle of a large white room that reads between clinical and stylized. I consider the question, not because I have, but because it occurs to me: I’ve perhaps never thought much about it at all, and