Markets
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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…
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Exclusive: Vanta hits $300 million ARR as ‘shadow AI’ explodes across corporate America
Most corporate employees in America have likely signed up for ChatGPT. And Claude. And possibly Cursor. Their employer’s security team has no idea—or even if they do, they can’t keep up. This paradox is why Vanta is having a blockbuster year. The San Francisco-based security and compliance company has crossed $300 million in annual recurring…
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How a Spanish startup pivoted to video AI and built a $230 million ARR business with no VC funding
Greetings, Tech Editor Alexei Oreskovic guest-writing your Term Sheet today. Silicon Valley likes to think of itself as the center of the tech universe, and San Francisco’s heavy concentration of AI companies is only reinforcing that habit. But innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurial acumen aren’t restricted by borders, as I was reminded when talking to Joaquín…
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How a chance encounter in Texas sparked a $1 billion Kleiner Perkins-backed AI startup
Tyson Chen and Apurva Shrivastava were chasing restaurants when they found an HVAC company. The two engineers had first met at MIT poker night and built an AI system to handle missed calls—originally, they thought this made sense for restaurants, specifically. But, as Chen and Shrivastava wandered a Texas restaurant conference, a Dallas heating and…
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Upfront’s Aditi Maliwal makes 3 bets a year and ignores the hype cycle
Aditi Maliwal doesn’t want to be “another checkbook.” “Ideas are a dime a dozen,” she told Fortune. “What I’m backing, especially at the earliest stages, is a person.” That thesis is part of why she does only two to three deals a year. Maliwal is a general partner at Upfront Ventures, a 30-year-old Los Angeles…
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Exclusive: Omni raises $120 million to fix one of AI’s biggest enterprise data problems
For years, companies have poured money into data warehouses, dashboards, and business intelligence tools, only to discover the real problem wasn’t storage or visualization—it was translation. That disconnect is exactly what Omni was built to bridge, and investors are now betting big that the company has the formula. The company just raised a $120 million…
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The Godmother of Silicon Valley and her former student want to fix how healthcare gets built
Mary Minno first met Esther Wojcicki when she was 15. Walking into Wojcicki’s journalism class at Palo Alto High School, she was new to Silicon Valley. About 20 years later, Minno’s still in the area—and after nearly a decade in Big Tech, most recently at Google, she’s teaming up with her former teacher. Wojcicki—often called…