Startups & Venture
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Anduril’s Trae Stephens says defense tech is headed for a shakeout
Trae Stephens is adamant that you can’t be boring and innovate. What he means is that people who refuse to take positions on anything are, in his view, definitionally incapable of building whatever comes next. This ethos also happens to be how Stephens operates. The Anduril co-founder and executive chairman—and Founders Fund partner—became invested in…
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Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky plans to start a new AI company
Airbnb Inc. Chief Executive Officer Brian Chesky is starting a new artificial intelligence lab, according to several people familiar with the matter, marking his first foray into the global AI race. Chesky plans to create an AI venture to develop artificial intelligence models and is considering a focus on user interaction and design, said the…
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Exclusive: Investors bet $40 million on Honeycomb’s no-inspection home insurance AI
Itai Ben-Zaken might be one of the only insurance tech founders who doesn’t need investors’ money—but he’ll still take it. He’s the CEO of Honeycomb Insurance, an AI-native insurer specializing in apartment buildings and condo associations. The company raised a $40 million funding round led by Zeev Ventures, Fortune learned exclusively. Ibex Investors, Peakline, Alpha…
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A single new sentence in SpaceX’s amended IPO filing could signal the biggest merger in history
On June 1, SpaceX issued an amended registration statement for its upcoming IPO that contains a couple of noteworthy additions to the original filing submitted two weeks earlier. In one new provision, the rocket and AI giant announced that it will reserve 5% of the offering’s shares for “certain employees and persons… which may include…
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Exclusive: Nvidia snaps up Kumo AI in latest acquisition
Nvidia has acquired Kumo AI, a small, four-year-old startup that develops foundation models designed to make accurate business predictions, according to two sources familiar with the deal. Kumo’s three co-founders, Vanja Josifovski, Hema Raghavan, and Jure Leskovec, transitioned to Nvidia last month, the sources said. While the founders’ LinkedIn profiles have been updated, and now…
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SpaceX may be the biggest IPO ever, but Morningstar says it is overvalued by half and the smart investors will wait out the hype and buy later
In just over a week, SpaceX is set to debut as one of the biggest IPOs in history with an eye-popping valuation of $1.75 trillion. One top analyst says it may actually be worth half of that, and investors may get a better deal by biding their time. Despite the hype surrounding the IPO, partly…
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Mark Cuban put $500K into a stranger’s rocket company over email. It’s now a SpaceX competitor worth $4 billion
Mark Cuban has a track record of making bold business bets with limited information. He once bought a $25 million Dallas mansion sight unseen, calling it his one “why the f–k not purchase.” But one of his most lucrative gambles started even more casually: with a cold email from a stranger he says he’s still…
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Andrew Yang’s upstart cell phone business acquires Helium Mobile
Andrew Yang enjoys being a maverick. After a surprisingly strong showing in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, where he stood out for wearing a “MATH” lapel pin during debates, Yang redirected his energy into business. In 2025, he decided to take on phone giants Verizon and AT&T with a low-cost mobile phone network, Noble Mobile.…
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Top analyst sees ‘opening of the floodgates for the IPO market’ after Anthropic’s filing as dotcom bubble comparisons fly
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is moving toward going public on Wall Street, the latest chapter in its meteoric rise from a little-known research laboratory to one of the leading AI companies valued at $965 billion. Anthropic said Monday it has submitted a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial…
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Anthropic confidentially files for IPO after raising $65 billion in a funding round at a $965 billion valuation
Anthropic PBC has confidentially submitted draft paperwork for a public listing as it races longtime rival OpenAI to make a Wall Street debut as soon as this fall. “The number of shares to be offered and the price have not yet been set,” the company said in a blog post Monday. The Claude maker recently…