It’s Monday, October 27, 2025, and we’re back with the top startup and tech funding news stories shaping today’s innovation landscape. From AI-driven hiring platforms and chip design automation to fintech, healthtech, and back-office AI for traditional industries, investors continued […]
“I cannot believe that they are doing it this way.” This sentiment, articulated by Jake Heller, co-founder and CEO of Casetext, encapsulates the entrepreneurial spark that ignited his $650 million AI legal startup, CoCounsel, recently acquired by Thomson Reuters. His candid talk at the AI Startup School on June 17th, 2025, offered a masterclass in […]
BOB’s new system enables bitcoin holders to borrow stablecoins against their BTC, keeping assets secured on Bitcoin and addressing a major obstacle to Bitcoin DeFi.
In a bid to dethrone Wikipedia, Elon Musk’s xAI has launched Grokipedia, an AI-generated online encyclopedia. With over 885,000 articles, xAI Grokipedia promises to deliver faster and more factual information.
According to recent reports, xAI, the company behind Elon Musk’s Grok platform, gave birth to a rival to the online knowledge powerhouse. The tech billionaire claims that the platform will be a “massive improvement over Wikipedia,” addressing it as a “woke” Wikipedia.
xAI Grokipedia Launch Sparks Enthusiasm
Tech billionaire Elon Musk launched xAI Grokipedia, an alternative to the uncontested titan, Wikipedia. Criticizing Wikipedia for harbouring “editorial bias” and “ideological narratives,” Musk intends to position his platform to provide fast, factual, and less biased information. In a September X post, Musk wrote,
“We are building Grokipedia @xAI. Will be a massive improvement over Wikipedia. Frankly, it is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”
Despite initial technical hiccups, xAI Grokipedia went live at grokipedia.com on Monday. The platform, powered by Grok, aims to transform the way online knowledge is created and shared. After launching in the afternoon, the site experienced a brief outage due to high traffic, but was restored by the evening.
Grokipedia vs Wikipedia
Notably, Grokipedia, the AI-powered online encyclopedia, boasts around 885,000 articles, a significant difference from Wikipedia’s vast repository of over 7 million articles in English alone. While Wikipedia has a more extensive collection, Grokipedia’s AI-driven approach enables faster updates and potentially more objective information.
Elon Musk’s xAI Grokipedia
Both platforms differ significantly in their approaches to content generation, editing access, and neutrality. Grokipedia uses anAIsystemin xAI’s Grok model to create and edit articles, using AI technology toupdatearticlesmorequickly and withlesspotentialbiasthanhumaneditingallows. Ontheotherhand, Wikipedia isentirelydependent on human volunteers to research, create, and edit entries.
While Grokipedia provides users theability to submit feedback, theeditingfunctionislessavailable, whereas Wikipedia allowsarticleeditingandcontributionsfromanyone.
According to Musk’s Twitter post, even in its early stage, Grokipedia is superior to Wikipedia; he noted that “version 0.1” is “better than Wikipedia,” promising that “Version 1.0 will be 10X better.”
Significantly, the xAI Grokipedia launch stems from Elon Musk’s long-standing criticism of Wikipedia. He believes that the latter is dominated by “far-left activists” and has an “extremely left-biased” editorial approach.
Musk has repeatedly expressed concerns about Wikipedia’s editorial bias, transparency, and potential manipulation of information. In a December 2019 post, he noted,
“Just looked at my wiki for 1st time in years. It’s insane!…Btw, can someone please delete ‘investor’. I do basically zero investing.”
Currently, many of the articles on the new platform appear to be derived from the existing online encyclopedia. But Musk aims to transition away from relying on Wikipedia’s content by the end of the year, leveraging xAI’s Grok model to generate articles instead. In his recent statement, reiterating the vision of xAI Grokipedia, the tech leader stated,
“The goal of Grok and Grokipedia is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We will never be perfect, but we shall nonetheless strive towards that goal.”
Conclusion
To summarize, Grokipedia, an xAI initiative from Elon Musk, has launched with more than 885,000 articles and intends to compete with Wikipedia. Technical issues were apparent in the early experience, but the platform is billed as more regular and frequent, with quality articles produced faster.
Despite Grokipedia’s capacity to produce overwhelming amounts of information with an AI model, there are still considerable concerns about the potential for bias and whether it is factually correct. Moving forward, it will be interesting to see whether xAI can improve Grokipedia by balancing rapid updates with building reliability and trust with users; all attempts at launching in Version 1.0 are pointed to being ’10X better.’
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Grokipedia? An AI-driven online encyclopedia founded by xAI and Elon Musk, designed to produce information faster and factual with less quality issues.
How does Grokipedia differ from Wikipedia? Unlike Wikipedia’s human-edited model, Grokipedia uses xAI’s Grok model to automatically generate and update articles.
How many articles does Grokipedia currently have? Grokipedia currently hosts over 885,000 AI-generated articles
Glossary
xAI: Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company that developed Grok and Grokipedia.
Grok: An AI chatbot by xAI that powers Grokipedia’s content generation.
Grokipedia: An AI-driven online encyclopedia created by xAI as an alternative to Wikipedia.
Wikipedia: A free, human-edited online encyclopedia known for its collaborative content model.
AI-generated content: Information or text created automatically by artificial intelligence rather than human writers.
Second day of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 at San Francisco's Moscone West. Here's the rundown on what to expect, including the 50% discount on passes for remainder of the event.
Google's Gemini for Education is rapidly integrating into higher education, offering no-cost AI tools to over 1000 institutions and 10 million students.
The Securitize IPO is a bellwether moment, creating the first publicly-traded company focused purely on the infrastructure for tokenizing real-world assets.
I’ve been building products and companies my entire career — Increo, Box, Crashlytics, Twitter and now, Digits — and I’ve had the privilege of speaking with some of the sharpest minds in venture and entrepreneurship along the way.
One recent conversation with a legendary investor really crystallized for me a set of truths about startups: what success really is, why some founders thrive while others burn out, and how to navigate the inevitable chaos of building something from nothing.
Here are some of the lessons I’ve internalized from years of building, observing and learning.
Success has no finish line
Jeff Seibert
In the startup world, we talk a lot about IPOs, acquisitions and valuations. But those are milestones, not destinations.
The companies that endure don’t “win” and stop — they keep creating, adapting and pushing forward. They’re playing an infinite game, where the only goal is to remain in the game.
When you’re building something truly generative — driven by a purpose greater than yourself — there’s no point at which you can say “done.” If your company has a natural stopping point, you may be building the wrong thing.
You don’t choose the work — the work chooses you
The best founders I’ve met — and the best moments I’ve had as a founder — come from an almost irrational pull toward solving a specific problem I myself experienced.
You may want to start a company, but if you have to talk yourself into your idea, it probably won’t survive contact with reality. The founders who succeed are often the ones who can’t not work on their thing.
Starting a company shouldn’t be a career move — it should be the last possible option after every other path fails to scratch the itch.
The real killer: founder fatigue
Most companies don’t die because of one bad decision or one tough competitor. They die because the founders run out of energy.
Fatigue erodes vision, motivation and creativity. Protecting your own drive — keeping it clean and focused — may be the single most important survival skill you have.
That means staying close to the product, protecting time for customer work, and avoiding the slow drift into managing around problems instead of solving them.
Customer > competitor
It’s easy to get caught up in competitor moves, investor chatter or market gossip. But the most important question is always: Are we delivering joy to the customer?
If you’re losing focus, sign up for your own product as a brand-new user. Feel the friction. Fix it. Repeat.
At Digits, we run our own signup and core flows every week. It’s uncomfortable — it surfaces flaws we’d rather not see — but it keeps us anchored to the only metric that matters: customer delight.
Boards should ask questions, not give answers
Over the years, I’ve learned the most effective boards aren’t presentation theaters — they’re discussion rooms.
The best structure I’ve seen:
No slides;
A narrative pre-read sent in advance; and
A deep dive into one essential question.
Good directors help you widen your perspective. They don’t hand you a to-do list. Rather, they help you see the problem in a way that makes the answer obvious.
Twitter: lessons from a phenomenon
When I think back to my time at Twitter, the most enduring lesson is that not all companies are built top-down. Some — like Twitter — are shaped more by their users than their executives.
Features like @mentions, hashtags and retweets didn’t come from a product roadmap — they came from the community.
That’s messy, but it’s also powerful. Sometimes your job isn’t to control the phenomenon, rather it’s to keep it healthy without smothering what made it magical in the first place.
Why now is a great time to start
If you’re building today, you have an advantage over the so-called “unicorn zombies” that raised massive rounds pre-AI and are now locked into defending old business models.
Fresh founders can design from scratch for the new reality; there’s no legacy to protect, no sacred cows to defend.
The macro environment? Irrelevant. The only timing that matters is when the problem calls you so strongly that not working on it feels impossible.
If there’s one takeaway from all of this, it’s that success is continuing. The real prize is the ability to keep playing, keep serving and keep creating.
If you’re standing at the edge, wondering if you should start — start. Take one step. See if it grows. And if it does, welcome to the infinite game.
Jeff Seibert is the founder and CEO of Digits, the world’s first AI-native accounting platform. He previously served as Twitter‘s head of consumer product and starred in the Emmy Award-winning Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma.”
While startup investment has been climbing lately, not all industries are partaking in the gains.
Cleantech is one of the spaces that’s been mostly left out. Overall funding to the space is down this year, despite some pockets of bullishness in areas like fusion and battery recycling.
The broad trend: Cleantech- and sustainability-related startup investment has been on a downward trajectory for several years now. And so far, 2025 is on track to be another down year.
On the bright side, however, there’s been some pickup in recent months, boosted by big rounds for companies in energy storage, fusion and other cleantech subsectors.
The numbers: Investors put an estimated $20 billion into seed- through growth-stage funding to companies in cleantech, EV and sustainability-related categories so far this year.
That puts 2025 funding on track to come in well below last year’s levels, which were already at a multiyear low.
Still, quarter by quarter, the pattern looks more encouraging. Investment hit a low point in Q1 of this year and recovered some in the subsequent two quarters. The current quarter is also off to a strong start.
Noteworthy recent rounds
The largest cleantech-related round of the year closed this month. Base Power, a provider of residential battery backup systems and electricity plans, raised $1 billion in Series C funding. The Austin, Texas-based company says its systems allow energy providers to more efficiently harness renewable power.
The second-largest round was Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ $863 million Series B2 financing. The Devens, Massachusetts-based company says it is moving closer to being the first in the world to commercialize fusion power.
For a bigger-picture view, below we put together a list of 10 of the year’s largest cleantech- and sustainability-related financings.
The broad takeaway: Startups innovating for an era of rising power consumption
Not to over-generalize, but if there was one big takeaway from recent cleantech and sustainability startup funding, it would be that founders and investors recognize that these are times of ever-escalating energy demand. They’re planning accordingly, looking to tap new sources of power, fusion in particular, as well as better utilize and scale existing clean energy sources.
Meta’s office at Dexter Station in Seattle. (Meta Photo)
Meta plans to lay off more than 100 employees in Washington state as part of a broader round of cuts within its artificial intelligence division.
A new filing with the state’s Employment Security Department shows 101 employees impacted, including 48 in Bellevue, 23 in Seattle, and four in Redmond, along with 23 remote workers based in Washington.
The filing lists dozens of affected roles across Meta’s AI research and infrastructure units, including software engineers, AI researchers, and data scientists. Meta product managers, privacy specialists, and compliance analysts were also affected.
Meta is cutting around 600 positions in its AI unit, Axios reported last week. The company is investing heavily in AI and wants to create a “more agile operation,” according to an internal memo cited by Axios. Meta has just under 3,000 roles within its superintelligence lab, CNBC reported.
The separations at Meta in Washington take effect Dec. 22, according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice filed Oct. 22.
Meta employs thousands of people across multiple offices in the Seattle region, one of its largest engineering hubs outside Menlo Park.
The latest reductions mark another contraction for Meta’s Pacific Northwest footprint following multiple rounds of layoffs over the past several years.
The company’s rapid expansion in Seattle over the past decade made it one of the emblems of the region’s tech boom, coinciding with Microsoft’s resurgence and Amazon’s rise.
Among the Bay Area titans, Google was among the first to establish a Seattle-area engineering office, way back in 2004. However, it was Facebook’s decision to open its own outpost across from Pike Place Market in 2010 that really got the attention of their Silicon Valley tech brethren.
The Meta Open Arts maker space in Block 16 in Bellevue’s Spring District. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
However, more recently Meta has made moves to trim its Seattle-area footprint.
Apple earlier this year took over a building previously occupied by Meta in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, near Amazon’s headquarters. CoStar reported in April that Meta listed its other Arbor Blocks building for sublease.
Meta previously gobbled up much of the planned office space at the Spring District, a sprawling development northeast of downtown Bellevue, including a building that was originally going to be a new REI headquarters. But it has subleased some of the space since then to companies such as Snowflake, which recently took an entire building from Meta at the Spring District.
Meta’s office in Redmond, near Microsoft’s headquarters, is focused on its mixed reality development.
GeekWire has reached out to the company for an updated Seattle-area headcount.
The line between traditional banking and digital assets is disappearing fast. Pave Bank, a fully licensed commercial bank built for this new era of programmable finance, has raised $39 million in fresh funding led by Accel, with participation from Tether […]
Anthropic is making its most aggressive push yet into the trillion-dollar financial services industry, unveiling a suite of tools that embed its Claude AI assistant directly into Microsoft Excel and connect it to real-time market data from some of the world's most influential financial information providers.
The San Francisco-based AI startup announced Monday it is releasing Claude for Excel, allowing financial analysts to interact with the AI system directly within their spreadsheets — the quintessential tool of modern finance. Beyond Excel, select Claude models are also being made available in Microsoft Copilot Studio and Researcher agent, expanding the integration across Microsoft's enterprise AI ecosystem. The integration marks a significant escalation in Anthropic's campaign to position itself as the AI platform of choice for banks, asset managers, and insurance companies, markets where precision and regulatory compliance matter far more than creative flair.
Why Excel has become the new battleground for AI in finance
The decision to build directly into Excel is hardly accidental. Excel remains the lingua franca of finance, the digital workspace where analysts spend countless hours constructing financial models, running valuations, and stress-testing assumptions. By embedding Claude into this environment, Anthropic is meeting financial professionals exactly where they work rather than asking them to toggle between applications.
Claude for Excel allows users to work with the AI in a sidebar where it can read, analyze, modify, and create new Excel workbooks while providing full transparency about the actions it takes by tracking and explaining changes and letting users navigate directly to referenced cells.
This transparency feature addresses one of the most persistent anxieties around AI in finance: the "black box" problem. When billions of dollars ride on a financial model's output, analysts need to understand not just the answer but how the AI arrived at it. By showing its work at the cell level, Anthropic is attempting to build the trust necessary for widespread adoption in an industry where careers and fortunes can turn on a misplaced decimal point.
The technical implementation is sophisticated. Claude can discuss how spreadsheets work, modify them while preserving formula dependencies — a notoriously complex task — debug cell formulas, populate templates with new data, or build entirely new spreadsheets from scratch. This isn't merely a chatbot that answers questions about your data; it's a collaborative tool that can actively manipulate the models that drive investment decisions worth trillions of dollars.
How Anthropic is building data moats around its financial AI platform
Perhaps more significant than the Excel integration is Anthropic's expansion of its connector ecosystem, which now links Claude to live market data and proprietary research from financial information giants. The company added six major new data partnerships spanning the entire spectrum of financial information that professional investors rely upon.
Aiera now provides Claude with real-time earnings call transcripts and summaries of investor events like shareholder meetings, presentations, and conferences. The Aiera connector also enables a data feed from Third Bridge, which gives Claude access to a library of insights interviews, company intelligence, and industry analysis from experts and former executives. Chronograph gives private equity investors operational and financial information for portfolio monitoring and conducting due diligence, including performance metrics, valuations, and fund-level data.
Egnyte enables Claude to securely search permitted data for internal data rooms, investment documents, and approved financial models while maintaining governed access controls. LSEG, the London Stock Exchange Group, connects Claude to live market data including fixed income pricing, equities, foreign exchange rates, macroeconomic indicators, and analysts' estimates of other important financial metrics. Moody's provides access to proprietary credit ratings, research, and company data covering ownership, financials, and news on more than 600 million public and private companies, supporting work and research in compliance, credit analysis, and business development. MT Newswires provides Claude with access to the latest global multi-asset class news on financial markets and economies.
These partnerships amount to a land grab for the informational infrastructure that powers modern finance. Previously announced in July, Anthropic had already secured integrations with S&P Capital IQ, Daloopa, Morningstar, FactSet, PitchBook, Snowflake, and Databricks. Together, these connectors give Claude access to virtually every category of financial data an analyst might need: fundamental company data, market prices, credit assessments, private company intelligence, alternative data, and breaking news.
This matters because the quality of AI outputs depends entirely on the quality of inputs. Generic large language models trained on public internet data simply cannot compete with systems that have direct pipelines to Bloomberg-quality financial information. By securing these partnerships, Anthropic is building moats around its financial services offering that competitors will find difficult to replicate.
The strategic calculus here is clear: Anthropic is betting that domain-specific AI systems with privileged access to proprietary data will outcompete general-purpose AI assistants. It's a direct challenge to the "one AI to rule them all" approach favored by some competitors.
Pre-configured workflows target the daily grind of Wall Street analysts
The third pillar of Anthropic's announcement involves six new "Agent Skills" — pre-configured workflows for common financial tasks. These skills are Anthropic's attempt to productize the workflows of entry-level and mid-level financial analysts, professionals who spend their days building models, processing due diligence documents, and writing research reports. Anthropic has designed skills specifically to automate these time-consuming tasks.
The new skills include building discounted cash flow models complete with full free cash flow projections, weighted average cost of capital calculations, scenario toggles, and sensitivity tables. There's comparable company analysis featuring valuation multiples and operating metrics that can be easily refreshed with updated data. Claude can now process data room documents into Excel spreadsheets populated with financial information, customer lists, and contract terms. It can create company teasers and profiles for pitch books and buyer lists, perform earnings analyses that use quarterly transcripts and financials to extract important metrics, guidance changes, and management commentary, and produce initiating coverage reports with industry analysis, company deep dives, and valuation frameworks.
It's worth noting that Anthropic's Sonnet 4.5 model now tops the Finance Agent benchmark from Vals AI at 55.3% accuracy, a metric designed to test AI systems on tasks expected of entry-level financial analysts. A 55% accuracy rate might sound underwhelming, but it is state-of-the-art performance and highlights both the promise and limitations of AI in finance. The technology can clearly handle sophisticated analytical tasks, but it's not yet reliable enough to operate autonomously without human oversight — a reality that may actually reassure both regulators and the analysts whose jobs might otherwise be at risk.
The Agent Skills approach is particularly clever because it packages AI capabilities in terms that financial institutions already understand. Rather than selling generic "AI assistance," Anthropic is offering solutions to specific, well-defined problems: "You need a DCF model? We have a skill for that. You need to analyze earnings calls? We have a skill for that too."
Trillion-dollar clients are already seeing massive productivity gains
NBIM CEO Nicolai Tangen reported achieving approximately 20% productivity gains, equivalent to 213,000 hours, with portfolio managers and risk departments now able to "seamlessly query our Snowflake data warehouse and analyze earnings calls with unprecedented efficiency."
At AIG, CEO Peter Zaffino said the partnership has "compressed the timeline to review business by more than 5x in our early rollouts while simultaneously improving our data accuracy from 75% to over 90%." If these numbers hold across broader deployments, the productivity implications for the financial services industry are staggering.
These aren't pilot programs or proof-of-concept deployments; they're production implementations at institutions managing trillions of dollars in assets and making underwriting decisions that affect millions of customers. Their public endorsements provide the social proof that typically drives enterprise adoption in conservative industries.
Regulatory uncertainty creates both opportunity and risk for AI deployment
Yet Anthropic's financial services ambitions unfold against a backdrop of heightened regulatory scrutiny and shifting enforcement priorities. In 2023, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released guidance requiring lenders to "use specific and accurate reasons when taking adverse actions against consumers" involving AI, and issued additional guidance requiring regulated entities to "evaluate their underwriting models for bias" and "evaluate automated collateral-valuation and appraisal processes in ways that minimize bias."
However, according to a Brookings Institution analysis, these measures have since been revoked with work stopped or eliminated at the current downsized CFPB under the current administration, creating regulatory uncertainty. The pendulum has swung from the Biden administration's cautious approach, exemplified by an executive order on safe AI development, toward the Trump administration's "America's AI Action Plan," which seeks to "cement U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence" through deregulation.
This regulatory flux creates both opportunities and risks. Financial institutions eager to deploy AI now face less prescriptive federal oversight, potentially accelerating adoption. But the absence of clear guardrails also exposes them to potential liability if AI systems produce discriminatory outcomes, particularly in lending and underwriting.
The Massachusetts Attorney General recently reached a $2.5 million settlement with student loan company Earnest Operations, alleging that its use of AI models resulted in "disparate impact in approval rates and loan terms, specifically disadvantaging Black and Hispanic applicants." Such cases will likely multiply as AI deployment grows, creating a patchwork of state-level enforcement even as federal oversight recedes.
Anthropic appears acutely aware of these risks. In an interview with Banking Dive, Jonathan Pelosi, Anthropic's global head of industry for financial services, emphasized that Claude requires a "human in the loop." The platform, he said, is not intended for autonomous financial decision-making or to provide stock recommendations that users follow blindly. During client onboarding, Pelosi told the publication, Anthropic focuses on training and understanding model limitations, putting guardrails in place so people treat Claude as a helpful technology rather than a replacement for human judgment.
Competition heats up as every major tech company targets finance AI
Anthropic's financial services push comes as AI competition intensifies across the enterprise. OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and numerous startups are all vying for position in what may become one of AI's most lucrative verticals. Goldman Sachs introduced a generative AI assistant to its bankers, traders, and asset managers in January, signaling that major banks may build their own capabilities rather than rely exclusively on third-party providers.
The emergence of domain-specific AI models like BloombergGPT — trained specifically on financial data — suggests the market may fragment between generalized AI assistants and specialized tools. Anthropic's strategy appears to stake out a middle ground: general-purpose models, since Claude was not trained exclusively on financial data, enhanced with financial-specific tooling, data access, and workflows.
The company's partnership strategy with implementation consultancies including Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, Slalom, TribeAI, and Turing is equally critical. These firms serve as force multipliers, embedding Anthropic's technology into their own service offerings and providing the change management expertise that financial institutions need to successfully adopt AI at scale.
CFOs worry about AI hallucinations and cascading errors
The broader question is whether AI tools like Claude will genuinely transform financial services productivity or merely shift work around. The PYMNTS Intelligence report "The Agentic Trust Gap" found that chief financial officers remain hesitant about AI agents, with "nagging concern" about hallucinations where "an AI agent can go off script and expose firms to cascading payment errors and other inaccuracies."
"For finance leaders, the message is stark: Harness AI's momentum now, but build the guardrails before the next quarterly call—or risk owning the fallout," the report warned.
A 2025 KPMG report found that 70% of board members have developed responsible use policies for employees, with other popular initiatives including implementing a recognized AI risk and governance framework, developing ethical guidelines and training programs for AI developers, and conducting regular AI use audits.
The financial services industry faces a delicate balancing act: move too slowly and risk competitive disadvantage as rivals achieve productivity gains; move too quickly and risk operational failures, regulatory penalties, or reputational damage. Speaking at the Evident AI Symposium in New York last week, Ian Glasner, HSBC's group head of emerging technology, innovation and ventures, struck an optimistic tone about the sector's readiness for AI adoption. "As an industry, we are very well prepared to manage risk," he said, according to CIO Dive. "Let's not overcomplicate this. We just need to be focused on the business use case and the value associated."
Anthropic's latest moves suggest the company sees financial services as a beachhead market where AI's value proposition is clear, customers have deep pockets, and the technical requirements play to Claude's strengths in reasoning and accuracy. By building Excel integration, securing data partnerships, and pre-packaging common workflows, Anthropic is reducing the friction that typically slows enterprise AI adoption.
The $61.5 billion valuation the company commanded in its March fundraising round — up from roughly $16 billion a year earlier — suggests investors believe this strategy will work. But the real test will come as these tools move from pilot programs to production deployments across thousands of analysts and billions of dollars in transactions.
Financial services may prove to be AI's most demanding proving ground: an industry where mistakes are costly, regulation is stringent, and trust is everything. If Claude can successfully navigate the spreadsheet cells and data feeds of Wall Street without hallucinating a decimal point in the wrong direction, Anthropic will have accomplished something far more valuable than winning another benchmark test. It will have proven that AI can be trusted with the money.
Office furniture from the former Zulily headquarters in Seattle. (Evergreen Goodwill Photo)
Zulily may no longer be a dominant player in Seattle’s tech scene, but physical pieces of the online retailer will live on in Evergreen Goodwill facilities across the region.
Hundreds of office chairs, desks, kitchen appliances, IT equipment, and more has been donated to Goodwill by Vanbarton Group, a commercial real estate investment firm that now owns the onetime Zulily building at 2601 Elliott Ave.
Vanbarton plans to convert the building, which occupies a full block near the waterfront, to 262 apartments, according to a Daily Journal of Commerce report from July.
A once-prominant online retailer, Zulily was a darling of Seattle’s growing tech scene when it was valued at $4 billion following its IPO in 2013. But after QVC parent Qurate paid $2.4 billion to buy the company in 2015, it was sold to Los Angeles investment firm Regent in May 2023 and eventually shut down.
In March, Zulily got a new owner for the third time in two years when Beyond, which emerged as a surprise buyer in 2024, announced plans to sell a majority stake in Zulily to Lyons Trading Company, the parent company of flash sales site Proozy.com.
Storage racks donated from the former Zulily headquarters in Seattle. (Evergreen Goodwill Photo)
Evergreen Goodwill said in a news release that the donation, facilitated by Vanbarton Group’s outreach, saved the nonprofit an estimated $100,000 in equipment costs and diverted valuable resources from landfills.
The office items are being repurposed in multiple locations, including Goodwill’s new Georgetown operations center, scheduled to open this fall, and job training and education centers that it operates in five counties.
Remaining items will be sold in Goodwill stores, with proceeds supporting free job training and education programs for people facing barriers to employment, according to Goodwill.
Fitbit's Gemini coach, now in public preview, leverages advanced AI to provide personalized fitness, sleep, and health coaching, redefining digital wellness.
The landscape of enterprise AI in financial services is undergoing a profound transformation, moving decisively from exploratory curiosity to tangible, production-ready deployment. This pivotal shift was the central theme of a recent discussion between Anthropic’s Alexander Bricken, Applied AI Product Engineer for Financial Services, and Nick Lin, Product Lead for Claude for Financial Services. Lin, […]
Today is the first day of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, where 10,000 founders, investors, and builders are flooding Moscone West for a nonstop run of ideas, demos, and deals. The energy is electric, the conversations are everywhere, and the breakthroughs are only just beginning. Don't miss out. Register here or head straight to Moscone West to join.
The old cliché says startups are born in garages and dorm rooms. That’s still true, but there’s a newer path: founding a startup inside a scale-up.
When you do that, you get the speed of a seed-stage team with the leverage of an established company. Executives and investors should care because this model can unlock new product lines, revenue and talent retention without recreating the wheel.
That’s how we built Saily, a travel eSIM service launched from inside Nord Security (the company behind NordVPN). In 19 weeks, a seven-person team went from a blank page to a live product. A little over a year later, we had scaled to millions of users with plans offered in more than 200 destinations. We did not invent everything from scratch. We reused what worked and validated everything else fast.
Incubation lowers two risks most founders underestimate
Vykintas Maknickas
Every new product faces two existential risks: market and execution.
Inside Nord, I’d helped launch at least half a dozen new products before Saily. The pattern was consistent: Great ideas die when they target the wrong market or underestimate execution. With Saily, timing and infrastructure lined up: eSIM demand was accelerating, pain points were clear, and we could tap Nord’s backend, payments, app teams and distribution.
That allowed us to move at startup speed without startup fragility.
‘Product organization fit’ beats a great idea
Founders obsess over product-market fit. Inside a scale-up, you also need what I call “product organization fit” or the overlap between a new product and what your company already does well.
When that overlap is high, you ship faster, hire smarter and avoid costly relearning. For Saily, the overlap was obvious: Security tech we knew (virtual location, web protection and ad-blocking), and app development know-how we could bring to travel connectivity.
Competition helped more than it hurt. “No competition” usually means “no demand.” We treated competitors as free market research, reading hiring signals, product moves and funding announcements to understand where the market was headed.
And we made security the product, not a feature. Travelers don’t want another app — they want reliable connectivity that isn’t risky on unknown networks. Building privacy and protection at the network layer means safety works phone-wide with no tinkering.
Autonomy inside structure
The hard part is not technical, but cultural. Large companies run on process. Startups run on autonomy. We set up Saily as a company within the company: A dedicated product and marketing team with decision speed, plus shared services (legal, finance and design) when needed. Think of it as an internal accelerator, where the platform handles overheads so the team can focus on products.
We kept one rhythm: ship, learn, repeat. Those 19 weeks weren’t about perfection, but about getting a usable product into the world and compounding feedback.
Experimentation only works if you measure what matters: speed, unit economics and retention. For example, independent third-party testing confirmed Saily’s network-level ad-blocking reduces data usage by 28.6% — real money saved for travelers. That is a signal you double down on. If a feature or tool adds complexity without value, cut it quickly.
What founders (and operators) can steal
Derisk in two tracks: Validate market pull and execution feasibility before you scale spend. If the market isn’t growing and your organization doesn’t have overlap, think twice.
Reuse before you reinvent: Borrow talent, systems and channels where you can. Every overlap removes weeks of risk.
Measure what matters: Do a simple before/after on ship speed, customer acquisition cost and retention. If the needle doesn’t move, remove it.
Build momentum in full sight: Share milestones and learning. It sharpens the team and attracts partners.
Saily is still early, and the market is just getting started, but the model matters as much as the product. Many future founders already work inside growth companies. Give them startup autonomy and scale-up leverage and remarkable things can happen — in months, not years.
Vykintas Maknickas is CEO of Saily, a global eSIM app from Nord Security. A former head of product strategy at NordVPN, where he helped launch a series of new product lines, Maknickas has turned Saily into a globally successful brand with millions of users and serving more than 200 destinations. An entrepreneur since age 15, Maknickas brings a hands-on, execution-driven approach to building secure, scalable consumer tech.
Streetbeat secured $15 million to expand its AI wealth management platform, promising increased efficiency for advisors and AI-powered investment returns for retail users.
Adaptam Therapeutics has raised €3 million in Adaptam Therapeutics funding to advance novel antibody-based cancer immunotherapies that disarm the tumor’s immune-suppressing defenses.
Healthcare, once a digital laggard, has become an AI powerhouse, deploying solutions at 2.2 times the rate of other industries and tripling spending to $1.4 billion this year.
Trove AI has secured $7.1M to deploy AI associates purpose-built for private equity, aiming to automate complex financial analysis and free up investor time.
It’s Saturday, October 25, 2025, and we’re back with the top startup and tech funding news stories spanning the U.S. and around the world. From billion-dollar AI infrastructure bets to fintech, enterprise SaaS, and Web3 innovations, investors showed no signs […]
Tahoe-x1 single cell, a 3-billion-parameter foundation model, applies large language model scaling laws to biology, promising a leap in cancer drug discovery.
Valthos AI biodefense has secured $30 million to develop AI systems that rapidly detect biological threats and update medical countermeasures in real-time, addressing the growing risks of programmable biology.
Google's new initiatives in Southeast Asia are poised to drive significant AI economic growth SEA, with a projected US$270 billion boost through strategic investments in skills, research, and sustainability.
When cybersecurity teams reflexively block emerging technologies, they inadvertently drive employee behavior underground, creating unmanageable “shadow” risks that ultimately cost organizations dearly. This was the central, provocative thesis presented by Jeff Crume, a Distinguished Engineer at IBM, in a recent commentary on the escalating challenges posed by Shadow AI, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and […]
Cryptocurrency adoption is rising again as digital assets mature globally and move beyond hype-driven cycles. More first-time investors are entering the market in 2025, and this trend is expected to accelerate in 2026.
However, choosing a trading platform is not always easy for new users who want a secure place to buy their first Bitcoin or stablecoins. That is why identifying the best crypto exchanges becomes essential before risking any capital in a volatile market.
The best crypto exchanges for beginners are defined by simple navigation, strong security history, transparent fees, fair customer support and reliable regulation. Many trading platforms promise these features but only a few deliver consistently over time.
This article provides a neutral, research-based look at the best crypto exchanges for beginners in 2025 and 2026 without favoring any platform. It also evaluates user experience, security measures and educational features that help newcomers learn safely.
What Makes the Best Crypto Exchanges Beginner Friendly
The best crypto exchanges are not always the biggest or most popular platforms. Instead, they must balance regulation, safety and usability with fair pricing. A platform that confuses a beginner with complex trading tools or hidden fees can lead to costly mistakes. A beginner-focused platform should offer a clear dashboard design, fiat on-ramp support, and transparent security policies. Platforms with strong reputations are usually licensed or registered in at least one major financial jurisdiction.
Ease of use is important but security cannot be ignored. Responsible platforms support cold storage, biometric login, know your customer verification and withdrawal whitelists. Educational content is another key benchmark. The best crypto exchanges teach users step-by-step trading skills without overwhelming them.
Comparison Table of Leading Crypto Exchanges for Beginners in 2025
Below is a neutral overview of popular trading platforms used by beginners around the world. Fees are approximate and may vary based on account type or trading region.
Exchange Name
Headquarters
Trading Fees
Supported Cryptos
Regulation Status
Ideal For
Binance
Global
0.1 percent
350 plus
Licensed in several regions
Low fees
Coinbase
United States
0.5 percent average
250 plus
US regulated
Ease of use
Kraken
United States
0.16 maker, 0.26 taker
230 plus
US and EU regulation
Security
OKX
Seychelles
0.08 percent
300 plus
Licensed in Asia and EU
Advanced beginners
Bybit
Dubai
0.1 percent
300 plus
UAE and global registration
Derivatives
Bitstamp
Luxembourg
0.3 percent
80 plus
EU licensed
Long term investors
KuCoin
Seychelles
0.1 percent
700 plus
Global access
Altcoin variety
Gemini
United States
1.49 percent
90 plus
US regulated
Compliance
Gate.io
Cayman Islands
0.2 percent
1,400 plus
KYC compliant
Variety of tokens
Crypto.com
Singapore
0.075 percent
300 plus
Multiple jurisdictions
Mobile users
This comparison highlights that the best crypto exchanges for a beginner depend on priorities. Someone who values strict compliance may choose a regulated American platform while another user who values low fees might prefer a global platform.
Why Beginner Traders Need Regulated Platforms
There is a common mistake among new crypto investors who chase platforms with the highest bonuses or leverage offers. Beginner-friendly platforms should instead offer a safe environment with regulatory transparency. Regulation protects user funds in many ways. First, regulated exchanges are legally required to maintain certain compliance standards and segregate user funds. Second, they are subject to audits and security checks. Third, regulated exchanges are less likely to disappear overnight with user funds.
A compliance officer at a European trading firm said in a recent interview that “crypto regulation is not a barrier to growth. It builds user trust and long-term adoption.” He added that future exchanges will combine both speed and compliance to scale globally. This reinforces why selecting from the best crypto exchanges with licenses remains important.
User Experience Matters More Than Hype
Beginners quit fast if a crypto exchange feels complicated. A platform can offer a long list of features but still fail if users struggle to complete a basic buy order. The best crypto exchanges for beginners remove unnecessary friction. Their interfaces are intuitive and mobile-friendly. Simple options for buying crypto using cards, bank transfers or local payment methods must be included.
Many advanced exchanges use trading views loaded with candlestick charts, leverage sliders and margin warnings. These tools are useful for professional traders but they can be intimidating for a beginner. A beginner-focused platform keeps things clean and allows users to grow into advanced features over time. Good exchanges adapt to the learning curve of their users rather than forcing them into complexity.
A product designer for a major trading app recently said in a podcast interview that “designing for beginners does not mean limiting features. It means prioritizing clarity and reducing risk.” That philosophy explains why user experience remains a serious benchmark in evaluating the best crypto exchanges.
Some of the Top Beginner Friendly Exchanges With Key Features
Binance
Binance remains one of the most used platforms in the world by trading volume. It offers extensive cryptocurrency support and low trading fees. It includes tutorials, spot trading, staking options and a secure mobile app. Even though it has faced regulatory challenges in some markets, it remains a go to platform for users seeking a broad set of features. It also includes a beginner mode that hides advanced tools while still granting access to simple buying options. Its global reach and scalability are why it is constantly mentioned among the best crypto exchanges even in 2025.
Coinbase
Coinbase is known for its user-friendly design. It allows instant purchases using bank cards and local payment methods in multiple countries. It also features beginner education modules, simple crypto storage and recurring investment plans. Coinbase is regulated under American law, which attracts risk-conscious users. Its interface avoids clutter which helps people who want a simple introduction to crypto trading. The platform also includes crypto earning features and staking rewards, which appeal to long-term holders.
Kraken
Kraken has built a strong reputation in the industry for security and transparency. It has never been hacked in over a decade of operation. It offers margin trading, spot trading and futures but still maintains beginner accessibility. Kraken is registered in both the United States and Europe. Its customer support and strict security policies make it suitable for conservative investors who value stability. That is why it is consistently included in lists of the best crypto exchanges globally.
OKX
OKX has grown strongly in Asia and Europe with flexible fee structures and creative trading features. It offers copy trading which helps new users follow professional traders and learn trading strategies over time. The platform supports hundreds of cryptocurrencies and offers strong mobile support. It also operates a DeFi wallet that gives users access to Web3 features. It is one of the best crypto exchanges for people who want a balance between basic trading and advanced features.
Safety Practices on the Best Crypto Exchanges
Security is a top priority because crypto is still a target for cyberattacks. The best crypto exchanges protect users through cold wallet storage, two-factor authentication, and regular security audits. Some exchanges also introduce proof of reserves reports to show that they hold enough assets to cover withdrawals. This helps to build trust after past scandals in the industry.
User security also begins with good personal practices. Even though a platform may include biometric login and identity verification, users should add extra protection. Private devices should always be used to access exchange accounts. Passwords must be unique and not reused from other platforms. Trading accounts should never be shared and customer support impersonators should always be avoided.
A cybersecurity researcher from a blockchain analytics firm recently explained that “ninety percent of crypto losses can be avoided if users combine basic security habits with regulated platforms.” This shows that responsibility is shared between users and platforms.
Fees and Costs To Consider Before Trading
Many exchanges compete on fees but beginners often overlook hidden costs. The best crypto exchanges are transparent about their charges. Fees can include trading fees, withdrawal fees, network fees, conversion fees and card processing charges. Low fees are attractive but too many bonus campaigns or unrealistic returns can be a danger sign. It is safer to choose a trusted platform with fair pricing rather than a suspicious one that promises extreme benefits.
Stablecoin conversions and peer to peer trading are important for users in regions without strong banking access. The best crypto exchanges support multiple payment methods to allow users to fund their accounts smoothly. Credit cards may be convenient but they are usually more expensive than bank transfers.
Regional Access and Legal Availability
Crypto trading laws differ from country to country and this affects how beginners can choose the best crypto exchanges. A platform that operates in one region may be restricted or banned in another. For example, some exchanges are not licensed to operate in the United States but are fully active in Asia, Africa or the Middle East. Others focus on European and North American trading laws and do not accept registrations from certain regions.
Beginners should always check whether their chosen platform is authorized in their country. Regulation helps in cases where a platform faces legal issues or goes bankrupt. When platforms hold licenses under financial regulators, users may receive better protection. While not all global platforms are regulated in every region, it is advisable to choose one that at least follows international financial compliance standards.
Some governments are now adopting clearer rules for cryptocurrency operations. This shift started a strategy that allows trusted companies to launch licensed trading products. Industry analysts predict that 2026 will introduce stronger regulation across major economies. This trend suggests that the best crypto exchanges will be those that adapt quickly to legal clarity and maintain transparent operations.
How Beginners Should Choose a Crypto Exchange
Selecting the best crypto exchange is not about choosing the biggest brand. It is about finding the platform that aligns with personal needs. Some beginners prioritize mobile trading while others focus on low fees or regional accessibility. Long-term investors prefer security and simplicity, while active traders want deep liquidity.
Beginners should consider these personal filters before making a choice. They should check verified reviews from real users instead of relying only on influencer promotions. They should also avoid trading platforms that operate without any form of verification or licensing. Responsible beginners start small, learn gradually, and use platforms that emphasize transparency.
What Will Matter in 2026
The crypto market is known for rapid innovation. In 2026 it is expected that artificial intelligence trading features, tokenized real world assets and regulated stablecoins will gain wider adoption. As the market grows, exchanges will compete more on security and transparency than ever before. Experts believe that platforms that focus only on leverage trading without user education may lose credibility.
A market strategist at a digital asset firm recently said in an interview that “the future belongs to trusted platforms that combine speed, security and simple products.” This view reflects an industry trend that favours quality and compliance over aggressive marketing. The best crypto exchanges are expected to integrate stronger consumer protection features.
Conclusion
Cryptocurrency markets are evolving quickly and more people are entering digital finance. This is why research and responsible trading are necessary. The best crypto exchanges for beginners in 2025 and 2026 are not only defined by trading volume. They must also demonstrate security, user education and transparency. Platforms that value long-term trust will stand strongest in the next cycle.
Beginners should avoid emotional decisions. They should study risk, understand trends and choose a platform that suits personal goals. The safest way to enter this market is through licensed platforms with proven records. Digital assets hold opportunity but require caution. With the right platform and education, anyone can participate in the future of finance.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the safest crypto exchange for beginners A safe exchange is one that follows regulation, provides strong security tools and offers insurance on user funds where available. Coinbase, Kraken and Bitstamp are often considered safe due to their regulatory frameworks.
Which exchange has the lowest fees for beginners Fee structures depend on region and trading volume. Binance and Crypto.com usually offer lower fees but users should still compare withdrawal and conversion fees.
Can a beginner start trading with a small budget Yes. Many of the best crypto exchanges allow users to start with as little as ten dollars. However, beginners should never invest more than they can afford to lose due to market volatility.
Which exchange is best for buying Bitcoin Many exchanges support Bitcoin purchases including Binance, Coinbase, Kraken and OKX. The best choice depends on location and payment method.
Are peer to peer platforms safe for beginners Peer to peer trading can be safe when users follow platform guidelines and trade only with verified users. However, centralized exchanges are easier for true beginners.
Glossary of Terms
Fiat Currency Traditional government issued money such as dollars, euros or pounds. It is used to buy cryptocurrencies on exchanges.
Spot Trading The direct purchase of a cryptocurrency for immediate settlement. It is the simplest form of crypto trading.
Liquidity A measure of how easy it is to buy or sell a cryptocurrency without causing price changes. High liquidity means smooth trading.
Cold Storage Offline storage of cryptocurrency in hardware wallets to prevent hacking or unauthorized access.
Proof of Reserves An audit method used by exchanges to show they hold enough assets to cover user balances.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is interviewed during Amazon’s first-ever live streamed NBA game on Friday. (Screenshots via Prime Video stream)
“It is here, it is real, it is happening,” said play-by-play announcer Ian Eagle. “The NBA on Prime.”
And with that, Amazon’s foray into live streaming NBA games tipped off.
Amazon marked a major milestone with its growing sports portfolio on Friday, broadcasting its first-ever live NBA game around the world. The matchup — Celtics vs. Knicks — was part of an 11-year deal that gives Amazon exclusive rights to select regular season and playoff games.
We watched the game via Prime Video — accessible with a $139/year Prime subscription — and came away impressed.
The stream ran seamlessly across Fire TV, iPhone, and MacBook. The quality was crisp, load times near-instant, and there wasn’t a hint of lag — at least on a home WiFi connection. Amazon’s 1080p HDR video and 5.1 surround sound were a slam dunk.
The broadcast looked and felt like a traditional national telecast.The graphics mirrored what fans expect from ESPN or TNT, the commentary came from familiar voices — Eagle and Stan Van Gundy — and the pregame show from featured a slick set with former NBA stars at Amazon MGM Studios.
Amazon’s pre-game show features a LED court that helps analysts explain basketball dynamics. The show includes (from left) host Taylor Rooks and former NBA stars Steve Nash, Udonis Haslem, Dirk Nowitzki, and Blake Griffin.
But under the surface, Amazon quietly tested a new frontier: in-stream sports betting.
The most noticeable new feature was the FanDuel integration, Amazon’s latest experiment in blending live sports and interactive technology.
Fans watching on Fire TV could log into their FanDuel accounts through Prime Video to view real-time betting information and track wagers directly within the broadcast.
You can’t make actual bets on Prime Video — not yet, at least— but it marks a subtle yet significant shift in how live sports may evolve on streaming platforms.
I was surprised when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver joined the broadcast for a live interview. Sideline reporter Cassidy Hubbarth opened by asking about the scandal.
Silver said he was “deeply disturbed” upon hearing the news.
“There’s nothing more important to the league and its fans than the integrity of the competition,” he said.
Silver also praised Amazon’s coverage: “I should have started [by saying] how excited we are to be on Amazon,” he said. “I guess I wouldn’t have predicted that my first interview on Amazon would be about sports betting.”
The interview underscored how Amazon’s coverage didn’t shy away from real-time news relevance — adding a traditional journalistic layer within a tech-powered broadcast.
It was also a surreal moment: the NBA’s top official discussing a sports betting scandal during the league’s debut on a platform now integrating betting tools into its stream.
Amazon has other new tech-fueled features including advanced NBA stats powered by Amazon Web Services — but I didn’t notice that during Friday’s broadcast.
One of the only stumbles for me came on the Fire TV user experience, which feels clunky compared to mobile or desktop. Navigation wasn’t intuitive, and the remote’s button mapping made simple actions harder than expected.
But overall, the whole experience felt less like a tech demo and more like a finished product.
Amazon.com’s homepage promoted the NBA game.
Amazon’s sports strategy is crystalizing: use live sports to drive Prime signups and boost engagement across its ecosystem. The broadcast was promoted on Amazon’s homepage and apps. Live sports also helps fuel Amazon’s growing advertising business.
Bloomberg reported that Amazon is paying $1.8 billion annually for the NBA rights.
As more people cut the cord, sports leagues are increasingly partnering with tech companies as their existing deals with traditional cable providers expire. Companies like Amazon, Apple, and Netflix are hungry for valuable content such as live sports to draw more subscribers to their respective platforms.
Amazon also aired the Timberwolves vs. Lakers game on Friday evening. It will stream 66 regular season games this year, along with some playoff games.
The company also separate deals to air the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, WNBA, and Premier League, among other sports-related programming on its Prime Video platform.
The NBA debut on Friday was a reminder of Amazon’s approach to live sports: combine the reliability of broadcast TV with subtle tech layers — such as betting, data, and e-commerce — built on its AWS cloud infrastructure and Prime membership model.
Alaska Airlines already tried to shore up its IT infrastructure after an outage in July forced the Seattle-based company to ground flights across the country.
Apparently, it wasn’t enough.
Alaska was hit with another major outage on Thursday, leading to a ground stop that lasted eight hours and resulted in more than 400 flights canceled across Alaska Airlines and its subsidiary Horizon Air.
In a new update Friday afternoon, the company said more than 49,000 passengers had their travel plans disrupted.
The outage was severe enough to postpone the company’s scheduled quarterly earnings call Friday. Shares were down more than 6%.
Alaska said it was still working to normalize operations.
The company has blamed the outage on a failure at its primary data center. It was not due to a cybersecurity incident.
“Following a similar disruption earlier this year, we took action to harden our systems, but this failure underscores the work that remains to be done to ensure system stability,” the company said in its latest update. “We are immediately bringing in outside technical experts to diagnose our entire IT infrastructure to ensure we are as resilient as we need to be. ”
It added: “The reliability of our technology is fundamental to our ability to serve guests and get them to where they need to be.”
Alaska said its July outage was caused by a failure of a “critical piece of hardware” at its data centers.
The airline operates a hybrid infrastructure, blending its own data centers with third-party cloud platforms, according to an interview last year with Vikram Baskaran, Alaska’s vice president of IT.
Alaska began migrating workloads to Microsoft Azure around 2015 and continues to maintain its own data centers for critical workloads, according to the interview.
The company last year partnered with Google Cloud on a generative AI-powered search experience.
The impact of this week’s outage was evident at Sea-Tac Airport on Thursday evening, where long lines wrapped around the concourse and a maze of suitcases piled up in the baggage claim area.
Alaska said Friday it does not have an estimate of the financial impact of the outage. The company’s Hawaiian Airlines subsidiary was not affected.
Alaska said the July outage was expected to reduce earnings by about $0.10 per share, or roughly $12 million.
The company on Thursday reported third quarter revenue of $3.8 billion, up 1.4% year-over-year, while profit dropped 69% to $123 million.
Want to keep track of the largest startup funding deals in 2025 with our curated list of $100 million-plus venture deals to U.S.-based companies? Check out The Crunchbase Megadeals Board.
This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding rounds here.
This was another active week for large startup financings. AI data center developer Crusoe Energy Systems led with $1.38 billion in fresh financing, and several other megarounds were AI-focused startups. Other standouts hailed from a diverse array of sectors, including battery recycling, biotech and even fire suppression.
1. Crusoe Energy Systems, $1.38B, AI data centers: Crusoe Energy Systems, a developer of AI data centers and infrastructure, raised $1.38 billion in a financing led by Valor Equity Partners and Mubadala Capital. The deal sets a $10 billion+ valuation for the Denver-based company.
2. Avride, $375M, autonomous vehicles: Avride, a developer of technology to power autonomous vehicles and delivery robots, announced that it secured commitments of up to $375 million backed by Uber and Nebius Group. The 8-year-old, Austin, Texas-based company said it plans to launch its first robotaxi service on Uber’s platform in Dallas this year.
3. Redwood Materials, $350M, battery recycling: Battery recycling company Redwood Materials closed a $350 million Series E round led by Eclipse Ventures with participation from new investors including Nvidia’s NVentures. Founded in 2017, the Carson City, Nevada-based company has raised over $2 billion in known equity funding to date.
4. Uniphore, $260M, agentic AI: Uniphore, developer of an AI platform for businesses to deploy agentic AI, closed on $260 million in a Series F round that included backing from Nvidia, AMD, Snowflake Ventures and Databricks Ventures. The round sets a $2.5 billion valuation for the Palo Alto, California-based company.
5. Sesame, $250M, voice AI and smart glasses: San Francisco-based Sesame, a developer of conversational AI technology and smart glasses, picked up $250 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital. The startup is headed by former Oculus CEO and co-founder Brendan Iribe.
6. OpenEvidence, $200M, AI for medicine: OpenEvidence, developer of an AI tool for medical professionals that has been nicknamed the “ChatGPT for doctors” reportedly raised $200 million in a GV-led round at a $6 billion valuation. Three months earlier, OpenEvidence pulled in $210 million at a $3.5 billion valuation.
7. Electra Therapeutics, $183M, biotech: Electra Therapeutics, a developer of therapies against novel targets for diseases in immunology and cancer, secured $183 million in a Series C round. Nextech Invest and EQT Life Sciences led the financing for the South San Francisco, California-based company.
8. LangChain, $125M, AI agents: LangChain, developer of a platform for engineering AI agents, picked up $125 million in fresh funding at a $1.25 billion valuation. IVP led the financing for the 3-year-old, San Francisco-based company.
9. ShopMy, $70M, brand marketing: New York-based ShopMy, a platform that connects brands and influencers, landed $70 million in a funding round led by Avenir. The financing sets a $1.5 billion valuation for the 5-year-old company.
10. Seneca, $60M, fire suppression: Seneca, a startup developing a fire suppression system that includes autonomous drones that help spot and put out fires, launched publicly with $60 million in initial funding. Caffeinated Capital and Convective Capital led the financing for the San Francisco-based company.
Methodology
We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Oct. 18-24. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.
Travelers at Sea-Tac Airport try to find their luggage following a major outage at Alaska Airlines that began Thursday afternoon. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Alaska Airlines is still working to restore operations following a major outage that forced the Seattle-based company to cancel more than 360 flights on Alaska and its subsidiary Horizon Air.
The outage began Thursday around 3:30 p.m. PT. Alaska grounded planes across the U.S. as it addressed what it described as a “significant IT outage.”
In a statement, Alaska said a “failure occurred at our primary data center.” The outage was not a cybersecurity incident, according to the company.
“The IT outage has impacted several of our key systems that enable us to run various operations, necessitating the implementation of the ground stop to keep our aircraft in position,” Alaska said. “The safety of our flights was never compromised.”
The ground stop was lifted at 11:30 p.m. PT Thursday, but the company is still actively addressing operational impacts that resulted from the disruption.
The company canceled its planned third quarter earnings call on Friday. “We do not yet have an estimate of the financial impact of the operational disruption on our fourth quarter results,” Alaska said in a regulatory filing. The company reported revenue of $3.8 billion, up 1.4% year-over-year, while profit dropped 69% to $123 million.
The impact of the outage was evident at Sea-Tac Airport on Thursday evening, where long lines wrapped around the concourse and a maze of suitcases piled up in the baggage claim area.
The company’s Hawaiian Airlines subsidiary was not affected.
Three days. That’s it. TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 — the startup world’s biggest stage — kicks off October 27 – 29 at Moscone West in San Francisco. When Disrupt 2025 arrives, the city doesn’t just host innovation — it amplifies it, transforming San Francisco into a living showcase of ideas, products, and partnerships driving the next wave of tech. Register before prices hike in 3 days.
Paygentic has raised $2 million in pre-seed Paygentic funding to develop flexible billing and payment infrastructure specifically for the complex demands of AI-native and agentic products.
Nearly four years ago, the market hit a cyclical peak under conditions that in many ways look quite similar to what we’re seeing today.
Sky-high public tech valuations. Booming startup investment. Sharply rising valuations. And, a few cracks emerging on the new offering front.
Sure, there are quite a few differences in the investment environment, which we’ll explore in a follow-on piece. For this first installment, however, we are focusing on the commonalities, with an eye to the four highlighted above.
No. 1: Sky-high public tech valuations
First, both then and now, tech stocks hit unprecedented highs.
In mid-November 2021, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index hit an all-time peak above 16,000. Gains stemmed largely from sharply rising tech share prices.
Today, the Nasdaq is hovering not far below a new all-time high of over 23,000. The five most valuable tech companies have a collective market cap of more than $16 trillion. Other hot companies, like AMD, Palantir Technologies and Broadcom have soared to record heights this year.
While private startups don’t see day-to-day valuation gyrations like publicly traded companies, their investors do take cues from public markets. When public-market bullishness subsides, private up rounds tend to diminish as well.
No. 2: Booming startup investment
In late 2021, just like today, venture investment was going strong.
Last time, admittedly, it was much stronger. Global startup funding shattered all records in 2021, with more than $640 billion invested. That was nearly double year-earlier levels. Funding surged to a broad swathe of startup sectors, with fintech in particular leading the gains.
For the first three quarters of this year, by contrast, global investment totaled a more modest $303 billion. However, that’s still on track for the highest tally in years. The core driver is, of course, voracious investor appetite for AI leaders, evidenced by OpenAI’s record-setting $40 billion financing in March.
The pace of unicorn creation is also picking up, which brings us to our next similarity.
No. 3: Up rounds and sharply rising valuations
At the last market peak, valuations for hot startups soared, driven in large part by heated competition among startup investors to get into pre-IPO rounds.
This time around, we’re also seeing sought-after startups raising follow-on rounds in quick succession, commonly at sharply escalated valuations. Per Crunchbase data, dozens of companies have scaled from Series A to Series C within just a couple of years, including several that took less than 12 months.
We’re also seeing prominent unicorns raising follow-on rounds at a rapid pace this year. Standouts include generative AI giants as well as hot startups in vertical AI, cybersecurity and defense tech.
No. 4: A few cracks emerging
During the 2021 market peak, even when the overall investment climate was buzzier than ever, we did see some worrisome developments and areas of declining valuations.
For that period, one of the earlier indicators was share-price deterioration for many of the initial companies to go public via SPAC. By late 2021, it had become clear that there were numerous “truly terrible performers” among the cohort, including well-known names such as WeWork, Metromile and Buzzfeed.
This time around, the new offerings market hasn’t been quite so active. But among those that did go public in recent months, performance has been decidedly mixed. Shares of Figma, one of the hottest IPOs in some time, are down more than 60% from the peak.
Online banking provider Chime and stablecoin platform Circle have shown similar declines.
At this point, these are still generously valued companies by many metrics. But it’s also worth noting the share price direction in recent months has been downward, not upward.
Next: Watch for more cracks
Looking ahead, one of the more reliable techniques to determine whether we are approaching peak or already past is to look for more cracks in the investment picture. Are GenAI hotshots struggling to secure financing at desired valuations? Is the IPO pipeline still sluggish? Are public tech stocks no longer cresting ever-higher heights?
Cracks can take some time to emerge, but inevitably, they do.
An Alaska Airlines plane at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Updated at 8:40 p.m. Pacific.
Alaska Airlines said it’s recovering from an IT outage and “actively restoring operations” as of 7 p.m. Thursday after grounding flights across the U.S. for about three hours.
In a statement sent to GeekWire, Alaska said the outage began around 3:30 p.m. PT with a failure at the company’s primary data center.
“The IT outage has impacted several of our key systems that enable us to run various operations, necessitating the implementation of the ground stop to keep our aircraft in position,” the company said. “The safety of our flights was never compromised.”
The outage was not a cybersecurity event or related to other events, according to Alaska.
Flights are resuming but passengers at some airports are facing long delays as they await inbound planes.
During the outage, passengers on Reddit reported that some planes were sitting on the tarmac or de-boarding. Customers also reported issues with the company’s app and website.
It was Alaska’s second outage in three months. The Seattle-based airline grounded flights after an outage in July that lasted about three hours.
Alaska Airlines is experiencing an IT outage affecting operations. A temporary ground stop is in place. We apologize for the inconvenience. If you're scheduled to fly tonight, please check your flight status before heading to the airport.
100 fewer Alaska Airlines aircraft in the air now compared to last week as the airline is experiencing an IT outage this evening. Some flights are now departing, but a delays will be felt for some time to come. pic.twitter.com/zIkJTTETiz
Diego Oppenheimer, Seattle-based entrepreneur and investor, with his AI assistant “Actionary,” a personal project. (Photo via Oppenheimer)
Every Friday at 5 p.m., Diego Oppenheimer gets an email that remembers his week better than he does. It pulls from his calendar, meeting transcripts, and inbox to figure out what really mattered: decisions made, promises to keep, and priorities for the week ahead.
“It gives me a superpower,” said Oppenheimer, a machine-learning entrepreneur best known as the co-founder of Algorithmia, who’s now working with startups as an investor in Seattle.
What’s notable is that Oppenheimer didn’t buy this tool off the shelf — he built it. What started as a personal experiment turned into a challenge: could he still code after years away from writing production software?
With the rise of AI-powered coding assistants, he realized he could pick up where he left off. His personal project, with the unglamorous name “Actionary,” has grown to somewhere around 40,000 lines of what he jokingly calls vibe-coded “spaghetti.” It’s messy but functional.
Oppenheimer’s do-it-yourself AI assistant is more than a novelty. It’s a window into a broader shift. Individuals and companies are starting to hand off pieces of judgment and workflow to autonomous systems — software that analyzes data, makes recommendations, and acts independently.
Exploring the agentic frontier
This emerging frontier is the subject of Agents of Transformation, a new GeekWire editorial series exploring the people, companies, and ideas behind the rise of AI agents. A related event is planned for Seattle in early 2026. This independent project is underwritten by Accenture.
For this first installment, we spoke with startup founders and DIY builders working to replicate different aspects of the work of great executive assistants — coordinating calendars, managing travel, and anticipating needs — to see how close AI agents are getting to the human standard.
The consensus: today’s agents excel at narrow, well-defined tasks — but struggle with broader human judgment. Attempts to create all-purpose digital assistants often run up against the limits of current AI models.
T.A. McCann of Pioneer Square Labs.
“I might have my travel agent and my finance agent and my stock trading agent and my personal health coach agent and my home chef agent, etc.,” said T.A. McCann, a Seattle-based serial entrepreneur and managing director at Pioneer Square Labs, on a recent GeekWire Podcast episode.
McCann foresees these narrow agents handling discrete tasks, potentially coordinated by higher-level AI acting like a personal chief operating officer.
But even the term “AI agent” is up for debate. Oppenheimer defines a true agent as one with both autonomy and independent decision-making. By that standard, his system doesn’t quite qualify. It’s more a network of models completing tasks on command than a self-directed entity.
“If you asked a marketing department, they would say, absolutely, this is fully agentic,” he said. “But if I stick to my AI nerd cred, is there autonomous decision-making? Not really.”
It’s part of a much larger trend. The market for AI workplace assistants is projected to grow from $3.3 billion this year to more than $21 billion by 2030. according to MarketsandMarkets. Growth is being driven both by enterprise giants such as Microsoft and Salesforce embedding agents into workplace software, and by startups building specialized agents.
A report by the newsletter “CCing My EA,” citing an ASAP survey, notes that 26% of EAs now use AI tools. Some fear job loss due to AI, but most top EAs see AI as an augmentation tool that frees time for strategic work.
From summaries to scheduling
ReadAI CEO David Shim (Read AI Photo)
One company exploring this emerging frontier is Read AI, a Seattle-based startup known for its cross-platform AI meeting summarization and analysis technologies, which has raised more than $80 million in funding.
Co-founder and CEO David Shim revealed that Read AI has been internally developing and piloting an AI executive assistant called “Ada” for tasks including scheduling meetings and responding to emails.
Ada replies so quickly that Read AI has been working on building in a delay into the email response time so that it seems more natural to the recipients.
Shim has been personally testing the limits of the technology — giving Ada access to a range of workplace data (from Outlook, Teams, Slack, JIRA, and other cloud services) and letting the assistant autonomously answer questions about Read AI’s business that come in from the company’s investors in response to his periodic updates.
“It answers questions that I would not have the answer to right off the bat, because it’s not just pulling from my data set, but it’s pulling in from my team’s data set,” Shim said during a fireside chat with GeekWire co-founder John Cook at a recent Accenture reception.
Shim laughed, “I’m willing to take that risk. We’re doing well, so I don’t mind giving out the data.”
However, there are limitations. Ada can struggle with complex multi-person scheduling or tasks requiring data it can’t access, and can still occasionally hallucinate. To manage this, ReadAI incorporates human oversight mechanisms like “sidebars” where Ada asks for confirmation before sending replies to messages deemed more sensitive or difficult.
Shim argues against the idea of building a single, all-encompassing agent.
“The approach of agents doing everything is not the right approach,” he said. “If you try to do everything, you’re not going to do anything well.”
Instead, he believes successful AI assistants will focus on solving very specific problems, much like Google Maps gives driving directions without trying to be a general travel agent.
The “book-me-a-hotel” challenge
Travel is a use case that’s close to the heart of Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital. Gerstner is known for backing some of the biggest names in tech — from Snowflake to Expedia — and for distilling big tech shifts into simple tests, such as his hotel booking challenge.
The specific example he gave at the 2024 Madrona IA Summit in Seattle was telling an AI agent to book the Mercer Hotel in New York on a specific day at the lowest price — a common challenge for business travelers.
“Until we can do that, we have not built a personal assistant,” he said.
That’s part of the larger problem Michael Gulmann, a former Expedia product executive, set out to solve with the startup Otto, which is developing an AI agent specifically for business travelers.
As shown publicly for the first time at this year’s Madrona conference, Otto tackled Gerstner’s specific challenge. After receiving the request to book the Mercer Hotel on a specific day, it found the cheapest available room, confirmed the price and details, and completed the booking, with minimal prompting, within about two minutes.
“Who would have thought that Brad Gerstner wanted the cheapest room?” Gullman joked.
Michael Gulmann demos Otto at the 2025 Madrona IA Summit. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Otto handles various aspects of travel. It understands and learns detailed user preferences — from specific amenities like rooftop bars to preferred airline seats, hotel room types, and loyalty programs — using this knowledge to refine searches and make personalized recommendations.
As Gulmann explained in an interview, Otto doesn’t use a single monolithic model. It coordinates a bunch of narrow agents: one to interpret messages, another to manage loyalty programs, another to handle payments. Together they simulate a small operations team working behind the scenes.
Otto confirms details with the user before completing purchases, even though it could do that autonomously. Gulmann described that precaution as psychological, not technical — knowing that most people aren’t yet comfortable with AI buying things without their involvement.
After learning about Otto’s capabilities, Gerstner was impressed and wanted to see how it performs as it moves into public beta, said Mike Fridgen, a venture partner at Madrona, which incubated the company.
The grand challenge of scheduling
If hotel booking is the acid test for autonomous assistants, scheduling meetings is the everyday nightmare.
That’s the problem Howie is trying to solve. The Seattle startup’s AI assistant lives in the email inbox. CC Howie on a thread, and it proposes times, confirms with all parties, creates invites, and adds meeting links.
Howie works from a detailed “preferences document,” inspired by how experienced executives train their human EAs — which cafés are acceptable for meetings, how late is too late on Fridays, etc.
The company recently launched publicly with $6 million in funding and a growing number of paying customers. It uses a hybrid model: AI supported by human reviewers. That helps avoid the tiny errors that destroy trust — mixing up time zones, dropping a name from a thread, or misreading social cues.
The system simulates decisions internally, flags potential errors for review, and escalates anything ambiguous to a human before hitting send.
“If you think about the things that a great human EA does, software is not replacing that anytime soon,” said Howie co-founder Austin Petersmith.
In fact, Petersmith said, many of Howie’s users are human EAs themselves, using it to offload logistics. “Nobody wants to do scheduling,” he said. “Everybody wants the machines to take this particular task on.”
As models improve, Petersmith hopes Howie can expand into other “meta-work” — the administrative overhead that keeps knowledge workers from the higher-value activities that are still the realm of humans.
More time in the day
For Diego Oppenheimer, this isn’t a hypothetical issue. “I’m extremely calendar dyslexic,” he explained. “I’ll triple-book myself. I’ll agree to go to places I shouldn’t be. I’ll travel to the wrong city. Really bad.”
Over the years, he relied on human EAs and a chief of staff to keep him on track. But when he stepped back from running a company full-time, hiring someone just to manage his complex, multi-role calendar no longer made sense. So he built Actionary to help. It sends the Friday recap to catch him up on the week, flagging issues right before his weekend “reboot.”
Oppenheimer’s project won the People’s Choice Award at an AI Tinkerers event in New York last month. But he is very clear: Actionary is a personal project, not a product in the making. He developed it for himself, and can’t imagine taking on the headache of feature requests and technical support from others.
He’s bullish on the larger trend, and a user and investor in tools like Howie. But he also recognizes that AI agents can’t match the comprehensive skills and judgment of a human EA, let alone a chief of staff in a higher-level strategic role.
Oppenheimer’s ultimate goal is more straightforward, but still ambitious. “I’m trying to make time in the day,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”
GeekWire’s Todd Bishop reported and wrote this article with editing assistance from AI tools including Gemini and a custom OpenAI GPT trained in GeekWire’s editorial approach. All facts, quotes, and conclusions were reviewed and verified prior to publication.
Carbon Robotics founder and CEO Paul Mikesell with the company’s LaserWeeder G2. (Carbon Robotics Photo)
Seattle agriculture-tech startup Carbon Robotics raised $20 million in new funding to support the creation of another piece of AI-powered machinery for farms.
With its signature LaserWeeder and relatively new Autonomous Tractor Kit (ATK) already being used by hundreds of customers, Carbon founder and CEO Paul Mikesell told GeekWire that “a brand new AI robot” is coming.
Mikesell said the machine, which is at least nine months away from being revealed, will leverage the same AI system used in Carbon’s other equipment but perform tasks beyond weeding.
“It’s very flexible, capable of doing a lot with the world around it, understanding what it’s seeing, what’s happening,” Mikesell said of Carbon’s system that uses an array of AI, computer vision and machine learning technology. “We see our ability to reinvest in that platform and double down on what it can do in some new activities.
“It’ll blow your mind,” he added.
Founded in 2018, Carbon Robotics made its name across ag-tech with the LaserWeeder, a machine which can be pulled behind a tractor and uses its tech to detect plants in fields and then target and eliminate weeds with lasers. The latest iteration, the LaserWeeder G2, was released in February.
In March, the company unveiled the Carbon ATK, previously called the AutoTractor. That autonomous platform is designed to fit on and control existing farm equipment and serve as an answer to labor shortages and increased productivity in farming.
Both platforms are continuing to grow and scale, and “things are moving really fast,” according to Mikesell, a longtime technologist and entrepreneur who previously co-founded data storage company Isilon Systems.
LaserWeeders are active on farms across the U.S. and in 14 countries around the world. Mikesell said revenue continues to grow every year, but Carbon is not yet profitable.
Carbon Robotics says it has hundreds of customers across the U.S. and 14 countries. (Carbon Robotics Photo)
Ranked No. 9 on the GeekWire 200 list of top privately held startups based across the Pacific Northwest, Carbon has previously been backed by NVIDIA and Seattle-based Voyager Capital.
The Series D-2 extension round attracted Giant Ventures as lead investor. The UK-based VC invests across a variety of “purpose-driven” startups, and Mikesell said, “They got what we were trying to do.”
Beyond the secretive new machine, Carbon is revealing more about the “large plant model” at the heart of how it does computer vision through its AI systems.
Mikesell said the company is at the point where it has enough training data and labeled images that it can teach its AI to learn about the basic structure of the plants it’s seeing. This allows Carbon to run one model on every machine in the world.
“If new weeds pop up in an onion field in France, and those are eventually going to show up in a carrot field in the U.S., the first time we see that weed anywhere it can be part of the model and be ready to go,” Mikesell said. “It also means that if we want to go into a new crop that we’ve never seen before, we can do it immediately.”
A LaserWeeder is designed to target the meristem of a weed to kill it as quickly as possible and the large plant model helps it understand where to precisely target its zap.
Carbon Robotics, which has raised $177 million to date, now employs about 260 people. The company runs a manufacturing facility in Richland, Wash., and added another in the Netherlands to offset some trade and tariff issues as well as speed deployment of machines in Europe.
Mikesell said as far as competition, there are some companies in Europe who claim to be building some version of a LaserWeeder, but he’s never seen one in a field or competed against one.
“It’s very hard to create a LaserWeeder,” he said. “The targeting system is so special, and the AI is so special. It’s not just about detecting where the weeds are. The trick to making it work is you need a targeting camera to be able to keep the lasers on target [while moving], and everybody I’ve seen that says they’re gonna build a LaserWeeder doesn’t understand that concept.”
Ring founder and Amazon exec Jamie Siminoff’s book, Ding Dong: How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door, is due out Nov. 10. (Courtesy Photo)
Jamie Siminoff has lived the American Dream in many ways — recovering from an unsuccessful appearance on Shark Tank to ultimately sell smart doorbell company Ring to Amazon for a reported $1 billion in 2018.
“I never set out to write a book, but after a decade of chaos, failure, wins, and everything in between, I realized this is a story worth telling,” Siminoff said in the announcement, describing Ding Dong as the “raw, true story” of building Ring, including nearly running out of money multiple times.
He added, “My hope is that it gives anyone out there chasing something big a little more fuel to keep going. Because sometimes being ‘too dumb to fail’ is exactly what gets you through.”
Siminoff rejoined the Seattle tech giant earlier this year after stepping away in 2023. He’s now vice president of product, overseeing the company’s home security camera business and related devices including Ring, Blink, Amazon Key, and Amazon Sidewalk.
As startup valuations reset and venture capital firms hunt for unconventional deals, one investor is looking to the bankruptcy courts. Bambu Ventures, an early-stage VC firm, last month agreed to acquire telemedicine company Lemonaid Health — once a $400 million bet by 23andMe — for just $10 million.
The transaction is more than a bargain buy. It’s also an intriguing deal that illustrates how an early-stage VC firm can operate by a private-equity playbook to revive a distressed asset.
DNA testing company 23andMe acquired Lemonaid for $400 million in 2021. Lemonaid operated as a division of 23andMe until the parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year.
Last month, New York-based Bambu made a deal with Chrome Holding Co. — the rebranded former parent company 23andMe Holding — in which the venture firm agreed to buy Lemonaid for a staggering 40x less than the DNA company had originally paid for the telehealth brand.
Kyle Pretsch, COO of Lemonaid SPV Inc.
So why did Bambu Ventures make a play for Lemonaid? Just how did it win the bid? And what are its plans for the asset? Crunchbase News recently spoke with Kyle Pretsch, COO of Lemonaid SPV Inc. and general partner at Bambu Ventures, to discuss all this and more. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
This is not your typical startup purchase. What prompted you to buy Lemonaid? Are you going to operate as an independent startup?
Lemonaid wasn’t just a company. It was a vision. It was an incredibly exciting team. It’s an incredible, exciting market, and it’s a mission that we can all feel good about, which is increasing accessibility to healthcare. Obviously, there’s a phenomenal market for that, but at the end of the day, we are working to provide improved transparency, the ability to improve your lifestyle at an affordable cost, and do it in a nice, systemic fashion, to reach more people.
23andMe has been an incredible custodian of this company and so we didn’t just see it as a company. We saw something much, much more. We plan to operate it independently. We like the fact that this is a space we’re familiar with. This is a space we have other holdings in.
We expect there will be opportunities along the way to use those contributions to help grow Lemonaid.
I understand that you’re paying about $10 million for Lemonaid when 23andMe paid $400 million to acquire it just a few years ago. Do you view this as an incredible opportunity?
Yes. We don’t believe the value of the asset has eroded since 2021.
Regeneron is buying the rest of 23andMe. How did you end up with Lemonaid?
Regeneron actually didn’t bid for Lemonade. It excluded it from their purchase. And technically Regeneron didn’t win 23andMe, either.
At one point, it had been identified as the winning bidder, but an organization called TTAM Research Institute, which was a research institute founded in part by Anne Wojcicki, the original founder of 23andMe, ended up prevailing in the repurchasing of the assets out of bankruptcy.
It, too, excluded Lemonaid from its bid. So both organizations put forth what’s called a stalking horse bid, which is if no one else bids, they would absorb the asset for a certain amount. And we ended up bidding in excess of that.
This feels very similar to a private-equity play. Do you think this sort of transaction is becoming more common? Are you going to do it more often?
This is a really unique situation, and for so many reasons I don’t think venture capital is going to find itself stalking the bankruptcy courts.
Nor do I think this was a standard bankruptcy case. But I do think our firm specifically brings a very PE style to venture capital. That’s what we do as a firm. And I think this was an exceptional opportunity where you have a venture-like company with PE idealism and process that can go ahead and reconstitute its growth track. We expect venture growth with PE discipline, and we’re happy to marry the two.
The fact that we identified it in bankruptcy court is a huge testament to our firm, how we worked and how we adapted to chase after a vision that we really, really, found meaningful. I believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
So it’s not something you’ve done before?
I have some experience in this space, but this is not a situation that I’ve ever come across. We’ve looked at things in bankruptcy before, but I think if you talk to anybody involved in this particular case, they would say: “Never has anything like this existed” for 10 different reasons.
How do you distinguish yourselves as a VC firm, and did Bambu Ventures actually conduct this acquisition?
Bambu Ventures is an operating firm for a variety of venture capital funds. Specifically, our key fund right now is a $50 million to $100 million fund, and Lemonaid is not being purchased from the fund.
We offer co-investments and sometimes pursue side deals, and this was something that I think the fund will have some participation in, but this is an act outside of that fund.
The same principles, however exist, which is, as a firm we believe in finding the companies that are being given these low values, or are being sometimes overshadowed or overlooked, and then bringing our team to it, and bringing discipline and execution to it, and reinvigorating growth — overlooked assets, plus PE discipline in well-known environments. And that, plus our team, is a formula for our success.
The purchasing entity is actually Lemonaid SPV. Bambu Ventures is a guarantor, because that’s a new company.
How is this transaction similar or different from a PE-type acquisition?
The mechanics are a little bit different in that it’s not being owned by a fund or an LP. It’s owned by an SPV. This is very similar to any kind of corporate transaction. We have a cap table. We have set up what we think is an incredible list of investors. We’ve taken some fund money from other VC funds to help instill that it has a list of interested LPs and parties.
So I would say this is very, very similar. The only key difference is we’re investing in a different company … From an organizational governance perspective, we went ahead and moved the investor funds directly into a top, or holding, company with its own cap table, versus a fund.
What will you do differently with Lemonaid?
The 23andMe team have been great stewards to this company, they’ve been great partners in transition and have really set this transaction up for success. I think there are immediate opportunities to advance within patient care, and that’s adding product and reaching more patients.
We plan on investing in marketing spend. Obviously 23andMe, through its process, had reduced that marketing spend heavily.
Will you be competing with companies such as Ro and Hims & Hers?
There is more than enough white space that we can all operate within our own moats and in our own domains without this warriors’ battle.
I will say that we do have visions of incredible growth, and we do have visions of creating a holistic offering that serves more and creates an improved consumer experience.
Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran at the company’s headquarters. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop)
Veeam Software, the data backup and recovery company that recently moved its headquarters to the Seattle area, announced plans to acquire Securiti AI for $1.725 billion.
Securiti AI, based in San Jose, Calif., helps enterprises manage data security posture, privacy, and compliance across cloud and software platforms. The deal aims to integrate Securiti’s Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) and “AI trust” technologies with Veeam’s core data resilience tools, giving companies a single platform to manage, secure, and recover their data while safely deploying artificial intelligence systems.
“We’ve entered a new era for data. It’s no longer about just protecting data from cyber threats and unforeseen disasters; it’s also about identifying all your data, ensuring it’s governed and trusted to power AI transparently,” Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran said in a statement.
Rehan Jalil, Securiti’s CEO and a cybersecurity entrepreneur, will join Veeam as president of security and AI once the deal closes, expected in the fourth quarter.
Securiti, founded in 2019, raised a $75 million Series C round in 2022.
Veeam, which reached a $15 billion valuation earlier this year, relocated its headquarters from Columbus, Ohio, to the Seattle area in 2024, citing the region’s deep technical talent pool. The company employs about 6,000 people globally and protects data for more than 550,000 customers, including two-thirds of the Global 2000.
Veeam moved its headquarters from Switzerland to the U.S. following its March 2020 acquisition by private equity firm Insight Partners — a deal that valued the company at $5 billion at the time.
Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran, who joined the company in December 2021, previously worked in the Seattle area as the corporate vice president of Microsoft Enterprise. He was most recently president at RingCentral.
Ticketmaster was dealing with ticket management issues as a result of the outage, according to messages shared by several sports teams hosting games on Monday, including the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Seahawks.
The Blue Jays, facing off against the Seattle Mariners in a Game 7 MLB playoff bout at Rogers Centre in Toronto, posted a statement earlier Monday about the outage and advised fans to “hold off on managing your tickets as we work through this.”
A few hours later, the team said ticket management was returning to normal.
>World Series appearance on the line >AWS outage sends Ticketmaster down >Blue Jays fans can't access Game 7 tickets >Blue Jays opponent…Seattle >Amazon headquarters…Seattle https://t.co/OYjjDj5cdfpic.twitter.com/rbNnwKYegG
The Seahawks, which are hosting the Houston Texans for Monday Night Football in Seattle, issued a statement about the outage “that may impact access to Ticketmaster, Seahawks Account Manager, and the Seahawks Mobile App.”
The outage effects went beyond just ticketing. The Premier League said its VAR tech system, used to determine offside calls in soccer, would not be available for Monday’s match between West Ham and Brentford.
Amazon’s outage began shortly after midnight Pacific in Amazon’s Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) region, which is AWS’s oldest and largest cloud region, a popular nerve center for online services.
In an initial update, AWS said the outage was related to a DNS resolution issue with its DynamoDB product, meaning the internet’s phone book failed to find the correct address for a database service used by thousands of apps to store and find data.
Amazon later said the root cause of the outage was an “underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers.”
By 3 p.m. PT, the company said all AWS services had returned to normal operations.
Major sites and services including Facebook, Snapchat, Coinbase and Amazon itself were impacted — reviving concerns about the internet’s heavy reliance on the cloud giant.
The outage suggests that many sites have not adequately implemented the redundancy needed to quickly fall back to other regions or cloud providers in the event of AWS outages.
Dubai-based fintech startup UPFRONT has secured a $10 million pre-seed round, a mix of equity and debt allocation, to tackle one of the most persistent pain points for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the MENA region, which is cash flow inefficiencies.
The round was led by venture capital funds Palm Ventures and SABAH.fund, with participation from a network of strategic angel investors. The funding will fuel product development and hiring across the UAE and soon Saudi Arabia.
Launched in May 2025 by serial entrepreneurs Anas Qudah, Abdullah Alghadouni, and Mahmoud Abdel-Fattah Moursy, whose prior experience spans Careem, Dubizzle, Property Finder, Nana, and Cartona. UPFRONT is building what it calls a “next-generation financial operating system” for MENA’s underserved SMB sector.
Its platform integrates seamlessly with existing accounting software to deliver real-time financial analytics, automate receivables, orchestrate payments, and unlock working capital, all while reducing Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and friction around cash flow.
“Cash flow inefficiencies are one of the biggest growth bottlenecks for SMBs in MENA,” said Anas Qudah, UPFRONT’s co-founder and CEO. “We’re building financial infrastructure that gives these businesses real-time visibility, faster access to credit, and tools that enable them to operate with more confidence and less manual overhead.”
In under six months, UPFRONT has attracted top regional and international investors and secured a strategic partnership with CredibleX, one of the region’s leading embedded finance platforms, giving it access to more flexible capital structures to serve SMBs with varying liquidity needs.
According to UPFRONT, the funding gap for SMBs in MENA sits at roughly $250 billion, largely driven by inefficient financial operations and delayed receivables across industries like F&B, FMCG, retail, and manufacturing.
Radwan Abudawood, General Partner at Palm Ventures, echoed the sentiment, pointing to Saudi Arabia’s rapidly maturing fintech landscape, “The Kingdom’s fintech ecosystem is hitting an inflection point,” Abudawood said. “UPFRONT is tackling foundational gaps in SMB financial infrastructure, and their execution so far makes them one of the most promising players we’ve seen in the space.”
Abbas Kazmi, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at SABAH.fund, said the firm was drawn to UPFRONT’s approach to solving this “invisible tax” on regional SMBs, “Their innovative blend of revenue-based financing, payment orchestration, and accounts receivable automation directly targets the critical liquidity issues choking business growth,” Kazmi said. “We are truly excited by UPFRONT’s vision and believe that they have the right team in place to deliver on this huge promise and create lasting impact.”
With operations in both the UAE and soon Saudi Arabia, UPFRONT plans to use the new capital to grow its engineering and go-to-market teams, and double down on building infrastructure that empowers SMBs to grow sustainably, without the constraints of outdated financial workflows.
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