Marina Temkin, Author at TechCrunch

OpenAI investor Josh Kushner praises Musk, despite Musk’s OpenAI lawsuit

Marina Temkin — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 20:48:28 +0000

Elon Musk may be suing OpenAI, accusing the ChatGPT maker of abandoning the company’s original mission as a nonprofit organization, but Josh Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital and one of the company’s key investors, has nothing but good things to say about the world’s richest man. “I have deep admiration and respect for Elon,” Kushner […]

Healthcare VC firm Initiate has a new $45M and has already founded five startups internally

Marina Temkin — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 18:30:38 +0000

Jessica Owens and Iana Dimkova, co-founders of Initiate Ventures, are launching their new healthcare/ life sciences-focused firm with a respectable $45 million debut fund. One of the ways they convinced limited partners to become investors is because they are building a combination early-stage and incubation firm. So not only will they invest in early-stage startups […]

Tech leaders recommend colleagues for Trump’s cabinet

Marina Temkin — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 23:56:37 +0000

Tech executives have been trying to influence the incoming Trump administration to appoint Silicon Valley insiders for cabinet positions, The New York Times reported. Given Elon Musk’s strong relationship with Donald Trump, many of these persuasion efforts have been directed towards him, including by friends of Musk like Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of Palantir and […]

Amazon scraps secret fertility-tracking project

Marina Temkin — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 20:28:03 +0000

Amazon has shut down a 4-year-old secret program working on a fertility monitoring device and accompanying smartphone app, CNBC reported. The project, which was known by the codename “Encore,” evolved out of Amazon’s 2020 purchase of a startup called bluDiagnostics, which was developing a device that measured the levels of estradiol and progesterone — two […]

Stepful raises $31.5M to address healthcare staffing shortage with AI-powered training

Marina Temkin — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:18:58 +0000

Carl Madi spent a chunk of the last decade working for Uber and Handy, an online marketplace for cleaners. “I spent a lot of time convincing drivers, handyman, and cleaners to join the gig economy,” he told TechCrunch. But when the pandemic struck, he saw many people lose their jobs overnight. He noticed that there […]

Quantune joins quest for the holy grail of non-invasive glucose monitoring

Marina Temkin — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 08:24:28 +0000

Berlin-based Quantune is trying to shrink laser spectrometers so that you can wear one on your wrist, and it just raised $9M to do it.

VCs on how to ‘survive and thrive’ after a down round

Marina Temkin — Sat, 09 Nov 2024 14:35:00 +0000

Founders hope that their startups continually raise larger funding rounds at escalating valuations. But unexpected challenges, such as a global health crisis or a sudden surge in interest rates, can have a significant impact on a company’s ability to maintain its valuations. Some of these startups may have to resort to down rounds, which are […]

Benchmark, Index, others are in a wild unsolicited bidding war over Anysphere, maker of Cursor

Marina Temkin — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 22:09:26 +0000

There isn’t a shortage of AI-powered coding assistance startups. They include Augment, Codeium, Magic, and Poolside. However, Cursor has become one of the most popular. Its developer, Anysphere, has seen its revenue grow from $4 million annualized recurring revenue (ARR) in April to $4 million a month as of last month, according to a person […]

AI-powered app integration platform UnifyApps grabs $20M from ICONIQ Growth

Marina Temkin — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 17:00:00 +0000

These days, it seems like every company either wants to or is already offering an AI product or service. For startups building an AI product in this space, it’s a really good time, but they aren’t without their challenges — the tech is still early, and though many companies are interested in trying generative AI […]

Coatue is raising $1B for AI bets

Marina Temkin — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:52:54 +0000

Coatue Management, a hedge fund that invested heavily in tech startups during the pandemic-infused boom, is raising $1 billion to back AI-focused companies, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The funding, which will top up the firm’s flagship fund, will be raised primarily from institutional investors. However, high-net-worth individuals with accounts at the brokerage Raymond James & […]

Anduril is considering Arizona, Ohio, or Texas for its massive manufacturing facility, source says

Marina Temkin — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 17:49:15 +0000

Anduril, the defense tech company co-founded by Palmer Luckey, is considering building its first major manufacturing plant, a 5-million-square-foot facility known as “Arsenal-1,” in Arizona, Ohio, or Texas, according to someone familiar with the matter. The company, which is developing autonomous drones, planes, and submarines, had announced $1.5 billion at a $14 billion post-money valuation […]

Kalshi secures tens of millions in loans from VCs, eyes $50M+ round amid election betting boom, source says

Marina Temkin — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 18:07:55 +0000

Investors are rushing to throw millions at a hot startup called Kalshi as loans or even as unusual we’ll-figure-it-out later cash. Kalshi is an exchange that allows people to bet, as official commodity trading contracts, on the outcomes of cultural events, from election results to how long Taylor Swift’s latest album will top the charts. […]

Salva Health wants to lower breast cancer mortality with its affordable screening device

Marina Temkin — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 18:12:39 +0000

Six years ago, while researching for a college entrepreneurship competition, Valentina Agudelo identified a troubling gap in breast cancer survival rates between Latin America and the developed world, with women in her native Colombia and the rest of the continent dying at higher rates due to late detection. She realized that breast cancer is highly […]

Despite risks, Vinod Khosla is optimistic about AI

Marina Temkin — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 23:55:12 +0000

Vinod Khosla has no doubts that humanity’s future with AI is bright. The Sun Microsystems co-founder turned prominent investor predicts that “the need to work will go away” almost entirely thanks to AI. “Almost all expertise, it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about primary care physicians, mental health therapists, oncologists, structural engineers or accountants […]

YC startup Pharos lands a $5M seed led by Felicis to bring AI to hospital quality reporting

Marina Temkin — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 15:30:00 +0000

Medical and administrative staff are increasingly overwhelmed with piles of paperwork they have to fill out every day. Dozens, if not hundreds, of startups, are seeing opportunities to make those bureaucratic processes less burdensome with the help of generative AI. These companies are building AI medical scribes, platforms for pre-authorizing health insurance payments, and products […]

Zoom partners with Suki to offer AI-powered medical note-taking

Marina Temkin — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 11:19:56 +0000

Zoom is partnering with Suki, an AI medical note-taking app, to let doctors use an AI scribe that will take notes of their consultations with patients.

Benchmark is raising $170M for its latest partners-only fund

Marina Temkin, Julie Bort — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 18:29:48 +0000

While fund sizes of many venture capital firms have ballooned into billions of dollars over the last decade, Benchmark Partners, one of Silicon Valley’s most successful investors, has stuck to raising approximately $425 million in capital every few years. That’s what the storied firm told in a letter to its limited partners when it announced […]

General Catalyst reportedly to back Saudi Arabian startup

Marina Temkin — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 22:41:59 +0000

Despite Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses, some investors are warming up to investing in the country’s startups. General Catalyst is planning to invest in Lean Technology, a Saudi Arabia-based fintech startup, the firm’s first investment in the Middle Eastern nation, the Information reported. Other Saudi Arabian startups that U.S.-based investors recently backed include […]

After selling Drift, ex-HubSpot exec launches AI for customer success managers

Marina Temkin — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 20:19:05 +0000

Elias Torres has achieved a lot for somebody who immigrated to the U.S. from Nicaragua at 17 without knowing any English. He served as a VP of engineering at HubSpot before co-founding Drift, a company that sold to Vista Equity for about $1.2 billion in 2021. “It’s very rare to get this far, but I’m […]

Our favorite startups from Pear VC’s invitational demo day

Marina Temkin — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 23:49:33 +0000

Pear VC, a prominent seed-focused venture firm, invites about 20 startups per semi-annual sessions to its coveted PearX accelerator.