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This week was imagined to be a brief one within the U.S., because it began with a vacation. However Inauguration Day stored some founders busy, and the next days introduced us greater than their fair proportion of startup information.
Most attention-grabbing startup tales from the week
This week reminded us that not all gross sales are created equal, and that it’s typically price trying past the value tag. Plus, there have been authorized troubles for an AI decacorn.
No divvy: Divvy Properties, a rent-to-own startup backed by a16z, is promoting to a division of Brookfield Properties for about $1 billion. Nevertheless, some shareholders might not see a dime from the sale.
Magnificence on the market: Shopper items big Hindustan Unilever agreed to purchase Peak XV-backed Indian skincare startup Minimalist for about $342 million — greater than the $300 million valuation it reportedly sought in a fundraising try final 12 months.
Huge markdown: AI-powered parking platform Metropolis acquired laptop imaginative and prescient firm Oosto for a fraction of what the startup had raised thus far. Previously referred to as AnyVision, it had misplaced backers over its expertise being utilized in controversial surveillance purposes.
Authorized conflict: Valued at $13.8 billion final 12 months, Scale AI is going through its third employee lawsuit of 2025, with contractors claiming they suffered psychological hurt from writing prompts about disturbing content material. A spokesperson for Scale AI mentioned it had “numerous safeguards in place.”
Most attention-grabbing VC and funding information this week
Sequence B rounds introduced this week diversified drastically in dimension, with a few of these exceeding different Sequence C rounds. And for corporations that don’t fairly really feel like going public but, there are nonetheless extra letters within the alphabet.
Pre-IPO letters: Knowledge analytics platform Databricks closed a $10 billion Sequence J fairness funding spherical at a $62 billion valuation, with an extra $5.25 billion in debt financing. Meta is backing the corporate as a strategic investor.
From cat to unicorn: Neko Well being, the Swedish body-scanning startup co-founded by Spotify’s Daniel Ek, and whose title means “cat” in Japanese, raised a $260 million Sequence B spherical of funding at $1.8 billion post-money.
Cash to maneuver: Lindus Well being, a startup backed by Peter Thiel and Creandum that’s at the moment transferring its HQ from the U.Okay. to the U.S., secured a $55 million Sequence B spherical to “fix the broken clinical trial industry.”
Spending much less: AI-powered SaaS spend administration platform Vertice raised a $50 million Sequence C spherical of funding led by Lakestar, at a valuation near $500 million, in keeping with sources.
Indian robotics: Indian-based autonomous cellular robots startup Ati Motors raised a $20 million Sequence B to develop internationally. The U.S. already dominates Ati’s revenues, and the corporate hopes to additional profit from demand for robotics manufactured outdoors of China.
Crypto crypto crypto: Capitalizing on crypto’s comeback, AngelList and CoinList teamed as much as launch crypto particular function automobiles and crypto roll-up automobiles that may let crypto founders elevate capital utilizing crypto cash.
Final however not least
AI remains to be purple sizzling, however there are at all times subsectors that VCs are extra inquisitive about. To determine which sorts of AI startups they’d most wish to again this 12 months, TechCrunch rounded up some findings from our current survey of 20 enterprise VCs. Briefly: Suppose corporations, not options.
