‘It felt so wrong’: Colin Angle on iRobot, the FTC, and the Amazon deal that never was
When iRobot filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last Sunday, it marked the end of an era for one of America’s most beloved robotics companies. The Roomba maker, which had sold over 50 million robots since its 2002 launch, had survived 35 years of near-death experiences and technical challenges only to be undone by what founder […]
New York Governor Kathy Hochul signs RAISE Act regulating AI safety
Governor Kathy Hochul signed the RAISE Act, making New York the second state in the U.S. to enact major AI safety legislation. The state Legislature passed the RAISE Act in June, but Hochul proposed changes to scale back the bill after lobbying from the technology industry. The New York Times reported that Hochul ultimately agreed […]
Sequoia partners debunk Brown shooting theory and test new leadership
Sean Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital, is once again drawing unwanted attention to his high-profile venture firm after falsely accusing a Palestinian student of involvement in the Dec. 13 Brown University shooting and subsequent killing of an MIT professor. In a since-deleted post to X, Maguire noted that Brown was “actively erasing his online […]
Resolve AI, a startup led by former Splunk executives, reaches $1 billion Series A valuation
Resolve AI, a startup developing Autonomous Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), a tool to automatically maintain software systems, has raised a Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to three people familiar with the deal. The maximum valuation for the new round is $1 billion, the people said. However, the company’s actual blend valuation was […]
Establish a venture-backable company in a highly regulated field
Building in a regulated industry adds a huge hurdle to the already difficult journey of building a startup. And this week on Build Mode, Startup Battlefield editor Isabel Johannessen speaks with two founders who are trying to make progress in an industry ripe for disruption, despite regulatory issues that may have deterred many others. In […]
Cursor continues acquisition spree with deal with Graphite
Cursor, an AI coding assistant, announced it has acquired Graphite, a startup that uses AI to review and debug code. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Axios reported that Cursor paid “well above” Graphite’s final valuation of $290 million. This valuation was set when the five-year-old company raised $52 million in Series B […]
Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay package reinstated by Delaware Supreme Court
The Delaware Supreme Court has reinstated Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla compensation package from 2018, overturning a ruling last year by the state’s Treasury Court, according to an opinion released Friday. In a unanimous decision, the Delaware Supreme Court justices said that canceling Musk’s package “denies him compensation for six years of his time and […]
Anonymous messaging app NGL is acquired by EarnPhone startup Mode Mobile
Anonymous messaging app NGL announced Friday that it has been acquired by Mode Mobile, a smartphone points company that makes money by bombarding users with ads. NGL quickly climbed the App Store charts after its release in late 2021, joining a group of similar apps popular with teens that allow users to send and receive […]
Hundreds of Cisco customers are vulnerable to new Chinese hacking campaign, researchers say
Cisco said Wednesday that a group of hackers backed by the Chinese government is exploiting vulnerabilities to target enterprise customers using its most popular products. Cisco has not said how many customers have already been hacked or may be running vulnerable systems. Security researchers now say there are hundreds of Cisco customers who could be […]
Yann LeCun approves new ‘world model’ startup, reportedly seeking valuation of more than $5 billion
Renowned AI scientist Yann LeCun admitted Thursday that he has launched a new startup, the worst-kept secret in the tech world, but said he has no intention of running the new company as CEO. His startup is called Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) and has hired Alex LeBrun, co-founder and CEO of medical transcription AI startup […]