AI Startups news and analysis on Web Pulse: 10868 curated articles tracking the latest AI Startups developments, tools, and research, updated continuously from vetted sources.
Friend CEO Avi Schiffmann announced the second iteration of the Friend AI pendant, which now includes a speaker for voice responses and runs on OpenAI's latest models. The device costs $249, up from the original $129, wi…
British AI cloud provider Nscale is acquiring Anyscale, the company behind the Ray distributed computing framework, for approximately $1.65 billion in a deal announced July 30 and expected to close in the second half of …
Scale AI, the AI data labeling company, has appointed a former Google Cloud executive as its new CEO amid Meta's $15 billion investment for a 49% stake in the company. The leadership change comes as Scale AI's data annot…
A new generation of Mexican entrepreneurs is using AI skills gained through Microsoft's Elevate program to solve local challenges, including water-efficient farming in Ciudad Juárez. Since its launch in September 2024, E…
Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness LP, an AI-focused hedge fund that managed roughly $20-24 billion, liquidated its entire public equity book after margin calls from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Bank of Americ…
British AI neocloud Nscale is acquiring software startup Anyscale for $1.65 billion to expand its AI compute stack. Anyscale, built on the open-source Ray framework, provides workload management and scaling for large lan…
Cloud infrastructure provider Nscale has agreed to acquire AI software startup Anyscale in a deal valued at approximately $1.65 billion, the companies announced Thursday. The acquisition aims to help clients better manag…
Job postings for forward-deployed engineers surged over 1,000% year-over-year through early 2026, as a study by MIT NANDA found 95% of 300 public enterprise AI projects showed little or no measurable profit-and-loss impa…
Simile, a year-old startup, has raised $200 million at a $2 billion valuation to build "agentic twins" — AI stand-ins for real consumers that companies can survey by the million. Greenoaks led the round, with Index Ventu…
A grant program needs five components to be effective: money, taste, dealflow, hustle, and trust, according to an analysis drawing on experience with platforms like Manifund. The author argues that improving dealflow and…
Liang Wenfeng, founder of Chinese quant trading firm High-Flyer and AI lab DeepSeek, is viewed abroad as a symbol of China's technological rise after DeepSeek's R1 model trained at a fraction of Western costs, but Chines…
Sakana AI, a Tokyo-based AI company, has released four products in rapid succession since March 2026, including Sakana Chat, Sakana Marlin, Sakana Fugu, and Sakana Translate. Sota Omura, head of product development, expl…
Executive search firm Christian & Timbers estimates there are only about 2,000 engineers in the U.S. with the expertise needed to help enterprises see a return on AI investments, and demand for forward-deployed engineers…
Nscale announced on July 30 that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Anyscale, the company behind the Ray distributed-computing framework, with closing expected in the second half of 2026. Financial terms were no…
Scale AI has appointed former Google Cloud COO Francis deSouza as CEO, signaling a shift from data labeling to enterprise AI applications. deSouza, who starts August 10, replaces interim CEO Jason Droege after founder Al…
Qualcomm acquired AI software infrastructure startup Modular for close to $4 billion, betting on an open, hardware-agnostic software stack that enables AI inference across heterogeneous silicon. Modular cofounder Tim Dav…
DataBahn announced a $40 million Series B on July 30 led by Insight Partners, with Forgepoint, GTM Capital and S3 Ventures participating, bringing total funding to $59 million. The company plans to expand its agentic dat…
Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness LP liquidated its entire public equities portfolio in a margin-fueled fire sale, offloading all holdings to a single buyer on or around July 30. The AI-focused fund, which gr…
ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, now generates about $4bn annually from artificial intelligence, the largest figure any Chinese firm has publicly claimed, according to the South China Morning Post. To press that lea…
A senior industry observer argues that the Chief Product & Technology Officer (CPTO) role is almost always a failure, especially for B2B companies north of $100M ARR in the age of AI. The author contends that CPTOs end u…