AI Startups

David Selinger, CEO of Deep Sentinel, worked at Amazon in the early 2000s as manager of customer behavior research, meeting with Jeff Bezos once or twice a week. Selinger describes Bezos as intensely visionary, teaching …

Animoca Brands extended the application deadline for its $10 million Minds Investment Programme to June 26, offering capital and platform credits to early-stage teams building on its agentic AI platform. The first invest…

Bitcoin miners are shutting down rigs and pivoting to AI infrastructure as the network hashrate drops 23% from its October peak, with listed miners potentially earning 70% of revenues from AI by year-end, according to Co…

ByteDance and Tencent have slashed AI model prices, joining a deepening price war in China's AI sector as falling costs and narrowing capability gaps intensify competition. ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 Mini is half the price…

OpenAI spent $34bn in 2025, more than double its $13bn revenue, as it prepares for a potential $1tn IPO. The company's massive spending on R&D, infrastructure, and staffing reflects the high cost of leading the AI race, …

Top 10 foundries saw 3.7% QoQ revenue growth in Q1 2026, driven by AI and consumer electronics, according to TrendForce. TSMC's market share grows on advanced AI chips, while SMIC gains from consumer demand, reflecting a…

South Korean AI firm Upstage announced it will integrate its AI model, workplace tools, and web portal into a single platform, betting on a home-grown stack to compete without relying on US or Chinese technology. The com…

Figure AI's Helix-02 humanoid robot operated autonomously for over 200 hours, sorting 149,000 packages without intervention. China mandated 10,000 humanoid deployments by end of 2026, while three Chinese robotics compani…

Respond.io, a Kuala Lumpur-based customer conversation management platform, raised $62.5 million in Series B funding led by Camber Partners with participation from Endeavor Catalyst. The company reports $35 million in an…

Upstage CEO Sung Kim told reporters in Seoul that a US directive restricting foreign access to Anthropic's advanced AI models underscores the need for South Korea to develop sovereign AI capabilities. Anthropic disabled …

David Silver, the DeepMind researcher behind AlphaGo, has chosen Google Cloud as the infrastructure partner for his new startup Ineffable Intelligence, which aims to build a 'superlearner' AI system. The deal, announced …

AI training startup Mode Inc has acquired two consumer apps, Trimbox and QR Code Reader, bringing its total buyouts to seven in the past year. The company pays users for their data, including receipts, emails, and photos…

Chinese AI lab DeepSeek closed its first outside funding round at roughly $7bn, valuing the company between $52bn and $59bn. Founder Liang Wenfeng contributed 20 billion yuan of his own money to maintain control, while T…

Upstage CEO Sung Kim cited Anthropic's compliance with US export controls by disabling its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models worldwide as evidence that countries must develop sovereign AI capabilities. Kim argued that dependen…

Optiak, a startup building a modular operating system for enterprise AI, raised €4m ($4.7m) in a pre-seed round led by Market One Capital, Next Tier Ventures, EA Ventures, Plug and Play EMEA Fund, and Mission. The compan…

Amazon Web Services (AWS) defines forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) as cross-functional teams that embed with customers to deploy AI solutions, a model that predates the generative AI boom. Taimur Rashid, managing direct…

Malaysian messaging platform Respond.io raised $62.5 million in Series B funding led by Camber Partners, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst and existing investors. The company, which processes 2 billion messages p…

Upstage launched a new corporate structure integrating its AI models, agent platform Timely, and internet portal Daum's operator AXZ, aiming to create a unified AI ecosystem. CEO Kim Sung-hoon announced the move as a ste…

DeepSeek is raising $7 billion at a $50 billion valuation, the largest AI funding round in China, with founder Liang Wenfeng personally contributing 40% of the round and owning 90% of the company. The funds will be used …

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek completed a funding round of more than $7 billion, pushing its valuation above $50 billion, with investors including Tencent and Contemporary Amperex Technology. The round is among the largest…