Julie Bort, Author at TechCrunch

AI coding assistants can help startups develop products, seed VCs believe

Julie Bort — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 16:00:00 +0000

By now, there’s hardly a coder in the world who isn’t using an AI copilot in some way. But using GitHub Copilot or Cursor.AI to ask technical questions and get debugging help could be just the beginning. AI coding may one day involve agents that can write the programs themselves based on a natural language […]

AI startups will need ‘quality of revenue’ to raise in 2025, seed VCs warn

Julie Bort — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 15:00:00 +0000

To raise VC money next year, it won't just be about sales and growth, but about the "quality" of that growth, VCs say.

No, startups shouldn’t always take the highest valuation, seed VCs say

Julie Bort — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

One of the lessons that the wild Silicon Valley venture funding environment of the past few years has clearly taught is this: Bigger valuations are not always better. “I think we’ve all kind of seen the negative impact of having a valuation too high from the last, call it, three years,” Elizabeth Yin, co-founder of […]

Level Zero Health is working on a potentially life-changing device for hormone health

Julie Bort — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 18:35:00 +0000

Level Zero Health’s co-founders Ula Rustamova and Irene Jia are swinging for the fences. They are attempting to invent a never-achieved technology that could help millions of people. If they succeed — and there are some positive early indicators — they will create a continuous hormone monitoring medical device. Such a device could do for […]

VC megadeals are booming — and AI is surprisingly not the top category

Julie Bort — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Ask any VC if we’re still in a venture capital bear market and that investor will almost certainly tell you no, that funding is still flowing for good companies. That might sound like spin, because anecdotes abound about how rough it still is for those raising now. And for good reason. Down rounds — that […]

Wiz hopes to hit $1B in ARR in 2025 before an IPO, after turning down Google’s $23B

Julie Bort — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 15:08:46 +0000

Wiz co-founder Roy Reznik said the company hit $500 million in annual recurring revenue this year, and still thought it could double that in 2025.

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 […]

Eric Schmidt’s SandboxAQ aims for $5B valuation for its AI/quantum Google moonshot

Julie Bort — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 21:17:54 +0000

SandboxAQ began as Alphabet’s moonshot AI and quantum computing and now has an impressive roster of projects.

Marc Benioff warns that AI, while useful, is overhyped and partly blames Microsoft

Julie Bort — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 18:23:33 +0000

One of the tech industry’s biggest hype men, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, is psyched about AI, but points out that it hasn't cured cancer.

How customer service AI startup Neuron7 convinced Keith Block to invest

Julie Bort — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Five-year-old AI customer service startup Neuron7 just closed an oversubscribed $44 million Series B round led by Keith Block and his year-and-half-old venture firm, Smith Point Capital. Neuron7 sits in one of the most promising areas for AI technology: customer service. But unlike the hoards of ChatGPT customer chatbot startups, or those doing natural language […]

Y Combinator is being criticized after it backed an AI startup that admits it basically cloned another AI startup

Julie Bort — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 00:13:50 +0000

A Y Combinator startup named PearAI launched with a tweet thread and YouTube video on Saturday and caused an immediate backlash.

Series, a GenAI game development platform, has quietly raised $28M from Netflix, Dell, a16z, others

Julie Bort — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 16:10:00 +0000

It’s been quite the year for game industry exec Pany Haritatos.
Last month, he quietly closed an oversubscribed $28 million from Netflix, Dell a16z, and others.

Fintech Mesa promises 1% cash back on mortgages, up to 3x on other home needs

Julie Bort — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Mortgage fintech Mesa has emerged from stealth on Tuesday with $9.2 million in seed capital and a novel idea for homeowners. It’s offering cash back and rewards on all spending done on the home, including the mortgage itself. Mesa is offering mortgage loans, original or refinancing, that include a credit-card-style 1% cash back on the […]

Letta, one of UC Berkeley’s most anticipated AI startups, has just come out of stealth

Julie Bort — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 16:00:00 +0000

AI memory management startup Letta just emerged from stealth with $10 million in seed led by Felicis and a bunch of big-name angels.

Salesforce Ventures ups its AI fund to $1B, doubling it again

Julie Bort — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 18:28:22 +0000

Salesforce Ventures just doubled its AI fund with another $500 million, and is helping San Francisco grow its attraction as the city for AI startups.

Fintech Bolt is buying out the investor suing over Ryan Breslow’s $30M loan

Julie Bort — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 20:00:11 +0000

Bolt says it has settled its long-standing lawsuit with its investor Activant Capital. One-click payments startup Bolt is settling the suit by buying out the investor’s stake “after which Activant will no longer hold any interest in Bolt,” the company said in a statement. Activant’s suit accused founder and then CEO Ryan Breslow of adding […]

Bolt has quietly settled its lawsuit with Fanatics amid ongoing boardroom drama

Julie Bort, Mary Ann Azevedo — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 18:20:00 +0000

Online sports apparel retailer Fanatics has agreed to settle and drop a lawsuit that it filed against troubled one-click payments provider Bolt in March, according to court documents obtained by TechCrunch. The settlement occurred as Bolt was in the thick of a new gambit to raise a large round of financing, including a “cramdown” threat […]

Why Y Combinator companies are flocking to banking and HR startup Every

Julie Bort — Thu, 12 Sep 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Rajeev Behera’s new all-on-one HR startup, dubbed Every, is either brilliant or crazy.

Announcing the final agenda for the Builders Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

Julie Bort, Richard Smith, Rebecca Szkutak — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Get ready for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, our signature event for startups of all stages, happening at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28-30. This year, we’re expecting a massive turnout of 10,000 leaders from the startup and VC community. As part of the program, we’re thrilled to unveil the complete agenda for the Builders Stage. […]

‘Emotion AI’ may be the next trend for business software, and that could be problematic

Julie Bort — Sun, 01 Sep 2024 15:01:00 +0000

As businesses experiment with embedding AI everywhere, one area starting to gain more attention is Emotion AI.