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Alec Litowitz joined Citadel in 1994 without a finance background, brought on by Ken Griffin for his way of thinking rather than his resume. He went on to help scale Citadel's equity business from about $100 million to $10 billion in assets before spending 18 years leading Magnetar Capital, which grew to roughly $20 billion by 2022.
Bain Capital Ventures has closed a new $1.6 billion fund, up 14% from its prior $1.4 billion vehicle raised three years ago. The firm plans to deploy the capital mainly into AI-focused startups, targeting infrastructure, healthcare, physical AI, and security as key sectors it believes will define what it calls the 'post-AGI era'.
Comp AI, a startup building AI agents to automate security and compliance tasks like drafting policies and gathering audit evidence, announced a $34 million Series A led by Roo Capital and Grand Ventures. The company was founded by Lewis Carhart, Claudio Fuentes, and Mariano Fuentes, who previously ran a workflow startup called LeapAI that they shut down after failing to find a sticky use case. Their frustration with the tedious SOC 2 compliance process while scaling LeapAI directly inspired Comp AI's product.
Iceland-based Treble, founded in 2020 by acoustic engineers Finnur Pind and Jesper Pedersen, has closed an $18 million extension to its Series A round led by Paladin Capital Group, with backing from KOMPAS VC, Frumtak Ventures, EIC, and Omega ehf. The funding brings Treble's total raised to over $40 million, following a $12 million round in 2024, and the company already counts Amazon and Logitech among its customers.
Startup Fortell, founded by Matthew de Jonge, has raised $163 million from investors including Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, and Valor Equity Partners CEO Antonio Gracias. The company is developing hearing aids that use AI to identify important sounds in real time and suppress background noise, rather than simply amplifying everything at once as most current devices do. De Jonge discussed the six-year effort behind the product on TechCrunch's Equity podcast.
Capital Economics economist James Reilly analyzed eight market indicators — including surging equity and debt issuance and extreme concentration of market value in a handful of tech stocks — and found most near levels historically seen just before major market crashes. Reilly concluded the data resembles a 'late-stage bubble' comparable to the run-up before the dot-com crash. The warning comes as the Federal Reserve weighs whether to raise interest rates to cool the AI-driven market euphoria.
Binance is expanding its Capital Connect platform, previously reserved for institutions, to allow wealthy individuals meeting a $1 million asset threshold to invest in professional trading strategies. The platform runs on Binance's Portfolio Account system, which manages fees and risk metrics while trading teams handle strategy execution, similar to separately managed accounts in traditional finance. The platform has grown from 106 portfolios and 35 trading teams in May to 212 portfolios and 77 teams by September.
Pershing Square Capital Management CEO Bill Ackman joined a conversation moderated by Mansueto Ventures' Stephanie Mehta to discuss how design shapes business outcomes and what the future of design might look like. The session, titled 'The Business of Design—and the Design of the Future,' explored the intersection of investment strategy and design thinking.
An Entrepreneur contributor explains that many startups fail not from lack of profit but from running out of cash, a pattern dubbed the growth paradox. Rapid expansion forces companies to pay upfront for hiring, inventory and fulfillment while customer payments lag 30 to 90 days behind, draining bank accounts even as income statements look strong.
Evvy, a women's health startup, has closed a $40 million Series B funding round led by Catalio Capital Management. The company operates an at-home vaginal microbiome test that uses mNGS sequencing, serving over 100,000 patients and 3,000 practitioners across the US, and has produced 15 peer-reviewed publications from its data.
TechCrunch is giving startups until 11:59 p.m. PT on Friday, September 18 to secure a $12,500 exhibit table at Disrupt 2026, warning that tables are limited and sold on a first-come basis. The package includes 10 event passes, Expo Hall access, lead capture through the event app, press-list inclusion and Silver Tier sponsor branding.
Rune Kvist, a former Anthropic employee, and Rajiv Dattani, ex-COO of AI safety group METR, launched a startup called Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) that builds a third-party audit and certification system for AI agents, modeled on the SOC 2 cybersecurity standard. The company, whose clients include Cursor, Lovable, Harvey, and ElevenLabs, just raised a $40 million Series A led by Ribbit Capital with First Harmonic, adding to a prior $15 million seed round, bringing total funding to $55 million.