Benchmark's entire current partnership—Jack Altman, Peter Fenton, Chetan Puttagunta, Everett Randle and Eric Vishria—will join a single main-stage panel at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco, marking the first time the full team has appeared together on the Disrupt Stage. The session, titled 'What We Believe Now,' will focus on where future startups may emerge and which founder assumptions deserve rethinking. The panel follows Benchmark's recent expansion, having raised roughly $2 billion this year across a new flagship fund and its first growth fund.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-21
AI coding startup Cognition has closed a Series E funding round of $2 billion, valuing the company at $48 billion. The round includes backing from investors such as Peter Thiel, underscoring strong investor confidence in AI-driven software development tools.
wsj.com
· 2026-09-09
French AI startup Mistral AI has closed a funding round of $3.48 billion, drawing from both existing backers like Samsung and ASML Holding and new investors. The round pushes the company's valuation above $24 billion, cementing its status as Europe's leading AI challenger to US and Chinese rivals.
wsj.com
· 2026-09-08
A former startup CEO who has raised tens of millions in VC funding argues that traditional venture capital, once about backing founders to build companies, has been co-opted by a small group of extremely wealthy investors. He says this cohort now operates with little accountability to markets, regulators, or voters, using the VC label to pursue a broader ideological agenda rather than genuine innovation.
anildash.com
· 2026-09-03
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, based in Hangzhou, is said to be raising fresh capital that would value the company at roughly $74 billion. The funds are intended to support research and development along with an expansion of its computing infrastructure.
wsj.com
· 2026-08-27
Stripe has acquired Clerky, an online legal services platform used by startups and their attorneys to handle routine formation and financing paperwork. Clerky says it will keep its existing team and focus after joining Stripe, continuing to serve the same startup and attorney customer base. The company reports its startups account for 23% of Silicon Valley seed and pre-seed financings and have collectively raised over $140 billion in venture capital.
clerky.com
· 2026-08-26
Deep Cogito, a startup founded by former Google AI search employees, has raised $43 million in funding. The capital will support the company's mission of helping businesses develop their own specialized AI models rather than relying solely on third-party systems.
wsj.com
· 2026-08-26
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