GoKawiil
Tech News
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.
Google's 2025 DORA report finds 90% of developers now use AI daily, but the tool mainly magnifies existing habits rather than automatically improving output quality. Separate data shows 66% of developers spend extra time fixing AI-generated code that's 'almost correct,' while GitClear found an eightfold rise in code duplication since AI adoption became widespread. The piece argues that cheaper development means weak feature ideas can ship as fast as good ones unless teams deliberately slow down to validate problems first.
A veteran product leader who left a decade-long healthtech career to become a part-time fractional product leader reports ongoing burnout even after her health issue resolved and her workload dropped to its lightest in years. She sought coaching after struggling repeatedly in job interviews for enterprise roles, question whether her burnout was blocking her performance or whether she had overestimated her own skills. Standard fixes like rest, PTO, and quitting for a new company failed to resolve her exhaustion.
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.
TechCrunch is recruiting volunteers for its rebranded Boston event, TechCrunch Founder Summit (formerly All Stage), taking place November 4th and expecting about 1,100 attendees. Volunteers will assist with tasks like registration, speaker coordination, and event setup in exchange for event access and other perks. Applications close October 19th, with limited spots available.
Kohler Health and startup Throne are marketing camera-equipped toilet attachments that use AI to scan urine and stool for color, consistency, and hydration markers, then generate daily 'gut health' scores through a companion app. Kohler's device costs $449 with a $130 annual membership, while Throne, which recently raised $10 million, charges $399 plus a $70 yearly fee. Both companies say their tools track what's normal for each user rather than issuing blanket health verdicts, unlike existing at-home microbiome test kits.
A developer launched a Show HN project that accepts a startup link plus an optional target, such as a pricing page, and generates a blunt critique framed as an obituary rather than encouragement. The tool strips personal data like addresses, emails and phone numbers before processing, and outright refuses inputs containing sensitive identifiers such as SSNs or passport numbers.
A survey from Wilbur Labs found that 87% of entrepreneurs experienced more isolation than they anticipated while running their companies, and 90% said stress made them consider quitting. The findings highlight a widespread mental health struggle among founders and point to peer advisory groups, incubators, and niche online communities as ways to counter it.
An entrepreneur used AI extensively to make pricing, hiring and marketing decisions while scaling a services business, reaching her $50,000 monthly revenue goal within six months. However, her underpriced premium offerings meant that payroll, rent and overhead grew alongside revenue, leaving no profit to reinvest or pay herself. The strain eventually caused missed deadlines, declining quality and staff departures.
Wonderful, an AI startup founded only last year, has reached a $5 billion valuation and already employs 650 people. The company is now expanding its forward-deployed engineering teams globally as it works toward a workforce of 1,000.
An Entrepreneur contributor column describes coaching a founder who had crossed seven figures in revenue and had a five-person team, yet still personally approved every decision and monitored every team chat message. The founder believed constant micromanagement was simply required to run a business, a belief the writer traces to an outdated subconscious 'operational identity' left over from her solopreneur days.
Many Windows programs quietly add themselves to the startup sequence, often because users miss an installer's checkbox or software enrolls itself without notice. Over time this can leave dozens of unnecessary apps launching every time a PC boots, slowing startup and consuming memory and CPU. Windows scatters these entries across several different settings areas, so users need to check multiple locations to find them all.