Legal AI startup Harvey has closed a $550 million funding round valuing it at $15.5 billion, co-led by Diffusion and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The raise comes just months after an $11 billion valuation in March and an $8 billion mark last December, bringing Harvey's total funding past $1.55 billion. The deal follows the company's launch of its own in-house model, Harvey Tenet, built on an open-weight foundation with help from Fireworks.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-09-09
A contributor for Entrepreneur argues that founders and business owners are increasingly turning to private capital, not just public markets, to grow wealth. The piece explains that more than 99% of U.S. companies are privately held, and that many valuable businesses build significant worth well before any public listing.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-09-08
Betaworks, the venture firm led by John Borthwick, was the first investor to fund AI startup Hugging Face and now holds an equity stake estimated at roughly $650 million. Other early backers of the company also saw substantial gains from their initial investments.
wsj.com
· 2026-09-04
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
Venture capital firms are increasingly directing funding toward businesses built around physical, real-world experiences—such as sports, gambling and travel—rather than digital or software-based startups. The strategy reflects investor concern that AI's rapid advancement could quickly disrupt or devalue many traditional tech business models.
wsj.com
· 2026-09-03
Entrepreneur magazine, working with Statista, is collecting recommendations from founders, startup employees, investors and service providers about their favorite business tools and services across finance, legal, HR, marketing, product and tech support. The findings will be compiled into a ranking of the most valued startup resources, to be published in an upcoming issue of Entrepreneur magazine.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-09-01
An Entrepreneur contributor argues that startups can no longer rely solely on a single venture capital raise as their financing plan, citing a sharp drop in global VC fundraising and slower exits that have left many funds unable to return money to their own investors. The piece recommends founders build a three-part capital stack combining equity, debt-based instruments and profitability to reduce dependence on favorable market timing.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-08-28
Crunchbase data shows global venture funding hit $300 billion in the first quarter of 2026, an all-time high, with AI companies capturing $242 billion, or 80% of that total. Despite the surge, an advisor to high-growth and venture-backed firms notes that founders are increasingly losing deals not because of weak technology, but because of shaky financial and operational foundations that investors uncover during due diligence.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-08-28
Julia Collins, who became the first Black woman to co-found a unicorn company after Zume Pizza hit a $1 billion valuation in 2018, later left to launch Planet FWD, a platform helping brands track and cut their carbon footprint. In an interview, she reflected on her entrepreneurial upbringing, her early career as the first hire at food chain Mexicue, and her approach to leadership across the more than $500 million she has raised in venture capital.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-08-26
Perceptron, a startup founded by former Meta FAIR researchers Armen Aghajanyan and Akshat Shrivastava, has released Isaac 0.5, a vision model built to help robots perceive and navigate physical settings like warehouses and factories. The model is open-weight, meaning its parameters and training data are publicly inspectable, and the company recently closed a $21 million round led by Bessemer Venture Partners.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-08-26
JOCO, a New York-based mobility company backed by roughly $7.5 million in venture funding, has built one of the largest urban e-bike infrastructure networks in the country, serving enterprise clients like Amazon, Uber Eats, Grubhub, Instacart and Gopuff. Its rise reflects a broader shift among startups away from pure software scaling toward capital-efficient, infrastructure-heavy business models as investor scrutiny tightens.
entrepreneur.com
· 2026-08-25
TechCrunch is inviting companies, investors and community organizers to apply to host official Side Events around Disrupt 2026, which runs October 13-15 in San Francisco. Approved events can take place anytime from October 10-16 and will be promoted to Disrupt's more than 10,000 attendees through official marketing channels. Applications close September 4.
techcrunch.com
· 2026-08-24
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