Startup companies

Startup companies

Identity and access management (IAM) provider Descope has announced raising $35 million in a seed funding extension that brings the total raised by the company to $88 million. The cash infusion came from existing investors Cerca Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Notable Capital, Triventures, and Unusual Ventures. Founded in 2022, the Los Altos, California-based startup landed a large $53 million seed funding round in 2023, aiming to disrupt the customer identity and authentication market.

"I'll binge the entire series with you." "I'll never leave dirty dishes in the sink." "I'll never bail on dinner plans."

What happens when your first 10 hires aren't people at all? At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27-29 at San Francisco's Moscone West, we're digging into the new wave of startups replacing or augmenting early employees with AI agents. Think outbound sales, billing, and customer support - automated from day one. This panel, hosted on the Builders Stage, features a mix of technical founders and seasoned operators who are actually doing it,

Kudotrade, one of the leading global CFD brokers known for its award-winning trading platform, is proud to announce the official launch of "Kudo Funded" its Proprietary Trading (Prop Trading) Platform. Following strong anticipation from the trading community, the platform is now live and ready to provide traders worldwide with an unprecedented opportunity: access to substantial trading capital without risking their own funds.

Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer is closing the doors on her consumer software startup Sunshine, and is selling the company's assets to her new AI startup, Dazzle. The news was first reported by Wired, which cited an email sent to Sunshine's shareholders. Dazzle is setting out to build an AI personal assistant, the report cited anonymous sources as saying, and added that all of Sunshine's employees will move to the new company.

A Faraday Future electric SUV caught fire at the startup's Los Angeles headquarters early Sunday morning, leading to an explosion that blew out part of a wall, the fire department told TechCrunch. The fire was extinguished in 40 minutes, and no injuries were reported. Damage to the building - a smaller two-story structure next to the larger portion of the headquarters (pictured above) -

While stand-up meetings focus on daily tasks and client meetings are often about relationship building and gathering information, L10 meetings have a more strategic and problem-solving focus. They encourage clarity, alignment, and action, thereby improving productivity, increasing revenue, and enhancing collaboration within the leadership team. 👪 Weekly L10 meetings are just one of the tools and principles that make up the Entrepreneurial Operating System ® (EOS).

Moore brings deep expertise in AI, infrastructure, and developer tooling from both the investor and founder perspectives. Cramer, who launched Sentry as an open source side project in 2012 and scaled it into a platform used by over 4 million developers, offers firsthand insights into how the right tools - and hires - can accelerate product velocity without overbuilding. Lloyd, who founded Warp to reinvent the terminal with AI-driven developer experiences,

Supernal's chief strategy officer Jaeyong Song and chief safety officer Tracy Lamb are no longer with the company, the startup confirmed Friday. Lina Yang, the chief of staff to Suprernal's recently-departed CEO Jaiwon Shin is also out. (Yang had previously served as Supernal's "Head of Intelligent Systems" until April 2025.) "As we transition to new leadership, we have taken the opportunity to strategically review our program's progress and next steps to ensure alignment with our long-term goals," the startup said in a statement to TechCrunch.

In part two of How YouTube Ate TV, Fast Company 's oral history of YouTube, we look at how the company's rapid ascent after its 2005 founding led to multiple challenges, from bandwidth costs to unhappy copyright holders. This prompted the startup to consider selling itself, and on October 9, 2006, Google announced that it would be buying it, for $1.65 billion. That deal came with the promise that the web giant would help YouTube scale up even further without micromanaging it. Eventually, the balance they struck between integration and independence paid off. But when YouTube was still a tiny, plucky startup, nobody was looking that far ahead.

Ask Starpath CEO Saurav Shroff his thoughts on America's space priorities and he'll say we're "one order of magnitude high on cost and one order of magnitude low on ambition." Starpath's answer, at least to part of the problem, is ultra-low cost space power, which is generated by solar panels. Starpath's new space-rated solar panel business kicked off sales in the U.S. on September 25 with an eyebrow-raising pitch. The company says its solar panels, called "Starlight," are priced around 10 times cheaper than typical industry pricing of $7-250 per watt, roughly a 90% cost reduction versus the status quo.

Wave positions itself as the go-to solution for freelancers and bootstrapped businesses. Its core accounting features come at no cost, making it incredibly attractive for startups watching every penny. However, you'll pay transaction fees when processing payments through its system. And if you want advanced features and lower transaction fees, prepare to upgrade to Wave Pro for $19 per month.

"Start with something that is fast to deliver and testable," Dunlap said, adding that side hustlers were often more focused on big projects.

Emergent, a company built by twin brothers Mukund and Madhav Jha, aims to become a similar platform for consumers when it comes to app creation. The platform allows non-technical users to create an app using prompts. While that's not a unique pitch in 2025, Emergent intends to aid users through the app development process, while also managing different APIs and deployment steps so they don't have to worry about various technicalities.

A couple of months ago, the founders behind YC-backed social app Candle were in "pivot hell," cycling through more than a dozen ideas after joining Y Combinator's Fall 2024 batch, while the clock on their seed money ticked down. Alex Ruber, previously an engineer at Apple, and Parth Chopra, formerly an engineer at Asana and Twitter, had built multiple projects together including Encore, a conversational AI shopping tool that got them into YC and with which they raised $2 million.

( Rigetti ComputingNASDAQ:RGTI) has become a quantum computing poster child, soaring from obscurity to a $10 billion valuation in mere years. As quantum tech inches closer to practical applications - things like drug discovery or unbreakable encryption - RGTI's stock has caught fire. Over the past month, shares have more than doubled, climbing from below $15 to over $31 per share. This isn't just about tech progress; it's also meme stock mania.

Hopefully, I pulled you in with that big number in the title - and it is real. Here are the numbers: Press enter or click to view image in full size But it isn't magic. It's just a really good research, design, and dev process. And I'm going to show you the whole thing from start to finish. 🛠️ Background: Building the Hard Way I've built a few SaaS products (5 to be exact) the old-fashioned way-handcoded. Some were super successful and some were absolute flops.

HiBob helps modern, mid-size businesses transform the way they manage people, giving HR and managers all they need to connect, engage, develop, and retain top talent. Since 2015, we've achieved consecutive triple-digit year-over-year growth, all backed by our amazing team of Bobbers from around the world, making us the choice HR Information System (HRIS) for over 4,000 midsize and multinational companies.

Palmer Luckey says he learned the hard way that relying on Silicon Valley talent can be a trap. The founder of Oculus VR and Anduril Industries recalled how, after Facebook (now Meta) acquired Oculus in 2014, his other company's hiring funnel narrowed almost exclusively to Bay Area engineers. Many, he said, were "very mercenary-minded" and more interested in résumé building than mission.