Venture
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17 hours agoThe AlleyWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 5/13/2026
Cinder raised a $41M Series B to expand an AI trust-and-safety platform, while e4n secured $12.5M in venture funding for AI-enabled managed IT services.
AI-Enhanced Phishing and Deepfakes: No longer are phishing emails riddled with obvious errors. AI tools can instantly craft convincing messages by harvesting content from social media and corporate sites, personalizing scams to increase their effectiveness. Adding to this, deepfake technology enables cybercriminals to mimic voices and even video images of executives to authorize wire transfers or issue fake instructions, making fraud exponentially harder to detect.
Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. OpenAI says that it has taken an undisclosed ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, the management-focused offshoot of private equity heavyweight Thrive Capital, which itself is a major investor in the ChatGPT maker. "This partnership with Thrive Holdings is about demonstrating what's possible when frontier AI research and deployment are rapidly deployed across entire organizations to revolutionize how businesses work and engage with customers," Brad Lightcap, COO of OpenAI said, according to a canned statement that accompanied the news.