#startups

#startups

Anne Sterling Dorman, a Consulting Chief Financial Officer for venture capital backed start-up companies in Silicon Valley and beyond, died on July 19, 2025, just three months after the passing of her wife, Annette Tracy. Dorman for many years had suffered from primary progressive aphasia. Before her illness, she was a regular guest at "Betty's List" events. Both she and her wife, who shared a home in the Castro, were supporters of the San Francisco Bay Times.

We have to start to open up the gates and allow our companies to innovate much, much faster.

It's the definitive startup event where what's next in tech takes the stage, and where early access, first-mover insight, and game-changing introductions all happen in one place. Investors discover the next breakout startups. Founders meet the backers, builders, and customers who can take them from idea to scale. And tech leaders from companies like OpenAI, Google Cloud, Meta, Amazon,Salesforce, and Replika share hard-won lessons, unfiltered insight, and a clear look at what's coming.

The startup Motive, which makes software for managing vehicle fleets and recently closed a $150 million funding round, has taken a 40,000-square-foot sublease in the building, X's broker Mike Sample told SFGATE on Thursday. He confirmed that more than 700,000 square feet of space in X's old offices are still up for grabs. X and Motive's deal was first reported by the San Francisco Business Times, whose sources said that the startup would move in in phases, beginning with 25,000 square feet.

Two former Google DeepMind researchers who worked on the company's Nobel Prize-winning AlphaFold protein structure prediction AI as well as its AlphaEvolve code generation system have launched a new company, with the mission of democratizing access to advanced algorithms. The company, which is called Hiverge, emerged from stealth today with $5 million in seed funding, led by Flying Fish Ventures with participation from Ahren Innovation Capital and Alpha Intelligence Capital.

The higher volume also drove Bausch + Lomb's CEO, Brent Saunders, to embrace new AI software, which helps manufacturing workers monitor, test, and fix mechanical issues. The technology, called Atlas and produced by Arena AI, is designed to predict machinery issues before they arise and send alerts to maintenance workers so they can diagnose errors and fix them. Saunders said that Atlas was tested in Rochester in 2023 and, by last year,

Here's the reality entrepreneurs don't want to hear: sales need fixing first. Mike Michalowicz covers this in his book "Fix This Next." The majority of businesses have decent products and people, but they're not selling effectively. This truth became even more stark during the pandemic. McKinsey found that 70-80% of small businesses experienced 30-50% revenue drops between 2020 and 2021.

"There are some companies that are obviously richly-valued," Kurtz told Fortune. "I think some of these companies don't realize that they are starting to move into zombieland: You look at their last round valuation, and it might be great for them, but it's expensive and it's necessarily actionable for a lot of companies, even ours." To be sure, there have been a couple of notable big-ticket acquisitions in cyber lately: Palo Alto Networks' $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk and Google's proposed $32 billion acquisition of Wiz.

Eight Sleep's AI-powered sleep technology, including the flagship Pod, automates sleep enhancement through real-time tracking of health metrics, leading to significant sales and data insights.

The outdated business credit scoring models are shutting out promising UK startups from crucial funding, urging a cultural and systemic rethink to match modern entrepreneurship.

Chowdeck, a Lagos-based food delivery startup that has stayed profitable in a notoriously tough and low-margin market, has raised $9 million in Series A funding to launch a quick commerce strategy and expand into more cities in Nigeria and Ghana.

"We're very open to [mergers and acquisitions]," Cook said at the time. "We basically ask ourselves whether a company can help us accelerate a roadmap. If they do, then we're interested."

With the expansion, Brex is now authorized to sell spend management complete with issuing cards and other tools like embedded payments to EU companies and startups.

Cohorts are dominated by AI companies, with roughly 70 of the 143 startups in the spring batch focused on agentic AI, demonstrating the sector's significant influence.

Immad Akhund, an angel investor in over 350 startups, asserts that simply emulating Silicon Valley playbooks often leads to failure, as they are context-specific and not universally applicable.

Working for equity can be a gamble, creating the potential for non-payment alongside opportunities for profit if the startup achieves success.

Clay has raised a $100 million Series C at a $3.1 billion valuation, led by CapitalG, confirming earlier reports. This follows a $1.25 billion Series B round.