Controversial drone company Xtend leans into defense with new $40M round

Close to a decade ago, brothers Aviv and Matteo Shapira co-founded Replay, a company that created a video format for 360-degree replays — the sorts of replays that have become part and parcel of major sports broadcasts. Replay caught the attention of Intel, which acquired the company in 2016 for …...Read More

Mycocycle uses mushrooms to upcycle old tires and construction waste

Usually, when something starts to rot, it gets pitched in the trash. But Joanne Rodriguez wants to turn the concept of rot on its head by growing fungus on trash to turn it into something better. “We train mushrooms to eat trash and create renewable, bio-based raw materials,” she told …...Read More

UK challenger bank Monzo nabs another $190M as US expansion beckons

Monzo has raised another £150 million ($190 million), as the challenger bank looks to expand its presence internationally — particularly in the U.S. The new round comes just two months after Monzo raised £340 million ($425 million), meaning the London-based company has now raised north of $610 million in 2024, …...Read More

iRobot names former Timex head Gary Cohen as CEO

iRobot Tuesday announced the successor to longtime CEO, Colin Angle. Gary Cohen, who previous held chief executive role at Timex and Qualitor Automotive, will be heading up the company, marking a major shift from his predecessor, Angle, a cofounder of the company who held the role from 1997 until January …...Read More

Reddit tests automatic, whole-site translation into French using LLM-based AI

Reddit — now a publicly-traded company with more scrutiny on revenue growth — is putting a big focus on boosting its international audience, starting with francophones. In their first-ever earnings call, CEO Steve Huffman confirmed the company is now working on automatic translations of the site’s content, in real-time, into …...Read More

Meati Foods bites into another $100M amid growth to 7,000 retail locations

Mushrooms continue to be a big area for alternative proteins. Canada-based Maia Farms recently raised $1.7 million to develop a blend of mushroom and plant-based protein using biomass fermentation. There’s also MyForest Foods and Fable Food. Then there’s Meati Foods, which claims it’s like no other alternative protein. The company …...Read More

Lucid Bots secures $9M for drones to clean more than your windows

Cleaning the outside of buildings is a dirty job, and it’s also dangerous. Lucid Bots came on the scene in 2018 with its Sherpa line of drones to clean windows in tall places, and now it’s back to take on more labor-intensive tasks. The Charlotte, N.C.-based company, which was part …...Read More

Israeli startup Panax raises a $10M Series A for its AI-driven cash flow management platform

High interest rates and financial pressures make it more important than ever for finance teams to have a better handle on their cash flow, and several startups are hoping to help. Two-year-old Israeli startup Panax is one, and it just raised a $10 million Series A round of funding led …...Read More

EU grills Elon Musk's X about content moderation and deepfake risks

The European Union has deepened the investigation of Elon Musk-owned social network X it opened back in December, under the bloc’s online governance and content moderation rulebook: the Digital Services Act (DSA). Confirmed breaches of the regime could be expensive for Musk as enforcers are empowered to issue fines of …...Read More

Atlan scores $105M for its data control plane, as LLMs boost importance of data

For the founders of Atlan, a data governance startup, data has always been at the heart of what they do, even before they launched the company. In fact, co-founders Prukalpa Sankar and Varun Banka got their start building India’s national data platform called SocialCops. So it probably shouldn’t come as …...Read More