<p>Former Y Combinator startup Telli is helping companies alleviate the bottleneck that occurs when a high-volume of customers try to, for example, book appointments. Its AI voice agents kick in and handle basic operations while handing off more-complex processes to human operators. The Berlin-based startup has now raised $3.6 million in a pre-seed funding round led [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Hexium has emerged from stealth with $8 million in seed funding.</p>

<p>U.K. startup Marshmallow has blown up over the years by using innovations in data science to build car insurance policies for immigrants and other consumers who have been overlooked or priced out of traditional insurance. Now, with a million drivers insured and a profitable annual revenue run rate of $500 million, Marshmallow has raised a [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The business of moving goods in the United States is dominated by trucks, which handle about two-thirds of the 20.2 billion tons of freight that’s transported annually. Parallel Systems founder and CEO, Matt Soule, wants to change that by putting a modern autonomous and electric twist on the centuries-old railroad system. The Los Angeles-based company [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. Startups aren&#8217;t isolated from the world. But this week, funding news felt positively uncorrelated from the overall news cycle, offering somewhat of a reprieve — or perhaps [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Mark your calendar — StrictlyVC London is just around the corner on May 13. Designed for founders, entrepreneurs, and investors, this exclusive gathering promises deep VC insight and high-value connections. We’re thrilled to welcome our first pair of confirmed speakers: Nazo Moosa, managing director of Paladin Capital Group, and Sonali De Rycker, partner of Accel [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Thinking Machines Lab, the new AI startup from ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is reportedly attempting to close one of the largest seed rounds in history. Business Insider reported on Thursday that Thinking Machines Lab has doubled the target for its seed funding round to $2 billion. The round, should it close according to plan, would [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Jobandtalent, an AI-based “workforce as a service” marketplace that connects people with companies looking for hourly workers, announced it has raised €92 million ($103 million).&nbsp; The Series F — which includes participation from Atomico, BlackRock, DN Capital, Hercules, Infravia, Kibo,&nbsp;and&nbsp;Kinnevik — values the Madrid, Spain-based company at €1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) post-money.&nbsp; On the surface, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>In the world of tech, some might argue that the term of the decade is AI, but in the bigger scheme of things, beyond this single sector, the most important word may well be &#8220;resilience.&#8221; How well prepared are people, organizations, and countries for unforeseen, negative economic, geopolitical, social, and environmental developments? It’s a question [&hellip;]</p>

<p>How do you get talented engineers to work for a startup in a mundane field at a time when more exciting companies are paying well and hiring aggressively? Here’s an answer from one insurance startup out of Poland called Ominimo: make pay competitive, but more importantly, give those engineers the license to apply their talent [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The money will fund a rapid expansion, including dozens more megawatt-hours of battery storage and plans for a domestic battery factory.</p>

<p>It’s been a tough but exciting year for 23-year-old Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, founder and CEO of AI sales agent startup Artisan. Artisan just raised a $25 million Series A led by Glade Brook Capital, Carmichael-Jack exclusively tells TechCrunch. Y Combinator, Day One Ventures, HubSpot Ventures, Oliver Jung, Fellows Fund, and others participated as well. A year [&hellip;]</p>

<p>After months of hearty marketing efforts and large-scale technology demos across the U.S., Nuro has secured $106 million in fresh funding to help scale its autonomous driving technology and advance commercial partnerships.&nbsp; The Series E round brings Nuro’s total funding raised to $2.2 billion and its valuation to $6 billion. That’s a drop from the [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Legal tech has come a long way, but the bulk of an intellectual property or patent lawyer&#8217;s work today is still done with spreadsheets, word processors, and PDFs. A startup out of Delaware, Solve Intelligence, is using generative AI to speed up that work, believing its tech is uniquely suited to the needs of patent [&hellip;]</p>

<p>It’s been a couple of years since our last topic-focused, one-day event — but with AI transforming the tech landscape, we couldn’t miss the chance to gather 1,200 founders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, investors, and anyone shaping the future of AI for a deep dive into what’s next. On June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Founders, the battlefield is calling! Startup Battlefield 200 applications are now live — and the race has begun. If you’ve got a groundbreaking idea and the guts to pitch it to the world, TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 is your arena. You’ll face elite VC judges. You’ll compete against 199 of the world’s most promising startups. And [&hellip;]</p>

<p>A founder who has carved out a name for himself building products to help restaurants connect better with would-be diners has raised $50 million for his latest startup: a new take on the idea of customer loyalty.&nbsp; Blackbird Labs has built a payments-meets-loyalty-meets-blockchain platform for restaurants to grow repeat business while reducing some of the [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Dark kitchens &#8212; also referred to as ghost kitchens, cloud kitchens, or virtual kitchens &#8212; often receive criticism for their food quality. Sizl, a cook-to-order delivery service based in Chicago, seeks to change this perception by delivering meals made with fresh ingredients in around 30 minutes flat. The company announced its recent $3.5 million seed [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Billing itself as &#8220;Stripe for emerging markets,&#8221; Turkish fintech Sipay has raised a $78 million Series B funding round, claiming a valuation of $875 million in the process. This round is significant, as Sipay plans to expand into markets outside of Turkey, offering additional services like remittances that Stripe currently does not offer in those [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Heron Power is raising between $30 million to $50 million for a Series A, according to a report.</p>