Startup companies

Startup companies

We were in the dark a lot. And as a kid, my self-esteem was low,

Mbodi wants to make training robots easier and quicker with the help of AI agents. The company will be showcasing this tech as one of the Top 20 Startup Battlefield finalists at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. New York-based Mbodi built a cloud-to-edge system, a hybrid computing system using both cloud and local compute, that is designed to integrate into existing robotic tech stacks. The software relies on a multitude of AI agents that communicate with each other to gather the needed information to help a robot learn a task faster.

"We're addressing a very acute problem that consumers face, which is that electricity has gotten more expensive and less reliable," Zach Dell, 29, told Fortune. "It's totally crazy if you think of all the things that have gotten better over the last decade, and our power has gotten noticeably worse. Batteries, paired with software and a unique business model, can make your power more reliable and less expensive."

In a nascent industry projected to hit $29 billion by 2030 - and between $1 trillion and $5 trillion a decade later - direction trumps dollars. Joby's update could highlight its edge in FAA testing, potentially lifting shares if it reaffirms 2026 launches in the UAE and U.S. Archer, with deeper pockets and manufacturing scale, might impress on production ramps, but delays in certification could weigh it down.

We initially started remote. My cofounder is based in the UK and is planning on relocating to New York. We have a sales guy in France, and we have someone running customer success in Illinois. Our goal has always been: How do we actually get people in the same office? You just work faster. I'm getting absolutely roasted by most of the remote tech worker community for my post in favor of the office.

Holon, the autonomous mobility subsidiary of Benteler Group and Tasaru Mobility Investments (Saudi investor) rebranded in 2022, presented its driverless shuttle for the first time at CES 2023 in Las Vegas. and is now preparing for series production and market rollout of its first fully electric autonomous shuttle, the Holon Urban, showcased at UITP Summit in Hamburg in June. It features design by Pininfarina and sees Beep and Mobileye as development partners.

Tech hopefuls are associating themselves with San Francisco online; some say for social media clout or to attract investors. Eight rising tech workers told Business Insider that they've noticed an influx of San Francisco love online. One changed his location to San Francisco as a "manifestation." Another said they thought of it as a "heavenly land." 18-year-old Lance Yan recently made his location on X to "Waterloo | SF."

Today I'm joined by Paul Gu, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Upstart. Paul's journey reads like a modern Silicon Valley story-from Chinese immigrant to Yale dropout, he became part of the inaugural class of Thiel Fellows before co-founding Upstart in 2012. Under his leadership, Upstart has gone from zero model training data points in 2013 to processing 91 million data points today. Their AI predicts both default and prepayment likelihood for every month of a loan's term.

"It was all the same data. It was all about the same physical object," he told TechCrunch. "I was like, this is nuts ... Why shouldn't I be able to have some sort of unified interface, or some sort of unified data model, that actually represents this thing correctly to whoever's looking at it?"

India's appetite for instant convenience - once confined to food and grocery delivery - is expanding into house help. That shift has helped Snabbit, an on-demand home-help startup, secure $30 million in new funding and lift its valuation to $180 million, up from $80 million five months ago. The all-equity Series C round - Snabbit's third fundraise in nine months - was led by Bertelsmann India Investments, with participation from existing backers Lightspeed, Elevation Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners.

Vinod Khosla, telling attendees he doesn't buy the argument that powering AI will doom climate efforts. Geothermal energy is nearly here, he said, while fusion remains further out. He also touched on his alignment with President Donald Trump (deregulation) and his disagreement (immigration): "The only thing I will say is this administration won't last forever," he said with a grin.

"When we started out, the problem we were trying to solve was, 'How can we make underwriting smarter, faster, so that these entrepreneurs get access to capital?'" Gammage, CEO, said. "We wanted a world where money moved freely like it did in other verticals. We came in with a borrower-centric experience, whereas a lot of companies were focused on 'how do we make this work for lenders.'"

Transformify [TFY], the forward-thinking platform that helps businesses hire, manage and pay global teams, contingent workforce and independent contractors, has been recognised by the 2025 Allica Bank Great British Entrepreneur Awards after scaling profit by an impressive 90%. Established in 2015 by CEO and Angel Investor, Lilia Stoyanov, TFY is underpinned by advanced AI which supports SMEs in scaling global growth by automating workforce onboarding, compliance, billing and payments.

Earlier this year, Slate Auto emerged from stealth mode and stunned industry watchers with the Slate Truck, a compact electric pickup it plans to sell for less than $30,000. Achieving that price won't be easy, but Slate really does look to be doing things differently from the rest of the industry -even Tesla. For example, the truck will be made from just 600 parts, with no paint or even an infotainment system, to keep costs down.

Cluely's AI assistant grew famous this April with a viral claim that its undetectable windows could "help you cheat on anything" - a claim that was quickly disproven when a string of proctoring services showed they could, in fact, detect use of the AI assistant. But in a matter of months, the company had raised $15 million from Andreessen Horowitz, becoming one of the most visible products in the crowded AI assistant space.

That difference stuck with me. Because years later, I see it everywhere: Many founders chase visibility before they build foundations. Visibility is seductive It's easy to focus on what looks good from the outside. A flashy website. A polished LinkedIn announcement. A big funding headline. And yes-awards. The appeal is obvious. Recognition feels good. It validates the sacrifices you've made. It gets people's attention. And in many cases, visibility can even buy time-helping attract investors, talent, or customers.

Depending on the root cause of the fall, like a temporary decline in the economy, it very well could rebound. But there are times when the root cause cannot be fixed, or worse yet, will continue to "snowball" in the wrong direction. In those scenarios, you need to know when to pull the "ripcord" to save whatever value you have left before your business is worth zero.

I've always wanted to live in San Francisco. It's the beating pulse of AI, and there are so many insanely ambitious and talented people to be surrounded by. You can literally walk into a coffee shop and end up in a two-hour deep dive conversation about AI agents or someone's YC application. Everyone's dreaming big, and you can feel that optimism in the air. It's a nice place to build a startup.

Pacaso is a platform for fractional ownership of luxury vacation homes. The company facilitates the sale of properties in vacation destinations like Jackson Hole, Tuscany, and Napa, which are acquired through property-specific LLCs. Unlike timeshares, which allow multiple users the right to use a property for a set time each year, Pacaso allows clients to share equity in their properties.

Since its founding in in Antwerp in 2016, Loop has become a best-selling, highly imitated earplug brand, racking up collaborations from Coachella to McLaren to Swarovski. When Bodewes and O, childhood friends who bonded over a mutual love of music festivals and motorcycles, began suffering from tinnitus in their late twenties, they found a gap in the market for affordable but stylish earplugs.

Sam Altman has tapped Mikhail Shapiro, an award-winning biomolecular engineer, to join the Merge Labs brain-computer interface startup he's set to announce soon with co-founder Alex Blania. While Shapiro's official title is unclear, sources say he will be part of Merge's founding team and has been positioned as a key leader in talks with investors. Those talks are ongoing, but Merge expects to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from OpenAI and others, as The Financial Times earlier reported.

Three days. That's it. TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 - the startup world's biggest stage - kicks off October 27 - 29 at Moscone West in San Francisco. When Disrupt 2025 arrives, the city doesn't just host innovation - it amplifies it, transforming San Francisco into a living showcase of ideas, products, and partnerships driving the next wave of tech. Prices jump to the full rate when doors open, so this is your final chance to save up to $444 on your pass

"This year was supposed to be the year of retail. Unfortunately, things kind of took a turn with the tariffs," Kinoshita said on the DTC podcast this summer. "That's just the nature of when you manufacture something overseas. You don't fully control your supply chain, you don't fully control your costs. It's not expected, but it's part of the game."

Elite Media transformed its commitment to community support into tangible action by launching the Keep It 100 pitch competition, distributing $100,000 among five Black-owned businesses during an event that celebrated innovation and cultural impact. The Harlem-based advertising agency drew from its own funds to create the prize pool, challenging industry peers to follow suit in supporting entrepreneurs who contribute meaningfully to their communities.

Products were developed around a sturdy core banking system and rigid business process to ensure security and trust, distributed through branch networks, and only then wrapped in a customer experience and brand veneer. But those days are over because customers and the market demand the opposite. Today's Fintech upstarts and digital-first neobanks have flipped the model on its head, designing their institutions from the outside in.