best ai startup funding 2026

Zhi东西（WeChat official account: zhidxcom） compiled | Sun Xiaowen edited | Cheng Xi Zhi东西 reported on November 12, that yesterday, the UK AI inference chip unicorn Fractile announced that it has completed a $720 million C round of financing. This round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Google's CapitalG and the UK National AI Venture Fund Sovereign AI. The company's post-money valuation reached $7 billion,

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images The AI boom has brought with it untold levels of fraud and graft. One of the largest schemes so far, concealed within the record-breaking valuations of the AI hype cycle, was iLearning Engines, a relatively young tech company which quickly scaled itself to a $1.5 billion market cap. A scathing statement by the US Department of Justice alleges that iLearning, an “out-of-the-box AI platform

Posted on April 27, 2026 at 15:59

An American startup, Atomic Machines, is using artificial intelligence to design and manufacture microscopic devices. The company created a system called "matter compiler," which transforms digital projects into physical components.According to The New York Times, the first application is a small electrical switch for data center equipment. Atomic Machines aims to apply the technology to micro-robots, motors, and devices capable of performing medical exams

Getty / Futurism With questions swirling about whether hundreds of AI startups will ever translate the tech into real-world economic returns, new players in the space are scrambling to justify all the hype. One of the particularly baffling ways they’re doing that is by renting attractive, grown-up office spaces in Manhattan — even if their business really only exists on a couple of MacBooks. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal about the bizarre AI real est

Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch Outspoken venture capitalist and major Trump backer Marc Andreessen, whose controversial “techno-optimist manifesto” in 2023 set the tone for a years-long AI boom cycle, doesn’t appear to know how the tech actually works. In a lengthy “custom prompt” he shared in a Monday tweet, the billionaire seemingly tried to show off his AI skills — only for the internet to mercilessly mock him for it. “You are a world class

A philanthropy created by Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and his pediatrician wife, Priscilla Chan, makes curing disease its main mission with a focus on using artificial intelligence. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a nonprofit launched by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife aimed at curing all disease, on Thursday announced it was restructuring to focus on using artificial intelligence to achieve that goal. The move narrows the focus of the philanthropic organizati

Published on May 30, 2026 at 4:10 p.m. Comment 0 𝕏 Print © Shift/MicroAGI Shift sends agents to clean your home, for free. The catch: every move is filmed to train the robots that will do the same work tomorrow. Without the agents. Launched a few days ago by German start-up Microagi, the Shift app offers a free two-hour cleaning service at home. The offer has generated “thousands upon thousands of bookings” in just a few days. In return for the service, an

Biz & IT Debunking the biggest myths about artificial intelligence From killer robots, to runaway sentience, there’s a lot of FUD that needs clearing up. Rupert Goodwins – Dec 25, 2015 9:00 am | 120 HAL 9000 in the film 2001. HAL 9000 in the film 2001. Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav The concept of inhuman intelligence goes back to the deep prehisto

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Kristina Bumphrey / Variety via Getty Images; Shutterstock The film community is in meltdown after acclaimed director Martin Scorsese promoted a new AI startup called Black Forest Labs, saying that he’s already using its tech to help plan his movies. Scorsese revealed this collaboration in a statement to The New York Times on Tuesday, which was accompanied by the release of a new promotional video fro

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Shutterstock Do you like kicking back and watching some sports after a long day? Do you like AI? Would you like more AI-generated content in your sports? You might not have much of a choice — at least if Itai Epstein, vice president of new ventures at WSC Sports, has anything to say about it. At the Microsoft AI Tour Tel Aviv 2026, Calcalist reports, Epstein bragged that his company is blazing new ter

Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images; Shutterstock Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, is in turmoil behind the scenes. The company is constantly playing catch-up with rivals Anthropic, with Musk personally obsessed with having his chatbot Grok match Anthropic’s Claude, Bloomberg reports. And its merger with SpaceX, followed by the latter going public in a historic IPO, led to dozens of employees leaving the compa

The founder of an AI startup in San Francisco was indicted this week for allegedly conspiring with his wife for six years to defraud investors out of $60 million. According to a press release from the US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California, Alexander Beckman—founder of GameOn Technology (now known as ON Platform)—and Valerie Lau Beckman—an attorney hired by GameOn who later became his wife—were charged with 25 counts, including conspir

While OpenAI does not expect to be profitable before 2029, the startup's valuation keeps climbing in funding rounds baffling some financial analysts. Three years after ChatGPT made OpenAI the leader in artificial intelligence and a household name, rivals have closed the gap and some investors are wondering if the sensation has the wherewithal to stay dominant. Investor Michael Burry, made famous in the film "The Big Short," recently likened OpenAI to Netsc

If there is one thing this moment of techno-negativity—from the rejection of Flock Security cameras to the distrust of AI companies gobbling up data—tells us, it’s that people hate feeling watched. You could put the brightest minds of our generation in a room and task them with coming up with the worst possible idea to meet this moment, and they wouldn’t be able to come up with a better idea than the startup Outlit, which promises an AI agent over every pe

Getty Images / Patrick McMullan Earlier this month, we published a months-long investigation into a little-known company called Brown Brothers Media. The venture is run by three brothers — Justin Brown, Lachlan Brown, and Brendan Brown — who buy struggling online publications and turn them into AI-powered slop farms that post thousands of articles to scoop up massive traffic from platforms like Google, pushing unwitting readers away from real journalism in

Published on September 30, 2026 at 07:33 Comment 0 𝕏 Print © Manus Meta wanted to acquire Manus, but Beijing decided otherwise. Three months after the breakup, the start-up is launching Cue, a personal-agents app that targets its former acquirer’s brand-new Muse. At the end of December 2025, Meta announced the acquisition of Manus, a fledgling agentic AI startup, for a reported amount of around $2 billion. The Chinese regulator blocked the deal in the spri

Character.AI / Futurism Character.AI, the once-buzzy chatbot startup that faced high-profile lawsuits over the deaths of minors, has declared bankruptcy. Character.AI announced last night that it had entered a “voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy process” and is looking to sell the company in a court-supervised sale. “Over the past year, we’ve taken meaningful steps to sustain and improve our business amid significant legal, regulatory, and operational headwin

AI job postings may be increasing, but that doesn't necessarily mean more jobs are being created, Northeastern research finds. Credit: Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University Artificial intelligence is reshaping how companies operate, but it may not translate into more job creation, according to new research. That's a major takeaway from a recently published study co-authored by Northeastern University economics and public policy professor Shantanu Khanna.