Startups Category
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: AI, Fintech And E-Commerce In The Lead
Want to keep track of the largest startup funding deals in 2025 with our curated list of $100 million-plus venture deals to U.S.-based companies? Check out The Crunchbase Megadeals Board. This is a weekly feature that runs down the week’s top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week’s biggest funding rounds here. The week’s largest funding rounds confirmed that we’re still very much in the AI era. This included the biggest deal, a $350 million Series C for AI hiring startup Mercor, along with good-sized financings for legal tech unicorn Harvey, shopping platform Whatnot, and email security provider Sublime Security. 1. Mercor, $350M, AI hiring: San Francisco-based Mercor, a provider of AI-enabled tools for hiring, secured $350 million in Series C funding at a $10 billion valuation. Felicis 1 led the financing, which included participation by Robinhood Ventures, General Catalyst and Benchmark. 2. (tied) SavvyMoney, $225M, fintech: SavvyMoney, which offers tools for financial services providers to embed features like credit scores and personalized offers into their consumer offerings, announced a $225 million investment co-led by PSG Equity and Canapi Ventures. Founded in 2009, the Dublin, California, company currently works with more than 1,500 financial institution customers. 2. (tied) Whatnot, $225M, e-commerce: Whatnot, a live shopping platform and marketplace, has closed a $225 million Series F round, more than doubling its valuation to $11.5 billion in less than 10 months. DST Global and CapitalG co-led the financing, which brings the Los Angeles-based company’s total raised to about $968 million since its 2019 inception. 4. (tied) Sublime Security, $150M, cybersecurity: Sublime Security, a developer of agentic AI tools for email security, raised $150 million in a Series C round led by Georgian. The financing brings total funding to date for the 6-year-old Washington, D.C.-based company to around $240 million, per Crunchbase data. 4. (tied) Harvey, $150M, legal tech: Harvey, developer of an AI-enabled platform for legal professionals, closed on a fresh $150 million, bringing total reported funding to date to $1 billion. Andreessen Horowitz led the latest round, which reportedly set an $8 billion valuation for the 3-year-old, San Francisco-based company. 6. (tied) Human Interest, $100M, finance: Human Interest, a San Francisco-based startup that helps small businesses offer 401(k) plans to their employees, raised more than $100 million at a $3 billion valuation, Axios reports. That valuation is up from the $1.3 billion the company was last valued at in 2024. Previous investors Baillie Gifford, BlackRock, Marshall Wace, Morgan Stanley and TPG again backed the company. 6. (tied) Substrate, $100M, semiconductors: Substrate, a San Francisco-based startup seeking to build semiconductor factories with new laser-based technology, raised $100 million from Founders Fund, General Catalyst, IQT and others. 8. Zag Bio, $80M, biotech: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Zag Bio, a developer of thymus-targeted medicines, announced its public launch with $80 million in financing, including a recently closed Series A round. Polaris Partners founded and incubated the startup and co-led the Series A financing with the JDRF T1D Fund. 9. ConductorOne, $79M, identity security: ConductorOne, an identity security startup building an AI platform geared for human, non-human and AI identities, landed $79 million in a Series B financing led by Greycroft. The 4-year-old Portland, Oregon-based company says it saw 400% revenue growth last year. 10. Blueprint, $60M, personal care: Blueprint, a Los Angeles-based brand that markets supplements, skin and hair care products, and foods geared to promote well-being and longevity, raised $60 million from a long list of venture and celebrity investors including Paris Hilton, Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss and Logan Paul. Methodology We tracked the largest announced rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the period of Oct. 25-31. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week. Illustration: Dom Guzman
The Non-Humanoid Robot Startups Are Rising Too
Despite our acclimatization to the forward march of technology, many of us remain vaguely creeped out by the concept of humanoid robots. Sure, it’d be wonderful to have autonomous machines adept at cleaning the house, harvesting and preparing food, running warehouses and performing a host of generally thankless and burdensome jobs. But must they look like us too? For many startups, the answer to this question is “no.” While humanoid robots startups like Figure and Apptronik have drawn headlines in recent months for big funding deals and flashy prototypes, an array of companies working on less-anthropomorphic designs have also secured considerable investment. These include four-legged models, AI-enabled appendages and skilled swimmers. The non-humanoid bot startups getting funded To illustrate, we used Crunchbase data to assemble a sample list of 26 companies in the non-humanoid robot startup sector that have raised rounds in the past few quarters. It’s a varied lot, with focus areas ranging from farming to pool cleaning to massaging. Bots around town The list also features a mix of consumer-facing and industrial use cases, and we figured we’d start by highlighting the first category. It’s not that these bots are necessarily more useful, but rather that being out in public does make it a bit more fun to contemplate. If recently funded startups have their way, some of the bots we see in action could be taking on more of the everyday drudgery currently shouldered by humans. Cleaning is one of the big areas. China-based Narwal Robotics, which closed a $100 million Series E in April, makes robot vacuums and mops and touts its “AI adaptive hot water mop washing,” LiDAR navigation and embedded dirt sensor. San Francisco-based The Bot Co., meanwhile, has raised $300 million since last year to iterate its vision of robots for household chores but has not yet released a prototype. Pool-cleaning, an area already long-dominated by autonomous machines, is also set for an AI era upgrade, with two China-based companies pulling in rounds of $140 million each this year. Xingmai Innovation, which closed its round in September, markets its $3,000 Beatbot model as the “world’s first AI-powered 5-in-1 robotic pool cleaner.” Rival Aiper charges $1,700 for its Scuba Max Pro, which features smart pool mapping and a dedicated app. And for those who need some pampering after a long day of not cleaning the pool, massage bot startup Aescape offers another spending option. The New York-based company secured $83 million in March to expand its customizable, “fully autonomous, AI-driven massage” offering. Bots behind the scenes While we may enjoy gawking at the still-unusual sight of a bot in public making a latte or delivering a restaurant meal, the bulk of funded companies in the non-humanoid bot space are working on models that will do their work behind the scenes. Surgical robots have long been one of the more heavily funded areas, and this holds true for recent investment as well. The largest fundraiser on our list, U.K.-based CMR Surgical, developer of a soft tissue surgical robot, has secured $1.1 billion in known funding to date, including a $200 million April financing. Israel-based ForSight Robotics, developer of a robotic platform for ophthalmic surgery, is also scaling up, closing a $125 million Series B in June. On the industrial front, Swiss startup Anybotics has raised more than $150 million to develop a four-legged bot optimized for inspections, capable of climbing stairs and avoiding obstacles. And Flexiv, which closed a $100 million Series C this summer, is working on appendage-like, AI-enabled robots that can be adapted for multiple industries. Agtech also emerged as a favored area for investment. Ecorobotix, based in Switzerland, has raised a couple hundred million for precision crop spraying, while Seattle-based Carbon Robotix is working on technology to kill weeds with lasers. Won’t mistake it for a human Of all the above-mentioned startups, none appear to be working on anything that could be remotely confused for a human, even from a distance. This seems logical, considering that so many jobs people have historically done don’t seem ideally suited to our particular form. If all goes well with these non-humanoid robot startups, perhaps it would leave us humans free to spend more time doing the activities that do seem optimally suited to our form. Sitting on the couch would be high on this author’s list, though I’m sure others could find many more productive pursuits. Related Crunchbase list: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Exclusive: Founded By Uber Alumni, Archy Raises $20M To Put Dental Practices ‘On Autopilot’
It was 2021 and Jonathan Rat was tired of seeing his wife, a dentist, struggle to maintain the tech stack at her practice. Rat, who had served as a product manager at companies including Uber, Meta and SurveyMonkey, dug into the problem and discovered that “most of the software used in the industry” was more than 20 years old and still required physical services onsite. “Most lacked integration with other platforms, were slow and buggy, and impossible to train new employees on,” he recalls. Archy Founders Benjamin Kolin and Jonathan Rat So Rat teamed up with Benjamin Kolin, a former director of engineering at Uber, to start Archy, an AI-powered platform that aims “to put dental practices on autopilot.” The pair previously led the rebuilding of Uber’s payment platform that’s still in use today. “I realized there was a massive need and opportunity for a modern, cloud-based software platform and set out to build that,” Rat told Crunchbase News. “I also realized bigger tech players have been building software for the larger healthcare market but overlooked the $500 billion dental industry.” And now, Archy has just raised $20 million in Series B funding to help it grow even more, it told Crunchbase News exclusively. TCV led the financing, which also included participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, CRV, Entrée Capital and 25 practicing dentists who wrote checks as angel investors. The raise brings Archy’s total funding to date to $47 million, Rat said. The company raised a $15 million Series A led by Entrée Capital almost exactly one year ago. Rat confirmed the Series B was an up round, but declined to disclose Archy’s valuation. All-in-one tool Archy claims to replace more than five existing tools to handle scheduling, charting, billing, imaging, insurance, payments, staffing, messaging and reporting “from one login.” It is now building AI agents “to handle the busywork” such as checking eligibility, filing and following up on claims, writing notes, managing patient communications and scheduling, and “turning raw practice data into clear answers,” according to Rat. The startup processes more than $100 million in payments annually across 45 states and has seen roughly 300% year-over-year growth, he said. It currently serves 2.5 million patients and has processed over 35 million X-rays through its platform. The company claims that mid-sized dental practices report saving around 80 hours a month by using its technology, and are able to avoid “big hardware costs.” For example, Rat said that one practice saved about $50,000 in its first year of using Archy. Dual-revenue model San Jose, California-based Archy operates on a dual-revenue model that combines subscription-based fees with payment processing services, and offers tiered monthly subscription packages. In addition to its subscription fees, Archy serves as a merchant processor for its clients, generating revenue from a percentage of payment transactions processed through the platform. “This hybrid approach allows us to remain aligned with our clients’ success while providing flexible options that scale with their business needs,” Rat told Crunchbase News. The company plans to use its new capital to “hire aggressively” across its engineering, AI and go-to-market teams. Presently, it has 57 employees. It plans to expand internationally starting in 2026. Austin Levitt, partner at TCV, told Crunchbase News via email that his firm had been looking for a way to invest in the dental space “for a long time” but didn’t find a company that was “appropriately tackling the root of the problem — the core PMS (practice management systems)” until it came across Archy. He added: “We consistently heard that Archy was supremely easy to use, requiring almost no training in contrast to others, providing a seamless ‘iPhone-like’ experience, and reducing what took 10 clicks in other software to one or none in Archy.” Related Crunchbase queries: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Regulation As Alpha: Why The Smartest Startups Now Build Legal Strategy Into Their DNA
Every founder knows the thrill of the moment: the first term sheet lands, the product is live, the market is opening up. But in 2025, there’s a new line in the sand: Did you clear the regulatory path before you scaled? Today, it’s not enough to disrupt the market — you have to anticipate the rule-set that will govern it. Investors are shifting gears. After a decade of “move fast and break things,” they’re asking: Who built the compliance engine before the crash? Because the truth is, regulation has become a form of alpha — a competitive advantage for startups that think of law not as a hurdle, but as a moat. The new era of smart compliance The startup landscape has changed. High-profile failures — from crypto exchanges to wild valuations in fintech and AI — taught us that the regulatory cost of growth can be massive. Today’s investors and founders alike expect legal strategy from day one, not as an afterthought. Consider the RegTech market: One recent estimate projects it will swell to about $70.64 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual rate of roughly 23%. Another forecast predicts growth to $70.8 billion by 2033. The message: Companies are no longer asking if they need compliance automation and legal-engineering infrastructure. They’re asking when they can monetize it. So when a startup designs its product around KYC, AML, data-protection or licensing from the outset, it’s not just avoiding risk — it’s building a moat others will struggle to cross. For founders, regulation isn’t just the cost of entry anymore — it’s the cost of exit-edge. When the law becomes a moat There are former unicorns, and there are regulation-ready unicorns. The difference hinges on when they built their compliance architecture, hired legal engineers and treated regulation as product. Take payment infrastructure: Stripe built payment-security and licensing into its model early, as Stripe’s PCI Level 1 certification and multijurisdiction licenses (U.S. money-transmitter, EU/UK e-money) enabled it to integrate cleanly with Apple Pay, power Shopify’s native payments, and — per a 2023 announcement — expand its role processing payments for Amazon. Or look at crypto: Coinbase built a licensure footprint early, publishing its U.S. money-transmitter licenses and securing New York’s BitLicense in 2017. Its 2021 SEC S-1 repeatedly frames regulatory compliance and licensing as fundamental to the business. In insurtech, from the outset, Lemonade hired senior insurance veterans (e.g., former AIG executive Ty Sagalow) and, per its S-1 and subsequent filings, expanded licensure across the U.S., operationalizing the 50-state regulatory landscape rather than trying to route around it. These examples show a pattern: When compliance is built in from the start, the cost of scaling drops and competitors face much higher entry bars. Regulation becomes a moat — not a burden. The rise of ‘legal engineering’ Welcome to the era of the legal engineer. The traditional model (sign contract, then lawyer reads, then flagged risk) is being replaced by code, automation and internal teams who speak both product and law. Startups such as Carta built cap-table software that includes “built-in tools and support to help with compliance year-round,” allowing it to embed governance and securities-law readiness into the product nature of equity management. Plaid has publicly positioned itself for evolving “data use, access, and consumer permission” rules (e.g., Section 1033) by building features such as data transparency messaging and consent-capture into its API stack — indicating a clear regulatory-first posture in its product roadmap. And what’s happening in AI? Founders are hiring general counsels on day one to forecast imminent regimes — privacy law (GDPR, CCPA), AI transparency bills, emerging algorithms-as-infrastructure regulation. The startup battle isn’t simply product vs. product anymore — it’s regulatory architecture vs. regulatory architecture. Reports back this up: One credible industry estimate shows the global compliance, governance and risk market is already around $80 billion and projected to reach $120 billion in the next five years. In short: Startups that solve compliance at scale are building infrastructure for everyone else to rent. That’s platform-level potential. Investors are taking note Regulation-ready startups aren’t just surviving — they’re attracting smarter capital. Venture funds now assess regulatory maturity, legal runway and governance readiness early on. A startup that can show it isn’t “waiting to deal with compliance” but designed it, has a valuation edge. Crunchbase data shows global startup funding reached $91 billion in Q2 2025, up 11% year over year. While not all of that is focused on law or compliance, the trend signals that smart investors are buried deeper in risk assessment and governance. Legal tech funding is accelerating, too: the sector recently topped $2.4 billion in venture funding this year, an all-time high. Funds are no longer only assessing TAM or go-to-market speed; they’re asking: “What’s the regulatory runway? Who owns risk? Who built the compliance pipeline?” Because in sectors like fintech, climate tech, health tech and AI, the fastest growth path is often the one that avoids the enforcement arm. The future: law as competitive advantage Let’s zoom out for a moment. We’re moving into a world where regulation isn’t a ceiling — it’s scaffolding. It defines markets, enables scaling and filters winners from pretenders. Founders who see law as a source of architecture, not as chewing-gum-on-the-shoe, will be the ones writing the playbook. Think about AI: Startups that design for regulatory change (data-provenance, audit trails, rights management) are already positioning for the future. Think about climate tech: Companies that can navigate evolving carbon-credit regimes or ESG disclosure laws are building invisible advantages. Think about fintech: Those that mastered licensing, KYC/AML, consumer-data flows early are the backbone of infrastructure. The next wave of unicorns won’t just have better tech — they’ll have truly infinitely better legal DNA. They won’t just disrupt a market; they’ll help write the rules of the market before they scale. Because in this new era, regulation isn’t a deadweight — it’s a launchpad. Aron Solomon is the chief strategy officer for Amplify. He holds a law degree and has taught entrepreneurship at McGill University and the University of Pennsylvania, and was elected to Fastcase 50, recognizing the top 50 legal innovators in the world. His writing has been featured in Newsweek, The Hill, Fast Company, Fortune, Forbes, CBS News, CNBC, USA Today and many other publications. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his op-ed in The Independent exposing the NFL’s “race-norming” policies. Related Crunchbase query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
Why Felicis’ Newest Partner Focuses On Community Building To Win AI Deals At Seed
Feyza Haskaraman is joining Felicis Ventures 1 as a partner after several years at Menlo Ventures, Crunchbase News has exclusively learned. In her new role, Haskaraman will focus on investing in “soon-to-break-out” AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, and applications companies for Felicis, an early-stage firm with $3.9 billion in assets under management. During her time at Menlo, Haskaraman sourced investments in startups including Semgrep, Astrix, Abacus, Parade and CloudTrucks — zeroing in early on how AI is reshaping developer security and enterprise infrastructure. Feyza Haskaraman, partner at Felicis Ventures Haskaraman, an MIT graduate who was born in Turkey, brings an engineering background to her role as an investor. She previously worked as an engineer at various companies at different growth stages, including Analog Devices, Fitbit and Nucleus Scientific. She is also a former McKinsey & Co. consultant who advised multibillion-dollar technology companies and early-stage startups on strategy and operations. It was after working with startups at McKinsey that her interest in venture capital was piqued, and she joined Insight Partners. Her decision to join Menlo Park, California-based Felicis stems from a shared interest alongside firm founder and managing partner Aydin Senkut to build communities even in “unsexy” industries such as infrastructure and security, she said. “Whether it’s connecting AI founders or bringing together technical and cybersecurity communities, the mission is the same: Believe in the best founders early and help them go the distance,” she told Crunchbase News. Felicis is currently investing out of its 10th fund, a $900 million vehicle, its largest yet. More than 60% of its investments out of Fund 9 and 10 (so far) are seed stage; 94% are seed or Series A. In 83% of its investments, Felicis has led or co-led the round. Nearly $3 out of every $4 that it’s deployed have gone into AI-related companies, including n8n, Supabase, Mercor, Crusoe Energy Systems, Periodic Labs, Runway, Revel, Skild AI, Deep Infra, Browser Use, Evertune, Poolside, Letta and LMArena. In an interview, Haskaraman shared more about her investment plans at Felicis, as well as why she thinks we’re in the “early innings” with AI. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. Let’s talk more about community-building and why you think it’s so important. Over the past few years in the venture ecosystem, just providing the capital is not enough. You need to surround yourself with the best talent. You’re seeing one of the fiercest talent wars in terms of AI talent. So one of the things that I’ve spent a lot of time on in my VC career is building a community, going back to my MIT roots, surrounding myself with founders, engineers and operators, and also going into specific domains, like cybersecurity — just building a network of CISOs that I communicate with regularly and really support them however I can, and then obviously get their take on the latest technology. That type of community-building effort is something that Aydin and I will be debating strategy for Felicis as well. Yes, Aydin (Felicis’ founder) has said that he thinks the next generation of enterprise investors aren’t just picking companies, they’re building ecosystems. Would you agree with that? Yes, we’re fully aligned on that. First of all, it’s a way of sourcing. Being able to source the best founders involves surrounding yourself in a community of people. You get very close to them, and you want to be the first call when they decide to jump ship and start a business. As early-connection investors, we want to invest in the founders as early as possible. So that’s why we want to immerse ourselves in these communities that provide prolific grounds for the technical founders that are coming in and building an AI. You were investing in AI before the big boom took off. Would you say there’s too much hype around the space? You are correct that there is a lot of euphoria around AI, but if you look at the overall landscape, we haven’t seen a technology that can have such a large impact. And we’re already seeing the results in enterprises that buyers of these solutions, and consumers of these solutions, including myself and our team, are seeing immense amounts of productivity gains. I remain immensely optimistic about the future and investing in AI, and that’s what we are paid to do, and what I also enjoy as a former engineer. Are there specific aspects of AI that have you particularly excited? I personally feel we’re still very much at the early innings. It’s been three years since ChatGPT came out, and the model companies really pushed their products into our lives. But if you take a look at what’s happening now, we have agents that are coordinating and automating our work. What are ways in which we should be securing agent architecture? And that is also evolving across the board, and if you think about another layer down, like the infrastructure to support these LLMs and agents, I have to ask “What do we need underneath?” I think there’s a lot more that will come, and there’s a lot of hope for innovation that will happen both across the infrastructure layer, as well as agents. There’s also the issue of “can applications actually be enabled?” I go back to the importance of securing our interactions with the agents and making sure that they’re not abused and misused. It’s a great time to be investing in AI. What stages are you primarily investing in at Felicis? We try to go as early as possible. But obviously, given our fund’s size, we have flexibility to invest whenever we see the venture scale returns make sense. But the majority of our investments are seed. It’s such a competitive investing environment right now. How do you stand out? Ultimately, what founders value is how you will work with them, your references. They value how you show up in those tough times, how you surround them with talent, how you help them see around the corners. That matters a lot. I believe that winning boils down to the prior founder experiences that you left, people who can speak highly of you and how you work. I tend to be a big hustler. So, there’s a lot more value-add that we want to make sure we bring to the table, even before investments. And then after the investment we can continue to bring that type of value to a company. Are you investing outside of AI? I’m investing in AI infrastructure, cybersecurity and AI-enabled apps. We are also at the verge of a big overhaul in terms of the application layer, companies that we’ve seen prior to AI — that is all getting disrupted. We’re seeing AI scribes in healthcare intake solutions, for example. We’re seeing code-generation solutions in developer stacks. We are looking at every single vertical, as well as horizontal application. I’m very interested in how all of these verticals’ application layers will get a different type of automation. What’s your take on the market overall right now? I feel like I lived three lifetimes in my investing career — just over the past few years. We as a VC community and tech ecosystem learned a lot, obviously, just in terms of what’s happening. We’re seeing new ingredients in the market, and that is AI, that did not exist during COVID. Think about the fact that this is not a structural change in the market driven by the economy. This is truly a new technology. I would bucket those waves as separate. I’m very grateful to be investing at this time. What a time to be investing, because AI is truly game-changing as a technology. Clarification: The paragraph about Haskaraman’s investments at Menlo Ventures has been updated to more accurately reflect her role. Related Crunchbase query: Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
The State Of Startups In 7 Charts: These Sectors And Stages Are Down As AI Megarounds Dominate In 2025
Venture funding has most definitely rebounded since the 2022 correction, but there’s a sharp divide between who’s getting funding and who’s not. That was the overarching theme from our third-quarter market reports, which showed that global startup funding in Q3 totaled $97 billion, marking only the fourth quarter above $90 billion since Q3 2022. Still, there are stark differences between the 2021 market peak and now, as contributing reporter Joanna Glasner noted in a couple of recent columns, here and here. Just as we saw four years ago, funding is frothy and often seems to be driven by investor FOMO. Some companies are even raising follow-on rounds at head-spinning speeds. But the funding surge this time is also much, much more concentrated — namely in outsized rounds for AI companies. With that, let’s take a look at the charts that illustrate the major private-market and startup funding themes as we head into the final quarter of 2025. AI funding continues to drive venture growth Nearly half — 46% — of startup funding globally in Q3 went to AI companies, Crunchbase data shows. Almost a third went to a single company: Anthropic, which raised $13 billion last quarter. Even with an astonishing $45 billion going to artificial intelligence startups in Q3, it was only the third-highest quarter on record for AI funding, with Q4 2024 and Q1 2025 each clocking in higher. Megarounds gobble up lion’s share It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that AI has also skewed investment heavily toward megarounds, which we define as funding deals of $100 million or more. The percentage of overall funding going into such deals hit a record high this year, with an astonishing 60% of global and 70% of U.S. venture capital going to $100 million-plus rounds, per Crunchbase data. Even with several months left in the year, it also seems plausible that the total dollars going into such deals will match or top what we saw in 2021, which marked a peak for startup funding not scaled before or since. The difference? Back then, startup dollars were widely distributed, going to a whole host of sectors — from food tech to health tech to robotics — and to early-stage, late-stage and in-between companies alike. Contrast that with recent quarters, when the LLM giants and other large, established, AI-centric companies are getting the largest slice of venture dollars. Seed deals slide further As megarounds have increased, seed deals have declined. The number of seed deals has shown a steady downward trend in recent quarters, Crunchbase data shows, even as total dollars invested at the stage has stayed relatively steady. That indicates that while seed deals are growing larger, they’re also harder to come by. Early-stage funding has essentially flatlined, despite larger rounds to companies working on robotics, biotech, AI and other technologies. The AI haves and have-nots AI has enthralled investors for the past three years. What are they less interested in? Old standbys like cybersecurity and biotech. Biotech investment as a share of overall funding recently hit a 20-year low. Crunchbase data shows that cybersecurity investment, while still relatively steady, also retreated somewhat in Q3 2025. That’s notable given that many cybersecurity companies are integrating AI into their offerings. Still, other sectors that benefit heavily from AI-driven automation are seeing a surge in investment. Perhaps most notable is legal tech, which hit an all-time high last month on the back of large rounds for companies promising to automate much of the drudgery of the profession. Among the other sectors buoyed by AI is human resources software (including AI-powered recruitment and hiring offerings). Other data points of note Other interesting points that emerged from our Q3 reports and recent coverage include: Looking ahead The increasing concentration of capital into a small cadre of large AI companies — not to mention the interconnectedness of those deals — begs some obvious questions. Are we in a bubble? And given that nearly half of venture capital in recent years has been tied up in AI, what happens to the startup ecosystem if or when it pops? Related reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman
I Was Fired From My Own Startup. Here’s What Every Founder Should Know About Letting Go
By Yakov Filippenko No founder plans for the day they get fired from their own company. You plan for funding rounds, product launches and exits, but not for the boardroom moment when everyone raises their hand, and you realize your journey inside the company is over. It happened to me. I called that board meeting. I set the vote. We had to choose who would stay, me or my co-founder. The vote didn’t go my way. In movies, this is where the music swells and the credits roll. Steve Jobs after John Sculley. Travis Kalanick after Bill Gurley. In real life, there’s no cinematic pause. No final scene. Just the quiet realization that everything you built now belongs to someone else. What follows isn’t drama, either. It’s disorientation. And like most founders, I had no idea how to handle it. Don’t fill the silence too fastYakov Filippenko When it ended, I filled my calendar with aimless meetings. Five or six a day. Not because they had any real purpose, but because it felt strange not to be doing business. For more than 10 years, I’d never had a day when I didn’t have to think about work. A startup teaches you to fix things fast. When you’re out, though, there’s nothing left to fix. Only yourself. Getting pushed out isn’t like missing a quarterly target. It’s like losing the story you’ve been telling yourself for years. The hardest part is that you don’t know who to blame. Investors? They were doing their job. Yourself? Every decision made sense in context. So the frustration lands on the person closest to you. Your co-founder. It’s not about logic. I would say it is more of a defense mechanism. It’s how the mind tries to make sense of loss. Learn to see the pattern For months, I kept asking: What did we do wrong? It took me a couple of years to see the pattern. Later, working inside a venture fund helped me see the truth. I saw the same story play out again and again. Founders repeating the same emotional arc, as follows: Every time, the same sequence. And when the dream fades, blame fills the gap. The pattern itself is that the anger toward a co-founder is often a projection of disappointment from a failed deal. If that energy isn’t processed consciously, it finds its own way out, usually as anger. You can’t really be mad at yourself; you did everything right. The other side acted in their own interest. So it lands on the person next to you, your co-founder and your team, and for them, it’s you. And that’s where I have a bit of a claim toward investors because they often see this dynamic coming and could at least warn founders about it. Once I recognized the pattern, I stopped seeing my story as a failure. It was part of a cycle almost every founder goes through, only most don’t talk about it. Trade strategy for emotional tools Traditional business tools didn’t help. OKRs, planning sessions, strategy off-sites, none of it worked on the inner collapse that comes when your identity and your company split apart. This led me to begin studying Gestalt therapy. It gave me the language to understand how situations like this actually work, their cycles, causes and effects, and how to think about them with the right awareness and perspective. One part of building startups isn’t about pivots or fundraising. It’s realizing how much of yourself you’ve tied to the story you’re telling the world. The point is to first get conscious of your anger, and then let it out. Acceptance comes in stages Acceptance doesn’t show up all at once. It arrives in pieces. For me, the first piece came when I watched another founder go through the same breakdown and recognized every stage. The second came when my first startup was acquired. Not at the valuation I’d dreamed of, but enough to accept that it continued without me. The third came with my current company, Intch, which is built from calm, not from fear. I no longer measure success by control, but by clarity. What I’d tell a founder in that room Here’s what I’d share now with another entrepreneur who finds themselves in the same situation. Founders are trained to manage everything except their own psychology. But startups are way more than capital and code. They run on the emotional architecture of the people who build them. And when that structure breaks, rebuilding it is the most important startup you’ll ever work on. Yakov Filippenko is a seasoned entrepreneur with more than 10 years of experience in IT and technologies, as well as scaling businesses internationally. As a product manager at Yandex, he led a team that grew the product’s user base from 500,000 to 1.2 million and secured its entry into the international market. Subsequently, he co-founded SailPlay, which he scaled to 45 countries and eventually exited, after it was acquired by Retail Rocket in 2018. In 2021, Filippenko launched Intch, an AI-powered platform connecting part-time professionals with flexible roles. Illustration: Dom Guzman
Whatnot Lands $225M Series F, More Than Doubles Valuation to $11.5B Since January
Whatnot, a live shopping platform and marketplace, has closed a $225 million Series F round, more than doubling its valuation to $11.5 billion in less than 10 months. DST Global and CapitalG co-led the financing, which brings the Los Angeles-based company’s total raised to about $968 million since its 2019 inception. Whatnot had raised $265 million in a Series E round at a nearly $5 billion valuation in January. New investors Sequoia Capital and Alkeon Capital participated in the Series F, alongside returning backers Greycroft, Andreessen Horowitz, Avra and Bond. Other investors include Y Combinator, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Liquid 2 Ventures. As part of the latest financing, Whatnot says it will initiate a tender offer where select current investors will buy up to $126 million worth of shares. Funding to e-commerce startups globally so far this year totals $7.1 billion, per Crunchbase data. That compares to $11.3 billion raised by e-commerce startups globally in all of 2024. This year’s numbers are also down significantly from post-pandemic funding totals, which surged to $93 billion in 2021. ‘Retail’s new normal’ Live commerce is the combination of livestreaming and online shopping. Grant LaFontaine, co-founder and CEO of Whatnot, said in an announcement that his startup is “proving that live shopping is retail’s new normal.” Whatnot co-founders Logan Head and Grant LaFontaine. Courtesy photo. The company says more than $6 billion worth of items have been sold on its platform in 2025 so far, more than twice its total for all of 2024. Its app facilitates the buying and selling of collectibles like trading cards and toys through live video auctions. It also offers items such as clothing and sneakers. It competes with the likes of eBay, which currently does not offer a livestreaming option. It’s also a competitor to TikTok Shop. “Whatnot brought the live shopping wave to the US, the UK, and Europe and has turned it into one of the fastest growing marketplaces of all time, Laela Sturdy, Whatnot board member and managing partner at CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund, said in a release. The company plans to use its new funds to invest in its platform, roll out new features and “evolve” its policies. It is also accelerating its international expansion, adding to its current 900-person workforce by hiring across multiple departments. Related query: Related Reading: Illustration: Dom Guzman