People without coding backgrounds are discovering that they can build their own custom apps using vibe coding — solutions like Lovable that turn plain-language descriptions into working code. While these prompt-to-code tools can help create nice prototypes, launching them into full-scale production (as this reporter recently discovered) can be tricky without figuring out how to…
SNAK Venture Partners announced Wednesday the close of its oversubscribed $50 million debut fund, anchored by the investment firm Pritzker Group (founded by Illinois governor JB Pritzker and his brother, Tony). SNAK founders Sonia Nagar and Adam Koopersmith worked at the firm and helped lead investments in companies like the auto marketplace Backlot Cars and…
The former Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, refuses to sit on the sidelines of the generative AI revolution. After spending the last six years running Sunshine, a photo-sharing and contact-management startup with little success, the storied tech leader has shuttered the company to launch Dazzle, a new startup focused on building the next generation of AI…
In a world that’s rapidly filling up with AI-generated content, a startup called First Voyage wants to help people avoid all the AI slop blasted their way and instead build the habits they want. And it’s doing that by way of an AI companion app: Called Momo Self Care, the app offers a digital pet…
Spotify may be synonymous with music streaming, but it’s also got a wildly popular developer-tool side hustle called Backstage. Backstage is an open source project that helps companies build their own internal developer portals: a catalog of their developer tools along with quick visualizations of the work the tools have done, and other metrics. But…
As U.S. giants like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic race to develop the large language models that underpin their AI products, startups such as Sakana AI, Mistral AI, DeepSeek, and AI21 Labs are carving out their own niche with specialized models designed for specific regions, industries, or unique features. In pursuit of that goal, Tokyo-based Sakana…
Although LLM-powered AI agents are a fairly new phenomenon, one of the areas where they’ve been most popular so far is in sales. 1mind, a startup co-founded by Amanda Kahlow, has been quietly shipping its sales agent, named Mindy, for about a year. On Monday, the startup announced a $30 million Series A round led by Battery Ventures. This brings 1mind’s total raise to $40 million, the company…
Cybersecurity is a massive sector, but startups in the category are more likely to be acquired than go public. Even Wiz, which for a time held the title of the fastest-growing startup, abandoned its IPO ambitions when it agreed to sell to Google earlier this year. In the past few years, there have been scant few significant…
Most people tracking their health today end up with scattered clues. Their smartwatch shows sleep duration. A fitness app logs steps. A nutrition app counts calories. Yet few tools help people understand how all of this fits together. Bevel, a New York–based startup, believes that’s the missing piece in the shift toward proactive health. The…
