The Next Step After Figma: Who Will Lead?
The post-Figma question: Who’s next? Hi, it’s Alexandra Sternlicht filling in for Allie today. Figma’s sensational IPO last week resurrected longstanding debates about IPO pricing and first day pops—an unsurprising reaction to the newly listed stock’s 333% surge in its first days of trading. As investors dissect the offering (and as Figma’s stock settles back a bit, falling 27% […]
Elon Musk’s AI Company Secures $200M Pentagon Contract After Months of Reducing Federal Deals and Launches New Division for Government Contracts
Elon Musk spent months slashing federal contracts — Now his AI company is celebrating a $200M Pentagon contract and new unit to get government business Elon Musk’s xAI has signed an important new customer: the U.S. government. The two-year old AI company—most recently in the news when its chatbot praised Hitler—said in a blog post […]
PitchBook Reports 210 Enterprise SaaS M&A Deals in Q1 2025
In Q1 2025, enterprise SaaS M&A deal count hit 210, according to PitchBook Consider, first, the good news, of which there’s quite a bit: Q1 2025 saw 210 enterprise SaaS mergers and acquisitions get done, a number on par with the 211 deals inked in Q4 2024, according to recent PitchBook data. That’s also a […]
Funding the Future: The Visionaries and Backers Driving Financial Innovation
The Funders And Founders Moving Money Into The Future This year’s honorees aren’t inheriting the financial system. They’re building the infrastructure for what comes next. By Leo Schoenberger, Hannah Hall and Moya Johnson Let’s face it—compliance is boring. But to Lisa Gradow, it’s an exciting target begging for some AI magic. Sure, billion-dollar AI companies […]
Synctera Secures $15 Million as Embedded Finance Evolves
Synctera Raises $15 Million Amid Embedded Finance’s Evolution Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) and embedded finance firm Synctera raised $15 million in new funding. The financing brings Synctera’s total funding to $94 million and will help support the acceleration of its growth and meet the more complex needs of its customers, according to a Tuesday (March 11) press […]
Exclusive: Roboflow secures $40 million in Series B funding for vision AI startup
Exclusive: Roboflow, vision AI startup, raises $40 million Series B When I met Joseph Nelson, CEO and cofounder of Roboflow, I asked him a question that I ask pretty much everyone: If we randomly met at a party, how would you explain what your company does? “I tell people that Roboflow makes developer tools to […]
Robin AI, a legal tech startup, secures $25 million in Series B Plus funding, highlighting the continued growth of the AI industry.
Legal tech startup Robin AI raises $25 million “Series B Plus” round—and what that says about the AI boom Hello and welcome to Eye on AI. In this newsletter…why a legal AI startup shows there’s more to the AI boom than just foundation models; Zoox starts offering robotaxi rides in San Francisco; it’s worryingly easy […]
Data from startup Evinced reveals that the top LLMs have blind spots when it comes to accessibility.
The leading LLMs have accessibility blind spots, says data from startup Evinced While working at Oracle, Navin Thadani found himself wrestling with an unexpected technical challenge. He was trying to make the company’s existing applications more digitally accessible—part of a growing personal interest in ensuring that all consumers, including those with disabilities, can successfully use […]
British fintech founder relocates to U.S.: U.K. tech industry lacking ambition, not taxed
British fintech founder who moved to U.S.: U.K. tech’s problem isn’t taxes—it’s ambition When a government announces tax hikes and entrepreneurs celebrate, you know something’s deeply wrong. Yet that’s exactly what happened in Britain this week, as tech founders cheered Labour’s “modest” increase in capital gains tax—simply because they’d feared worse. It’s like watching passengers […]
Stealth Mode Startup Reactiv Launches Mobile Commerce Platform with $5 Million in Seed Funding
Reactiv, mobile commerce startup, launches out of stealth with $5 million seed round The rise of Shopify, based in Ottawa, Ontario, has boosted Canada’s tech scene in recent years. But what’s it actually like raising money for an early-stage startup in Canada these days? Zack Elias and Ross Correia, two Shopify alums, are a case […]