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After SEC investigation, Curastory founder resigns, hires replacement Nov 20, 2025

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Curastory’s founder and CEO, Tiffany Kelly, has resigned from the role and replaced herself with Dave Dickman, former CEO of the influencer marketing platform Tagger.

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Cavela lands $6.6M to help brands beat pre-tariff manufacturing costs; plus Function Health raises $298M Series B at $2.5B valuation Nov 20, 2025

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When Anthony Sardain began developing Cavela in 2023, an AI startup that helps brands automate supplier sourcing, he did not foresee that new tariffs would drive customers to become increasingly wary of manufacturing products in China.

Function Health, which offers a regular lab testing service to help people track their health, wants to change that by consolidating health data and making it usable for its customers by connecting that data to an AI model. To further that effort, the company recently raised $298 million in a Series B round led by Redpoint Ventures at a valuation of $2.5 billion.

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Onepot AI raises $13M to help make chemical drug creation easier Nov 19, 2025

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“The best ideas in drug discovery were often blocked not by biology, but by synthesis,” Boiko told TechCrunch. Synthesis is the creation of new molecules by using chemical reactions. It’s like a recipe or Lego pieces, where small pieces, ingredients, molecules, come together to form a wider puzzle picture, a food dish, a larger molecule.

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Boop’s new app turns social recommendations into bookable itineraries Nov 19, 2025

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Instead of getting an AI-generated travel plan, Boop aims to give users access to itineraries from real people who went on real trips.

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Peec AI raises $21M to help brands adapt as consumers ditch Google for ChatGPT Nov 18, 2025

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With consumers increasingly asking questions to ChatGPT, not Google, product discovery is changing — and the promise to give brands visibility and control over this fast-growing search channel has made Peec AI one of Europe's hottest startups.

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Luminal raises $5.3 million to build a better GPU code framework; plus Sakana AI raises $135M Series B at a $2.65B valuation to continue building AI models for Japan Nov 18, 2025

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On Monday, Luminal announced $5.3 million in seed funding, in a round led by Felicis Ventures with angel investment from Paul Graham, Guillermo Rauch, and Ben Porterfield.

Also, 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 AI 21 Labs are carving out their own niche with specialized models designed for specific regions, industries, or unique features.

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Is Jeff Bezos returning to the trenches with a new AI startup? Also, Bone AI raises $12M to challenge Asia’s defense giants with AI-powered robotics Nov 17, 2025

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Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos seems to be getting his hands dirty once again: the billionaire is partly backing a new AI startup called Project Prometheus that has raised $6.2 billion in funding, and will take on duties as co-chief executive.

Plus, Bone AI, a South Korean startup, is combining AI and manufacturing to build next-gen defense robotics and challenge the region’s industry giants.

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Milestone raises $10M to make sure AI rhymes with ROI Nov 17, 2025

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Israeli startup Milestone raised a $10 million seed funding round to correlate AI tool usage with engineering metrics, including code quality.

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Exowatt wants to power AI data centers with billions of hot rocks Nov 14, 2025

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The solar-thermal startup wants to deliver electricity for as little as one cent per kWh. But first it has to scale production to 1 million units per year.

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VCs abandon old rules for a ‘funky time’ of investing in AI startups Nov 14, 2025

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The goalposts are moving for AI startups when it comes to growth, product features and just about everything else.

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