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A new wave of social media apps provide hope in a doomscrolling world Oct 20, 2025

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"The platforms that won were the ones that kept people scrolling the longest, not the ones that made them feel the most connected,”  Zehra Naqvi told TechCrunch. “Now there is an abundance of content but a scarcity of joy.

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Too burned out to travel? This new app fakes your summer vacation photos for you Oct 20, 2025

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Product designer Laurent Del Rey, who recently joined Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, launched a side project called Endless Summer, a photobooth app for iPhone that creates AI-generated vacation photos starring you in locations around the world.

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General Intuition lands $134M seed to teach agents spatial reasoning using video game clips, also, Electric aircraft startup Beta Technologies seeks to raise $825M in IPO Oct 16, 2025

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Late last year, OpenAI reportedly tried to buy Medal and its vast trove of video game data for $500M. Today, the company spun out a frontier research lab that's using that data to build AI agents that understand how they move through space and time, a concept called spatial-temporal reasoning.

Also, electric aviation startup Beta Technologies has priced shares for its initial public offering between $27 and $33, in hopes of raising as much as $825 million, according to a regulatory document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If the company attracts investors at the top of that range it will debut with a valuation of about $7.2 billion.

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Liberate bags $50M at $300M valuation to bring AI deeper into insurance back offices; also, Eightfold raised $35M for an AI digital twin startup Oct 16, 2025

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Liberate’s AI agents automate tasks for P&C insurers, working across sales, service, and claims.

Viven's seed funding was led by Khosla Ventures and Foundation Capital.

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Inaudible sound might be the next frontier in wildfire defense Oct 15, 2025

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Sonic Fire Tech has developed a device that can extinguish flames using acoustic energy below the range of human hearing. The startup is building a demo capable of protecting a home.

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FleetWorks raises $17M to match truckers with cargo faster Oct 15, 2025

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Co-founded by a former Uber Freight product manager, and backed by Uber's lead seed investor, FleetWorks is quickly scooping up customers in the trucking world.

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Sheryl Sandberg-backed Flint wants to use AI to build and update websites, and Coco Robotics taps UCLA professor to lead new physical AI research lab Oct 14, 2025

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Flint raised a $5 million seed round led by Accel, with participation from Sheryl Sandberg’s fund, Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, and prior investor Neo.

Also, Coco Robotics is working toward automating its fleet of delivery robots using its millions of miles of collected data.

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India’s Airbound bags $8.65M to build rocket-like drones for one-cent deliveries Oct 14, 2025

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An Indian drone startup called Airbound raised nearly $9 million in seed funding as it begins a drone-delivery pilot with a private hospital and works toward one-cent delivery using its ultra-light, blended-wing-body aircraft.

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Kalshi hits $5B valuation days after rival Polymarket gets $2B NYSE backing at $8B; also, Oct 13, 2025

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Kalshi, a prediction market that allows people to bet on future events, announced that it raised over three hundred million dollars at a 5 billion dollar valuation. The company’s value has increased two and a half times since its last fundraise just three months ago, when it was valued at two billion dollars.

Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has lost one of its co-founders to Meta.

The Wall Street Journal reports that AI researcher Andrew Tulloch announced his departure to employees in a message on Friday. A Thinking Machine Labs spokesperson confirmed Tulloch’s departure to the WSJ, saying he “has decided to pursue a different path for personal reasons.”

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Reflection AI raises $2B to be America’s open frontier AI lab, challenging DeepSeek Oct 10, 2025

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Reflection, once focused on autonomous coding agents, has raised $2B at an $8B valuation to expand into both an opensource alternative to closed frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic, and a Western equivalent to Chinese AI firms like DeepSeek.

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