BioNTech’s $550M acquisition of African AI startup InstaDeep is paying off. InstaDeep, known for its cutting-edge AI applications, continues to operate independently while boosting BioNTech’s biotech capabilities. In just over a year, the AI company has accelerated BioNTech’s drug and vaccine development, improving processes like tissue analysis by 5x. Their collaboration now includes breakthrough projects like AI-driven protein design and cancer-fighting innovations. Despite the biotech focus, InstaDeep is still making waves outside pharma, solving industrial challenges like railway scheduling and locust outbreak detection in Africa. With over 400 employees globally, InstaDeep is thriving under BioNTech’s wing and pushing the frontier of AI innovation across industries. Read our interview with InstaDeep's CEO Karim Beguir at the link in the bio 👆 Article by Tage Kene-Okafor Image Credits: InstaDeep; BioNTech #TechCrunch #technews #artificialintelligence #startup #founder #venturecapital

Bigger isn't always better 🤷 One of the lessons that the wild Silicon Valley venture funding environment of the past few years has clearly taught is this: Bigger valuations are not always better. “I think we’ve all kind of seen the negative impact of having a valuation too high from the last, call it, three years,” Elizabeth Yin, co-founder of Hustle Fund said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt last week. When a VC bull market hits and startups are able to easily raise a lot of money before they have real, provable businesses, they’ve set themselves up for difficult times. Because “the bar is higher for that next round,” she said. If the company fails to grow into a lofty valuation, it could wind up burning its most valuable employees, said VC Renata Quintini, co-founder of Renegade Partners. Read more on why startups shouldn’t always take the highest valuation at the link in the bio 👆 Article by Julie Bort Image Credits: Barak Shrama/ Slava Blazer Photography / Flickr #TechCrunch #technews #startups #founders #VCs #funding #venturecapital

Is this another DEI rollback in tech? Let’s discuss… Full story linked in comments below ✍🏾👇🏾 #tech #politics #race #money #finance #business #venturecapital #dei

Fundraising in 2025 will continue to be a “tale of two cities,” VC Renata Quintini, co-founder of early-stage VC Renegade Partners, said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. “Some companies, really having the promise of going after big markets growing fast, [will be] receiving a lot of funding and momentum.” But on the other side, the “companies that need to build real businesses and efficient businesses” will struggle to raise cash, Quintini warned. She’s referring to the tight fundraising market that startups have faced in the era of higher interest rates. As 2025 arrives, the best chance of getting venture funding will be to have solid business fundamentals. That means selling a product or service at a profitable price point that serves a sizable customer base. Read how AI startups can successfully raise funds at the link in the bio 👆 Article by Julie Bort Image Credits: Barak Shrama/ Slava Blazer Photography / Flickr #TechCrunch #technews #artificialintelligence #startups #founders #venturecapital

With Elon Musk playing such a high-profile role in Donald Trump’s transition team, Musk’s buddies, many of them Silicon Valley venture capitalists, are reportedly being tapped to help out. For instance, VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, and in particular co-founder Marc Andreessen, is repeatedly being mentioned. He, along with Antonio Gracias and Joe Lonsdale, are reportedly being asked to help with Musk’s advisory panel, the Department of Government Efficiency, which is examining ways to overcome the technical challenges of collecting data about federal programs, reported the Washington Post on Sunday. They are among a handful of other Silicon Valley moguls being tapped. Read about all the VCs reportedly in the running for new Trump committees at the link in the bio 👆 Article by Julie Bort and Maxwell Zeff Image Credits: Taylor Hill / Contributor / Getty Images #TechCrunch #technews #SiliconValley #venturecapitalists #venture #government

As college tuition increases and the student loan debt crisis continues, three former executives from language learning app Duolingo are building a new startup aimed at making college education more affordable and accessible. The company, tentatively named Outsmart Education (the name is not final yet), is headed by co-founders Daniel Falabella (CPO), former senior director of product for learning at Duolingo; Gina Gotthilf (CMO), former vice president of growth and marketing at Duolingo; and Jorge Mazal (CEO), ex-chief product officer at Duolingo. The idea for Outsmart came out of Mazal’s own frustration with the current system, he says. When Mazal moved to the U.S. to pursue his undergraduate degree, he didn’t have the resources to pay for it and had to find a way to finance his education through a combination of jobs, scholarships, and other means. When he went on to complete two master’s programs at Harvard and Wharton, he didn’t realize how much debt he would end up with. Read more on Outsmart Education at the link in the bio 👆 Article by Lauren Forristal Image Credits: rattanakun; Outsmart #TechCrunch #technews #startup #founders #edtech #venturecapital

We're back 👏 For all the chatter about the decline of San Francisco, data repeatedly shows that the Bay Area, including the city itself, is still the best place for venture-backed startups. Startups located in the Bay Area vacuumed up $90 billion of VC investment in 2024, which was 57% of the $178 billion of global venture funding spent last year, new stats released on Tuesday by Crunchbase show. As we previously reported, this isn’t just happenstance. It’s a result of the area’s dominance in AI, the biggest tech of 2024, as well as being home to Big Tech (Google, Nvidia, Salesforce, etc.), and a longstanding startup infrastructure there — from Y Combinator to the VC-land of Sand Hill Road. Read more on Crunchbase's findings at the link in the bio 👆 Article by Julie Bort Image Credits: Ron Albers / Getty Images #TechCrunch #technews #startups #founders #venturecapitalists #fundraising

Woolly mammoths & Tasmanian tigers & dodo birds, oh my! Colossal Biosciences, the company that’s famously on a mission to bring back the woolly mammoth and two other extinct species, has raised a $200 million Series C at a $10.2 billion valuation from TWG Global. The funding comes two years after the company closed its previous round at a reported valuation of $1.5 billion. Why did investors pour so much capital at an eye-popping valuation for a company that has yet to generate any revenue and whose flagship projects, resurrecting an extinct mammoth and Tasmanian tiger, are not expected to be completed until 2028? The company claims it has made significant breakthroughs on all three of its main projects, which, in addition to the mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger (also known as the thylacine), includes the dodo bird, and is on schedule or even ahead of it to resurrect these animals. Read more on Colossal Biosciences at the link in the bio 👆 Article by Marina Temkin Image Credits: LEONELLO CALVETTI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty Images #TechCrunch #technews #artificialintelligence #biotech #startup #founder #venturecapital #funding

Exclusive: Companies that want to build AI voice into their products are rushing to work with ElevenLabs, the startup that develops synthetic voice technology like voice cloning and dubbing tools. Now ElevenLabs is turning up the volume on its business with a huge series C raise, just a year after a sizable series B. The New York startup has closed a Series C of $250 million at a valuation of between $3 billion and $3.3 billion, multiple sources tell TechCrunch. The round is being led by ICONIQ Growth, several people said. Andreessen Horowitz, one of the lead investors in the company’s $80 million Series B in January, 2024, was another name mentioned as a potential investor in this round. ElevenLabs, ICONIQ Growth and Andreessen Horowitz did not respond to our request for comment. For months, investors have been scrambling to invest in ElevenLabs after a blockbuster period of growth for the company, with its AI audio technology getting used everywhere, TechCrunch was the first to report in October. Read more on ElevenLabs at the link in the bio 👆 Article by Ingrid Lunden and Marina Temkin Image Credits: Edward Olive / Canva #TechCrunch #technews #artificialintelligence #startup #venturecapital #founder

Anthropic has reportedly raised around $1 billion from Google as the AI company looks to deliver a number of major product updates this year. First reported by the Financial Times, Google’s fresh investment brings the tech giant’s total stake in Anthropic to around $3 billion. Google poured $2 billion into Anthropic late last year. Anthropic, which is also in the process of raising up to $2 billion from investors including Lightspeed at a $60 billion valuation, has an ambitious roadmap for 2025. According to Crunchbase, the company has now raised $14.7 billion altogether. In a series of interviews this week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that the company plans to launch new AI models, bring “two-way” voice chat and web access to its chatbot, Claude, and roll out an AI system called the “Virtual Collaborator.” According to Amodei, the Virtual Collaborator will run on PCs, execute workflows, write and compile code (and verify the results), and interact with users through apps like Slack and Google Docs. Image Credits: Chesnot / Contributor / Getty Images #TechCrunch #technews #artificialintelligence #startup #venturecapital #fundraising #founder