The latest reporting, explainers, and analysis in AI Startups.
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Moonshot AI has introduced Kimi Work, a local desktop agent built on its Kimi Code foundation. Designed to transition AI from conversational assistants to autonomous executors, the tool features multi-agent orchestration, zero-code natural language control, and deep integration with professional workflows.
Cognition, the developer of autonomous AI engineer Devin, has closed a $1 billion funding round at a $25 billion pre-money valuation, more than doubling its worth in eight months amid surging enterprise adoption and a $492 million annualized revenue run rate.
AI gateway startup OpenRouter has secured $113 million in Series B funding, pushing its valuation past $1.3 billion. Backed by Alphabet’s CapitalG, the platform’s rapid growth underscores a broader industry shift toward multi-model AI routing and away from single-vendor lock-in.
AI founders and venture capitalists are increasingly stretching the definition of Annual Recurring Revenue to inflate startup valuations and secure PR, raising concerns about transparency in the tech funding ecosystem.
SpaceX's IPO filing exposes xAI's staggering $6.4 billion operational loss in 2025 on $3.2 billion revenue, revealing Elon Musk's ambitious yet expensive AI strategy as he scales Grok toward 'multiple trillions of parameters' despite limited user adoption.
Mira Murati’s startup, Thinking Machines Lab, has introduced a research preview of a “full duplex” AI model designed to process input and generate responses simultaneously, aiming to make AI conversations feel more like real-time phone calls than turn-based text exchanges.
Jieyue Xingchen, a leading Chinese large-model startup, is reportedly close to completing a $2.5 billion financing round and has dismantled its red-chip structure as it accelerates plans for a Hong Kong IPO, with major hardware supply chain investors joining the round.
A public dispute has erupted between Google and Mozilla after Google claimed “strong positive support” from developers for a new LLM-related Web API on the Blink-dev mailing list. Firefox publicly questioned the evidence behind that claim, highlighting growing tensions over how AI capabilities should be standardized in browsers.
xAI’s surprise partnership with Anthropic suggests the company may be shifting its focus from building AI models to selling compute capacity. By renting out its Colossus 1 data center, xAI is positioning itself more like a neocloud provider than a traditional AI developer.
San Francisco-based Altara has raised $7 million in seed funding to build an AI layer that unifies fragmented R&D data across spreadsheets and legacy systems. The startup aims to help companies in batteries, semiconductors, and medical devices diagnose failures faster and accelerate development.
PayPal is pitching an AI-led turnaround as it restructures and cuts jobs, aiming for at least $1.5 billion in savings over the next two to three years. CEO Enrique Lores says the company will aggressively adopt AI and modernize its tech stack to boost productivity and redesign core processes.
Voice AI startup ElevenLabs has disclosed new investors in its $500 million Series D round, including BlackRock, Nvidia, Jamie Foxx, and Eva Longoria. The company also surpassed $500 million in annual recurring revenue and continues to expand its enterprise footprint.