DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ How Termina selected and ranked the 2024 Seed 100 and Seed 40 lists of the top early-stage venture capitalists
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-06 | by ( Jake Ellowitz | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Read previewThe Seed 100 and Seed 40 lists are derived from a statistical analysis of investor track records. Incubated by Tribe Capital, Termina is an AI-software platform that powers quantitative due diligence for leading investors around the world. Show intermediate signs of future success with seed investments that consistently receive follow-on investment. Ten percent of all seed investors in scope were women, up from 8% when the first Seed 100 was released in 2021. The result in just one year is the largest-ever rebalancing of how investors allocate seed capital across sectors.

Persons: —, We've, We're, OpenAI, Termina, Jake Ellowitz Organizations: Service, Business, Tribe Capital Locations: USA, Canada

☆ Email startup Beehiiv just raised $33 million to build a big ad business and differentiate itself from rival Substack
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-02 | by ( Lauren Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

download the appSign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. The firm closed a $33 million round of Series B funding, with the bulk of the money going toward building out its advertising business, CEO Tyler Denk told Business Insider. With the new round of funding, Beehiiv hopes to make $5 million from ads in 2024, he said. AdvertisementBeehiiv acquired the email ad platform Swapstack and launched its ad network that places ads in newsletters during the third quarter of 2023. Beehiiv's Denk said that Beehiiv has a "difference in philosophy" on ads than Substack does.

Persons: —, Tyler Denk, Beehiiv, Denk, Boston Globe Media's, Beehiiv's cofounders, Substack, Jesse Singal, Beehiiv's Denk Organizations: Service, Business, NEA, Sapphire, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Boston Globe, Morning, Netflix

☆ Influencer-marketing startup Grin has laid off staffers in a new round of cuts
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-25 | by ( Amanda Perelli | Sydney Bradley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The influencer-marketing platform Grin has laid off "many" staffers — in the company's third round of layoffs in recent months — a spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider. As the company grew, "a distance also grew" between the platform and its customers, the Grin spokesperson said in a statement. First, in November 2022, the company laid off 60 staffers, mostly in Grin's sales department, the company confirmed to BI at the time. Then, in March 2023, the company laid off several staffers across multiple departments, sources close to the company told Business Insider. The impacted staffers in this latest round of cuts will receive a three-month severance package and extended healthcare benefits, the Grin spokesperson said.

Persons: —, Grin, Brandon Brown Organizations: Business, Red, BI Locations: France

☆ Trying to win the AI war is going to be expensive. Really, really expensive.
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-17 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The AI war is going to be really, really, really expensive. Simply put, the more chips you have, the more computing power available to train AI models on greater volumes of data. Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesThe general business of training models is getting more expensive, too. AdvertisementStanford University's annual AI index report, published this week, notes that the "training costs of state-of-the-art AI models have reached unprecedented levels." The original technology behind AI models cost about $900 to train in 2017.

Persons: Demis Hassabis, —, Demis, Hassabis, they're, Jensen Huang, Justin Sullivan, Google's Organizations: Google, Service, TED, Microsoft, Nvidia, Stanford Locations: Vancouver

☆ Amazon-backed humanoid firm Agility Robotics laid off a 'small number' of staff
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-04 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Agility Robotics said it laid off a "small number" of employees on Wednesday. The company told Business Insider that the job cuts affected a "small number" of employees. Amazon is testing its Agility's Digit robots in a research and development facility near Seattle. AdvertisementAn electrical engineer at the humanoid robotics firm shared in posts on LinkedIn and X that he was "one of the many laid off" at the company. AdvertisementJohnson previously told BI that it will churn out "hundreds" of its Digit robots in 2025 and then "ramp up capacity to thousands" in the years that follow.

Persons: —, Lisa Haugh, Crunchbase, it's, Peggy Johnson, Johnson, It's Organizations: Robotics, Service, Business, Industrial Innovation, LinkedIn, Bureau of Labor Statistics Locations: Oregon, Seattle

☆ It looks like it could be the end of the AI hype cycle
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-03 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Read previewSome AI leaders are starting to ask themselves the question: should we be buying the hype? Almost a year and a half on from the launch of ChatGPT, the hype around the technology is seemingly everywhere. AI image generator Stability AI also lost its chief, Emad Mostaque, amid reports of financial pressure. Others though, like Google deep learning expert François Chollet, are keen to stress just how far off human intelligence today's AI models actually are. Until some real signs of money-making, human-level intelligence do emerge, expect more to call it all hype.

Persons: —, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, it's, Gary Marcus, Sam Altman, Marcus, GmjUDKhc6k — Gary Marcus, @GaryMarcus, Mustafa Suleyman, Emad Mostaque, Eric Schmidt, Demis Hassabis, Musk, François Organizations: Service, Business, Google, Invest, Investors, New York University, Nvidia, NVidia, Blackwell, Microsoft, Financial Locations: OpenAI, Sequoia

☆ See the pitch deck that helped a former Goldman Sachs exec raise $5 million for an AI-powered networking startup that feeds deal ideas to bankers
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-22 | by ( Bianca Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Doctor, then a Goldman Sachs managing director who ran the bank-solutions group based in Hong Kong, was visiting the bank's London office. The AI startup was built to suggest potential deals based on the data it's exposed to. Louisa AI knows that a current Goldman employee used to work at the semiconductor company, and the AI knows a project-finance employee in New York. In an article about solar panels, Louisa AI would link the words "solar panels" to "solar" and then to "renewables." Here's the pitch deck Louisa AI used to raise $5 million to fund its AI-powered deal prompter.

Persons: Rohan Doctor, Goldman Sachs, Doctor, Jim Esposito, Louisa AI, Louisa, Janet Yellen Organizations: Business, Blue9, Insight Partners, Goldman, Oxford Locations: Hong Kong, London, Asia, Oxford, Canada, Here's, Taiwan, New York

☆ Private-equity and VC investors look to sports, AI, and live events as the era of peak TV draws to a close
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-07 | by ( Lucia Moses | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

That was a far steeper decline than the overall venture funding market, which declined 38% in 2023, the report said. (The report was based on data from Crunchbase, which Alignment Growth is an investor in.) Investors have been flocking to AI, live entertainment, and sports. Sports M&A nearly tripled in three years to $27.9 billion in 2023, driven by deals for team franchises, the Alignment Growth report showed. High ticket prices for live entertainment could dampen attendance, especially if consumer confidence takes a hit.

Persons: Wade Holden, Anthony Jasenski, CBRE's, Jasenski, haven't, IATSE, Alex Iosilevich, Schlogel, Craig Thompson Organizations: Venture, Business, Disney, Warner Bros, Global, P Global Market Intelligence, Blackstone, Bain Capital Real, Deloitte, Teamsters, Hollywood, Investors, Sports, Atwater, Mindspring Capital Locations: Hollywood, Crunchbase, Americas, OpenAI

☆ Founders Fund partner Sam Blond has left the firm
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-04 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Sam Blond has left Founders Fund after 17 months with the firm. Blond's departure from Founders Fund is the second in as many months after Keith Rabois left. AdvertisementSam Blond, the Founders Fund partner who brought sales expertise from his years at Brex and Zenefits, has left the firm, he announced on X. He's the second partner to depart Founders Fund this year after Keith Rabois made a return to Khosla Ventures in January. In 2022, Founders Fund took part in 84 rounds that totaled about $6.6 billion.

Persons: Sam Blond, he's, Keith Rabois, —, I've, Blond, Forbes, Rabois, Axios Organizations: Fund, Service, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Brex, Institutional Locations: Brex

☆ More than 100 years since the Black Wall Street massacre, Tulsa is creating a haven for entrepreneurs
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-16 | by ( Alex Harring | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

Overlaid on that picture is the company name, Grier Shoe Shop, and its address — which is part of an area known as Black Wall Street. With these ventures, she's part of a growing class of Black entrepreneurs tapping into Tulsa's history for inspiration and resources for support. He also won a grant from a Black Wall Street organization. The Black Wall Street Mural in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Friday, June 19, 2020. Greenwood, known as Black Wall Street, was one of the most prosperous African-American enclaves in the U.S. before it was burned down by a white mob in 1921.

Persons: Venita Cooper, Parnia Mazhar, Grier, Silhouette, They've, Cooper, Dominick Ard'is, George Floyd, Ashli Sims, she's, Sims, North Martin Luther King, Edna Martinson, It's, Martinson, LaTanya White, he's, Adesanya, Grant Warner, James Lowry, Lowry, who's, Greenwood, Christopher Creese Organizations: Silhouette, NBC News, Tulsa, Build, Art, NBC, North Martin Luther King Jr, Ku Klux, House, Art Basel, Southwest, Black, Stanford, National Bureau of Economic Research, Creative, CNBC, Harvard Business School, Center for Black Entrepreneurship, Black Economic Alliance Foundation, Boston Consulting, Bloomberg, Getty Locations: Greenwood, Tulsa , Oklahoma, TULSA, Tulsa, North, Miami, South, Austin, U.S, PalmPlug, Seattle, America

☆ Marcelo Claure and Paul Judge bought SoftBank's diversity fund. Now they're trying to raise $200 million for it.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-01 | by ( Vishal Persaud | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Read previewFormer SoftBank executive Marcelo Claure and serial entrepreneur and investor Paul Judge are in the throes of raising a new $200 million fund. The past year has been transitional for the fund since Claure and Judge bought the $100 million fund from SoftBank. Since then, there haven't been any new investments, but the two are poised to capitalize on the success of the first fund and are raising the second Open Opportunity Fund. He said that limited partners' interest has been positive overall since the Open Opportunity Fund's first fund has had so much success. AdvertisementJudge said that he expects the first Open Opportunity Fund to continue to deliver "top quartile" returns to its investors over the next five to seven years.

Persons: —, Marcelo Claure, Paul Judge, It's, Claure, haven't, SoftBank —, I've, Judge, George Floyd's, Masayoshi, Shu Nyatta, Stacy Brown, what's Organizations: Service, Business, Opportunity Fund, Opportunity, Fund, Mastercard, Vista Equity Partners, Ventures, Sprint, Bicycle Capital, TechCrunch Locations: SoftBank, Atlanta, America

☆ Exclusive: Organic baby food startup Yumi has slashed its valuation after running low on cash
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-31 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Yumi, a startup backed by a long list of prominent Silicon Valley investors that makes high-end organic baby food, is raising a down round that values the company at around $40 million, Business Insider has learned. The funding represents a substantial discount from Yumi's Series B round in 2021, which valued the company at more than $300 million, according to Pitchbook data. It also means Yumi has burned through more than twice as much cash, nearly $90 million dollars, as it is currently worth. Startup fundraising tumbled to a five-year low in 2023 with funding for e-commerce and shopping startups down 60%, according to Crunchbase data. Convoy, the freight startup that was once called the "Uber for trucking" and raised more than $1 billion, shut down in November.

Persons: Yumi, Evelyn Rusli, Angela Sutherland, Gerber, Sutherland, Rusli, Anne Wojcicki, Gabrielle Union, Warby Parker, Goldman Sachs, Christina Minnis, Kelly Coffey, Masha Drokova, Lauren Dillard Organizations: Business, BI, Walmart, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Enterprise Associates, Uber, City National Bank, One Ventures, Nasdaq, Startup, Convoy, Olive Locations: millennials

☆ Beautycounter’s founder sold the $1 billion business and lost her job—now she’s back as CEO: 'Failure is not an option'
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-31 | by ( Tom Huddleston Jr. | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Gregg Renfrew built a billion-dollar brand, only to end up on the outside looking in after investors brought in a replacement CEO. Renfrew, 55, founded clean beauty brand Beautycounter in 2011 with the mission of disrupting the cosmetics industry by only selling products made without "questionable or harmful chemicals." Along the way, Renfrew and Beautycounter raised more than $93 million from investors, according to Crunchbase. Renfrew: It was really, really difficult. I sold the business right before the world opened up with Covid and so much was changing and swirling around.

Persons: Gregg Renfrew, Beautycounter, Carlyle, Renfrew, Marc Rey, Martha Stewart, Rey, burnishing, Renfrew's, Carlyle Roberto Marques, it's, It's, you've Organizations: CNBC, Ulta, Carlyle Group Locations: Renfrew, New York, Denver, U.S, Washington

☆ Generative AI is booming in the legal industry. Here's an exclusive look at the pitch deck Robin AI used to raise $26 million from investors like Singapore's Temasek.
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-10 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The startup Robin AI, recently closed its Series B funding round, which Singapore investment company Temasek led. Headquartered in London, Robin uses Anthropic's latest large language model, Claude 2.1, and offers an "AI co-pilot" to help lawyers draft and revise contracts. The startup raised a $10.5 million Series A in January 2023 and a $2.5 million seed round in 2021. Although funding for legal tech startups fell in 2023, according to Crunchbase, a handful of startups have raised new rounds of cash. Check out the eight-slide pitch deck Robin used to raise its $26 million Series B funding round.

Persons: Robin, Claude 2.1, Richard Robinson, Robinson, Darrow Organizations: Business, Temasek, AFG Partners, Google Locations: Singapore, London, what's, Asia

☆ Two Amazon and Netflix alums have raised $1 million for their fintech startup that aims to disrupt entertainment and production financing
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-30 | by ( Lucia Moses | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Conduiit, a fintech startup that promises to save entertainment companies time and money by centralizing their production finance operations, has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding. He saw how production companies were using a hodgepodge of services to manage day-to-day transactions, as well as managing individual productions in silos, resulting in lost time and wasted expense. ConduiitCharging on a SaaS model, Conduiit lets production companies access all their compliance, management, accounting, and payment tools from a single platform. "There are two Black founders in a world that doesn't have a lot of them," said Glover of Hamilton and Thurman. Only about 1% of venture funding in 2022 went to Black startup founders, according to Crunchbase data analyzed by TechCrunch .

Persons: Hiro Mizushima, Shawn Hamilton, Hamilton, Hamilton's, Jason Thurman, who's, HBO Max, Max, John Oliver, Drew Glover, Glover, Thurman, we're Organizations: Fiat Ventures, Aperture Venture, Business, Amazon, Netflix, Disney, HBO, Jigsaw, Laylow Productions, Productions, Silicon Valley Bank, Fiat, TechCrunch Locations: Silicon, Hollywood

☆ The cofounder of Allbirds has some advice for startups looking to IPO: make money ahead of going public
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-30 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Allbirds was one of the last startups to go public in 2021's IPO biltz. "You need to be a great company, you need to be profitable," says Allbirds cofounder Tim Brown. download the app Email address Sign up By clicking “Sign Up”, you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . Going public before turning profitable is a thing of the past, according to Allbirds cofounder and chief innovation officer Tim Brown. "You need to be a great company, you need to be profitable," he told Business Insider.

Persons: Allbirds, Tim Brown, —, Klaviyo, Lerer, confidentially, PwC, Spencer Platt, Champagne, Brown, Joanna Glasner, Didi, Rivian Organizations: Service, Time Magazine, Maveron, Tiger Global, Casper Locations: Instacart, Silicon, Americas, Allbirds, Ukraine

2023 was a tumultuous year for the venture capital industry. This year, Business Insider asked the most important VCs across the US to name the most promising VCs in their cities. Business Insider also asked the general public and last year's rising stars who they thought should make the cut. And just like last year, more of this year's rising stars are women than men, indicating that more women are being brought into the pipeline of the traditionally male-dominated venture capital industry. Scroll to see 2023's rising stars of venture capital, organized alphabetically by the investor's name.

Organizations: Silicon Valley Bank, Tech, Business

☆ Inside the chaotic Thanksgiving-weekend collapse of homebuilder startup Veev that left employees shocked and worried about their jobs
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-30 | by ( Alex Nicoll | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

But for workers of Lennar-backed homebuilder Veev, they were spent scrambling to determine if they would still have jobs come Monday. Speaking to the "Veev Family," he wrote: "Family will stay in touch and together forever, even if it is going to be only within our hearts." The company has about 250 employees, according to news site Calcalist. "We call it the Veev family," Haller said. On a very personal note, for me Amit Haller, Veev was my personal journey in the past 15 years, half of my professional career and about ⅓ of my entire life.

Persons: Amit Haller, Veev, Haller, doesn't, we're, homebuilder, Kleiner Perkins, Bond, Lennar, Linda Keala, Ami, Amit Organizations: Business, Dragonfly, Wall, Center, Real Estate, Technology Innovation, Employees, Dafna Locations: California, Tel Aviv, Hayward , California, Haller, Reali, @nicollsanddimes, .

☆ OpenAI ditched the only 2 women on its board. So far, it's replacing them with men.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-22 | by ( Tom Carter | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

OpenAI announced a new male-dominated board after Sam Altman won the battle to return as CEO. 'Please, more representation and balance'The departure of Toner and McCauley has put the makeup of OpenAI's new board in the spotlight. Emily Bell, a founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, wrote in a post on X : "OpenAI fires women on the board — board chair who oversaw fuck up stays." Tom Williams/Getty ImagesOne of OpenAI's main rivals also weighed in on the lack of diversity on the new board. Within the private sector, research from Crunchbase in 2022 showed that women held 16% of board seats among more than 660 companies they analyzed.

Persons: OpenAI, Sam Altman, Helen Toner, Tasha McCauley, Adam D'Angelo, —, Sam Altman's, Bret Taylor —, Larry Summers, D'Angelo, Ilya Sutskever, Altman, Toner, McCauley, Emily Bell, Summers, Jeffrey Epstein, Bell, Tom Williams, Bret, Taylor, Emad Mostaque, Vinod Khosla, OpenAI's, Angela Hoover, Andi Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Tow Center, Digital Journalism, Deloitte, Alliance for Board Diversity, Fortune, New York Times Locations: Crunchbase, San Francisco

☆ OpenAI’s Cast of Characters
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-22 | by ( Jennifer Korn | Paul Glader | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +12 min

Before OpenAI, Altman was president of Y Combinator, mentoring a host of founders and expanding his network in Silicon Valley. “We are encouraged by the changes to the OpenAI board,” he wrote on X on Wednesday. Mira MuratiNamed by the OpenAI board as Altman’s interim successor on Friday, Murati was replaced by Shear before the weekend was done. In September, she joined the board of directors of Shield AI, a defense technology company building AI pilot technology for aircraft. Will HurdAfter joining the OpenAI board in 2021, Hurd was the third director to exit in 2023.

Persons: OpenAI, Sam Altman, Altman, Elon, Satya Nadella, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Kiko, Emmett Shear, Y, Nadella, ”, Mira Murati, Murati, Shear, “ Mira, ” Nadella, Ilya Sutskever, Brockman, Sutskever, “, we’ve, Adam D’Angelo D’Angelo, Mark Zuckerberg, D’Angelo, Forbes, ” Bret Taylor, Bret Taylor, Elon Musk, Taylor, Justin Kan, Tasha McCauley McCauley, Joseph Gordon, Levitt, McCauley, Greg Brockman Greg Brockman, Peter Thiel, Musk, Helen Toner Toner, AI’s, Toner, Joshua Kushner Kushner, Kushner, Jared Kushner, Karlie Kloss, Charles Kushner, Donald Trump, Larry Summers Summers, Obama, Clinton, Summers, Shivon Zilis, Zilis, Walter Isaacson, Will Hurd, Hurd, Nikki Haley, Reid Hoffman, Hoffman, OpenAI . Hoffman, He’s Organizations: CNN, Stanford University, Microsoft, OpenAI, Colby College, Dartmouth University, Tesla, Time, Phillips Exeter Academy, California Institute of Technology, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yale University, Justin.tv, GeoSim Systems, Rand Corporation, Centre, Bard College, University of Southern, Harvard University, MIT, Elon, Georgetown’s Center for Security, Emerging Technology, Open, Oscar Health, Memphis Grizzlies, Harvard College, Harvard Business School, Republican, CIA, Allen & Company, Texas, M University, Reid Hoffman LinkedIn, PayPal, LinkedIn, Greylock Partners, SpaceX, Boring Company Locations: Silicon Valley, St, Louis , Missouri, OpenAI, Seattle , Washington, Israel, University of Southern California, North Dakota, Beijing, Georgetown, Canada, United States, Texas, Oxford

☆ The Pitch Deck Healthtech Startup Sunnyside Used to Raise $11.5 Million
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-15 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

One startup wants to help consumers be more mindful about their alcohol consumption — and it just raised $11.5 million in venture-capital funding. The startup, Sunnyside, announced that it raised a Series A funding round led by Motley Fool Ventures. Sunnyside's founder Nick Allen launched the startup in San Francisco in 2020, initially calling it Cutback Coach. Sunnyside offers a mobile app that encourages "mindful drinking" practices via weekly goal setting, text reminders, an online community, and one-on-one coaching. Check out the 10-slide pitch deck Sunnyside use to raise its Series A funding round.

Persons: Motley, Cooley, Michael Lee, Nick Allen, Allen, hasn't, Steve Lloyd Organizations: Motley Fool Ventures, Will Ventures, Uncork, Offline Ventures, Joyance Partners, Wisdom Ventures, Eudemian Ventures, Business, Big Tech, Sunnyside Locations: Sunnyside, San Francisco, Valley

☆ How working moms can make sure they don't get lost in the RTO conversation
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-12 | by ( Tim Paradis | Josée Rose | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Leaders need to articulate team needs; workers need to be honest about work-life prioritization. The flexibility of signing on from their living room leaves more time for school pickups, doctor's appointments, and meal planning, but it's more of a Band-Aid than a real fix for the pile of challenges working moms often face. For these women, who want to be great moms and have fulfilling careers, and some RTO mandates may make achieving both (or either!) AdvertisementAdvertisementTaking an individual approach to employees can help them do their best work — and meet the employer's needs — especially because many RTO mandates often fail to take into account what many working moms need, Scheib said. And I think the kids will suffer at the end of the day and moms and their mental health will suffer."

Persons: —, it's, it'll, Kelly Resendez, Danna Greenberg, Wells, Cork Gaines, Greenberg, Resendez, aren't, Mandy McAllister, Kelly Scheib, Scheib, prescriptively Organizations: Service, Babson College, Bank of America

☆ The CEO of UNest, a college savings app, stepped down after she said the company was 'insolvent.' Here's what customers need to know.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-03 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

UNest is a startup that makes it easier for people to save up for major life expenses like college. Ksenia Yudina, founder & CEO, stepped down last month and warned the company was "insolvent." download the app Email address Sign up By clicking “Sign Up”, you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . As Insider previously reported, Ksenia Yudina, founder & CEO, stepped down last month and warned the company was "insolvent." "The board, remaining management, and investors are working closely together to secure additional funding for the company," he said.

Persons: Ksenia Yudina, —, Franklin Templeton, Star Baron Davis, Laura Dern, Michael Doniger, UNest, Ben Bergman, bbergman@insider.com Organizations: Service, Artemis Fund, Anthos, Northwestern Mutual, Star, Vanguard, Blackrock, Apex Clearing Locations: Anthos Capital, Apex

☆ Legal tech startup Responsiv is bringing AI to in-house attorneys to help them save time and money. It just raised $3 million from Greylock.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

But by building a program with "guardrails," a new legal tech company is working to bring all of the benefits of artificial intelligence to companies' in-house legal teams without the risks. Based in Chicago, Responsiv is an AI assistant for in-house legal teams. With Responsiv, in-house counsel can quickly get answers to legal questions that are easily verifiable, saving companies time and money. "There's a noticeable gap in innovation tailored specifically to in-house legal teams," Domash said. Funding for legal tech has fallen in 2023, according to Crunchbase, but many startups in the space focus on law firms.

Persons: ChatGPT, Mike Duboe, Nikita Solilov, Jordan Domash, Jordan, Nikita, Duboe, Domash, Responsiv, We'll, Darrow Organizations: Greylock Partners Locations: Chicago, Silver, Greylock

☆ The CEO of UNest resigned after she said the board asked her to approve an 'illegal' takeover, according to a leaked email. The company says customer accounts are safe.
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-31 | by ( Ben Bergman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

"This matter is very confidential and person who leaked the email can be subject to legal claims," Yudina wrote. UNest boasted 400,000 users that year and said it was on track to hit a million users in 2022. "I wasn't doing something that I perceived as illegal and unethical, therefore I stepped down from the position of CEO," Yudina wrote. "Tech industry is navigating a lot of headwinds and even strong startup founders get affected," Yudina wrote, before saying that people should be focused on supporting Israel. "As we navigate the hurdles of our daily lives, it's crucial to remember that there are people on another continent enduring unimaginable suffering and uncertainty," Yudina wrote in the message.

Persons: Ksenia Yudina, UNest, Yudina, I'm, Michael Doniger, Doniger, Franklin Templeton, Northwestern Mutual –, Star Baron Davis, Laura Dern, –, SVB, Ben Bergman, bbergman@insider.com Organizations: Silicon Valley Bank, LinkedIn, Apex, Capital Group, Artemis, Anthos, Northwestern Mutual, Star, Business, Tech, Israel Locations: Silicon, Anthos Capital, UNest, Silicon Valley

Search resuls for: "Crunchbase"

25 mentions found