DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ In Silicon Valley, Venture Capital Meets a Generational Shift
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-13 | by ( Erin Griffith | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Reid Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn and a longtime venture capitalist, is no longer the public face of the venture firm Greylock. Michael Moritz, a force at Sequoia Capital for 38 years, officially separated from the investment firm last summer. They are among the most recognizable of a generation of Silicon Valley investors who are getting out of venture capital at the end of a lucrative 15-year upswing for the industry. Investors at Tiger Global, Paradigm, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Emergence Capital and Spark Capital have all announced plans to step back. Foundry Group, a venture firm in Boulder, Colo., that has backed 200 companies since 2006, said in January that it would not raise another fund.

Persons: Reid Hoffman, Michael Moritz, Jeff Jordan, Andreessen Horowitz Organizations: LinkedIn, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark, Foundry Group, Apple, Google Locations: Silicon, Boulder, Colo, —

☆ Insider is seeking nominations for the 2023 rising stars of venture capital
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-24 | by ( Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Insider is putting together a list of the best up-and-coming venture capitalists of 2023. download the app Email address Sign up By clicking “Sign Up”, you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . AdvertisementAdvertisementWe are seeking nominations for Insider's yearly list of rising stars of venture capital, and we want to hear from you. In the past, we've had people with a variety of roles and experiences from VC funds like Founders Fund, Greylock Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Tiger Global, and Spark Capital. Please email Madeline Renbarger at mrenbarger@insider.com or Samantha Stokes at sstokes@insider.com with any questions or issues submitting your nominations.

Persons: VCs, —, we've, Madeline Renbarger, Samantha Stokes Organizations: Service, Founders, Greylock Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Tiger Global, Spark Locations: mrenbarger@insider.com, sstokes@insider.com

Oct 4 (Reuters) - Headway, a healthcare tech startup that connects patients and in-network therapists, has raised $125 million in Series C funding, the company told Reuters. Insurance company Health Care Service Corporation also joined the round. Based in New York, Headway's platform connects patients with therapists and psychiatrists who can provide care covered by insurance. The company makes money by taking a cut of the payments that therapists on its platform receive from insurance companies. The pandemic prompted more people to turn to mental health services to deal with stress and burnout.

Persons: Andreessen Horowitz, Andrew Adams, We've, Adams, Will Reed, Krystal Hu, Tom Hogue Organizations: Reuters, Spark Capital, Accel, Andreessen Horowitz . Insurance, Health Care Service Corporation, Thomson Locations: New York, U.S, San Francisco

☆ Google-backed Anthropic raises $100 mln from South Korea's SK Telecom
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

The logo of SK Telecom is pictured at the GSMA's 2023 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain February 28, 2023. REUTERS/Nacho Doce/File PhotoSEOUL, Aug 14 (Reuters) - South Korea's largest telco SK Telecom (017670.KS) said it will invest $100 million in U.S. artificial intelligence firm Anthropic to strengthen its telecommunications-driven AI business. SK Telecom, which also made a smaller investment in May, said on Sunday that the two companies plan to jointly develop a global telecommunications-oriented multilingual large language model and build an AI platform. SK Telecom declined to reveal the size of its May investment or the size of its stake in Anthropic. In July, SK Telecom agreed with Deutsche Telekom, e& and Singapore Telecommunications to form an alliance to jointly develop telecommunications-driven AI businesses.

Persons: Nacho, Anthropic, Claude, OpenAI's, Joyce Lee, Sam Holmes Organizations: SK Telecom, Congress, REUTERS, telco SK Telecom, OpenAI, Google, Spark Capital, Deutsche Telekom, Singapore Telecommunications, Thomson Locations: Barcelona, Spain, SEOUL, KS, Anthropic

☆ Kinnu helps users improve their long-term memory and their rate of learning. Check out the 14-slide pitch deck it used to raise $6.5 million.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-05 | by ( Riddhi Kanetkar | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Learning platform startup Kinnu has raised $6.5 million from LocalGlobe and Cavalry Ventures. Kinnu aims to help users improve in areas like long-term memory and the rate at which they learn. A startup using generative AI to build a learning app to help people improve in areas like long-term memory and the rate at which they learn has raised $6.5 million in fresh funds. London-based Kinnu bills itself as a gamified learning platform for those who want to learn generalist knowledge. The platform is currently popular among adult generalist learners, "who love learning for the sake of learning," Kahler told Insider.

Persons: Chris Kahler, chatbots, Kahler, Kinnu, Tom Hulme, Guy Podjarny, Rene Rechtman Organizations: Cavalry Ventures, UK, Spark, Google Ventures, Moonbug Entertainment Locations: LocalGlobe, London

☆ The makers of Dispo are quietly building a new dating app that uses AI to spark romance — but David Dobrik isn't involved
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Sydney Bradley | Amanda Perelli | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The team behind photo-sharing app Dispo is building a new dating app called Teaser AI. Spotted on the Apple App Store, Teaser AI will incorporate AI into online dating. The team behind David Dobrik's photo-sharing app, Dispo, is up to something new: a dating app. Teaser AI, with the tagline "less talk, more action," is an unreleased dating app that will — you guessed it — incorporate AI into online dating. The app also pledges to "ward off catfishing and creeps" by verifying profiles, according to the app store listing.

☆ How Anthropic cofounder Daniela Amodei plans to turn trust and safety into a feature, not a bug
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Amodei chatted with Insider about her approach to trust and safety and what the future holds for AI. However, the majority of Anthropic cofounder and president Daniela Amodei's career has been spent trying to prove the opposite: that trust and safety is a feature, not a bug. "It's an organizational structure question, but it's also a mindset question," she told Insider. In 2020, Amodei and six other OpenAI employees, including her brother Dario Amodei, left the company to start rival AI lab Anthropic. Throughout Anthropic's growth, the company has kept an interdisciplinary culture, with employees whose experiences range from physics to computational biology to policywriting, Amodei told Insider.

☆ How Anthropic cofounder and former journalist Jack Clark turned a chance meeting into an AI newsletter with over 34,000 subscribers
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Jack Clark was a Bloomberg tech journalist in 2015 when he came across OpenAI for the first time. He was so inspired that he quit his job and dove into the world of AI, later cofounding Anthropic. Now, he writes Import AI, a weekly AI-focused newsletter that reaches over 34,000 subscribers. A "weird" newsletterA weekly newsletter, Import AI features detailed analyses on AI research papers, Clark's thoughts on current events, and AI-focused short fiction stories. He estimates that he's read around 4,000 research papers while writing Import AI — and more importantly, he jokes, spent over $6,000 in lattes due to his persistent habit of drinking multiple caffeinated beverages while writing each week.

☆ Deel Speed: The inside story of a $12 billion HR startup's breakneck growth
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Rob Price | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +32 min

Insider spoke with more than 30 current or former Deel workers about the HR company's extraordinary rise, and the unconventional tactics that made it possible. "I think if you talk to anyone, they would say that Alex is the face but all decisions run through Phillipe," one former Deel worker told Insider. "They lose every employment and labor protection," Valerio De Stefano, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, said of independent contractors. Alex Bouaziz, Deel on Centre Stage during day two of Collision 2022 at Enercare Centre in Toronto, Canada. The company didn't have an internal human-resources team until sometime in 2021, by which point it had grown to hundreds of people.

☆ Adept raises $350 mln in Series B funding
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

March 14 (Reuters) - OpenAI rival Adept said on Tuesday it had raised $350 million in a Series B funding round led by General Catalyst and co-led by Spark Capital. Reporting by Ananya Mariam Rajesh in BengaluruOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Crypto tokens were once considered a fast track to riches for Web3 startup founders. Now some aren't bothering to launch them.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-17 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Crypto tokens were once a quick way for Web3 founders to cash in. Just over a year ago, Web3 startups regularly raised money by selling their own cryptocurrencies directly to the public. But now, the crypto crash has made it an inauspicious time for them to launch tokens. Common has since postponed its token launch indefinitely. Georgen said that his aspirations to launch tokens weren't primarily motivated by cashing in.

☆ Bill Gates' climate investment firm is backing this reusable rocket startup
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Diana Olick | In Dianaolick | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Stoke Space is developing a clean-fueled, rapidly reusable rocket that can deliver satellites into earth's orbit, while protecting the earth itself by creating fewer emissions. Stoke Space is still in the first stages of testing the rocket and is a long way off from taking satellites into space. But its plans are ambitious and built around the idea of launching more satellites to combat climate change. We started thinking many years ago around how do we deploy more satellites focused on climate problems? In addition to Breakthrough Energy, investors include Spark capital, Toyota Ventures, Point72 Ventures, MaC Venture Capital and NFX Ventures.

☆ Insider is seeking nominations for the 2022 rising stars of venture capital
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | Samantha Stokes | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

Insider is putting together a list of the best up-and-coming venture capitalists of 2022. We want to spotlight VCs who are skilled at dealmaking at both large and small funds. In the past, we've had people with a variety of roles and experiences from VC funds like Founders Fund, Greylock Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Tiger Global, and Spark Capital. Please make your submission below or through this form by November 11th to have your selection considered for the list. Please email Madeline Renbarger at mrenbarger@insider.com or Samantha Stokes at sstokes@insider.com with any questions or issues submitting your nominations.

Hong Kong/Tokyo CNN Business —A quarter of a century ago, a major financial crisis ripped through Asia, shaking its economies to the core. “I do not expect a repeat of the [1997] Asian Financial Crisis this time,” said Khoon Goh, head of Asia research at ANZ Research. “Importantly, there is not the same build up of foreign denominated debt in recent years, which was one of the triggers of the Asian Financial Crisis,” Goh added. China and Japan have the world’s two biggest foreign exchange reserves, holding $3 trillion and $1.3 trillion respectively. “Asia’s resilience in the face of the current global storm is partly the result of reform that the Asian Financial Crisis prompted,” Neumann from HSBC said.

Search resuls for: "Spark Capital"

14 mentions found