Take an extra $100 off your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass: This week only!

Starting today, you can take an additional $100 off your founder, investor, or attendee TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 pass, which is a nice bonus on top of our current discounted pricing. 

Bending Spoons to buy Airtable for $1.28B

At its peak in 2021, Airtable was valued at over $11 billion, but earlier this year, its shares were said to be trading on the secondary markets at a valuation of $4 billion.

AWS is helping vibe-coding startup Superblocks, and the implications are big

AWS now allows vibe coding tool Superblocks to be embedded into the private clouds of AWS customers. It’s another step towards decoupling apps from models.

Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire leads $1B round for nuclear startup Valar Atomics

Valar Atomics raised $1 billion at a $6 billion valuation after signing a development deal with Nvidia in June.

Horizon3 hits $2 billion valuation with $250M Series E as AI threats escalate

Cybersecurity startup Horizon3 raised $250 million at a $2 billion valuation as companies want continuous, AI-powered security validation instead of annual pentesting.

VC-backed startups commit more fraud, and researchers think they know why  

New research from the U.K.’s Imperial College and France’s Emlyon Business School mapped out how Silicon Valley founders commit fraud — and the role investors play.

Sam Altman isn’t the only one who wants to pump the brakes on AI

After years of pushing full speed ahead on AI, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says maybe it’s time for the AI industry to “pace” itself. The comments came just days after one of OpenAI’s own models broke out of its test environmen…

Smallest.ai raises $13M to build ultra-fast voice AI that sounds genuinely human

The startup is building voice models designed to make AI phone calls pass the Turing test.

Repeat founder Ryan Williams raises $10M seed for an AI startup for private credit managers

Ellis AI announced Thursday its emergence from stealth with $10 million in seed funding.