At least 95,000 workers at U.S.-based tech companies were laid off in mass job cuts in 2024, per a Crunchbase News tally, and the cuts are continuing into 2025. See who the latest companies are to cut roles.

For the second week in a row, big, $100 million-plus rounds rolled into startups. This week defense and artificial intelligence led the way with massive rounds, but healthcare, security and more also saw big raises.

Overall, gaming-related startup funding has been falling each year since the 2021 peak, and its not alone. Most consumer-facing sectors, including e-commerce, consumer products and consumer electronics, have also seen reduced funding in the past few years.

Conditions are primed for a VC talent shake-up, as firms reassess the skills and attributes they need in their corner to stay ahead of the pack, writes Eleanor Kaye of Newton Venture Program, who points out that talent unboxing may be the solution to today's hiring strategies.

Together AI, a developer of a cloud platform to allow developers to build on open and custom artificial intelligence models, raised a $305 million funding round led by General Catalyst and Saudi Arabia's Prosperity7 Ventures.

Despite their strong track record, East Asian founders don’t receive investment proportional to their success, writes guest author Lex Zhao. He suggests those founders team up with the broader immigrant community for help facing the challenges of unconscious bias.

Financial literacy, including the ability to coherently connect stories and numbers, is where value lies, not in crude comparisons to roughly similar startups, writes frequent Crunchbase guest author Dan Gray, who shares some questions VCs should ask themselves to understand any pitch.

Last week as Elon Musk seemed to place his OpenAI offer on and off the table daily, something else OpenAI-related caught our eye — SoftBank reported a net loss of nearly $2.4 billion for its fiscal third quarter.

Last year, there were nearly 400 deals in which startups bought other startups — a 31% surge — per Crunchbase data, with the year ending particularly strong. In 2023, barely 300 such deals occurred.

Verkada, a developer of security systems for the real world, locked up a $200 million Series E led by General Catalyst that values the San Mateo, California-based firm at $4.5 billion.