#venture-capital

#venture-capital

The AI gold rush these days is littered with abandoned enterprise projects, with humans - not the technology itself - being blamed for high failure rates of AI projects. Recent data indicates that stagnant AI projects were often the result of poor vision, mismanagement, and a lack of resources. Eagerness from the top to become "AI-first" companies is also putting pressure on C-suite execs and other IT decision-makers who might not have the budgets, systems, or tools for success.

The latest venture capital, seed, pre-seed, and angel deals for NYC startups for 11/19/2025 featuring funding details for Venn, Deduction, and much more. This page will be updated throughout the day to reflect any new fundings. Venn - $52M Series B Venn, an operating system for multifamily property management, has raised $52M in Series B funding led by noa and CIM Group. Founded by Chen Avni and Or Bokobza in 2016, Venn has now raised a total of $152M in reported equity funding.

"It's no longer enough to show how far we've come. It's critical, too, that we use those insights to point the way forward," said the report's author, Tom Wehmeier, who is also a partner at Atomico and the firm's head of intelligence. This includes four policy recommendations with fairly self-explanatory names: Fix the friction, Fund the future, Empower talent, and Champion risk.

Produced by The Legaltech Fund, the first venture capital firm devoted exclusively to legal tech, it is a conference I previously dubbed the Davos of legal tech for the fact that it brings together leaders from across disciplines to engage in open and unfettered dialogue about the state and future of legal innovation. As someone who has attended all four summits, I've had a front-row seat to its evolution.

Corporate investing may sound like something that only happens behind closed boardroom doors, but quite simply, it's about making smart financial decisions. Companies invest in order to strengthen their future, balance their risk, and create more profit. Whether it's placing money in stocks, real estate, or cutting-edge tech, the goals of being resilient and profitable stay the same. Most businesses have been looking beyond the more traditional investment routes and into emerging areas. These are areas that include sustainability, green energy, and digital assets.

According to a recent blog post, the San Francisco-based a16z launched an internal branding and marketing arm called the "New Media team" several months ago in order to provide founders with "the legitimacy, taste, brandbuilding, expertise, and momentum they need to win the narrative battle online." This team will embed itself within portfolio companies when necessary, per the blog post.

Contrary to popular narrative, Europe is not short of cash. In aggregate, European households save $1.4 trillion a year-substantially higher than the $800 billion figure for U.S. households. According to data platform Dealroom, European investors in 2025 were sitting on $31 billion of dry powder, waiting to be invested. But where American capital is one of the U.S. economy's great strengths, famously accelerating business growth there, Europe's capital doesn't deliver in nearly the same way.

As the tech industry funnels billions into AI data centers, chip makers both big and small are ramping up innovation around the technology that connects chips to other chips, and server racks to other server racks. Networking technology has been around since the dawn of the computer, critically connecting mainframes so they can share data. In the world of semiconductors, networking plays a part at almost every level of the stack-from the interconnect between transistors on the chip itself,

Kardashian's ventures, including her cosmetics brand SKKN, have attracted young shoppers and benefited from her vast social media following. Similarly, other celebrity-backed brands have also drawn venture capital investment, as firms bet on the marketing power and built-in audiences of high-profile founders to drive consumer demand. Elf Beauty agreed to buy Hailey Bieber's makeup and skincare brand, Rhode, for about $1bn earlier this year, while Rihanna-backed Fenty Beauty and Khloe Kardashian's Good American have also drawn venture capital funding.

That was the case with crypto payments firm Mesh, which announced an $82 million Series B this year that included a $20 million payout to its founder. Ditto with the blockchain social network firm Farcaster, which raised an eye-popping $150 million Series A, but saw its CEO carve off at least $15 million of that. You can read about other examples here.

There's no shortage of noise coming out of San Francisco and New York with AI breakthroughs, billion-dollar valuations and the race to back the next big consumer app or fintech darling. With a crowded landscape sometimes influenced by hype, venture capital has developed a kind of tunnel vision. The fixation on what's shiny and fast-scaling has blinded many investors to the country's most foundational industries, which are the ones that really keep America running.

NVIDIA and Qualcomm Ventures have joined a growing coalition of U.S. and Indian investors backing India's deep tech startups. The group launched in September with more than $1 billion in commitments, timing that aligns with India's new ₹1 trillion (around $12 billion) research and development initiative. NVIDIA has joined the coalition as a strategic technical advisor, without any financial commitments, while Qualcomm Ventures has come on board alongside six Indian venture firms, bringing additional capital commitments totaling more than $850 million.

The venture capital industry has long operated on a transactional model: evaluate the science, assess the team, write the check, and monitor progress through quarterly board meetings. This approach may work for software startups, but it fundamentally misaligns with biotechnology development realities. The path from laboratory breakthrough to FDA-approved therapy involves navigating regulatory mazes, recruiting specialized talent, and building relationships across interconnected scientific communities-challenges that capital alone cannot solve.

I decided to approach as many recent AI founders as I could. The goal was not to try to pick winners but to see what it's like, on the ground, to build AI products-how AI tools have changed the nature of their work; how terrifying it is to compete in a crowded field. It all sounded a bit like trying to tap-dance on the roiling surface of the sun.

Tech hopefuls are associating themselves with San Francisco online; some say for social media clout or to attract investors. Eight rising tech workers told Business Insider that they've noticed an influx of San Francisco love online. One changed his location to San Francisco as a "manifestation." Another said they thought of it as a "heavenly land." 18-year-old Lance Yan recently made his location on X to "Waterloo | SF."

Vinod Khosla, telling attendees he doesn't buy the argument that powering AI will doom climate efforts. Geothermal energy is nearly here, he said, while fusion remains further out. He also touched on his alignment with President Donald Trump (deregulation) and his disagreement (immigration): "The only thing I will say is this administration won't last forever," he said with a grin.

AI is reshaping the media and marketing industries at warp speed - whether consumers like it or not. Adtech and martech startups are raising millions of dollars from venture capital firms on the back of the AI wave. Many of these companies are developing under-the-hood tech, like agentic AI tools designed to streamline marketers' workflows and boost productivity. Others are working on creative platforms that let marketers create ads and even virtual influencers using generative AI.

AI taking entry-level jobs is a 'when,' not an 'if.' But in venture capital, 70% of the decision is reading the founder and team-and that's something AI can't do. That simple breakdown , 70% people, 30% product-flips the usual narrative about finance. For decades, finance was defined by numbers. Analysts lived and died by the spreadsheets. Today, AI can run discounted cash flows, parse a term sheet, and size a market faster than any junior associate.

In 2022, when Yoni Rechtman's boss asked where he wanted to be in five years, the newly hired venture capitalist told him, "Not here." What might have sounded like defiance was exactly what Kevin Colleran, managing director of Slow Ventures, wanted to hear. The firm doesn't promote from within. It keeps funds small - "easier to return many multiples of success," Colleran said - and so the firm needs fewer investors.

Kevin Hartz tends to be first through the door. In 2001, he co-founded Xoom, back when sending money across borders meant standing in line at Western Union. In 2013, it went public, and in 2015, PayPal paid $1.1 billion for it. Four years after launching Xoom, he co-founded Eventbrite, which went public in 2018 and turned buying event tickets into something you could do without wanting to throw your laptop in the ocean.