#venture-capital

#venture-capital

The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Vulcan Elements - a tiny startup of 30 employees that specializes in producing rare-earth magnets used in drones, radars, and other pieces of military equipment - has scored a $620 million loan from the Pentagon as part of "a $1.4 billion deal to increase the supply of magnets for industries alongside partner ReElement Technologies."

The venture capital world has a liquidity problem. With IPOs scarce and M&A exits few and far between, investors have been stuck in positions for years, unable to return capital to their LPs or move into new opportunities. But while traditional exit doors have stayed shut, technology has opened up new ones-specifically, platforms that make it possible to create and trade Special Purpose Vehicles at scale, something that used to require armies of lawyers and fund administrators.

There is a very good set of investment opportunities here,

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.

"Skims speaks to the power of a consumer product that resonates with a lot of people," said Shamin Walsh, BAM Ventures managing director, via email. "This is entirely different from the old direct-to-consumer days where they're buying revenue. Skims has clearly cracked a formula. If they are profitable and producing that much revenue, then it actually seems like a reasonable multiple based on the strength of the brand and the way they're expanding."

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.

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."