Sheryl Sandberg has led a $10 million investment in Self Inspection, a San Diego-based startup that is also backed by former Tesla CEO Jon McNeill’s DVx Ventures. The startup, founded in 2021, has spent the last few years trying to disrupt the vehicle inspection process by making it possible to properly assess damage to a
Travel agency Fora announced a $60 million Series D round led by Forerunner and Tactile Ventures, valuing the company at $1 billion. Founded in 2021, Fora is a two-part platform: it allows people to easily become travel agents by providing the infrastructure to support customer communication and trip planning; It also allows users to find
In the race to bring autonomous robots into the home, Sunday Robotics says it has solved one of the field’s toughest problems: getting a robot to work in homes and handle objects it has never seen before. On Thursday, the Bay Area-based startup unveiled ACT-2, a new artificial intelligence model that powers Memo, its wheeled
Live shopping app Whatnot announced Wednesday that it has acquired Shaped, a machine learning company that specializes in real-time search and recommendation systems. The deal aims to strengthen Whatnot’s discovery and personalization capabilities as the platform continues to expand across new product categories and millions of shoppers. According to the company, the acquisition helps Whatnot
Sportswear company Lululemon has invested in the $30 million Series A round raised by Syntetica, a French startup that developed a novel approach to recycling nylon, whose properties make it too good to throw away but difficult to reuse. Syntetica promises to recycle two types of nylon, Nylon 6 and Nylon 6,6, that cannot be
Applied Computing, a London-based startup that is building a basic AI model for the oil, gas and petrochemical industry, has raised a $20 million Series A led by engineering giant KBR, with participation from Databricks Ventures. Founded in 2023, the startup targets oil, gas, refining and petrochemical systems, where a single facility can have thousands