Hi there and welcome to Funded, where we spotlight early-stage bets on the future of tech. This week, we’re highlighting Grasp, the Swedish startup building an AI Analyst to automate the grunt work of high-stakes financial decision-making. Grasp has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from Yanno Capital, […]
To anyone who saw a haggard, chap-lipped traveler who looks a lot like me shuffling around the Las Vegas airport on Tuesday evening, no you didn’t. I’ve got Money 20/20 President Tracey Davies as an alibi. We met up at the press lounge — it felt far busier, if not overcrowded, this year; though some […]
In case you missed it yesterday, we’ve been reporting the latest from Money 20/20! And on this day, when the world’s first $5 Trillion company (NVIDIA) was minted, we are keeping an eye on the latest in AI: London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) partnered with Anthropic to bring financial data access into Claude (e.g., summarising earnings calls, scanning diligence […]
Whenever there’s a mention of a company using AI, the default perception is that it’s a copilot or an assistant that generates, summarizes, or surfaces insights from a company’s data backend. The idea isn’t misplaced, but the actual role of AI inside enterprises is evolving fast. A new wave of startups has productionized AI to […]
“We’re getting accustomed to the risk, the friction, the discomfort, because the value is so high to the downstream customer,” Renata Caine said. Fintech-forward bank Green Dot (NYSE: GDOT) runs the gamut: powering everything from Apple Cash and Samsung Pay to a range of cash-to-formal-banking onramps for low-to-moderate income consumers. The co powers 80 million […]
Money20/20 has it all. From Matt Gaetz roaming the halls of the Venetian, to a conference attendee who looks uncannily like Formula1 driver Max Verstappen, to really nice Owala bottles from dLocal. There’s also substance amidst the buzz and doppelgängers and merch: Congressman Mike Flood told Financial Technology Association’s Penny Lee that he’d vote to […]
When small business owners talk about funding challenges, the story is often the same: too much paperwork, not enough time, and limited access to the kind of capital that helps them grow. A quiet revolution is reshaping that narrative. Artificial intelligence (AI), once the preserve of big tech, is now powering the next generation of […]
From fintech to foundational models, ex-Square and Nearside founder Thomson Nguyen wants to shape AI’s “innocent Wild West” with operator-first VC. I’d never heard someone frame their personality as as “orthogonal” to others’, let alone frame orthogonality as the unique selling point that makes a quarter-billion-dollar venture firm’s leadership structure work in lockstep, but, lo, […]
As expected, the cold plunge sent my body into shock. Venturing into one of LA Tech Week’s most-talked-about events, Rejuvenation Mansion in glossy Bel Air, I had no intention of subjecting myself to a first-time ice plunge in the midst of a networking-heavy day. But, after 15 minutes in the pop-up sauna, chatting with a […]
Dialogue AI’s oversubscribed, $6 million seed round is proof that investors, researchers, and any industry that would benefit from structured feedback (generated rapidly and at scale) are excited about the possibilities of a live, AI-based conversational interviewer. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, joined by Michael Eisner-founded Tornante Company, Seven Stars, Uncommon Projects, […]