OpenAI pushed back on reports it missed internal growth targets, calling them “prime clickbait” and insisting its consumer and enterprise businesses are “firing on all cylinders.” Bloomberg has more here.

By Dominic-Madori Davis & Sean O'Kane

When Chris Gray sold his Shark Tank-backed scholarship search startup Scholly to Sallie Mae in 2023, he thought he had it all. Now he’s suing the student loan giant for wrongful termination and alleging that it’s selling the data his app collected, which includes personal info on minors, without properly informing users. 

Gray co-founded the company a decade prior with the hope of helping students more easily find college scholarships that were going untapped. Within two years, he nabbed sharks Daymond John and Lori Greiner as investors after an appearance on the show. 

With the acquisition, Gray became one of the few Black venture-backed fintech founders to exit their company, despite receiving some blowback that he was “selling out.” “I think being one of the first Black tech companies to get acquired by a bank, that’s really a big achievement,” he said at the time. 

He took a vice president role at Sallie Mae and expected to settle in nicely at his new gig, while helping scale Scholly and making it free to use, he said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch.

What happened next is detailed in Gray’s lawsuit against Sallie Mae in Delaware Superior Court, and in a whistleblower complaint he submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, both of which he filed earlier this month. 

He alleges Sallie Mae laid off his employees, including his co-founders, and then went back on promises that it wouldn’t sell the users’ data, according to a TechCrunch review of both filings. He claims the company fired him a year after the acquisition when he tried to raise concerns about data privacy issues. Gray is seeking backpay and punitive damages in the suit, plus legal costs. 

Coultreon Biopharma, a one-year-old Belgian startup that develops therapies targeting inflammatory pathways in immunology and metabolic diseases, including a selective SIK3 inhibitor for autoimmune conditions, raised a $125 million Series A round co-led by Sofinnova Investments, Forbion, and Novo Holdings, with additional support from Galapagos, Regeneron Ventures, Balyasny Asset Management, Luma Group, Samsara BioCapital, Longwood Fund, and Finchley Healthcare Ventures. More here.

Liquid Instruments, a 12-year-old San Diego company that combines reconfigurable test hardware and software to replace multiple lab instruments and enable programmable measurement and signal processing for engineering and research, raised a $50 million Series C round co-led by Keysight Technologies and the Australian Government’s National Reconstruction Fund Corporation. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Nervonik, a six-year-old Los Angeles startup that develops implantable peripheral nerve stimulation devices that deliver electrical signals and use real-time sensing to personalize chronic pain treatment, raised a $52.5 million Series B round led by Amzak Health, with Elevage Medical Technologies, U.S. Venture Partners, Lumira Ventures, Foothill Ventures, and Shangbay Capital also investing. More here.

Parallel Web Systems, a three-year-old Palo Alto startup that provides infrastructure for AI agents to search the web, raised a $100 million Series B round at a $2 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by Sequoia Capital, with previous investors Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, and Khosla Ventures also participating. The company has raised a total of $230 million. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Sniffies, an eight-year-old Seattle startup that operates a location-based social app for gay men to connect with nearby users, received a $100 million investment from Match Group. TechCrunch has more here.

True Anomaly, a four-year-old startup based in Centennial, CO, that builds space interceptors and autonomous orbital systems, raised a $650 million round at a $2.2 billion post-money valuation. The deal was co-led by Eclipse and Riot Ventures. The company has raised a total of $1 billion. CNBC has more here.

vVardis, a seven-year-old startup based in Zug, Switzerland, that develops non-invasive treatments for early tooth decay, raised an undisclosed amount at a $1+ billion valuation from Apollo Global Management, with co-founders and co-CEOs Goly and Haley Abivardi retaining approximately a 70% ownership stake in the company. Bloomberg has more here.

Wiliot, a nine-year-old San Diego and Israeli startup that processes data from battery-free Bluetooth sensors to track product location and condition in real-time and automate supply chain workflows, raised a $75 million round. Avery Dennison provided the funding. More here.

Clarasight, a five-year-old New York startup that consolidates travel, expense, and payment data into a unified model to automate analysis, policy enforcement, and spend management for enterprises, raised an $11.5 million Series A round led by AlleyCorp, with Rackhouse Venture Capital, Clocktower Ventures, Pulse Fund, Thayer Ventures, Future Back Ventures, Vestigo Ventures, and XYZ Venture Capital also participating. More here.

Fathom Therapeutics, a three-year-old New York startup that designs small molecule drugs by simulating protein behavior inside cells using physics-based models and AI, raised a $47 million Series A round led by Sutter Hill Ventures, with Chemistry, Alexandria Venture Investments, and Empire State Development's NY Ventures also contributing. More here.

Patronus, a five-year-old Berlin startup that provides a digital smartwatch and companion app, enabling elderly users to call for immediate assistance 24/7, raised a $12.9 million round led by 3TS Capital Partners, with Grazia Equity as well as previous investors Singular, Burda Principal Investments, Adjacent, NAP, and UVC Partners also pitching in. Tech Funding News has more here.

SkyfireAI, a two-year-old startup based in Huntsville, AL, that enables organizations to plan, deploy, and coordinate multiple drones in real time for public safety, defense, and critical infrastructure missions, raised an $11 million seed round led by Mucker Capital, with AI Fund, SaaS Ventures, Halogen, Harvard Business School Alumni Angels, and New York Angels also engaging. More here.

Windmill, a three-year-old New York startup that aggregates data from workplace tools to analyze employee performance, team dynamics, and staffing needs and support workforce decisions, raised a $12 million round led by Inspired Capital, with Primary Venture Partners, Founder Collective, and Oceans Ventures also chipping in. More here.

Zamp, a four-year-old Miami startup that automates sales tax filing, registration, and compliance workflows across jurisdictions using AI agents paired with tax professionals, raised a $17 million round led by Acrew Capital, with Thomson Reuters Ventures also anteing up. AlleyWatch has more here.

Dehaze, a three-year-old Munich startup that uses AI to analyze existing patient data to detect missed diagnoses, flag inappropriate treatments, and predict future health risks, raised a $3.7 million seed round co-led by YZR Capital and DN Capital, with Angel Invest and Zoho also taking part. More here.

Fermeate, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that uses optogenetics to control gene expression with light and increase cell productivity in industrial fermentation processes, raised a $2 million seed round led by Newfund Capital, with SOSV, Ajinomoto Group Ventures, Ki Tua Fund, Heuristic Capital Partners, Momentum Capital, Plug, Play, Tesserakt Ventures, and Ag Startup Engine also piling on. AgFunderNews has more here.

Linexa, a one-year-old Munich startup that decodes industrial control system code to give manufacturers visibility into production lines and enable faster troubleshooting and optimization, raised a $2.3 million pre-seed round. Project A was the deal lead. More here.

Marloo, a two-year-old Auckland startup that automates administrative tasks including notes, forms, emails, and follow-ups for financial advisers around client meetings, raised a $10 million seed round. Blackbird Ventures led the transaction. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Redpine, a two-year-old Stockholm startup that provides an API that lets AI agents access, query, and pay for licensed datasets in real-time, raised an $8 million round led by NordicNinja and including Luminar Ventures and Node.vc. Tech Funding News has more here.

Segura, a two-year-old São Paulo startup that connects insurers and brokers through a platform that manages quotes, policies, renewals, and billing while enabling customer interactions over WhatsApp, raised an $8 million seed round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kaszek, with Big Bets also joining in. Tech Funding News has more here.

Kompas VC, a five-year-old firm with offices in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Tel Aviv, has raised a €160 million ($187.5 million) second fund focused on startups tackling what it calls the "physical world" — decarbonization, manufacturing, supply chains, and critical infrastructure. The firm writes early-stage checks of €3 million to €5 million and has developed a strategy around the view that the U.S., Europe, and China are increasingly diverging economic and political spheres. In practice, that means evaluating not just a startup's technology but whether its home market is large enough to deliver venture returns on its own. Partner Sebastian Peck tells TechCrunch more here.

Retail investors are piling into funds offering exposure to SpaceX ahead of a potential IPO, with one closed-end fund briefly trading at a roughly 3,000% premium to its underlying assets. Bloomberg has more here.

On the first day of the trial between Elon Musk and OpenAI, Musk said that Larry Page’s dismissal of the idea that AI could lead to human extinction helped spur OpenAI’s creation and ended their once-close friendship. TechCrunch has more here.

Speaking of the trial, the judge urged Elon Musk and Sam Altman to stop trading social media barbs, telling them to “control your propensity” to inflame the dispute outside the courtroom. Bloomberg has more here.

Big Tech’s AI spending spree is driving widespread layoffs, with companies like Meta and Microsoft cutting thousands of jobs as they redirect hundreds of billions toward chips and data centers. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

A new study finds roughly a third of websites created since 2022 are AI-generated. “We're witnessing, in my opinion, a major transformation of the digital landscape in a fraction of the time it took to build in the first place,” concluded Jonáš Doležal, an AI researcher at Stanford and co-author of the paper. 404 Media has more here.

Despite internal employee backlash, Google has joined OpenAI and xAI in letting the Pentagon use its AI tools in classified settings, while inserting pro forma language stating the technology isn’t intended for autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Researchers including artificial intelligence OG Alec Radford have built a 13B-parameter “vintage” model trained only on pre-1931 texts, producing a version of 2026 filled with steamships and railroads and even predicting that a second world war is unlikely. The Decoder has more here.

Awkward! Meta is reportedly preparing to unwind its $2.5 billion acquisition of Manus even though early Manus backers like Benchmark have already received their returns. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Ted Lasso is back.

A California man riding a hydrofoil board off Santa Barbara was chased by a shark for roughly 10 minutes, with the predator reportedly tailing him within inches of his feet before he managed to escape.

According to Vanity Fair, “stealth wealth” is over. “Niche riche” is in.

A 72-acre private island in the lagoon surrounding Venice has hit the market for $23 million, complete with a villa, farmhouse, chapel, vineyard, orchards, helipad, and five boats.

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