OpenAI just closed a $6.6 billion secondary at a $500 billion valuation, making it the world’s most valuable private company, but the fact that it did not sell the $10.3 billion in stock that was authorized suggests that employees still see a lot of upside. CNBC has more here.

Open source AI adoption has multiplied in the last 18 months. Don't miss the wave. 

Check this list of 50+ under-the-radar OS startups that are dominating GitHub, HuggingFace, and traffic charts. Funding, founder, and traction breakdown inside. 

By Connie Loizos

While AI coding startups like Cursor close brow-raising rounds on barely three years of existence, Replit’s path to a $3 billion valuation has been anything but swift. For CEO Amjad Masad, who’s been building tools to democratize programming since 2009, it’s a story of muscling through multiple failed business models, years stuck at the same revenue plateau, and a reckoning last year that forced him to cut half his staff.

That makes what happened next more remarkable. Earlier this month, the Bay Area-based company closed a $250 million funding round led by Prysm Capital, nearly tripling its valuation from 2023. The raise came on the heels of never-before-seen revenue growth for the company — from just $2.8 million last year to $150 million in annualized revenue in less than a year. But for Masad, this moment represents something more than finally realizing financial traction. It’s the culmination of a 16-year obsession.

“Our mission has always been the same,” Masad told me on the newest episode of TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC Download podcast. “Initially, we said we want to make programming more accessible, and then we sort of upped the ante a little bit. We said we’re going to create a billion programmers.”

It’s purposely audacious – what a headline! – but it’s also something that Masad, a Palestinian-Jordanian, has been working toward for his entire career. As he tells it, he came to the United States in 2012 after his open-source coding project began gaining attention – including catching the eye of the New York Times. But he’d been making programming more accessible since building his first online coding experience back in 2009, with his work as an early engineer at the startup Codecademy kicking off what became the massively online open courses (MOOC) revolution. (His code also powered the in-browser tutorials of Udacity, a Codecademy rival that launched in 2012, one year after Codecademy was founded.)

Still, turning that vision into a viable business of his own proved a lot harder than he anticipated. Replit was founded in 2016, and for eight long years, the company struggled to find product-market fit. “We had reached that $2.83 million [in annual recurring revenue] back in ’21, maybe,” Masad recalled. “And so this is how painful it’s been. We’ve been hovering around the same revenue for like four or five years.”

Cartography Biosciences, a five-year-old South San Francisco startup that develops antibody drugs to treat colorectal cancer, raised a $67 million Series B round led by Pfizer Ventures, with LG Corp, Amgen Ventures, Finchley H.V., Global BioAccess Fund, Lotte Holdings CVC, Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, Wing Venture Capital, Catalio Capital Management, AME Cloud Ventures, ARTIS Ventures, and Gaingels also piling on. BioPharma Dive has more here.

Nscale, a one-year-old London startup that builds data centers to power AI, raised a $433 million pre-Series C SAFE round from a syndicate that included Nvidia, Nokia, Dell, and Blue Owl just days after closing a $1.1 billion round. The company has raised a total of $1.7+ billion. Tech.eu has more here.

Waat, an eight-year-old Paris startup that deploys and operates EV chargepoints across France, raised a $117.2 million round co-led by DWS Group and Bpifrance, with previous investor RAISE Impact also anteing up. EV Infrastructure News has more here.

Cypher Games, a three-year-old Istanbul startup that develops casual mobile puzzle and luck-based games, raised a $30 million Series A round co-led by The Raine Group and Play Ventures, with MIT, E2VC, and VC Big Bets also participating. More here.

Dash0, a two-year-old New York startup that develops AI-native software to help companies monitor and resolve system issues, raised a $35 million Series A round co-led by Accel and Cherry Ventures, with previous investor DIG Ventures also reupping. Tech Funding News has more here.

Filament, a two-year-old New York startup that is building professional collaboration software, raised a $10.7 million seed round. Investors included EQT Ventures, Flybridge Capital, Oceans Ventures, Mozilla Ventures, and Betaworks. More here.

Lupa, a two-year-old London startup that develops AI software for veterinary clinics, raised a $20 million Series A round led by Singular, with previous investor firstminute capital also contributing. More here.

Moonlake AI, a San Francisco startup founded this year that develops AI models for creating real-time interactive simulations and games, raised a $28 million seed round. Investors included AIX Ventures, Threshold, Nvidia Ventures, Jeff Dean, and Naval Ravikant. Forbes has more here.

Oneleet, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that helps companies streamline security compliance with integrated tools like penetration testing, code scanning, and attack surface management, raised a $33 million Series A round. Dawn Capital was the deal lead, with Y Combinator, Dropbox cofounder Arash Ferdowsi, and famed operator Frank Slootman also pitching in. The company has raised a total of $35 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Outsmart, a two-year-old New York startup that aims to make higher education more affordable and aligned with workforce needs, raised a $25 million Series A round co-led by DST Global Partners and Forerunner, with Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed, Abstract, Reach, and Latitud also joining in. The company has raised a total of $38 million. More here.

Electroflow, a two-year-old startup based in San Bruno, CA, that claims it has developed a process to make lithium-iron-phosphate battery material more cheaply than Chinese producers, raised a $10 million seed round co-led by Union Square Ventures and Voyager, with Fifty Years and Harpoon Ventures also taking part. TechCrunch has more here.

Mesta, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that provides a hybrid fiat and stablecoin payments network for cross-border transactions, raised a $5.5 million seed round led by Village Global, with Circle Ventures, Paxos, and WTI as well as previous investors Garuda Ventures, Canonical Crypto, Everywhere Ventures, and Inventum Ventures also investing. More here.

Optimuse, a four-year-old Vienna startup that uses AI to cut costs and emissions in building design, raised a $4.7 million seed round co-led by seed + speed Ventures and Blum Ventures, with previous investors Matterwave Ventures and Gründungsfonds also chipping in. Tech.eu has more here.

Praxipal, a two-year-old Berlin startup that automates patient communication for healthcare practices with its AI receptionist, raised a $6.7 million seed round led by HV Capital, with Nebular, Anamcara Capital, HPI Ventures, and Angel Invest also stepping up. Cointurk Finance has more here.

viboo, a Zurich startup that develops AI-driven building management systems to cut energy use and costs, raised a $3.9 million seed round. Realyze Ventures was the lead investor, with additional support from Zürcher Kantonalbank as well as previous investors HTGF and Swisscom. EU-Startups has more here.

How does your firm compare? 
 
Private equity deal value reached $227.7B in the first half of 2025—up 10.7% YoY—while networks expanded 29%. Affinity’s 2025 Benchmark Report breaks down these shifts and highlights the four behaviors that set top firms apart. See how your firm compares and uncover insights to refine your strategy in today’s competitive market. 
 
Download the report today

55North, a new Copenhagen VC firm that invests in quantum startups in computing, sensing, communications, and enabling tech, completed a €134 million first close on its first fund, which is targeted at €300 million. Anchor backers include EIFO and Novo Holdings. Global Corporate Venturing has more here.

Yahoo is close to unloading AOL to Milan-based Bending Spoons for about $1.4 billion, a deal that would hand the Italian unicorn another aging internet brand as it preps for a likely U.S. IPO. Reuters has more here.

According to Bloomberg, DeepL, the German translation startup last valued at $2 billion, is weighing a U.S. IPO as soon as next year at a possible $5 billion valuation. PYMNTS has more here.

Anthropic just poached former Stripe CTO Rahul Patil as its new tech chief, a move that reshuffles co-founder Sam McCandlish into chief architect and underscores how the company is bulking up its infrastructure game as OpenAI and Meta pour hundreds of billions into compute. TechCrunch has more here.

Elon Musk just crossed the $500 billion mark in net worth after Tesla shares jumped nearly 4% this week, cementing his lead as the world’s richest person and fueling talk that he could be the first to reach a trillion. Forbes has more here.

Andreessen Horowitz’s first AI Spending Report shows startups are shelling out most for OpenAI and Anthropic, with the broader takeaway that companies are still testing a crowded field of copilots before true agentic tools take over. TechCrunch has more here.

The Wall Street Journal digs into the decline of L.A.’s entertainment economy, pointing out that the number of people employed by the motion picture industry in Los Angeles County fell by almost 30% from 2022 to 2024. More here.

Asahi, Japan’s biggest brewer, was forced to halt production across its factories after a cyberattack knocked out ordering and shipping systems, a reminder of how fragile even the most old-school industries are in the face of digital sabotage. TechCrunch has more here.

Robots are learning to make human babies. Twenty have already been born, reports The Washington Post.

Startups could face frozen deal flow, stalled visas, and delayed regulatory approvals if the U.S. government shutdown drags on. TechCrunch has more here.

College students at multiple U.S. campuses are handing their phones to a “valet” for an hour as part of a pledge to unplug that’s catching on with Gen Z. The New York Times has more here.

Rolling Stone reviews Taylor Swift’s latest album, which comes out tomorrow (Oct. 3rd).

How to live to 117.

Samsung claims that its latest 115” (!) 4K TV uses AI to enhance its picture.

Louis Vuitton chocolate.

Please send all of your hot gossip to [email protected] or [email protected].

To book ads directly, contact us at [email protected].