Quick mention that TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 2026 applications are officially open, and if you're a pre-seed to pre-Series A founder or you’ve funded one, we want to hear from you. It's free, we take no equity, and past participants have gone on to raise hundreds of millions (including Dropbox and Cloudflare). You'll pitch live at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco (October 13–15), so there's plenty of time to prep, but do yourself a favor and apply early. We get buried near the May 27 deadline, and the earlier you apply, the better chance you have of catching us before we go full deadline goblin. — CL | | Top News | According to a report in Bloomberg, Anthropic has rebuffed investor offers that would value it at $800 billion or more even as its revenue has reportedly surged to $30 billion from $9 billion just months earlier. The company last raised $30 billion in February at a $350 billion pre-money valuation. TechCrunch has more here. | A jury found Live Nation and its subsidiary Ticketmaster illegally maintained monopoly power in the ticketing market, potentially opening the door to further damages and remedies. TechCrunch has more here. | | |
Fidelity — Your Pitch Isn’t the Only Thing Investors Are Evaluating. | Investors don’t just listen to what you say - they look at how your company operates. Is ownership clear? Do your numbers match your story? Can you answer follow-up questions without digging through spreadsheets? The Fundraise-Ready Startup Kit equips founders with the materials investors expect to see, before pressure is on. Because confidence in the room doesn’t come from slides. It comes from preparation. | | Airwallex Is About to Take on Stripe and the Rest of the Payments Industry — in the Physical World |  | Image Credits: Lionel Ng / Bloomberg / Getty Images |
| By Connie Loizos | Airwallex, the Australian fintech that has spent a decade quietly building global payments infrastructure, is moving into in-person payments. The move deepens its rivalry with Stripe across the payments stack, and enables the startup to directly aim at Square and Adyen on one of the last major battlegrounds in financial technology. | Airwallex is launching a point-of-sale product that it says does something its rivals’ offerings don’t: Allow businesses to accept in-person payments in multiple countries via a single platform, without onboarding local vendors in every market. | “When a business expands into a new market, they typically have to onboard a new local acquirer, navigate fragmented compliance, and manage yet another set of vendor relationships,” CEO and co-founder Jack Zhang told TechCrunch. | In 2019, Stripe offered to acquire Airwallex for $1.2 billion, when Airwallex had just $2 million in revenue. But Zhang decided to keep building. “I even said yes to the deal,” he said, recalling the months-long negotiation. “But what really got me to change my mind is when I actually flew back to Melbourne and went deep on what motivated me to build Airwallex.” | Zhang founded Airwallex in 2015 out of frustration with the friction and expense of moving money internationally, but took a different approach than most fintech: He spent years assembling its own underlying payment rails. | Today, Airwallex, valued at $8 billion by its investors, claims it generates annualized revenue of about $1.3 billion, and that the number is growing by roughly 85% every year. The startup says it now serves more than 46,000 U.S. businesses and processes $100 billion in annual volume. | The startup currently boasts close to 90 regulatory licenses across roughly 50 markets, direct connections to local payment networks in over 120 countries, and the ability to settle transactions in more than 90 currencies. It is the very infrastructure, Zhang says, that Stripe and Square lack in meaningful ways — particularly the local banking licenses that allow funds to be held, converted, and deployed within a given market rather than immediately repatriated. | | | Massive Fundings | Artemis, a six-month-old New York startup that aims to use an AI “brain” to replace rule-based security tools, raised a $70 million Series A round led by Felicis, with additional support from Theory Ventures as well as previous investors First Round Capital and Brightmind. Fortune has more here. | Flock Safety, a nine-year-old Atlanta startup that provides license plate–reading surveillance technology used by law enforcement, is in talks to raise a new funding round of undisclosed size after raising $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation in 2025. Axios has the scoop here. | nEye, a six-year-old startup based in Santa Clara, CA, that develops optical switching chips that connect servers in data centers for AI workloads, raised an $80 million Series C round led by Sutter Hill Ventures, with CapitalG, M12, and Socratic Partners also participating. The company has raised a total of $152 million. More here. | Terremoto Biosciences, a five-year-old South San Francisco startup that develops small molecule drugs that selectively target AKT1 to treat cancer and rare diseases, raised a $108 million Series C round. Investors included RA Capital Management, Deep Track Capital, Osage University Partners, and BeOne Medicines as well as previous investors OrbiMed, Third Rock Ventures, Novo Holdings, and Cormorant. More here. | Turion Space, a five-year-old startup based in Irvine, CA, that builds maneuverable satellites and software to track and monitor objects in orbit, raised a $75+ million Series B round led by Washington Harbour Partners, with Aurelia Foundry, Forward Deployed VC, FoundersX, Center15 Capital, Magnetar Capital, HOF Capital, and Industrious Ventures also taking part. Space News has more here. | Wayve, an eight-year-old UK startup that uses end-to-end neural networks trained on sensor data rather than maps or fixed hardware to power autonomous driving systems, raised a $60 million Series D extension. Investors included AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm. The company has raised a total of approximately $2.8 billion. TechCrunch has more here. | | Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings | Agriodor, a seven-year-old startup based in Rennes, France, that develops insect-repelling and attracting compounds to control crop pests without chemical pesticides, raised a $17.7 million Series A round. Crédit Mutuel Impact was the deal lead. The company has raised a total of approximately $27.1 million. The Next Web has more here. | Auctor, a one-year-old New York startup that records project discussions and generates implementation documents to manage enterprise software deployments, raised a $20 million Series A round led by Sequoia Capital, with M12, HubSpot Ventures, Workday Ventures, OneStream, Y Combinator, and Tercera also digging in. Tech Funding News has more here. | Donecle, an 11-year-old company based in Toulouse, France, that uses autonomous drones and AI to automate aircraft inspections, raised an $11.8 million round co-led by IRDI Capital Investissement and SWEN Capital Partners, with GSO Innovation and ARIS Occitanie also opting in. EU-Startups has more here. | Gizmo, a five-year-old London startup that turns notes and content into personalized study materials like flashcards and quizzes, raised a $22 million Series A round led by Shine Capital, with Ada Ventures, Seek Investments, GSV, and NFX also engaging. Tech.eu has more here. | Hilbert, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that connects data across teams and uses AI agents to analyze user behavior and recommend actions to drive growth, raised a $28 million Series A round. Andreessen Horowitz was the deal lead. More here. | Hyfix, a two-year-old startup based in Santa Clara, CA, that develops integrated chips that combine flight control, navigation, communications, and computing for drones, raised a $15 million seed round led by Craft Ventures, with Catapult Ventures, Multicoin Capital, Finality Capital, and Sky Dayton also chiming in. Dronelife has more here. | Keebler Health, a three-year-old startup based in Durham, NC, that uses LLMs to process unstructured clinical data and identify risk adjustment opportunities, raised a $16 million Series A round led by Flare Capital Partners, with Sands Capital and Aviano Ventures, Everywhere Ventures, Freestyle Capital, Hustle Fund, MBX Capital, New Stack Ventures, Tau Ventures, Tweener Fund, and Underdog Labs also piling on. The company has raised a total of $23 million. MobiHealthNews has more here. | Lightcast, a seven-year-old startup based in Cambridge, UK, that analyzes how individual cells function to support drug discovery and development, raised a $27 million round led by ARCH Venture Partners, with M Ventures, Illumina Ventures, +ND Capital, Longwall Ventures, and OMX Ventures also investing. The company has raised a total of approximately $78 million. More here. | NanoTech Materials, a seven-year-old Houston startup that develops coatings that reduce heat transfer and improve fire resistance in buildings and infrastructure, raised a $29.4 million Series A round led by HPI Real Estate & Investments, with Goose Capital and Milliken & Co. also pitching in. The company has raised a total of $34.4 million. More here. | Onto Health, a two-year-old Chicago startup that provides fertility care and longevity services using AI-driven diagnostics and treatment planning, raised a $20 million Series A round. Investors included Artis and Humania. More here. | Parasail, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that routes AI inference workloads across distributed data centers to lower compute costs, raised a $32 million Series A round co-led by Touring Capital and Kindred Ventures, with Samsung Next, Flume Ventures, and Banyan Ventures also contributing. TechCrunch has more here. | Paxos Labs, a 14-year-old New York company that provides software for companies to issue stablecoins and enable lending and borrowing in decentralized finance, raised a $12 million round led by Blockchain Capital, with Robot Ventures, Maelstrom, and Uniswap also anteing up. Fortune has more here. | Ph |
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