Sierra raises $950M as the race to own enterprise AI gets serious
The raise gives Sierra more than $1 billion to work with — capital the company says it will use to become the “global standard” for AI-powered customer experiences.
Nicolas Sauvage is betting on the boring parts of AI
The portfolio he has assembled since 2019 is dotted with technologies that have become more widely interesting to VCs over the last year:
We’ll take it: a TikToker rallies pledges to buy Spirit Airlines after its abrupt weekend collapse
Within hours he’d thrown up a website — a janky, one-hour job, by his own admission — and by Sunday, 36,000 “founding patrons” had pledged nearly $23 million, crashing his servers in the process.
Uber wants to turn its millions of drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies
Praveen Neppalli Naga, Uber’s chief technology officer, revealed the plan in an interview at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event in San Francisco on Thursday night, describing it as a natural extension of a nascent program the company…
Replit’s Amjad Masad on the Cursor deal, fighting Apple, and why he’d rather not sell
At TechCrunch’s sold-out StrictlyVC event in San Francisco on Thursday night, we covered a lot of ground in a short time, beginning with the question everyone in the industry is asking right now: in a…
At his OpenAI trial, Musk relitigates an old friendship
It’s a story Musk has told before — in interviews and to author Walter Isaacson for his bestselling biography of Musk — but Tuesday was the first time he said it under oath.
Drizzle on top: a new high-end dog food brand is coming for the 1%
Golden Child is launching with two “five-star” products: a fresh frozen meal system and, more intriguingly, a “drizzle.” It has also raised $37 million in funding.
The Stanford freshmen who want to rule the world . . . will probably read this book and try even harder
Can a book like this actually change anything? Or does the spotlight, as it always seems to, send more students racing to the place?
Meta’s loss is Thinking Machines’ gain
Meta has been poaching talent from Thinking Machines Lab. But it’s a two-way street.
LinkedIn’s CEO is moving on; please hold your tearful video tributes
Ryan Roslansky has stepped down as LinkedIn’s CEO after six years running the world’s largest professional network. Dan Shapero, the company’s COO, takes over immediately.