Why this VC thinks 2026 will be ‘the year of the consumer’
AI adoption in enterprise is stalling as companies don’t know where to start. Vanessa Larco of Premise VC thinks 2026 will be the year of the consumer.
Startups
Former Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla’s startup triples to $100M valuation
Spangle has raised $15 million in a Series A round to expand its AI-generated shopping experiences.
Yes, LinkedIn banned AI agent startup Artisan, but now it’s back
Several viral posts noticed that Artisan was banned. But the CEO tells us it wasn’t for the reasons many thought.
Shopify competitor Swap raises $100M six months after raising $40M
VC firms DST Global and Iconiq are piling into e-commerce startup Swap Commerce, which is going up against Shopify.
Where VCs think AI startups can win, even with OpenAI in the game
Vanessa Larco, partner at Premise and former partner at NEA, thinks 2026 will finally be the year of consumer AI. Larco, who’s been investing in consumer and prosumer for years, thinks we’re about to see a shift in…
How Quilt solved the heat pump’s biggest challenge
Quilt’s heat pumps are built containing a suite of sensors, which have delivered mountains of data that allow its engineers to wring added performance out of its systems.
Intel spinout Articul8 raises more than half of $70M round at $500M valuation
Articul8’s valuation for its current funding round marks a roughly fivefold increase since its Series A.
McKinsey and General Catalyst execs say the era of ‘learn once, work forever’ is over
Calacanis, General Catalyst’s Taneja, and McKinsey’s Sternfels discussed how AI is reshaping technology and the labor force.
The most bizarre tech announced so far at CES 2026
From an AI panda pet to an anime girl hologram for your desk, here are the wildest products at CES 2026.
LMArena lands $1.7B valuation four months after launching its product
LMArena, which started as a UC Berkeley research project, has raised about $250 million total and become a unicorn in about seven months.