Latest news with #Crunchbase
Wall Street Journal
7 days ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
There Are No Easy A's in Venture Capital These Days
Venture capitalists are making startups work for their A's. It takes, on average, about 2½ years for a company in the U.S. to reach Series A, according to a Crunchbase analysis of startups with at least $1 million in initial pre-seed or seed funding. Back in 2015, it took about a year and a half. The average timespan dropped slightly last year, but then rose again this year.
Forbes
30-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Can AI Enable A Solopreneur Or Small Team Build A Colossal Company?
Can AI agents help? Lately, there's been a lot of attention on the 'solopreneur,' or one person building a scalable business using digital tools and platforms to conduct business operations. It's even suggested that we may soon see a $1 billion company built and run by a solopreneur. Is this sustainable? Can one person – or a very small team – really do it all, with assistance from an army of AI agents? There are a lot of extremely small, well-funded, and ambitious businesses out there. In the United States alone, there are at least 10,000 companies with fewer than 10 employees that have received substantial investments or venture capital funding in the millions of dollars, according to estimates in Crunchbase. One can, at least in theory, build a fairly large company with current technology and freelancers, according to leading solopreneur proponent Tim Cortinovis. It is possible to build a huge. competitive company with just AI tools and freelancers, he explained in his recent book, Single-Handed Unicorn: How to Solo Build a Billion-Dollar Company, as well as a recent podcast. With the assistance of AI agents, "you can handle everything," he said. The idea of a small but profitable enterprise built around digital technologies has been bubbling up for some time now. Back in 2009, Thomas Friedman was calling it an element of the 'Do-It-Yourself economy,' in which entrepreneurial or corporate types could pluck the online services they need off the internet to launch new products and services. How has this changed over the past decade and a half? Across the industry, especially among entrepreneurs themselves, there is agreement that large-scale solopreneuring is now possible, but with caveats. 'The entrepreneurs of the past needed grit. The entrepreneurs of today need architecture,' said David Brudenell, executive director at Australia's only publicly listed AI company. 'If you can design a business where data generates insight, insight triggers action, and action loops back into performance, all without human friction, then you're no longer constrained by size. You're only constrained by your imagination.' While the idea of a large business run by a solopreneur or very small team is attainable, "it's not for everyone and not in every niche," said Alexandr Korshykov, founder and CEO of DreamX, a Ukrainian UX/UI design and development company. "Today, thanks to AI, automation, and global access to markets, it is possible to build a large-scale company with a small team or even solo. My company works with startups and we see how individuals creating SaaS products, managing e-commerce empires, and launching EdTech platforms - all while keeping team costs minimal." A leader can't afford to step back and put their business on autopilot, however, Korshykov cautioned. "You need to have a clear vision, systematic thinking, process management skills, strong self-management, and a willingness to delegate technical tasks to machines and routine tasks to freelancers or a micro-team." AI – in particular, agentic AI – is taking self-sufficiency to the next level, Cortinovis suggested. It starts with having one managing agent, acting as a supervisor and "the brain of the others. You have subagents on the way down, and you can give the subagents access to client information, client addresses and so on.' And presto! A growing scalable business. But is it sustainable? "AI is undoubtedly removing many of the barriers to scaling a business with limited resources," said John Jackson, a seasoned entrepreneur and founder of Hitprobe, a fraud-protection platform. 'But it's unlikely we're going to see many one-person unicorns.' What is more likely, Jackson continued, 'is that we will start to see very lean businesses with small teams as small as three to five people scaling to levels that would previously have required an entire workforce.' Initially, these are likely to be technology or SaaS companies, "but there are also potentially some huge opportunities for disruption in more traditional sectors, such as audit and compliance, which could see tiny companies competing against large established organizations," Jackson added. Support for the growth of these very lean companies "will be enabled by the smart use of AI tools for everything from customer support and automated marketing platforms to low-code product builders and scalable cloud infrastructure," he said. "The winners will be those that are able to use these tools to give them a competitive edge by enabling them to scale without increasing their workforce, and giving them the ability to act with far more speed and agility than much larger companies." With current technologies – cloud, AI, low-code tools, and other tools – "a single founder can move faster and scale further than ever before,' said Eli Goodman, CEO and co-founder of Datos, a Semrush Company. "But building a billion-dollar business still requires a combination of product-market fit, relentless execution, and a bit of luck. The decisions, relationships, resilience, and so many other human components can't be automated." What's often underestimated is "how many other people, directly or indirectly, contribute to the outcome,' Goodman pointed out. 'You might not have full-time staff, but you've got contractors, advisors, legal, maybe even immigration lawyers, depending on how you've built your team. The myth of doing it completely alone doesn't hold up when you're actually in it.' It's up to human professionals to oversee 'operations, sales, compliance, and product" from a strategic perspective, Goodman added. 'Yes, you can automate execution, but you can't automate judgment.' That's because "AI is not always reliable yet when it comes to high-level analytics, emotional interaction with clients, or handling unpredictable situations," Korshykov explained. "For example, content generation without editing is often superficial or off-target. There are still challenges with fully automating legal processes, financial audits, and strategic consulting. Additionally, data security and privacy issues often become blockers for scaling, especially in regulated industries." You can have all the state-of-the-art digital technology in the world, but nothing can succeed without a human's will to succeed. 'What's most important isn't the tool; it's time management and prioritization,' said Goodman. 'You can outsource tasks, but you can't outsource your ability to discern what actually matters. The founders who succeed are those who know when to delegate and when to dig in. So yes, solo entrepreneurship is more viable than ever, but billion-dollar companies? Those still require a system of people, whether they're on payroll or not.' The difference now – versus a few years ago – "is the convergence of foundational models, agentic frameworks, and cloud-native infrastructure,' said Brudenell. 'We finally have tools that can reason, act, and scale autonomously. The only question is whether we have the vision to build alongside them?'
India.com
13-07-2025
- Business
- India.com
US-6, China-3, India-1...; Mukesh Ambani and Isha Ambani raising India's global status in this list, its related to...
(File) India has emerged as a hub of successful startups over the past decade many of whom have become unicorns– a private firm whose market valuation is $1 billion or more. As per a global list by Crunchbase, the United States has the most unicorn companies at 793, followed by China (284), and India with 88 companies with a valuation of $1 billion or more. The US also dominates the list of top 10 largest unicorns with as many as six companies, followed by China at three, while the solo Indian company to be ranked among the top 10 is Reliance Retail– the retail arm of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries, headed by his daughter, Isha Ambani. Which country has the highest number of unicorns? As per the Crunchbase list, there are 793 unicorns in the US, followed by 284 in China, 88 in India, and 40 each in the United Kingdom and Germany– the largest economy in Europe. Check out the complete list below: USA: 793 China: 284 India: 88 UK: 64 Germany: 40 France: 30 Canada: 30 Singapore: 22 Israel: 22 South Korea: 21 Brazil: 20 Japan: 16 Hong Kong: 12 Australia: 12 Mexico: 10 Ireland: 10 Indonesia: 10 Switzerland: 9 Netherlands: 9 Sweden: 8 Who are the top 10 largest unicorns globally? According to Crunchbase, Elon Musk-led SpaceX is the world's largest unicorn with a market cap of $350 billion. ChatGPT maker OpenAI is ranked second with an mcap of $300 billion, followed by TikTok parent Bytedance at three with a valuation of $220 billion, and China's Antgroup at four ($150 billion mcap). Reliance Retail, which is led by Isha Ambani– the daughter of Asia's richest man, Mukesh Ambani– is the only Indian unicorn among the top 10, coming at number five with a valuation of $100 billion. Here's the complete list: SpaceX: $350 billion OpenAI: $300 billion ByteDance: $220 billion Ant Group: $150 billion Reliance Retail: $100 billion xAI: $70 billion Shein: $66 billion Stripe: $65 billion Databricks: $62 billion Anthropic: $62 billion About Reliance Retail Reliance Retail, India's largest retailer, is run by Isha Ambani, the only daughter of Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani. The retail arm of Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries is a partner brand of major international brands such as Versace, Amiri, Armani, and Balenciaga, bringing reputed international brands, into the Indian market. Under Isha's leadership, Reliance Retail, which has an estimated value of around Rs 8.3 lakh crores, has witnessed exponential growth in a short period of time, opening 3,300 stores across the country in 2023.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Q2 venture funding climbs on AI deals while PE stuck on sidelines
Greetings, Term Sheeters. This is finance reporter Luisa Beltran, subbing for Allie. It's time to take the temperature of the venture and private equity sectors, and we've got some new numbers. VC investing in startups is on the upswing, with venture firms pouring $91 billion into companies during the second quarter, a roughly 11% increase year over year, according to business data and predictive intelligence firm Crunchbase. Second quarter's $91 billion represents a 20% drop from the first quarter when startups raised $114 billion. However, Q1 was the strongest quarter for venture investment since Q2 2022. (First quarter also included OpenAI's $40 billion financing, the largest private round ever.) Nearly half of Q2's $91 billion came from one sector: AI, which kicked in $40 billion. (Meta's $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI in June generated more than one-third of AI sector funding.) Healthcare and biotech came in second with $14.8 billion in funding, while financial services delivered $11.3 billion for third place. 'Global funding has increased year over year for the past three quarters, driven primarily by billion-dollar-plus rounds into AI research labs as well as data and infrastructure providers in the sector,' Crunchbase said in the report. Nearly one-third of all capital in Q2 went to 16 companies—including Anduril Industries' $2.5 billion round, and the separate $2 billion fund rounds for Thinking Machine Labs and Safe Superintelligence. Startup M&A was also active. Q2 saw $50 billion in reported exit value, the second strongest quarter since 2021. The total was down from $71 billion in the first quarter, which included Google's $32 billion buy of Wiz. OpenAI was the most active and largest acquirer of startups in Q2, scooping up four companies, including Jony Ive's io for $6 billion and Windsurf for $3 billion. On the private equity side of things, fundraising among PE firms continues to drag. Global PE funds have collected $223 billion so far in 2025, on pace to fall short of last year's performance, when PE pools accumulated $551 billion for all of 2024, according to research and data firm PitchBook. US funds have raised $149 billion so far in 2025, also below last year's pace, when PE pools collected $333.4 billion. The slowdown in PE fundraising is due to fewer mergers and a decline in IPOs. PE firms have struggled to sell their investments, which means they can't send money back to their investors and this causes their own fundraising to stall. PE firms entered 2025 expecting a strong year, or at least a rebound, in mergers. But volatility due to President Trump's Liberation Day tariffs caused many deals and IPOs to be put on hold in April. While new issues began rebounding in June, M&A remains sluggish. U.S. private equity managers have more than $1 trillion in dry powder, or uninvested, committed capital, according to Kyle Walters, private equity research analyst at PitchBook. Many PE firms are '[sitting] on the sidelines, choosing not to sell most of their assets in what they deem to be an unfavorable exit market,' Walters said. (The PE dry powder total figure is as of Sept. 30, 2024, and has likely dropped since then, Walters said. Venture firms had $701.2 billion in uninvested capital, he said.) So far in 2025, PE funds have clinched $339.8 billion in total exit value, which is on pace to surpass last year's total of $384.2 billion. A handful of large deals, including natural gas exporter Venture Global's $58.7 billion IPO and WorldPay's $24.3 billion sale to Global Payments, have helped boost exit value this year. 'We need to see a strong pick-up in terms of exit count if we want to see the fundraising slowdown come to an end. And given that most exit activity is in a wait-and-see mode, you likely won't see fundraising activity pick back up until 2026,' Walters said. See you Wednesday, Luisa BeltranX: @LuisaRBeltranEmail: a deal for the Term Sheet newsletter here. Sara Braun curated the deals section of today's newsletter. Subscribe here. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
Mint
02-07-2025
- Business
- Mint
Unicorn startup that makes ‘superhuman' robots plots path to IPO
The robots are coming, but their arrival might be welcome if artificial-intelligence unicorn startup Dexterity has its way. California-based Dexterity programs what it describes as 'superhumanoids": large industrial robots built to do physically demanding and dangerous tasks. The aim, says founder and chief executive Samir Menon, isn't to replace humans but to amplify them. 'You can try to do robotics in a way that you're replacing people or you can try to do it in a way that you're supercharging people," the 40-year-old said in a recent interview on the sidelines of the ATxSummit in Singapore. In the AI gold rush of the past years, the startup founded by Menon in 2017 has raked in millions in investment. At a $1.65 billion valuation, it's secured 'unicorn" status. Dexterity's robots, designed to operate at temperatures and altitudes unfriendly to humans, have attracted partnerships with U.S. delivery giant FedEx and Japan's Sumitomo Corp. Dexterity's robots are manufactured via partnerships with industrial veterans like Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries, which do the manufacturing. Its flagship offering, the Mech, is a roving, two-armed robot that can perform heavy lifting. 'They're kind of inspired by 'Transformers' and 'Pacific Rim'," Menon said, in a nod to the Hollywood blockbusters starring giant robots. Dexterity is currently fundraising and eventually wants to go public in the U.S. Humanoid companies have been pulling in major investments in recent years. According to Crunchbase, six robotics companies became new unicorns last year. This year, more have joined the ranks, including The Bot Co., a robotics company focused on household chores which Crunchbase said was valued at $2 billion though it still hasn't released a product. With profitability for Dexterity still a few years away, Menon says he is prioritizing growth for now. Getting to the IPO stage rests on stable revenue streams and scaling the company, he said. Menon's upbeat on that front, seeing a not-too-distant future where industrial robots are commonplace in places like supermarkets and airports. Market analysts agree. A recent report by Morgan Stanley projects that by 2050, the humanoids market will top $5 trillion. Over 1 billion humanoids could be in use by then, primarily in commercial and industrial settings, it said. The parcel industry, retail and e-commerce sectors are already on the verge of mass adoption, said Menon, predicting take-up by large enterprises that will be 'a great foundational step for physical AI." That doesn't necessarily have to be bad news for the labor market, he said. If robotics firms want to be non-disruptive, they will focus on making robots that are superhuman in size, strength, and can work in extreme heat and cold, said Menon, who holds a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University. 'You can build [robots] in a way that you're copying the human shape, in which case it's designed to replace a human," he said. 'It's a strategic decision. We took the decision to do robotics in a way that supercharges people." Robots can help fill market gaps, the tech CEO argues. In many developed societies, declining birthrates and longer lifespans mean shrinking workforces need to support growing retiree populations. Bain & Company estimates that by 2030, the global shortage of manufacturing workers could reach nearly 8 million, boosting the need for robots to sustain economic growth. While humanoids won't replace swaths of workers overnight, they will take a meaningful share of physical jobs as tech advances and costs fall, the consulting firm said in a report. For Menon, worker deficits mean there is a way to introduce robots in markets like the U.S., Japan and Europe 'in a non-disruptive manner." Big improvements in standards of living in certain developed markets help too, he added. 'A lot of people don't really want to do extremely low-paying, very stressful tasks."
