Latest news with #QualcommVentures
TechCrunch
28-05-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Context gets $11M to build an AI-powered office suite
Context, a startup building an AI-powered office suite, on Wednesday announced that it raised $11 million in a seed round led by Lux Capital with participation from Qualcomm Ventures and General Catalyst. The round, which brings the company's total raised to around $15.75 million, values Context at $70 million. Founder Joseph Semrai, a Thiel Fellow, started working on Context in 2024 after he realized that current digital office suites are not well suited to take advantage of AI models. '[W]e have a bunch of disparate applications that aren't necessarily built keeping the power of [AI models] in mind,' Semrai told TechCrunch in a phone interview. 'We want to take advantage of the fact that [models] can understand large context windows and use multiple applications at the same time to get the best result.' Over the past few years, many startups in the productivity and browsing space have made user interface changes to adopt a chat-forward experience, largely thanks to the rise of AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT. Semrai thinks that Context, which is similarly chat-focused, can be a powerful tool for workers using an office suite, similar to how Cursor has become a useful app for programmers. Context founder Joseph Semrai Image Credits: Context Office suite makers like Google and Microsoft have infused AI into their applications. Canva, which has been in the creative space historically, is also designing products that suit all kinds of office work with AI at the center. Notion, meanwhile, is building an enterprise workplace with an AI search and research mode. Many of these products offer connectors to third-party applications. But Semrai said that while connecting to sources and retrieving data is becoming commoditized, new-age tools don't always deliver capabilities that help with analysis. That, he said, is where Context comes in — it's designed to make it easier for users to reason over the data they fetch from various sources and make decisions based on that. Context has a simple interface with a chat box in the center. You can ask the AI tool to perform research based on your documents, integrations, and web knowledge. You can then ask it to convert all this to a document, spreadsheet, or presentation, while continuing to interact with it to generate different artifacts. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW Context also offers a Python interpreter to let you run code. The goal isn't necessarily replacing a fully-featured office suite like Microsoft 365. Rather, Context is going after a market not well-served by the current crop of tools. For example, unlike many AI-powered data analysis products, Context will soon be able to work offline, Semrai said, enabling simple analysis and document drafting based on existing data and documents via Context's desktop app. Users can try out Context for free with 50 credits, one workspace, and 10 team members. Alternatively, they can pay $20 per month to get 2,000 credits with no limits on workspaces and team members.
Time of India
15-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Deeptech startups snagged $324 million in first four months of the year
ETtech Live Events The R&D-focused and innovation-anchored deeptech ecosystem, contrary to perception, is lately drawing more money—and deals. Venture Intelligence data showed investments in deeptech doubled in the first four months of 2025 to $324 million across 35 deals, compared with $156 million in the same period last year that saw 21 such of the biggest deeptech deals in 2025 included a $90 million investment in Netradyne , an AI-based fleet management platform, by Qualcomm Ventures, Point72 Ventures and others; $54 million in SpotDraft, an AI-based contract management firm, from Trident Capital and others; $35 million investment in predictive maintenance service platform Infinite Uptime by Tiger Global, GSR Ventures and $21 million in Tonbo Imaging, which offers imaging and sensor systems to military, by Florintree and broadly refers to technology-based innovation that hinges on advanced scientific and engineering research, which require significant expertise, capital and union minister Piyush Goyal 's comment on the lack of a deeptech ecosystem certainly triggered the conversation, deeptech ecosystem has been seeing increasing interest for a while Natarajan, managing partner, Mela Ventures, said that unlike a few years ago, deeptech is seeing more commercial use cases making the sector Subramaniam, managing partner, Yali Capital, which has Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan as an advisor, said that there are more companies that are being created in deeptech now than before. This is formed by people from premier institutions and executives from multinational companies, who are choosing to stay back in the Shankar, co-founder, Java Capital, a deeptech fund, said that recent times have seen several government initiatives that attempt to grow the deeptech ecosystem in the country such as Rs 10,000 crore fund of funds to invest in deeptech and other initiatives that support semiconductors, space, and these are resulting in increased competition for deeptech deals in India.A partner from a deeptech fund told ET that they are now competing with larger players in early stage deeptech deals and are closing more as well. 'This year alone we have closed 4-5 deals at a higher valuation. We used to do 7-8 per year,' the investor Capital's Shankar said that initial investment for deeptech companies is now upwards of $4-5 million now, compared to $2-3 million a couple of years is also gaining momentum. For instance, Mela Ventures has invested along with Blume in Optimized ElectroTech, a defence technology Natarajan said that, unlike consumer technology startups, the model of investment for deeptech needs to be different as it takes a longer time to commercialise. 'If it is a 3–5-year horizon for consumer technology startups, in deeptech it requires 8-10 years. They also need intense involvement, hand-holding and mentoring to help them through the process,' he addition, one of the key challenges is also market creation. Natarajan explained that in many cases these startups are catering to the market that either does not exist or require firms to adopt a newer way. While funds like them are helping companies to reach the commercialisation stage, there is a need for intervention to drive market adoption. 'Like how the government offered subsidies for EVs (electric vehicles) there must be some incentives for customers to adopt deeptech solutions,' he added.
Bloomberg
16-04-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
US Bitcoin Mining Firm Raises Funds With Chinese Rivals Stuck
A US maker of Bitcoin mining computers said it has closed a $153 million funding round as its Chinese competitors face increasing scrutiny and tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. The California-based company, Auradine, is raising the money from several investors, including Samsung Catalyst Fund, Qualcomm Ventures and MARA Holdings, which is the largest US-listed Bitcoin mining company by market capitalization.
