Latest news with #RadicalVentures
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Unblocked raises $20M for AI to help devs understand codebases
Every developer has their own unique style of writing code. Despite companies establishing best practices and drawing up documentation, it can be hard for developers to understand someone else's codebase. To solve this problem, Dennis Pilarinos built a tool called Unblocked — an AI-powered assistant that answers contextual questions about lines of code. Pilarinos is a seasoned professional at building developer tools. He has worked as a director at Microsoft and Amazon, working on Azure and Amazon Web Services. Later, Pilarinos built a continuous integration platform for remote teams called Buddybuild, which was acquired by Apple in 2018, and he also worked at Apple for around two years on the Xcode Cloud platform. "Developers trying to get the information they want is quite painful and time-consuming," Pilarinos told TechCrunch in a phone interview. "We wanted to use all the data, code, and tribal knowledge of conversations to present developers with easy answers." Pilarinos added that with more AI programming tools seeping into developers' workflows, the aforementioned problems are going to get worse. Image Credits: Unblocked Unblocked integrates with development environments and apps like Slack, Jira, Confluence, Google Drive, and Notion. The tool gathers intelligence about a company's codebase and helps answer questions such as "Where do we define user metrics in our system?" Developers can also use the platform to search for the person who made changes to a particular module and quickly gain insights from them. Unblocked offers admin controls that can be easily adopted by a company's system admin, and the startup is working on integrating with platforms like Cursor and Lovable to improve code explainability. Beyond this, Unblocked is developing tools that actively help developers with projects rather than simply answer questions. One, Autonomous CI triage, supports developers in testing code through different scenarios. Unblocked counts companies such as Drata, AppDirect, Big Cartel, and TravelPerk as customers. Pilarinos claims that engineers at Drata were able to save 1-2 hours per week using Unblocked's platform. Image Credits: Unblocked Unblocked said Tuesday it has raised $20 million in Series A funding from B Capital and Radical Ventures. The round takes the company's total capital raised to $30 million from investors including Amplify Partners, First Round Capital, and XYZ Capital. Rob Toews, a partner at Radical Ventures, said that as AI-generated code proliferates, products like Unlocked will become extremely valuable.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI assistant startup Yutori raises $15m in seed funding
Yutori, a US-based AI assistant startup founded by two former Meta executives, has raised $15m in seed funding. The funding round was led by Radical Ventures and saw participation from Felicis and more than a dozen angel investors, including Fei-Fei Li and Jeff Dean. Investors namely Elad Gil, Sarah Guo from Conviction, and Sandhya Venkatachalam from Axiom also took part. Yutori is co-founded by AI researchers Abhishek Das, Devi Parikh, and Dhruv Batra. Devi Parikh was previously a senior director at Meta, where she led research in multimodal generative AI, contributing to projects like Llama 3, Make-A-Scene, Make-A-Video, and Emu. Dhruv Batra also worked as a senior director at Meta, focusing on research related to embodied agents, which supported the multimodal assistant in the Ray-Ban Meta glasses and demos from Boston Dynamics through Meta's FAIR division. Das' PhD thesis, Building Agents that can See, Talk, and Act, was a finalist for the AAAI/ACM SIGAI doctoral dissertation award in 2020. The startup focuses on developing personal AI assistants to automate digital tasks. It uses an agent-first approach for building such personal AI assistants to ensure accuracy and reliability across the web. The funds will be utilised to expedite the development of Yutori's agent-first approach, expand its engineering and design teams, and prepare for the product launch. Yutori said it plans to offer early adopters the opportunity to participate in a closed beta version of its first product offerings later in 2025. Yutori co-CEO and co-founder Devi Parikh said: 'Productivity isn't about cramming more into your day — it's about reclaiming your attention for what truly matters, and amplifying the outcomes of the time you give something. 'Yutori's mission is to build the best AI assistants to make space for the meaningful things in life. The company refines foundation models after training to enhance their autonomy, using a multi-agent system capable of handling multiple tasks and sub-tasks in parallel for high efficiency. Yutori chief scientist and co-founder Dhruv Batra said: 'What differentiates chatbots from agents is an external environment. The web is the ultimate digital environment — if a task can be done digitally, it can be done via the web. 'But the web is dynamic, non-deterministic, and noisy; which means mistakes are inevitable and the key agentic skill is resilience. Yutori's agent-first approach will unlock superhuman performance on this grand challenge.' "AI assistant startup Yutori raises $15m in seed funding" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Axios
04-03-2025
- Business
- Axios
Exclusive: Firsthand raises $26M for brand agents
Firsthand has raised $26 million in Series A funding as it builds an AI agent platform for brands and publishers, executives exclusively tell Axios. Why it matters: The digital advertising industry is at its next stage of evolution with the introduction of generative AI and AI agents. Zoom in: Radical Ventures led and was joined by FirstMark Capital, Aperiam Ventures and Crossbeam Venture Partners. The New York-based startup previously raised $6.6 million in seed funding, led by Radical Ventures. Angel investors included former DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt, AppNexus and Scope3 co-founder Brian O'Kelley and Horizon Media president Bob Lord. Behind the scenes: Firsthand co-CEOs Jonathan Heller and Michael Rubenstein met at DoubleClick, the ad exchange acquired by Google. Rubenstein later helped build AppNexus, the programmatic ad platform acquired by AT&T. Heller co-founded FreeWheel, the online video ad platform acquired by Comcast. Heller says he met with Rubenstein in the spring of 2023 to discuss launching the startup after educating himself on AI. Their third co-founder and CTO is Wei Wei, previously an engineering lead at FreeWheel. "A lot of the stuff that's described as agents today is optimizing or automating marketing as it already exists," Heller says. "We think the opportunity is so much different and bigger than that." How it works: Firsthand enables marketers and publishers to engage consumers through AI agents, which can be distributed on their own sites and on other sites as paid media. Firsthand also created a data and rights management system called Lakebed that helps agents work with multiple parties' data and protects that data. "[Agents] act as sort of guides, where they're surfacing the right information that makes sense in that moment for what that type of customer or consumer might want," Heller says. The company declined to disclose specific clients but said they include top global publishers, agencies and brands. The bottom line: "AI is a new communications medium that can fundamentally revolutionize the way that brands and consumers and publishers build relationships and communicate is the most exciting change and opportunity we've seen, I think, in our careers," Rubenstein says.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Latent Labs Secures $50M in Funding to Realize the Potential of AI-Powered, Programmable Biology
Financing was co-led by Radical Ventures and Sofinnova Partners, with participation of Flying Fish, Isomer, Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, and existing investors 8VC, Kindred Capital and Pillar VC. Founder, alumnus of DeepMind's Nobel Prize-winning AlphaFold team, will lead generative protein design effort. The frontier AI lab enables biotech and pharmaceutical companies to generate and optimize proteins. LONDON & SAN FRANCISCO, February 13, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Latent Labs, the company building AI foundation models to make biology programmable, today emerged from stealth with $50M in total funding to accelerate their progress and partnerships. The company was founded by Dr Simon Kohl, previously a co-lead of DeepMind's protein design team and a senior research scientist on DeepMind's AlphaFold2, the project which earned a Nobel Prize for Chemistry for Demis Hassabis and John Jumper. The funding includes a $40M Series A co-led by Radical Ventures and Sofinnova Partners, with the participation of Flying Fish, Isomer, as well as existing investors 8VC, Kindred Capital and Pillar VC. Notable angel investors include Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, Transformer architecture inventor and Cohere founder Aidan Gomez, and ElevenLabs founder Mati Staniszewski. DeepMind's AlphaFold solved the decades-old problems of protein structure prediction and showcased how machine learning can help us understand biology; now, the opportunity lies in advancing and applying the latest generative techniques to design proteins from scratch. Latent Labs' platform does just that: by empowering researchers to computationally create new therapeutic molecules, such as antibodies or enzymes, the AI lab will help partners unlock previously challenging targets and open new paths to personalized medicines. What's more, partners can leverage the platform to design proteins with improved molecular features (such as increased affinity and stability), expediting drug development timelines and raising success rates. Latent Labs CEO and founder, Simon Kohl, said: "Every biotechnology or pharmaceutical company wants to be at the forefront of technology to find the best therapeutic molecules, yet not all are in a position to develop the most advanced AI models for the job. That's where Latent Labs comes in. We push the frontiers of generative biology, giving our partners instant access to tools that accelerate their drug design programs." Radical Ventures partner, Aaron Rosenberg, the former Head of Strategy & Operations at DeepMind, where he contributed to spinning out Isomorphic Labs to build upon AlphaFold, said: "We've partnered with Latent Labs because we're confident that this team will realize the therapeutic and commercial potential of de novo protein design. Such a capability has never before been possible, one which can benefit humanity in such a profound way. Accelerating the development of more effective cures for disease, Latent is at the vanguard of innovation in computational biology, and we are excited to join them on this journey." Edward Kliphuis, partner at Sofinnova Partners, said: "Latent Labs transforms biology from an observational science into an engineering craft, granting us precise control over life's building blocks. In practical terms, it means crafting bespoke molecules that tackle challenges once thought insurmountable. It's a revolution in our ability to harness nature's building blocks to develop breakthrough treatments and transform our lives. With pharmaceutical companies overwhelmingly demanding agile, next-generation tools to accelerate discovery and improve patient outcomes, Latent Labs is at the forefront of this rapidly growing market need." Latent Labs has attracted world class talent, bringing experience from DeepMind, Microsoft, Google, Stability AI, Exscientia, Mammoth Bio, Altos Labs and Zymergen. The company is based in London and San Francisco, where it experimentally validates its AI platform in its lab facilities. Researchers can register interest at About Latent Labs Latent Labs is an AI-driven biotechnology company developing AI foundation models to make biology company innovates on and applies generative AI technologies to enable biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to computationally create new molecules for a range of therapeutic, industrial, and environmental uses. Founded by Dr. Simon Kohl, a former DeepMind researcher and key contributor to the AlphaFold project, the company is backed by leading investors including Radical Ventures, Sofinnova Partners, 8VC, Kindred Capital, Pillar VC, Isomer and Flying Fish. Latent Labs operates globally, with offices in London and San Francisco. To join us visit: View source version on Contacts contact@
New York Times
29-01-2025
- Business
- New York Times
They Invested Billions. Then the A.I. Script Got Flipped.
Jordan Jacobs, an investor at the venture capital firm Radical Ventures, has spent the last few days fielding half a dozen calls from his firm's investors. All of them wanted to know about DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence app that topped the app stores over the weekend. DeepSeek had created a powerful A.I. model with far less money than most A.I. experts thought possible, upending many assumptions underlying the development of the fast-evolving technology. To calm the panic, Mr. Jacobs said he explained to his investors that Radical Ventures had long invested in more efficient A.I. models, similar to the one made by DeepSeek. 'Let's focus on the companies who are actually building real businesses, rather than the ones that are chasing science fiction,' Mr. Jacobs said he told them. Nvidia, Google, Meta and other giant tech companies have faced a barrage of questions about DeepSeek since last week as the Chinese start-up toppled longstanding notions about A.I. But its repercussions are being felt beyond the largest firms, reaching into the venture capital industry that has bet big on the technology by plowing billions of dollars into A.I. start-ups. For two years, venture capital firms have been engaged in a funding frenzy, pouring more than $155 billion into A.I. start-ups between 2023 and 2024, according to PitchBook, which tracks start-ups. Two of those A.I. companies — OpenAI and Anthropic — have raised $24 billion and $16 billion with the goal of building A.I. that is as intelligent as humans. OpenAI's valuation has hit $157 billion — more than Pfizer or Citigroup — while Anthropic's valuation has reached $20 billion. What DeepSeek did has now called that funding fever into question. If a Chinese upstart can create an app as powerful as OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude chatbot with barely any money, why did those companies need to raise so much cash? 'It's not a good look right now' for some A.I. companies 'given their talk about needing ever larger scale to come up with the best model,' said Matt Turck, an investor at FirstMark Capital. But, he added, A.I. companies would ultimately need money, computing power and infrastructure to serve their customers. Venture capitalists have debated the best way to invest in A.I. ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022. Some investors have argued that the technology underpinning ChatGPT and other products — often referred to as 'foundation models' because they can power many applications, including chatbots, search engines and image generators — is not a good investment because the systems are expensive to create and easy for competitors to copy. Marc Andreessen, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz, last year called such systems a 'race to the bottom' and speculated that building a business with this type of A.I. would be like 'selling rice' where anyone can compete. With the hubbub caused by DeepSeek in recent days, venture capital investors who have not invested in foundation model companies like OpenAI and Anthropic — either because they anticipated the race to the bottom or because they did not have the money or opportunity — have used the moment to share their views. Eric Vishria, an investor at the venture firm Benchmark, said on social media on Monday that he believed foundation models were 'the fastest depreciating asset in human history.' Anjney Midha, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz, wrote that DeepSeek showed 'the current AI foundation model market structure is far from stable.' Investors who have backed foundation model companies defended their investments. Gavin Baker, an investor at Atreides Management, which has invested in Elon Musk's A.I. start-up said he felt good about his bet because A.I. companies are limited by how much data they can access. he said, was in a strong position because it has its own unique source of data from the social network X, which Mr. Musk also owns. 'For me, I feel very, very calm,' Mr. Baker said. Other tech leaders have dissected DeepSeek's claim that it only spent $6 million to create its A.I. model, which is a fraction of what other companies spend. Some pointed fingers at regulation, including former President Biden's A.I. executive order and California's failed attempt to enact a state law on A.I., for trying to hold back the industry's progress. They also bemoaned export restrictions on powerful A.I. chips as ineffective in stopping Chinese tech advances. Some lashed out at so-called A.I. safety advocates, who have tried to slow the development of A.I. because of its potential risks to humanity. Others invoked patriotism and said DeepSeek was a sign that the United States needed to move faster in A.I. Still others saw the moment as an opportunity. Mr. Turck said DeepSeek's breakthrough might be bad news for some of the largest A.I. companies, but it opened up possibilities for other firms that were just getting started. 'The panic over the last few days is a dramatic overreaction,' he said in a message. Niko Bonatsos, a venture capital investor at General Catalyst, said in an interview that DeepSeek had energized start-ups. 'If you are building anything that is touching A.I. and you haven't been excited, obsessed, scared and sleep-deprived over the last four days, what planet are you living on?' he said. Mr. Bonatsos spent Monday morning on the phone with the founders of companies who had enthusiastically built their own 'forked' versions of DeepSeek's technology, meaning they had copied and customized it. Many of these start-ups were already building software on platforms developed by OpenAI and Anthropic, he said. DeepSeek had showed people new techniques for developing A.I. models that are cheaper to train and maintain, he said, which could lead to more competition and possibly some 'creative destruction' for incumbents. 'That's capitalism,' Mr. Bonatsos said. Clément Delangue, the chief executive of Hugging Face, a start-up that allows A.I. companies to post projects and work together, said on Tuesday that more than 600 versions of the DeepSeek model had been created on his site in just a few days. Investors are bracing for more surprises in the coming weeks. A.I. is 'such a dynamic space that there is something wild that happens almost every day,' Mr. Jacobs said.
