Latest news with #startupfunding
Finextra
9 hours ago
- Business
- Finextra
Banxware co-founder launches credit infrastructure platform
Berlin-based startup Credibur has secured $2.2 million in pre-seed funding to launch its credit infrastructure platform. 0 The round was led by European FinTech VC Redstone, with participation from MS&AD Ventures, Inovia, and a host of angels. Credibur is the brainchild of Nicolas Kipp, co-founder of embedded lending platform Banxware and chief risk officer at Ratepay. In these roles, Kipp says he witnessed daily how funding and reporting processes can become operational bottlenecks that hinder growth. With Credibur, Kipp and his 10-person team has set out to build infrastructure that solves a central problem in the structured credit portfolio business between non-bank lenders and institutional capital providers: it automates complex, Excel-based workflows and provides all critical decision-making data in real-time. The majority of institutional capital providers continue to rely on manual processes or outdated systems. Credibur replaces these with a modular API-and-AI-first infrastructure for more informed risk assessment and improved decision-making in the credit business. With the funding in place, the startup is exiting stealth mode and is already launching with its first pilot customers. "Debt facility management is the underestimated Achilles' heel in non-bank lending - operationally complex and technologically neglected. With Credibur, we're digitalising this final frontier in the value chain and efficiently connecting institutional capital with new credit models," says Kipp.
Reuters
15-07-2025
- Business
- Reuters
US AI startups see funding surge while more VC funds struggle to raise, data shows
July 15 (Reuters) - U.S. startup funding surged 75.6% in the first half of 2025, thanks to the continued AI boom, putting it on track for its second-best year ever, even as venture capital firms struggled to raise money, a report from PitchBook on Tuesday showed. Startup funding in the first six months of 2025 jumped to $162.8 billion, marking the strongest performance since the same period in 2021 — the historic peak for venture capital activity. That previous surge came during the era of the Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), when central banks slashed rates to stimulate economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic, sending capital into higher-risk assets including venture capital. This year's boom has been driven largely by major AI investments and bold bets from big tech companies, a wave of activity set off by the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022. In the past three months alone, $69.9 billion was invested in U.S. startups. Standout deals included OpenAI's $40 billion round and Meta's (META.O), opens new tab $14.3 billion purchase of a stake in Scale AI. Other AI deals exceeding $1 billion in the second quarter included significant investments in Safe Superintelligence, Thinking Machine Labs, Anduril, and Grammarly. These deals underscore sustained investor conviction in the AI sector, which accounted for 64.1% of the total deal value and 35.6% of the deal count in the first half of the year. "I think it's downstream of the fact that OpenAI and Anthropic continue to grow at unbelievable rates," said Davis Treybig, partner at VC firm Innovation Endeavors. "If there's even a chance you could see that sort of progress in other domains, whether it's robotics, protein folding models, world models or video models, then there's a lot of people who are going to want to invest a lot of money." In contrast, U.S. venture capital fundraising continued to face headwinds, with just $26.6 billion raised across 238 funds in the first half of the year. This subdued environment represents a 33.7% year-over-year decline in capital raised, extending the downward trend from 2024. It is also taking fund managers longer to close new vehicles, with the median time stretching to 15.3 months by the second quarter of 2025 - the longest in over a decade, data shows. The disconnection from the startup market reflects concerns from limited partners on the asset class due to recent underperformance and liquidity constraints. A rebound in exit activity, including IPOs and M&A, has brought a sense of optimism for the remainder of the year. Exit activity in the second quarter was up 40% from last year, as a loosening antitrust environment and a thawing IPO market boost confidence. Sectors aligned with President Donald Trump's priorities such as AI, national security, defense technology, fintech and crypto dominated IPO interest in the second quarter, the report noted. "The good news is we're starting to see the tide turn," said Lucas Swisher, co-head of growth investing at tech investment firm Coatue. "IPOs like Coatue portfolio companies Hinge Health and Coreweave have been well received by the market, and there are a dozen companies filed now."
CNA
15-07-2025
- Business
- CNA
US AI startups see funding surge while more VC funds struggle to raise, data shows
U.S. startup funding surged 75.6 per cent in the first half of 2025, thanks to the continued AI boom, putting it on track for its second-best year ever, even as venture capital firms struggled to raise money, a report from PitchBook on Tuesday showed. Startup funding in the first six months of 2025 jumped to $162.8 billion, marking the strongest performance since the same period in 2021 — the historic peak for venture capital activity. That previous surge came during the era of the Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), when central banks slashed rates to stimulate economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic, sending capital into higher-risk assets including venture capital. This year's boom has been driven largely by major AI investments and bold bets from big tech companies, a wave of activity set off by the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022. In the past three months alone, $69.9 billion was invested in U.S. startups. Standout deals included OpenAI's $40 billion round and Meta's $14.3 billion purchase of a stake in Scale AI. Other AI deals exceeding $1 billion in the second quarter included significant investments in Safe Superintelligence, Thinking Machine Labs, Anduril, and Grammarly. These deals underscore sustained investor conviction in the AI sector, which accounted for 64.1 per cent of the total deal value and 35.6 per cent of the deal count in the first half of the year. "I think it's downstream of the fact that OpenAI and Anthropic continue to grow at unbelievable rates," said Davis Treybig, partner at VC firm Innovation Endeavors. "If there's even a chance you could see that sort of progress in other domains, whether it's robotics, protein folding models, world models or video models, then there's a lot of people who are going to want to invest a lot of money." HARDER FOR VC FUNDS In contrast, U.S. venture capital fundraising continued to face headwinds, with just $26.6 billion raised across 238 funds in the first half of the year. This subdued environment represents a 33.7 per cent year-over-year decline in capital raised, extending the downward trend from 2024. It is also taking fund managers longer to close new vehicles, with the median time stretching to 15.3 months by the second quarter of 2025 - the longest in over a decade, data shows. The disconnection from the startup market reflects concerns from limited partners on the asset class due to recent underperformance and liquidity constraints. A rebound in exit activity, including IPOs and M&A, has brought a sense of optimism for the remainder of the year. Exit activity in the second quarter was up 40 per cent from last year, as a loosening antitrust environment and a thawing IPO market boost confidence. Sectors aligned with President Donald Trump's priorities such as AI, national security, defense technology, fintech and crypto dominated IPO interest in the second quarter, the report noted.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Equipment maintenance startup MaintainX valued at $2.5 billion in latest fundraise
(Reuters) -MaintainX has raised $150 million in its latest fundraising round, valuing the equipment maintenance startup at $2.5 billion, the company said on Wednesday. The round brings the company's total external funding to $254 million, following a trend among mature startups to remain private-for-longer amid choppy IPO market conditions. The new capital will be used to develop MaintainX's artificial intelligence and machine health monitoring capabilities, aiming to replace a widely used manual approach to equipment hygiene. The funding round saw participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Bain Capital and D. E. Shaw Ventures. Sign in to access your portfolio
RNZ News
07-07-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
BNZ's new offer for technology entrepreneurs
The Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) is offering something new for technology entrepreneurs. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon The Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) is offering something new for technology entrepreneurs - a tailored home loan product. BNZ said tech company founders struggled to get mortgages because standard bank lending criteria did not recognise how high-growth tech start-ups operated. "The core problem is that for [tech] companies who have traditionally been in a loss-making phase, the negative earnings would be applied to their [founder's] personal income," Tim Wixon, BNZ head of technology industries, said. Wixon said this negatively impacted their debt-servicing metrics using traditional banking criteria. He said that could effectively lock tech company founders out of the mortgage market. BNZ's 'Founder Housing' programme used different metrics to assess tech company viability, noting that tech companies' finances were typically heavily front-loaded with research & development, marketing, and expansion, which could create losses that appear on founders' personal financial assessments. Wixon said that it had already trailed the programme with a small number of tech company founders before its official launch, and that the bank's standard deposit, security and affordability criteria still applied before granting loans. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
