TechCrunch Founder Summit 2026: Everything you need to know 

TechCrunch Founder Summit is a full-day gathering in Boston on November 4 where founders across all stages connect with top VCs and experienced entrepreneurs to gain tactical insights on building and scaling their companies.

Year-old AI lab Flapping Airplanes raises $1B at a $6B valuation

Just 9 months after raising a $180 million seed round, Flapping Airplanes has landed a $1 billion Series A for its mission to build AI models “without ingesting half the internet.”

Legal AI startup Legora raises $550M Series E at $8.8B valuation

Legal AI startup Legora announced Wednesday that it raised a $550 million Series E round, valuing it at $8.8 billion. 

Blacksmith hits unicorn valuation after Sequoia leads Series C

Blacksmith, a platform that lets companies build and test AI code more effectively, just announced a $66 million Series C round led by Sequoia that values the company at $1 billion. 

Mach9 raises $34M after pivoting to AI CAD software

The startup initially set out to build better, faster, and cheaper surveying hardware in 2021.

Eric Schmidt reportedly owns about half as much of Anthropic as CEO Dario Amodei

Eric Schmidt’s fortune is about to get even bigger.

Amazon is taking its biggest shot at Nvidia yet with new TorchNeuron dev tool

Amazon wants to break Nvidia’s hold on PyTorch, the free toolkit used to build most AI apps, so that more developers run their apps on alternative chips like its own.

Replika’s founder built the AI assistant she pitched at Disrupt 12 years ago

Eugenia Kuyda’s newest startup Wabi is positioned to take advantage of an idea she had more than a decade ago. Wabi offers a personal AI assistant with a twist, free and downloadable to anyone today.

AI assistant startup Town nabs unicorn valuation 4 months after launch

AI assistant startup Town nabbed a unicorn valuation on Monday, announcing a $108 million Series B round co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures.

Disney agrees to hire the majority of Character.AI’s workforce

The filing also says that the “vast majority” of Character.AI employees who were offered jobs at Disney accepted them. However, this is a stalking horse bid, so another company could come forward with a higher offer.