Voice‑AI startup ElevenLabs announced a $500 million financing led by Sequoia Capital, pushing its valuation to $11 billion. Existing backers a16z, Iconiq and several others increased their stakes, while new investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, EvanticCapital and Bond joined the round. The capital will fund research, product development and international expansion into markets like India, Japan, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico. Co‑founder Mati Staniszewski highlighted plans to broaden the company’s offerings beyond voice, including video content and multi‑modal AI agents. The company closed the prior year with $330 million in annual recurring revenue. Leer más →

Luma AI, the a16z-backed AI video and 3D model company, announced a new model called Ray3 Modify that lets creators edit existing footage by providing character reference images and start‑and‑end frames. The model preserves the original motion, timing, eye line and emotional delivery while allowing transformations such as costume changes, location swaps or full reshoots with AI. Ray3 Modify is available through Luma’s Dream Machine platform and follows a recent $900 million funding round led by the Public Investment Fund‑owned AI firm Humain. Leer más →

Oboe, the AI‑driven learning startup founded by former Spotify executives, announced a $16 million Series A round led by a16z with participation from existing backers including Eniac, Haystack, Offline and Factorial, as well as individual investors such as Adam D’Angelo and Garry Tan. The funding will fuel growth and product enhancements for Oboe’s platform, which lets users define learning goals and automatically generates multi‑modal courses—including text, audio, quizzes and flashcards—tailored to each topic. The company also introduced new pricing tiers that expand unlimited course generation and export capabilities. Leer más →

German AI lab Black Forest Labs announced a $300 million Series B funding round that values the company at $3.25 billion. The round was co-led by Salesforce Ventures and Anjney Midha (AMP) with participation from a16z, NVIDIA, and several other investors. The capital will be directed toward research and development of its foundation image‑generation models. Black Forest Labs, launched in August 2024, recently unveiled Flux 2, a model capable of 4K resolution and multi‑image reference styling. Its technology powers products at Adobe, Picsart, VSCO, Vercel and was used by Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot. Leer más →

Sphere, the AI-driven tax compliance platform founded by Nicholas Rudder, has closed a $21 million Series A round led by a16z, with participation from YC and Felicis Ventures. The San Francisco‑based startup automates global tax registration, calculation, filing, and remittance for companies expanding internationally. Integrations with major billing systems like Stripe enable real‑time tax assessment, while its proprietary AI engine, TRAM, codifies jurisdictional rules and provides citation‑backed determinations. Sphere aims to extend its infrastructure to more tax authorities, grow its engineering and sales teams, and become the essential tool for finance teams navigating cross‑border compliance. Leer más →

ClickUp has refreshed its productivity platform with a 4.0 release that introduces two AI assistants, aiming to create a single‑shop solution that rivals Slack, Notion and Microsoft Teams. The new agents draw on internal knowledge bases and external tools such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Figma and Gmail, while a general‑purpose assistant called Brain can schedule meetings, generate ideas and draft content. CEO Zeb Evans highlighted the company’s eight‑year vision, recent revenue growth past $300 million, and plans to go public within two years. ClickUp’s funding totals more than $537 million from investors including a16z, Tiger Global, Craft Ventures and Lightspeed. Leer más →

Codi, the Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup founded by Christelle Rohaut and Dave Schuman, has introduced what it calls the first AI‑driven platform to fully automate office management. Building on its original marketplace for flexible office space, the new SaaS product uses a trained AI to coordinate vendors, handle pantry restocking, cleaning and other logistical tasks, aiming to cut administrative costs and free staff to focus on culture and growth. The beta, released in May, quickly attracted dozens of new customers, including TaskRabbit and Northbeam, and the company says it reached $100,000 in ARR within five weeks. Leer más →

Andreessen Horowitz, in partnership with Mercury, released its first AI Spending Report, analyzing transaction data to identify the top AI-native application layer companies that startups are purchasing. The study shows a diverse range of AI products in use, with major labs like OpenAI and Anthropic leading the spend, and a surge in “human augmentor” or copilot tools that boost workforce productivity. While startups continue to experiment with various solutions, the report signals a gradual shift toward more integrated, end‑to‑end AI agents as the technology matures. Leer más →

A new consumer‑AI report from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) charts the latest competitive landscape. While OpenAI’s ChatGPT remains the market leader, Google’s Gemini, AI Studio, NotebookLM and Google Labs have entered the top rankings. Meta AI and xAI’s Grok are also gaining ground, with Grok reporting roughly 20 million monthly active users and a recent 40 percent surge after its latest version. Chinese AI products continue to dominate traffic in their home market, and a wave of newcomers is reshaping the mobile app list as platforms crack down on copycat services. Leer más →