Latest news with #IndexVentures
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
OpenAI Hires Entire Team From AI Startup Backed By Shopify And Radical Ventures 'To Ensure AGI Benefits All Of Humanity'
After raising more than $13.5 million and spending eight years building personalized AI shopping technology, the entire team behind startup Crossing Minds is now joining OpenAI, TechCrunch reports. Crossing Minds announced the transition on its website, calling it a "new chapter" and thanking its investors, partners, and internal team. According to TechCrunch, Crossing Minds had built a reputation for helping clients like Chanel, Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU), Udacity, and Anthropic improve real-time personalization without compromising user privacy. Crossing Minds had previously been backed by Index Ventures, Shopify (NASDAQ:SHOP), Plug and Play, and Radical Ventures across multiple rounds of funding. Don't Miss: —with up to 120% bonus shares—before this Uber-style disruption hits the public markets $100k+ in investable assets? – no cost, no obligation. The startup developed technology that could understand long-term customer preferences using on-site behavioral data, avoiding the need to collect personal information, TechCrunch says. Company Shuts Down Client Work as Co-Founders Say Goodbye to Startup Life The Crossing Minds team said their work began with the core belief that understanding intent was the foundation for building powerful AI assistants. They didn't want to simply predict a user's next move, but to learn their long-term preferences and what made each individual unique. That principle guided the company through years of development, research, and product testing. The team said that their goal was to create systems that could work in real time with messy, complicated environments, not just clean lab data. Trending: Named a TIME Best Invention and Backed by 5,000+ Users, Kara's Air-to-Water Pod Cuts Plastic and Costs — Crossing Minds is no longer accepting new business, according to its notice. It is unclear whether the company will continue to operate independently following the team's transition to OpenAI. The co-founders said they were motivated by a belief in OpenAI's mission and felt aligned with the company's broader purpose. "Joining OpenAI allows us to bring our work — and our values — into a mission we deeply respect: to ensure artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity," they wrote. They also credited their team with embodying values like integrity, empathy, and over-delivery, praising the group for their persistence through difficult engineering challenges. Alexandre Robicquet, one of the co-founders, has already updated his LinkedIn profile to reflect his new role at OpenAI in research, post-training, and AI agents. 'After eight years of building Crossing Minds, today marks the start of a new chapter: our team is joining OpenAI,' Robicquet wrote in a LinkedIn post. 'Personally, joining OpenAI's research team to focus on agents and information retrieval is a unique honor. These are precisely the problems I've always been passionate about: how systems learn, reason, and retrieve knowledge at scale, in real-time,' he OpenAI Might Want a Shopping Assistant Team Right Now As Google and Perplexity roll out their own AI shopping tools, OpenAI has already been rolling out e-commerce features within ChatGPT, including AI-generated shopping suggestions, reviews, and images, TechCrunch says. OpenAI's integration of Crossing Minds' team may strengthen its position in this competitive space. Startups like Daydream have raised large rounds recently to build AI shopping assistants, signaling that recommendation technology is in high demand, according to TechCrunch. Crossing Minds' co-founders said that their work was rooted in understanding intent, not just predicting actions, and described the move to OpenAI as a natural continuation of their mission. They also said they were excited to learn and contribute alongside OpenAI's team, which they described as "setting the direction for the future of AI." The co-founders have not disclosed what their immediate focus will be at OpenAI. As OpenAI expands its efforts in personalization, agents, and post-training systems, the Crossing Minds team will likely play a key role in shaping how those technologies are developed and deployed at scale. Read Next: Warren Buffett once said, "If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die." Image: Shutterstock UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? INTUIT (INTU): Free Stock Analysis Report This article OpenAI Hires Entire Team From AI Startup Backed By Shopify And Radical Ventures 'To Ensure AGI Benefits All Of Humanity' originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Sign in to access your portfolio
Finextra
10-07-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Moment raises $36m to automate fixed income
Moment has raised $36 million in Series B funding led by Index Ventures for its platform automating trading and portfolio management workflows for fixed income teams. 0 Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Venrock, Neo, and Contrary Capital joined the round for Moment, which was founded by the team that built the automated credit desks at Citadel Securities and Jane Street. Moment's platform unifies trading, research, portfolio optimisation, reporting, and risk and compliance in a single system. The firm's clients use it to execute thousands of trades in seconds with automated execution rules, optimise tax-sensitive, multi-asset class portfolios across hundreds of thousands of accounts, scan all of their accounts and trades in real-time for compliance violations, and use AI-powered workflows to instantly generate portfolios from email requests, build transition proposals from PDFs in seconds, and produce client-ready reports with custom commentary. Having recently secured a partnership with the largest independent dealer-broker in the US, LPL Financial, Moment says it will use the new funding to strike more deals, invest in research and development, and expand its New York-based team. "Demand for fixed-income has exploded, and leading financial institutions are capitalizing on this unique opportunity to seize market share' says Dylan Parker, CEO, Moment. 'These firms are partnering with Moment to co-create the future of fixed income - empowering their fixed income teams with a differentiated platform to win new business, unlock eight-figure revenue channels, and genuinely 10x their productivity.'
TechCrunch
09-07-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
6 days until TC All Stage kicks off in Boston and up to $475 in savings ends
In just 6 days, the doors to TechCrunch All Stage swing open in Boston's SoWa Power Station — and your chance to save up to $475 slams shut. This isn't just another founder event. It's the summit designed to help startups move faster, fundraise smarter, and scale more effectively. Whether you're refining your pitch, preparing to raise capital, or leading a growing team, TC All Stage delivers the tools, tactics, and connections you need to move forward. Right now, Founder Passes are only $100 and Investor Passes are $200 — the lowest prices available. Once they're gone, ticket prices rise to full rate. Don't wait to secure your spot and maximize your savings. Register here. Real strategies and actionable insights At TC All Stage, the focus is on substance. You'll get direct access to startup strategies that actually work — shared by operators and investors who have built, backed, and scaled successful companies. Here's what's happening on July 15 in Boston: Breakout sessions focused on fundraising, growth-stage scaling, startup hiring, and how AI is being used to build real businesses focused on fundraising, growth-stage scaling, startup hiring, and how AI is being used to build real businesses Roundtable discussions that address the tough questions and give honest, practical answers that address the tough questions and give honest, practical answers The ' So You Think You Can Pitch ' showdown , featuring live feedback from seasoned VCs , featuring live feedback from seasoned VCs Curated networking powered by Braindate to help you meet the people who can move your startup forward to help you meet the people who can move your startup forward Side events around Boston for deeper conversations and meaningful connections outside the main agenda Image Credits:Halo Creative Meet the voices behind the sessions Explore the TC All Stage agenda and hear from some of the most respected names in venture and startup building: Image Credits:Haje Kamps Just days left to save before TC All Stage kicks off on July 15 TC All Stage is on July 15 — just 6 days away. This is your final opportunity to access the lowest ticket rates and get in the room with the founders, investors, and experts shaping the next wave of startups. Register now and save up to $475 before prices rise at the door. Techcrunch event Save up to $475 on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Save $450 on your TechCrunch All Stage pass Build smarter. Scale faster. Connect deeper. Join visionaries from Precursor Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Underscore VC, and beyond for a day packed with strategies, workshops, and meaningful connections. Boston, MA | REGISTER NOW
Bloomberg
09-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Former Citadel Quants Raise $36 Million for Fixed-Income Fintech
Moment, a financial-technology company founded by former Citadel Securities quantitative traders and researchers, raised $36 million in a new round of funding from firms including Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz to further automate fixed-income trading technology. The latest round of fundraising brings Moment's total backing to $56 million, with Lightspeed, Venrock, Neo and Contrary Capital participating in the latest investment, according to a statement Wednesday.
Business Insider
09-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Read the exclusive pitch deck data startup Ryft used to raise $8 million, led by Index and Bessemer
Data management startup Ryft is emerging from a 10-month stealth period with an $8 million seed round. Index Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners co-led the round, with participation from members of the founding teams at Wiz and Eon. Ryft cofounder and CEO Yossi Reitblat told Business Insider the company provides a more flexible data product for its customers than cloud giants like Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft, AWS, and Google. In the age of AI where data is paramount to creating new models, companies "don't want to be locked with a single vendor and then only use their capabilities," he said. "They want to be able to mix and match." Ryft handles data optimization, compliance, disaster recovery, and governance while allowing customers to take ownership of their data, allowing them to access it with different tools — such as those that write code for AI apps, Reitblat said. It works with companies across finance, e-commerce, adtech, gaming, and cybersecurity. The New York-based company was founded by three friends who met in high school and subsequently worked together as software engineers in the Israel Defense Forces, building data software. In addition to Reitblat, there's CTO Yuval Yogev and vice president of research and development Guy Gadon. Ryft has 13 employees. The team built Ryft for Apache Iceberg, an open-source analytic table software developed by Netflix. Ryft makes money by charging a yearly fee based on the amount of data it manages. The seed round will go toward hiring more engineers, scaling sales efforts, and launching new products, Reitblat said. Here's a look at the pitch deck that Ryft used to raise $8 million in seed funding.
