Venture Capital News

TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Google DeepMind has featured Hirundo’s security-hardened variant of Gemma 4 in its Gemmaverse – the official showcase for the Gemma open-model ecosystem. The feature validates Hirundo’s weight-level machine unlearning approach as a production-grade solution to one of the most persistent vulnerabilities in enterprise AI deployments: prompt injection attacks. The hardened model is built on Google’s Gemma 4 E4B instruction-tuned base. At 4 billion parameters, it...

MANCHESTER, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Imperagen, a Manchester-based techbio company using AI and quantum physics to engineer better enzymes faster, has closed a £5 million seed funding round led by PXN Ventures with participation from Imperagen’s existing investors IQ Capital and Northern Gritstone. The raise brings Imperagen's total funding to £8.5 million and will accelerate research and development, expand its wet lab capabilities, and build out its go-to-market function over the next 18 mon...

DURANGO, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Payman AI, a fintech building AI agents for community banks, announced its selection to the Independent Community Bankers of America’s (ICBA) ThinkTECH Accelerator Program, which kicks off at the ICBA Center for Innovation in Atlanta. “Agentic banking will redefine how customers interact with their money, turning friction into seamless execution,” said Tyllen Bicakcic, co-founder and CEO of Payman AI. “By participating in the ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator, we’re cr...

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Daversa has been named to Forbes’ America’s Best Executive Recruiting Firms list for the fifth consecutive year. Based on more than 18,000 survey recommendations from recruiters, HR leaders, and candidates, the list recognizes firms setting the standard across the industry. Daversa operates alongside founders and investors building the most ambitious companies of this generation across frontier AI, defense, enterprise software, digital health, and consumer. These...

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Stephens Group, LLC (“Stephens Group”) announced today that it has exited its investment in IMA Financial Group, Inc., a North American insurance brokerage firm specializing in risk management, employee benefits and investment advisory services, via the completion of an equity recapitalization transaction. Oak Hill Capital and New Mountain Capital are each taking minority positions, with additional participation from HarbourVest and a select group of prominent insti...

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sverica Capital Management LP (“Sverica”) announced today that its Fund V portfolio company, WinWire Holdings, LLC (“WinWire” or the “Company”), has entered into a definitive agreement to be sold to NTT DATA. This transaction marks the culmination of a successful five-year partnership with WinWire, during which the Company more than doubled in size, reinforced its position as a leading Microsoft services partner, and emerged as a differentiated provider of AI-led...

HAYWARD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OnQ’s Converge platform now integrates directly with IBM AS/400 systems, connecting real-time inventory data to in-store digital experiences....

COSTA MESA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Experian today announced that Akamai Technologies has joined its growing partner ecosystem, designed to further advance secure, trusted AI driven commerce through the Experian Agent Trust™ framework, alongside partner Skyfire supporting emerging payment innovation. As AI agents begin to search, decide, and transact autonomously, they introduce a fundamental challenge for businesses: how to trust an action when it is no longer directly initiated by a human. W...

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ten Toes, the sports marketing agency behind work for FIFA, The FA, Matchroom, Nike, Harry Kane, Ferrero, and Visa, today launches Ten Beat, sport's first million-persona intelligence platform. Ten Beat is the largest behavioral data sample ever built for sport. At its most basic level: imagine wanting to know what hundreds of thousands different types of football fans think about a topic or brand. Before Ten Beat, that would require finding them, surveying them and t...

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Agentic AI is moving out of the browser and into the physical world. ResolveGrid launched today with a platform that guides field service technicians through complex repairs in real time, cutting dispatches in half at early customers. The company is being brought to market as an independent business co-founded with Andrew Ng's AI Fund, building on technology originating at Xerox, where it was proven across one of the world's largest field service organiza...