Parallel Web Systems, the AI agent-tool startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has raised a $100 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation led by Sequoia. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Spark Capital, and Terrain Capital also participated, the company said.
This raise comes just five months after the startup announced its $100 million Series A at a $740 million valuation led by Kleiner and Index, and brings the total capital it raised to $230 million.
Parallel offers a suite of web search and research APIs specifically for AI agents and names customers such as Clay, Harvey, Notion, and Opendoor. It says its customers include banks and hedge funds (though it has not named them).
The confidence of investors in Agrawal’s startup has to be particularly gratifying for him after his time at Twitter ended with a subsequent lawsuit. Elon Musk famously fired him and all the top execs after he bought Twitter. Those execs, including Agrawal, sued, alleging that Musk failed to pay the $128 million in severance pay they believe they were owed. In October, Musk settled the case for undisclosed terms.
In addition to some big-name customers, Parallel tells TechCrunch it has over 100,000 developers using its products.
Parallel Web Systems, the AI agent-tool startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has raised a $100 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation led by Sequoia. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Spark Capital, and Terrain Capital also participated, the company said.
This raise comes just five months after the startup announced its $100 million Series A at a $740 million valuation led by Kleiner and Index, and brings the total capital it raised to $230 million.
Parallel offers a suite of web search and research APIs specifically for AI agents and names customers such as Clay, Harvey, Notion, and Opendoor. It says its customers include banks and hedge funds (though it has not named them).
The confidence of investors in Agrawal’s startup has to be particularly gratifying for him after his time at Twitter ended with a subsequent lawsuit. Elon Musk famously fired him and all the top execs after he bought Twitter. Those execs, including Agrawal, sued, alleging that Musk failed to pay the $128 million in severance pay they believe they were owed. In October, Musk settled the case for undisclosed terms.
In addition to some big-name customers, Parallel tells TechCrunch it has over 100,000 developers using its products.
#Parallel #Web #Systems #hits #valuation #months #big #raise #TechCrunchai agent,In Brief,parag agrawal,Parallel Web Systems">Parallel Web Systems hits $2B valuation five months after its last big raise | TechCrunch
Parallel Web Systems, the AI agent-tool startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has raised a $100 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation led by Sequoia. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Spark Capital, and Terrain Capital also participated, the company said.
This raise comes just five months after the startup announced its $100 million Series A at a $740 million valuation led by Kleiner and Index, and brings the total capital it raised to $230 million.
Parallel offers a suite of web search and research APIs specifically for AI agents and names customers such as Clay, Harvey, Notion, and Opendoor. It says its customers include banks and hedge funds (though it has not named them).
The confidence of investors in Agrawal’s startup has to be particularly gratifying for him after his time at Twitter ended with a subsequent lawsuit. Elon Musk famously fired him and all the top execs after he bought Twitter. Those execs, including Agrawal, sued, alleging that Musk failed to pay the $128 million in severance pay they believe they were owed. In October, Musk settled the case for undisclosed terms.
In addition to some big-name customers, Parallel tells TechCrunch it has over 100,000 developers using its products.
#Parallel #Web #Systems #hits #valuation #months #big #raise #TechCrunchai agent,In Brief,parag agrawal,Parallel Web Systems
Parallel Web Systems, the AI agent-tool startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has…
After the revised OpenAI/Microsoft agreement was announced on Monday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy noted in a tweet that it was a “very interesting announcement.” That agreement solved OpenAI’s problem of allowing AWS to offer its products, an issue that crystalized after it signed an up-to-$50-billion deal with Amazon.
Amazon announced on Tuesday that AWS’s Bedrock service now has OpenAI’s latest models, its code-writing service Codex, and a new product for creating OpenAI-powered AI agents. Bedrock is Amazon’s AI app building and model-choosing service.
Amazon is calling the new agent service Bedrock Managed Agents. It is specifically designed to use OpenAI’s reasoning models, offering features like agent steering and security.
Amazon promises in its blog post that “this is the beginning of a deeper collaboration between AWS and OpenAI.” And it will certainly be interesting to watch.
After the revised OpenAI/Microsoft agreement was announced on Monday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy noted in a tweet that it was a “very interesting announcement.” That agreement solved OpenAI’s problem of allowing AWS to offer its products, an issue that crystalized after it signed an up-to-$50-billion deal with Amazon.
Amazon announced on Tuesday that AWS’s Bedrock service now has OpenAI’s latest models, its code-writing service Codex, and a new product for creating OpenAI-powered AI agents. Bedrock is Amazon’s AI app building and model-choosing service.
Amazon is calling the new agent service Bedrock Managed Agents. It is specifically designed to use OpenAI’s reasoning models, offering features like agent steering and security.
Amazon promises in its blog post that “this is the beginning of a deeper collaboration between AWS and OpenAI.” And it will certainly be interesting to watch.
#Amazon #offering #OpenAI #products #AWS #TechCrunchAmazon,AWS,In Brief,OpenAI">Amazon is already offering new OpenAI products on AWS | TechCrunch
Almost as soon as OpenAI announced that its major investor and cloud partner, Microsoft, no longer has exclusive rights to any of its products, Amazon started gloating.
After the revised OpenAI/Microsoft agreement was announced on Monday, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy noted in a tweet that it was a “very interesting announcement.” That agreement solved OpenAI’s problem of allowing AWS to offer its products, an issue that crystalized after it signed an up-to-$50-billion deal with Amazon.
Amazon announced on Tuesday that AWS’s Bedrock service now has OpenAI’s latest models, its code-writing service Codex, and a new product for creating OpenAI-powered AI agents. Bedrock is Amazon’s AI app building and model-choosing service.
Amazon is calling the new agent service Bedrock Managed Agents. It is specifically designed to use OpenAI’s reasoning models, offering features like agent steering and security.
Amazon promises in its blog post that “this is the beginning of a deeper collaboration between AWS and OpenAI.” And it will certainly be interesting to watch.
Semafor reported Sunday that Canadian holding company Tiny, which owns some 60% of Letterboxd, has been courting various potential buyers, including Versant, the parent company of CNBC and MS NOW (formerly MSNBC). Another potential buyer is The Ankler, a popular Hollywood newsletter, according to Semafor. Tiny bought the platform in 2023, valuing it at over $50 million. It’s unclear whether the company has neared any sort of deal.
Representatives for Letterboxd and Tiny did not immediately provide comment when reached by TechCrunch.
Founded in 2011, Letterboxd saw a jump in users in the past few years, climbing to about 26 million users this year, up from 1.7 million in 2020, according to The New York Times. In recent years, the site has seen interest from movie studios, which see it both as a vehicle for marketing films and a source of information about moviegoer trends, as well as from the Oscars, which teamed up with the social platform in a digital content partnership several years ago.
Semafor reported Sunday that Canadian holding company Tiny, which owns some 60% of Letterboxd, has been courting various potential buyers, including Versant, the parent company of CNBC and MS NOW (formerly MSNBC). Another potential buyer is The Ankler, a popular Hollywood newsletter, according to Semafor. Tiny bought the platform in 2023, valuing it at over $50 million. It’s unclear whether the company has neared any sort of deal.
Representatives for Letterboxd and Tiny did not immediately provide comment when reached by TechCrunch.
Founded in 2011, Letterboxd saw a jump in users in the past few years, climbing to about 26 million users this year, up from 1.7 million in 2020, according to The New York Times. In recent years, the site has seen interest from movie studios, which see it both as a vehicle for marketing films and a source of information about moviegoer trends, as well as from the Oscars, which teamed up with the social platform in a digital content partnership several years ago.
#Letterboxd #social #platform #film #buffs #reportedly #owner #TechCrunchHollywood,In Brief,Letterboxd,media,movies">Letterboxd, the social platform for film buffs, reportedly looking for new owner | TechCrunch
Letterboxd has surged in popularity in recent years. Once a niche site for only the most fervent of film nerds, the site — which allows users to rate, review, and recommend movies to one another — has continued to add accounts by the tens of millions, thanks largely to interest from millennials and Gen Z. Now, the company’s controlling investor has apparently made it known that they are looking to cash out.
Semafor reported Sunday that Canadian holding company Tiny, which owns some 60% of Letterboxd, has been courting various potential buyers, including Versant, the parent company of CNBC and MS NOW (formerly MSNBC). Another potential buyer is The Ankler, a popular Hollywood newsletter, according to Semafor. Tiny bought the platform in 2023, valuing it at over $50 million. It’s unclear whether the company has neared any sort of deal.
Representatives for Letterboxd and Tiny did not immediately provide comment when reached by TechCrunch.
Founded in 2011, Letterboxd saw a jump in users in the past few years, climbing to about 26 million users this year, up from 1.7 million in 2020, according to The New York Times. In recent years, the site has seen interest from movie studios, which see it both as a vehicle for marketing films and a source of information about moviegoer trends, as well as from the Oscars, which teamed up with the social platform in a digital content partnership several years ago.
Factory founder Matan Grinberg told the Wall Street Journal that the company’s key differentiator is its ability to switch between different foundation models, such as Anthropic’s Claude or Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. However, startups like Cursor also don’t rely on a single model to generate code.
Factory’s customers include engineering teams at Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, and Palo Alto Networks.
The startup was founded in 2023 after Grinberg, then a PhD student at UC Berkeley, cold-emailed Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire. The two bonded over mutual academic interest. (Maguire’s PhD from Caltech is in the same area of physics Grinberg was studying.)
Maguire convinced Grinberg to drop out and launch Factory, with Sequoia backing the startup at the seed stage.
Factory founder Matan Grinberg told the Wall Street Journal that the company’s key differentiator is its ability to switch between different foundation models, such as Anthropic’s Claude or Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. However, startups like Cursor also don’t rely on a single model to generate code.
Factory’s customers include engineering teams at Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, and Palo Alto Networks.
The startup was founded in 2023 after Grinberg, then a PhD student at UC Berkeley, cold-emailed Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire. The two bonded over mutual academic interest. (Maguire’s PhD from Caltech is in the same area of physics Grinberg was studying.)
Maguire convinced Grinberg to drop out and launch Factory, with Sequoia backing the startup at the seed stage.
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#Factory #hits #1.5B #valuation #build #coding #enterprises #TechCrunchAI coding tools,In Brief,Khosla Ventures,Sequioa">Factory hits $1.5B valuation to build AI coding for enterprises | TechCrunch
More than three years after the emergence of generative AI, AI-assisted coding remains by far the most popular and lucrative use case for the technology.
Although multiple companies — including Anthropic, maker of Claude Code, as well as Cursor and Cognition — are already vying for dominance, investors believe there is room for at least one more player.
On Wednesday, Factory, a startup developing AI agents for enterprise engineering teams, announced it had raised $150 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, and Blackstone. Keith Rabois, a managing director at Khosla Ventures, joined the startup’s board.
Factory founder Matan Grinberg told the Wall Street Journal that the company’s key differentiator is its ability to switch between different foundation models, such as Anthropic’s Claude or Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. However, startups like Cursor also don’t rely on a single model to generate code.
Factory’s customers include engineering teams at Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, and Palo Alto Networks.
The startup was founded in 2023 after Grinberg, then a PhD student at UC Berkeley, cold-emailed Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire. The two bonded over mutual academic interest. (Maguire’s PhD from Caltech is in the same area of physics Grinberg was studying.)
Maguire convinced Grinberg to drop out and launch Factory, with Sequoia backing the startup at the seed stage.
