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The AI gold rush is pulling private wealth into riskier, earlier bets
Loading the player… For decades, buying stock in a hot startup meant being allowed to invest in the funds run by the top VCs. But with the AI boom causing an investment frenzy, more family offices and private wealth are skipping the VC middlemen to get directly onto the cap table. “Companies are staying private longer, and there are fewer IPOs now than we’ve seen historically,” Mitch Stein, founder of Arena Private Wealth, an investment advisory firm for high-net-worth individuals, told TechCrunch on arecent episode of Equity.“A lot of money is being made well before companies go public, and right now the private markets are dominated by a lot of these AI names. The family offices who are allocating [directly into AI startups] are right on.” Arena recentlyco-led a $230 million roundinto AI chip startup Positron, an investment that earned the midwestern firm a board seat. Stein says that’s part of a deliberate shift away from being passive allocators and towards becoming “active participants in the capital markets.” The urgency amongst today’s family offices is real. “The world’s AI infrastructure is being built now, so you’re either going to get in early and have an opportunity to do more primary investing…and really build a portfolio, or you’re going to miss it and be taking random bets,” Ari Schottenstein, Arena’s head of alternatives, told TechCrunch. Stein put it more bluntly: “Your biggest risk is not having exposure to AI, not what could happen to your AI investments.” The numbers reflect this sentiment. In February, family offices made41 direct investmentsinto startups, nearly all of them tied to AI. Among those are high profile names like Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective into World Labs, Azim Premji’s family office into Runway, and Eric Schmidt’s Hillspire into Goodfire. According to BNY Wealth research, 83% of family offices say AI is a top strategic priority over the next five years, and more than half have AI exposure through investments. Some are going further still. A growing number of family offices are incubating their own AI companies, seeding the first several million, taking on operational roles, and deploying the same entrepreneurial instincts that built their wealth in the first place, according to Schottenstein. Jeff Bezos’ decision to serve asCEO of his own robotics company, which raised an initial $6.2 billion last year at a nearly $30 billion valuation, is a high-profile example of the model. On a smaller scale, Stein pointed to Tyson Tuttle, an Austin-based angel investor and former CEO of Silicon Labs — which agreed to be acquired by Texas Instruments for $7.5 billion. Tuttle co-founded Circuit, a startup using AI to improve manufacturing and distribution, raising a$30 million angel roundthat includes $5 million from his own family office. Not everyone coming to the table has founded a company, though. Arena’s team comes from institutional finance, and they argue that rigorous due diligence is what earns them the right to lead rounds. “We take our time, we’re a very slow ‘yes,’ we say ‘no’ a lot,” Schottenstein said. “We definitely invest in the sources and experts and people necessary to make sure that a company is what it says it is and can do what it says it will do.” For the Positron deal, that meant working with third-party experts to validate the technology, but also reading the cap table itself as a signal: “If Arm is coming into a deal, we’d like to think your technology is real,” Schottenstein said. Arena also knew Oracle was a major customer, making Positron one of the only AI chips deployed into a hyperscaler not named Nvidia or AMD. That selectivity shapes how Arena participates once it’s in. Unlike a typical VC spreading risk across a portfolio, Arena makes a small handful of direct deals per year, which changes the stakes entirely. When they’re in, they’re all in; Positron is their one and only AI inference chip investment. “When we participate in single asset direct deals and only do a small handful every year, our stakes are incredibly high,” Stein said. “We are not managing portfolio-level returns. We don’t model in failure on a single asset transaction. We are taking a tremendous amount of risk with concentrated client capital. We’re taking on reputational risk as a firm. We’re allocating a tremendous amount of time and resources. There’s an alignment there that founders appreciate.”
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4 days left to save close to $500 on TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 passes
We’re down to 4 days left to save up to $482 on yourTechCrunch Disrupt 2026pass. These low rates will disappear on April 10 at 11:59 p.m. PT. If you’ve been mapping out your 2026 tech event calendar, this isn’t the moment to wait.Register now to lock in your savings before prices increase. Each year,Disruptbrings together 10,000+ founders, tech leaders, and VCs at San Francisco’s Moscone West. From October 13–15, you’ll gain valuable takeaways and curated networking opportunities designed to elevate your startup trajectory, accelerate your career, or strengthen your portfolio. Last year, Disrupt featured 200+ on-stage conversations with 250+ top voices shaping the tech ecosystem. Expect the same level of powerful, candid conversations this year with tracks ranging from AI and scaling to fintech and climate. Keep an eye on theevent pageas we roll out the 2026 agenda. 2025 highlights included: Last year, 20,000+ curated meetings took place over three days. Beyond that, thousands more connections happened organically through impromptu moments, roundtables, and conversations across a 10,000+ attendee Expo Hall. This year, we’re rolling out improved networking technology to make those connections even more targeted and efficient. Meet the one person who can change the trajectory of your startup. It only takes one. Startup Battlefield 200is where 200 TechCrunch-selected, early-stage startups compete on a global stage for $100,000 in equity-free funding, global visibility, and direct access to top investors. Hear directly from tier-one VCs as they share candid feedback on what makes a startup viable. Is your startup ready to join the battle?Apply here. Know a startup that belongs in this competition?Nominate here. This iconic pitch competition has helped launch breakout companies like Discord, Cloudflare, and Trello. 300+ startup exhibitorswill showcase innovations across the venue, especially in the Expo Hall, where foot traffic converges. Discover tomorrow’s breakthroughs and today’s solutions — all in one place. Want to book a table for your startup?Get started here. Throughout Disrupt Week, October 11–17, TechCrunch Disrupt Side Events will take place across the Bay Area beyond the main venue. Attend a post-event cocktail hour, grab breakfast before the day begins, or even host your own off-site panel. The opportunities to make powerful connections around Disrupt are endless. Five days remain to lock in the lowest rate of the year. Prices increase after April 10 at 11:59 p.m. PT.Register nowand secure your savings of up to $482 before they’re gone. Coming with a group? Save up to 30% onbundle passes.
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Google Maps can now write captions for your photos using AI
Google is rolling out new features to make it easier for users to contribute local knowledge to Maps, the company announced on Tuesday. Most notably, Gemini can now create captions when users are looking to share a photo or video about a place. Once users select photos that they want to share, Gemini will analyze the images to create captions. Users can then choose to edit or remove the caption. The company says the new tool is designed to give users a head start on captions when sharing content. Caption suggestions are available now in English on iOS in the U.S., and will expand globally and to Android in the coming months, Google says. The company is also making it easier to find the right image for sharing with the community. If users turn on media access for Google Maps in their phone’s settings, they will see photos and videos from their recent experiences directly in the “Contribute” tab. From there, they can tap on a photo and post it. “Photos and videos you post help people better understand a place, like the overall vibe or the newest menu,” Google explained in a blog post. “Now, we’re making it easier to find the right image for sharing.” Photo and video recommendations are now available globally on iOS and Android. In addition, Google is making it easier for users to track the impact of their contributions, as they will now see total points earned displayed in the “Contribute” tab. Additionally, “Local Guide” levels will be highlighted on profile pages. For context, Local Guides earn points by adding photos, writing reviews, answering questions, and checking facts to improve Google Maps. The company says it has updated its achievement badges so it’s easier to see if someone is an “expert fact-finder,” “a master photographer,” or “a rising novice.” Plus, Google is making it easier to spot high-level contributors with new gold-colored profiles. Google says these new features are designed to support its community of over 500 million contributors, who share photos, reviews, and videos to help others decide what to do and where to go. Given that Maps largely relies on contributors to keep information fresh and updated, it makes sense for the company to streamline the process of these contributions.
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Anthropic ups compute deal with Google and Broadcom amid skyrocketing demand
AI research lab Anthropic announced Monday that it signed anew agreement with Google and Broadcomfor increased processing and compute capacity to power its Claude AI models. This reworking of its compute deals comes as demand for its AI models continues to soar. The deals would expand Anthropic’s use of Google Cloud’s tensor processing units, or TPUs, the company’s advanced AI chips, and is an expansion of the deal the companies struck inOctober 2025for more than a gigawatt of compute capacity. This new compute capacity will come online in 2027, Anthropic said in a blog post. The company did not give specifics for its compute expansion, but a recentBroadcom SEC filing shows the deal includes 3.5 gigawatts of compute. The majority of this compute will be housed in the U.S. and will be an extension of the company’s$50 billion commitment to invest in U.S. compute infrastructure, Anthropic said in the post. “This groundbreaking partnership with Google and Broadcom is a continuation of our disciplined approach to scaling infrastructure: we are building the capacity necessary to serve the exponential growth we have seen in our customer base while also enabling Claude to define the frontier of AI development,” Krishna Rao, CFO of Anthropic, said in the press release. “We are making our most significant compute commitment to date to keep pace with our unprecedented growth.” Anthropic did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. The company has seen demand for its Claude models explode in recent months, buoyed by enterprise customers and despite the U.S. Defense Departments’s labeling of Anthropic asupply chain risk. Anthropic also recently closed a$30 billion Series G funding roundthat valued the company at $380 billion. The company’s run rate revenue is now $30 billion, the company announced, marking a drastic jump from the $9 billion the company recorded at the end of 2025. Anthropic also has more than 1,000 business customers spending more than $1 million on an annualized basis.
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Indian IT’s Mid-Senior Layer is Getting Squeezed in the AI Shift
AI is disrupting the IT services model, leaving middle managers stuck between legacy metrics and new demands.
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Infosys Partners With US-Based Harness Partner to Solve ‘AI Velocity Paradox’
The collaboration combines Infosys Topaz, Cobalt, and Harness AI to boost productivity, governance, and delivery.
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OpenAI Shares Superintelligence Vision for Workers, Calls for Four-Day Workweeks and Bonuses
OpenAI, on Monday, shared a report on how the global government policies should be shaped to avoid the concentration of power and benefits in the hands of a select few. The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) firm's report focused on broad areas of creating an open economy, sharing the prosperity received from the technology, and building a resilient society to mitigate the risks of AI. The company also suggested policy changes to improve workers' benefits and tax reformations.
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Anthropic, Google and OpenAI Join Hands to Fight AI Model Copying Attempts by Chinese Rivals: Report
The three giants of the artificial intelligence (AI) space — Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI — have reportedly joined hands to combat the attempts of model distillation by Chinese rivals. As per the report, the Silicon Valley firms have agreed to share information to ensure that their frontier AI models are not copied and brought to the market at a cheaper price point. Notably, in 2025, OpenAI first accused Chinese AI firm DeepSeek of distilling its model to build the DeepSeek-R1.
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Quest Global Buys Bengaluru Startup BITSILICA to Level-Up Semiconductor Capabilities
With the acquisition, Quest Global brings aboard BITSILICA's end-to-end chip design and verification capabilities.
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Surat-based AI Startup Rocket Launches Vibecoding Platform to Unify Workflows
Rocket claims over 1.5 million users across 180 countries and is backed by investors including Salesforce Ventures, Accel, and Together Fund.
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Oracle Shatters the Biggest Myth About Tech Layoffs
AI may be changing how work gets done, but the layoffs sweeping the sector today are less about tech replacing humans.
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Tessolve Appoints Former HCL SVP Ravi Kumar Chirugudu as President and COO
Chirugudu said he has joined Tessolve at a time when the semiconductor industry is moving towards complex, AI-driven systems.
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