Julie Bort

MyFitnessPal acquired AI calorie-counting startup Cal AI, founded by two 19-year-old high school friends who built a 15 million download app generating $30 million in annual revenue in under two years.

“Author of "MyFitnessPal acquired Cal AI"”

Databricks raised $1 billion at a $100 billion-plus valuation nine months after its $10 billion raise, reaching $4 billion ARR, fueled by rising adoption of AI-generated databases.

“Author of "Databricks confirms new $100B valuation on $4B ARR" in TechCrunch”

Cohere raised $500M at a $6.8B valuation with participation from AMD, Nvidia, and Salesforce, positioning itself as the security-first enterprise LLM alternative to consumer-focused AI models.

“Author of "Cohere hits a $6.8B valuation as investors AMD, Nvidia, and Salesforce double down" in TechCrunch”

Anthropic has acquired Vercept, an AI startup that built Vy, a computer-use agent tool, as part of its strategy to scale AI agent capabilities following its earlier acquisition of coding agent engine Bun.

“Author of "Vercept Acquisition by Anthropic" in TechCrunch”

OpenAI's former sales leader Aliisa Rosenthal joins Acrew Capital as GP, bringing insights that enterprise AI startups can build defensible moats through specialization and persistent context management rather than competing with foundation model makers.

“Author of "OpenAI's Former Sales Leader Joins VC Firm Acrew: OpenAI Taught Her Where Startups Can Build a 'Moat" in TechCrunch”

While tech executives like Nadella promote AI as a human augmentation tool, research suggests the actual job displacement impact remains uncertain and may differ significantly from industry claims.

“Author of "Do Layoffs Really Prove AI Replacement?"”

Google released a reimagined Gemini Deep Research agent powered by Gemini 3 Pro that allows developers to embed advanced research capabilities into their own applications through a new Interactions API, positioning the company for an agentic AI era.

“Author of "This Is What Agentic AI Actually Looks Like"”

OpenAI has secured approximately $1 trillion in infrastructure and chip deals in 2025 including partnerships with Nvidia ($100B investment), AMD (stock exchange), Oracle ($500B Stargate + $300B cloud), and SoftBank, with CEO Sam Altman signaling more major deals are forthcoming.

“Author of "Even after Stargate, Oracle, Nvidia, and AMD, OpenAI has more big deals coming soon, Sam Altman says" in TechCrunch”

AMD has structured an unusual deal where OpenAI receives up to 160 million AMD stock warrants to pay for billions in GPU purchases, effectively using AMD's own stock appreciation to finance the customer's purchases.

“Author of "Wall Street analysts explain how AMD's own stock will pay for OpenAI's billions in chip purchases" in TechCrunch”

Periodic Labs, founded by former OpenAI and DeepMind researchers, raised $300M in seed funding to automate scientific discovery by building AI scientists and autonomous laboratories that conduct physical experiments to discover new materials like superconductors.

“Author of "Former OpenAI and DeepMind Researchers Raise Whopping $300M Seed to Automate Science" in TechCrunch”

Cohere raised $100M in funding extension, reaching a $7B valuation, and partnered with AMD to run its Command AI models on AMD Instinct GPUs as it positions itself in the enterprise AI sovereignty market.

“Author of "Cohere's $7B Valuation" in TechCrunch”

Sam Altman questions whether social media posts praising OpenAI's Codex are written by humans or bots, highlighting how humans increasingly mimic LLM communication patterns and platforms incentivize engagement through astroturfing.

“Author of "What if your favourite Reddit thread is just AI talking to AI?"”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong mandated AI coding assistant adoption for all engineers and fired those who refused to onboard GitHub Copilot and Cursor, treating AI competency as a non-negotiable job requirement.

“Author of "Coinbase CEO: Use AI or Get Fired"”

Sam Altman is co-founding brain-to-computer interface startup Merge Labs valued at $850 million with potential funding from OpenAI's ventures team, positioning it to compete directly with Elon Musk's Neuralink.

“Author of "The Brain Chip Beef You Didn't Know You Needed"”

“Journalist who reported on Anthropic's S-1A filing revealing the company may imminently meet its Responsible Scaling Policy threshold.”

“Reported on Jensen Huang playing with Microducks robots at GTC Berlin and the viral video.”

“Reported on OpenAI's $30B fundraising round at $1.25T valuation.”

“Reported on Anthropic's Claude discovering a new enzyme system through AI-powered biology research.”

“Wrote article about Jensen Huang pushing back against AI legislation at Salesforce Dreamforce conference.”

“Author reporting on AIUC's AI safety certification service for enterprises.”

“Reported on Simile's $200M Series B funding at $2B valuation and its AI simulation capabilities.”

“TechCrunch journalist who reported on infostealer malware stealing Claude login sessions and token allowances.”

“Author reporting on Open Secure AI Alliance forming and Palantir CEO's AI industry criticism.”

“Wrote article about Elon Musk's praise for Anthropic and assurances about not restricting their access to SpaceX infrastructure.”

“Byline author reporting on Groq's $650 million funding round.”

“Byline author of article about MANGOS replacing FAANG as tech overlords.”

“Byline author reporting on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's announcement of Vera, a new AI-focused CPU.”

“Byline author reporting on Cerebras Systems' blockbuster IPO preparation and its deep relationship with OpenAI.”

“Reported on Microsoft testing OpenClaw-style AI bots for Copilot integration.”

“Byline author reporting on Microsoft testing OpenClaw-style agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot.”

“Journalist who reported on Zero Shot fund and its OpenAI founders investing in AI and robotics startups.”

“Julie Bort wrote the TechCrunch article about OpenAI's new $100/month ChatGPT Pro plan.”

“Authored article on Zero Shot VC fund founded by OpenAI alumni.”

“TechCrunch journalist reporting on Anthropic hitting server capacity limits due to surging user growth from Claude Code releases and DOD feud attention.”

“Reported on Anthropic's surging paid subscriber growth and Claude's growing popularity compared to ChatGPT.”

“Authored the TechCrunch article on Replit's $9 billion valuation and Series D funding.”