Startups

Meta has acquired Conductor, a young artificial intelligence startup whose software lets developers run several coding agents at once, each working on a separate part of a project in its own workspace. Meta confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch but declined to comment further, and the financial terms were not disclosed. The deal was first reported by Axios, and Conductor announced it on its own blog on Wednesday.

OpenAI announced on Wednesday, November 4, that it will acquire Pierre Computer Company, a low-profile developer tools startup whose software already runs inside Codex, its AI coding platform. The financial terms were not disclosed. The deal is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and the two companies will remain separate and independent until it closes.

CrowdStrike used its Fal.Con Europe conference in Barcelona on Tuesday, November 3, to make three connected moves on AI agent safety. The company introduced an AI Kill Switch inside Falcon Guardian, and it signed agreements to acquire two AI security startups, Fiddler AI and Dreadnode. Together, the announcements cover testing an agent before it ships, watching it in production, and stopping it when it goes off course.

Intel said on Monday that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Classiq, an Israeli startup that makes software for building quantum computing programs, in a move that would turn the chipmaker's long-running quantum research effort into a full-stack business spanning hardware and code. Intel said combining Classiq's synthesis platform with its own spin-qubit manufacturing and existing software would create a user-friendly platform aimed at moving quantum computing toward the mainstream.

Daytona Platforms, a three-year-old startup building cloud infrastructure designed specifically for AI agents, has raised a 60 million dollar Series B round at a 1 billion dollar valuation. FirstMark Growth led the round, which the company announced this week, and the new money brings Daytona's total funding to 91 million dollars — a rapid climb for a company selling one of the least glamorous and most necessary pieces of the AI stack: somewhere for agents to actually run.

Warp Sciences emerged from stealth on Thursday with 215 million dollars in funding and a plan to rebuild, in the United States, a piece of the drug discovery business that largely moved overseas: making and testing compounds. The round, led by Lightspeed, values the startup at 865 million dollars including the new money, according to the company's announcement.

Legal AI startup Legora announced on Wednesday that it has raised 550 million dollars in a Series E funding round that values the company at 8.8 billion dollars, a major financing for a company selling AI tools built for lawyers.

Boston-based artificial intelligence startup ASI said on Tuesday it has raised 325 million dollars in a Series C funding round that values the company at 3 billion dollars, a sign of how strongly investors are backing AI built for the physical world rather than for chatbots. The round was led by Spark Capital, with participation from affiliates of Citadel Securities, Meritech Capital and Craft Ventures, among others, Reuters reported.

Tenstorrent, the AI chip company led by veteran processor designer Jim Keller, said on Monday that it has closed a 1.5 billion dollar Series E funding round at a 6.2 billion dollar post-money valuation. The figure more than doubles the valuation the company reached in December 2024, and it ranks among the largest single raises by an independent AI chip startup this year.

Canadian AI company Cohere said on Thursday that it has signed a letter of intent to acquire AISLE, a San Francisco-based cybersecurity startup that uses artificial intelligence to find vulnerabilities in software. Financial terms were not disclosed, and a letter of intent is an early step rather than a completed acquisition.