S. expansion arrives on September 24, when the health-scanning startup opens its first American office.
In Brief Posted: 6:00 AM PDT · August 18, 2026 Neko Health’s promised U.S. expansion arrives on September 24, when the health-scanning startup opens its first American office. It will be located in SoHo, Manhattan’s home of luxury shopping, at 300 Lafayette Street. Neko was founded by Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek and Hjalmar Nilsonne, who serves as Neko’s CEO. The company says that more than 25,000 New Yorkers have joined a waitlist. As we previously reported, Neko Health has developed proprietary body-scanning technology, which it pairs with bloodwork and data from fitness devices to assess a person’s health. Currently, the startup has locations in the U.K. and Sweden. When it raised a $700 million Series C last month, it said that 100,000 people already had scans. Neko is among a growing number of health scanning companies created by tech founders or backed by VCs. For instance, Midjourney, the AI lab best known for its AI image and video creation model and website, is also creating a body scanner, which it plans to integrate into a spa experience. It plans to open in San Francisco in 2027. Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis also have a longevity company called Fountain Life that does scans and health assessments. Function Health, co-founded by well-known wellness podcaster Dr. Mark Hyman, offers blood testing, and it added body scans after acquiring the startup Ezra. Function just took on a $450 million loan from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund, where companies repay the money via profit-sharing arrangements. Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Latest in Biotech & Health
Reach Capital announced Tuesday the close of a $265 million Fund V. The thesis of the 11-year-old, San Francisco firm is to back founders building AI applications that can “expand human potential,” Tony Wan, head of platform at Reach Capital, told TechCrunch. In practice, he added, that means looking at founders building across three areas: learning, health, and work. “We believe AI should serve human flourishing, not replace it,” Wan said. The firm’s previous investments include Replit, ClassDojo, and Coral Care. The new fund will write checks of $1 million to $10 million, spanning pre-seed through Series A, into roughly 50 companies over the next three years. So far, no companies have been backed through Fund V. Limited partners include Capricorn Investment Group, the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions, the LEGO Foundation, and College Board. Speaking to TechCrunch, general partner Jomayra Herrera said fundraising went smoothly and that the team was able to raise the new fund in less than six months. “The vast majority of our LPs doubled down, and we brought on a few new marquee LPs,” Herrera said. “We attribute this to LP interest in sector-focused boutique funds that focus on conviction-based investments.” Reach Capital’s new fund is noteworthy given the barbell shape the broader fundraising market has taken in recent years, with capital flowing overwhelmingly to giant, brand-name funds on one end and to sharply focused specialists on the other, with generalist firms in the middle struggling to get LPs’ attention. Analysis by PitchBook and the National Venture Capital Association found that established firms captured more than 90% of the roughly $62 billion raised across U.S. VC funds through May of this year, leaving a smaller pool of first-time and mid-sized managers to compete for whatever’s left. Reach’s thesis, with over a decade of edtech and impact-investing, fits the mold of the kind of specialist fund LPs have remained open to funding. The outfit previously raised $215 million for Fund IV in 2023 and $165 million for Fund III in 2021. One of its most recent exits came in June, when Superhuman — the productivity platform now owned by Grammarly — acquired GPTZero, the AI-detection startup co-founded by Princeton graduate Edward Tian. Terms weren’t disclosed, but GPTZero had grown to more than 19 million registered users and $30 million in annual recurring revenue on just $13.5 million raised, and Reach was one of several investors in the company, alongside Uncork Capital, Footwork, and Jack Altman’s Alt Capital. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Dominic-Madori Davis is a senior venture capital and startup reporter at TechCrunch. She is based in New York City. You can contact or verify outreach from Dominic by emailing dominic.davis@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at +1 646 831-7565 on Signal. View Bio
As AI makes coding dramatically faster, the next big challenge in software development is testing and validating all that code. Blacksmith has raised a new $45 million round to capitalize on that shift. The Series B, led by Peak XV Partners, values Blacksmith at $550 million, up from the $60 million valuation it was assigned when it raised a $10 million Series A less than a year ago. Existing investors GV and Y Combinator also participated, bringing the startup’s total funding to $58.5 million. Founded in 2024, Blacksmith helps companies build, test, and verify software before it reaches production. The startup now serves more than 5,000 customers, including Mercury, Supabase, Clerk, Ashby, and Expensify, up from more than 700 customers less than a year ago, co-founder and CEO Aditya Jayaprakash said in an exclusive interview. The rise of AI coding tools such as Cursor, OpenAI’s Codex, and Anthropic’s Claude Code has made it significantly easier for software teams to generate code, but the quality of AI-generated code is not a given. “Validating code is still a bottleneck, and it’s an even bigger bottleneck because people are writing even more,” Jayaprakash said. Blacksmith started as a cloud provider for continuous integration (CI) workloads, helping companies run the software builds and tests needed to validate code before it reaches production. The startup has since broadened its platform with Codesmith, an AI coding agent that can automatically fix failed code checks. Jayaprakash said Blacksmith reached a $10 million annualized revenue run rate with just 10 employees and has since grown its workforce to about 30 and grown revenue to “tens of millions of dollars.” He declined to provide a specific updated ARR figure, though did say some of its largest customers now spend more than $1 million a year on the platform. While that appears to be solid and fast progress, Blacksmith is operating in a crowded market. Its key competitors include GitHub Actions, Cursor Automations, validation capabilities baked into Codex and Claude Code, numerous other startups, and AI code-testing services offered by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Jayaprakash said his startup is competing on the speed of testing code as well as affordability. Looking ahead, Jayaprakash said that Blacksmith plans to expand into a broader suite of coding tools, aiming to help developers write, validate, and merge software faster. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Jagmeet covers startups, tech policy-related updates, and all other major tech-centric developments from India for TechCrunch. He previously worked as a principal correspondent at NDTV. You can contact or verify outreach from Jagmeet by emailing mail@journalistjagmeet.com. View Bio
It’s hard to imagine a home appliance more forgotten — yet more consequential — than the water heater. Most people only think of water heaters when their shower runs cold, but they represent about 18% of a household’s total energy budget and are one of the main causes of residential water damage. To Luke Winston-Almanzar, water heaters are in clear need of an upgrade. “The typical water heater is devoid of intelligence, it’s using a god-awful amount of energy, and my air fryer is smarter than it,” he told TechCrunch. “I was using more energy to heat my water than it takes to drive my electric car.” So Winston-Almanzar, who was previously chief business officer at 3D printing startup Formlabs, co-founded Reservoir along with Gabriel Parisi-Amon and Jake Felser to make a water heater that they would want to buy. Reservoir announced Wednesday that it has raised $8 million in a seed round led by Asymmetric Capital Partners with participation from Founder Collective and MCJ. The funding will help the company install more of its water heaters in homes around the Boston area, it’s initial market. Reservoir has installed about 100 devices to date, and Winston-Almanzar said his company hopes to have around 1,000 installed by the end of next year. “That’s when you start talking about a megawatt-scale in terms of capacity,” he said. Storing megawatt-hours of energy as hot water could go a long way to stabilizing the grid. Today’s water heaters tend to be dumb devices, responding only to changes in temperature in the tank. But Reservoir, by predicting when people will need hot water, can heat the tank when electricity demand is low and prices are cheap. Plus, the device’s heat pump is nearly four times more efficient than an electric water heater and five times more efficient than a natural gas version. The startup has been able to show that it can relieve strain on the grid at the neighborhood level, Winston-Almanzar said. Eventually, Reservoir could aggregate its fleet of water heaters to participate in utility demand response programs, which pay handsomely for large users to avoid tapping the grid at certain times. Winston-Almanzar said he’s looking at ways to use those payments to keep Reservoir’s prices down. While energy storage might get grid experts excited, it won’t sell many water heaters. Most people replace their water heaters with whatever their plumber has on hand. The Reservoir team knew they needed to do more than build another heat pump water heater. “The sustainable product need to just be the better product,” he said. To make an appliance that customers will seek out, Reservoir has included a number of features that aren’t found in typical water heaters. The predictive heating feature ties in with energy storage. Reservoir’s water heater will spend the first month in a home gathering information about water usage patterns to train a model. Once trained, it will run the unit’s heat pump at the most efficient and cost effective times to save money while also ensuring ample supply. Reservoir also added an ultrasonic flow sensor to help detect plumbing leaks throughout the home, sending homeowners an alert through its app. In the Max version, Reservoir added more features, including a recirculation valve to provide instant hot water and a mixing valve that can prevent pipes from freezing in cold snaps. In the Max version, a 50-gallon tank can deliver up to 150 gallons of hot water in “party mode,” which can be set either on the device’s touchscreen or through the app. To keep pricing simple and to speed up the sales process, Reservoir has also started its own plumbing company. Winston-Almanzar said that decision was inspired by his experience at Formlabs. “We built direct relationships [there] because, in a lot of cases, distributors weren’t embracing the new technology.” Reservoir’s “Max” version costs $6,500, while the base “Core” version costs $5,000, installation costs included. Massachusetts residents quali
As India’s quick-commerce platforms race to deliver everything from groceries to smartphones in minutes, electric mobility startup Yulu has seized the boom, raising $93 million in fresh funding. The Bengaluru‑based startup offers electric two‑wheelers on weekly subscription plans, so delivery drivers can jump straight into the platform, without buying their own vehicle. With around 50,000 electric vehicles in its fleet, Yulu reports that it logs about 1.6 million miles each week and powers more than 750,000 deliveries a day. The new funding will let Yulu grow that fleet to 200,000 bikes in the next two years and launch faster electric two-wheelers aimed at different logistics use cases. The Series C round comprised $63 million in equity led by GEF Capital Partners and $30 million in debt financing. About $5.5 million of the equity component was used to buy shares from seed investors whose funds were nearing the end of their investment life, co-founder and CEO Amit Gupta said in an interview. The deal valued Yulu at about $170 million post-money, people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Gupta declined to comment when asked about the valuation and did not dispute the figure. Existing investors Bajaj Auto and Magna International did not participate in the round after waiving their pre-emptive rights, allowing GEF to acquire its target ownership stake, Gupta said. He added that the startup expects this to be its final equity fundraising before an eventual public listing, with future fleet expansion financed primarily through debt and lease financing. The business moves toward becoming profitable before interest and taxes next year, after achieving positive EBITDA last financial year, Gupta told TechCrunch. The startup also saw its revenue growing seven-fold between fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2026, he said, without sharing specifics. The COVID shift Founded as a bike-sharing startup for urban commuters in 2017, Yulu found its biggest opportunity during the COVID-19 pandemic as demand for food and grocery deliveries accelerated. Today, Gupta told TechCrunch that about 95% of Yulu’s revenue comes from renting electric bikes to gig workers on weekly subscriptions, while the rest is generated by its station‑based rental service in Bengaluru. The startup has also dropped an earlier plan to sell bikes directly to consumers. To fuel its next growth phase, Yulu is introducing a full-sized, higher‑speed electric scooter, called Yulu Express. This is designed for longer‑haul e‑commerce deliveries, bike taxis, and express parcel services — the areas its slower fleet could not previously cover. About a third of the planned 200,000‑vehicle fleet will be made up of this new model, Gupta said. While Yulu’s current low‑speed fleet is built by Bajaj Auto, the new high‑speed scooter comes from a different Indian manufacturer — Gupta declined to name it. About 500 of the new bikes are already running in Bengaluru and are being trialed in three additional cities, Gupta told TechCrunch. Currently, Yulu operates in 12 Indian cities, running its own operations in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi‑NCR, and Hyderabad, while partnering with franchisees in eight other markets. The startup, Gupta said, aims to reach roughly 20 cities within the next year, with Chennai and Pune among the key targets for expansion. Gupta stated that Yulu partners with almost every major quick‑commerce, food‑delivery, and e‑commerce platform — including Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart — though its customers are the gig workers who rent the bikes, not the platforms themselves. He compared Yulu’s role to “the AWS of mobility,” supplying the infrastructure that lets delivery workers operate without the platforms taking a cut. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Jagmeet covers startups, tech policy-related updates, and all other major tech-centric developments from India for Tech
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 is built around one question: How do you build an enduring company in the AI era? Our programming and speaker lineup reflect that, based on the feedback we’ve gotten from the community and the reality on the ground. Last year at Disrupt, we spoke with founders about their experiences and discovered the results of their attendance firsthand. One founder saw a 3x oversubscription rate after their confirmation for Startup Battlefield and more than 100 investor inbounds helping fuel conversations about a future fundraising round. Another founder had nearly 30 back-to-back conversations with investors who flocked to them after a pitch onstage and followed them to their booth. That’s not the exception at Disrupt — that’s the point. And those opportunities aren’t just available for Battlefield finalists. Every conversation in the Expo Hall or in a Side Event can create an opportunity for your startup. For years, whether it’s been held in New York, San Francisco, or elsewhere, Disrupt has brought together thousands of founders, investors, startup team members, and tech leaders. We’re keeping that mission alive at SF’s Moscone West, this October 13-15 with a packed lineup of speakers, more than 200 expert sessions, a wealth of organized and serendipitous networking opportunities, and most of all, the chance to be in the same room as the person who could change your nascent idea for a company or your current startup’s trajectory. This guide is for the founders out there who are just learning about Disrupt, who need a refresher, or are skeptical of whether it’s worth it. TechCrunch has been around for more than 20 years; we can take it. Image Credits:TechCrunch / Slava Blazer Photography The reality of what makes Disrupt, Disrupt If you’re asking Claude or ChatGPT if TechCrunch Disrupt is worth it, you’re not alone. The reality is that Disrupt is a unique event, and it’s happening at a unique time for the startup community. This year’s Disrupt isn’t about predicting the future of AI; it’s about building companies in it. Across six editorially curated stages, founders will hear practical lessons from the CEOs, investors, engineers, and operators shaping the next decade of technology. Whether you’re raising your first round, scaling your team, or deciding how AI changes your product, every session is designed to answer one question: “What can I take back to my company on Monday morning?” The founders Disrupt empowers Disrupt works a bit differently, depending on where you are in your founding journey, with different tracks you can follow to make the most of the three days: Pre-seed and idea stages You’re here to pressure-test your thesis, meet your first angel or pre-seed investors, and figure out who else is building in your space. Prioritize the Builders Stage, the Startup Battlefield semifinalist pitches, and the Expo Hall, along with roundtables tied to your industry and conversations you’ll want to learn more from. Early revenue or actively raising You’re here for capital and validation above all else, and your time is valuable. Prioritize our investor-matchmaking tools and the connections that come with your Founder Pass, including the networking tools in our app. You also get access to the Deal Flow Café, where we foster one-on-one conversations between founders and investors. And when your schedule isn’t packed with dealmaking, learn from VC perspectives and fundraising-focused sessions at the Builders Stage. Scaling, hiring, in search of partnerships You’re here in search of talent, strategic partners, and market visibility. Those same networking tools and opportunities can help you meet potential hires and partners and deepen those connections or make new ones. Disrupt’s Side Events aren’t to be missed — there’s one for every industry, interest, or post-event vibe you could be looking to find. Startup Battlefield: The most iconic pitch competition The Startup Battlefield winner’s reveal
Silicon Valley is already convinced that AI agents are the future. In the heart of the tech industry, people are designing payment systems for agents, using them to automate their jobs, and most recently, trying to stop them from hacking into other organizations. But out in the real world, most people have never touched an AI agent. That might be because tech companies haven’t given them a good reason to.“Hot take … isn’t it kinda crazy that nobody is really using AI Agents,” Josh Miller, CEO of The Browser Company, wrote in a viral X post this week. “Theoretically, the tech is ready for AI agents to totally transform how we work and live our lives … but alas the general public dgaf” (doesn’t give a fuck).Miller’s agentic epiphany resonated with many in Silicon Valley, where people are broadly bewildered by the fact that the general public doesn’t seem to care about its latest obsession. Miller told me in an interview on Wednesday that he fired off his post while half asleep during a family trip to Europe, but he stands by it. He says the industry needs to focus on building agent products that people actually want.“I just have not heard a single person outside of the tech community talk about an agent that they use,” Miller says. “As excited and optimistic as we as an industry may be about the frontier and recursive self-improvement, it's worth pausing and just saying, ‘Huh, what?’”Last month, OpenAI said that its Codex and ChatGPT Work agents collectively have about 10 million weekly users. People close to Anthropic tell me that its Claude Code and Cowork agents are seeing similar levels of adoption. Compared to chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini, which both have around a billion monthly active users on average, agents amount to basically a rounding error.That’s a problem for the AI labs. Most consumers are using generative AI today for fairly simple tasks, such as looking up information and chatting. But Silicon Valley has spent billions training models that can do far more, and agents represent a way to capitalize on that investment—if people actually use them.This tracks with broader concerns I’ve been hearing among AI insiders, who note that although they have poured considerable resources into building AI agents, no one has created a killer consumer product so far. When, if ever, will the ChatGPT moment happen for agents?Despite Miller’s self-deprecating personality—he frequently noted he is “just” a sociology major—I think his arguments are worth paying attention to. His latest startup developed Arc, a web browser with a cult following, and it was acquired by Atlassian last year for $610 million. His first company, Branch, was bought by Facebook in 2014, and Miller also previously served as the White House’s first director of product under President Obama.Miller’s bigger point is not just that AI agents haven’t caught on yet. It’s that they are more of a technology than a stand-alone product.“No one wants AI agents, because AI agents aren't a thing. It is an invented frame made up by our industry to collectively refer to something,” says Miller. “Let's make a product that makes you calm, focused, and inflow right when you open your laptop. And the fact that we're able to do that because there's a thing called a ‘harness’ that calls up tools—who cares? Like, no one needs to know that.”Miller has firsthand experience to back up his claims. He says The Browser Company’s most popular feature ever is a personalized morning briefing for users in its AI-powered browser, Dia. When people open their laptop, they receive a homepage with a greeting, a daily to-do list populated from their calendar and email, and some random tidbits designed to spark joy—such as a piece of art. Technically, Miller says, the feature was only made possible by an AI agent, but the user doesn’t need to know that.Miller’s arguments are convenient coming from someone who sells an AI-powered web browser. But I think he’s correct that today’s agentic product
Sidd Motwani, Ian Anderson and Shivaditya Sinha spent years building the behavioral intelligence infrastructure behind Spotify’s recommendation engine. Called Vector AI, the system is designed to predict a person’s intent and next actions instead of relying only on their past behavior. It powers about 90% of Spotify’s recommendations to its 800 million users. Now, the three are bringing a similar system to e-commerce with their new startup, Malachyte. The company on Thursday said it had raised $10 million in seed funding to scale distribution and hire more product and commercial leaders. Malachyte was formed from the belief that most online stores treat shoppers the same way: Personalization is largely dictated by historical purchases, demographic segmentation, or logged-in customer profiles. That means first-time visitors often see the same generic storefront as everyone else, while existing shoppers receive recommendations based primarily on what they bought previously rather than what they need today. The startup wants to change that by building real-time, intent-aware shopping experiences. Its platform uses what it calls “two-headed Vector AI” to predict what product a shopper wants next, learn their general taste, and fine-tune continuously based on what they do in real time. “[Our] system starts forming before the first click, using the context available the moment the page loads. Within a single session, we build a real read on both preferences and what someone is trying to accomplish right now,” Motwani, Malachyte’s CEO, told TechCrunch. “A search for ‘heavy-duty boot’ followed by two clicks on steel-toed boots is enough to move work pants and gloves up the page and push dress shoes down, with no account or history required. Every additional action sharpens the profile, so the experience gets more relevant the longer someone stays, and again on their next visit.” Motwani argues that retailers already possess their most valuable source of customer intelligence, but rarely take advantage of it in real time. “Every hover, click, scroll, search refinement and add-to-cart is a signal, and most systems either never act on it in the moment or aggregate it into a segment overnight. We read it continuously, so each action makes the user’s vector more confident about both preference and current intent,” he added. He also believes contextual signals remain significantly underutilized. “A phone visitor at 11 p.m. from an email link is in a different state of mind than the same person on a laptop mid-morning, and most systems treat them identically,” Motwani said. The company has been developing and testing its technology since 2024, and worked with more than 20 enterprise customers across travel, grocery and retail before ultimately focusing on e-commerce. Its platform first went live in the fall of 2025 with Fun.com. Since June 2026, it has been generally available to Shopify merchants through a native integration, while larger retailers can integrate the technology through its API. Looking ahead, Motwani says the bigger opportunity is in bringing merchandising and marketing together around the same understanding of customer behavior. The funding round was co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Gradient, with participation from Harpoon Ventures. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Lauren covers media, streaming, apps and platforms at TechCrunch. You can contact or verify outreach from Lauren by emailing laurenf.techcrunch@gmail.com or via encrypted message at laurenforris22.25 on Signal. View Bio
Ellis AI announced Thursday its emergence from stealth with $10 million in seed funding from investors including First Round Capital, 645 Ventures, Harlem Capital, Khosla Ventures, Thrive Capital, Slow Capital, and Ariel Alternatives CEO Mellody Hobson. Ellis uses AI agents to tackle the fragmented workflow private credit managers deal with, including managing documents, spreadsheets, and correspondence. The company was founded by Ryan Williams, best known for co-creating the real estate investment platform Cadre alongside Josh and Jared Kushner back in 2014. That company raised more than $160 million in funding and, at its peak, was valued at $800 million before being sold for an undisclosed sum to the alternative investment company Yieldstreet in 2024. “At Cadre, I saw the next major constraint,” Williams said. “Even as the front end of private markets became more modern and accessible, the operating infrastructure underneath it remained fragmented.” He started working on Ellis last year. The company seeks to connect and centralize all the scattered software, accounting information, and documents a private credit firm would use into one easily accessible platform. The system can flag discrepancies in the data and uses AI agents to help perform tasks like portfolio monitoring and preparing reports. For example, Williams promises the agents can help close a fund’s books at the end of the month. “A team may have to download files from several systems, reformat the data, compare balances, investigate discrepancies, and re-enter information by hand. In many firms, Excel becomes the operating system,” he continued. “Ellis connects to the systems and documents a firm already uses rather than forcing it to rip everything out and start over.” It keeps a human in the loop, too, he says. “Material decisions and actions remain with the human experts,” he said. “I expect the human loop to become narrower, but not disappear,” he continued, when asked if he sees a day when the AI works fully autonomously. “Our goal is not to replace human judgment; it’s to help people cut through the noise and make educated decisions faster.” When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Dominic-Madori Davis is a senior venture capital and startup reporter at TechCrunch. She is based in New York City. You can contact or verify outreach from Dominic by emailing dominic.davis@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at +1 646 831-7565 on Signal. View Bio
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