section 32

Ema, a ‘Universal AI employee,’ emerges from stealth with $25M

Generative AI well and truly has a grip on public technology discourse these days. A new startup called Ema out of San Francisco thinks it’s a lot more than just a passing fancy. It’s emer

Section 32 closes on $525M fund, says there is ‘a zone of commoditization that you have to avoid while investing in AI’

Section 32, a venture firm founded by ex-Google Ventures CEO Bill Maris, has closed on $525 million in capital commitments across its fifth fund, TechCrunch is first to report.  A portion of the capi

Disney-backed Inworld raises new cash for its AI-powered virtual characters

If software is eating the world, AI isn’t far behind. AI-powered text-, art- and audio-generating systems will soon make — and already are making — their way into the tools people us

Alphabet just spun out out its quantum tech group, launching it as an independent company

Quantum tech may be having its moment at long last. Consider that earlier this month, one of the few “pure play” quantum tech companies in the world, Rigetti Computing, went public by merg

ScienceIO leaves stealth with millions to structure health data

Years before he co-launched a stealthy business to fix the messy world of health data, Gaurav Kaushik was slowly connecting the dots on how better visualization could impact health outcomes. In 2018,

Bill Gates wants Western countries to eat ‘synthetic meat’; Meatable has raised $47 million to make it

In a recent interview discussing Bill Gates’ recent book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster“, the Microsoft and Breakthrough Energy founder (and the world’s third wealthiest man)

Newly funded Legacy, a sperm testing and freezing service, conveys a message to men: get checked

Legacy, a male fertility startup, has just raised a fresh, $3.5 million in funding from Bill Maris’s San Diego-based venture firm, Section 32, along with Y Combinator and Bain Capital Ventures,

As concerns over medical device security rise, MedCrypt raises $5.3 million

As medical devices move to networked technologies, securing those devices becomes increasingly important. Regulators, seemingly late to the threat that unsecured medical devices posed, only began requ

Music services company Kobalt is raising a big round that could exceed $100 million

Kobalt, a 19-year-old, London-based music services company that operates as both a music publisher and a service-based music company — among other things, it helps artists collect the royalties

Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong: ‘I’d love to run a public company’

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase, wants to take his company public — maybe on the blockchain. Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018, Armstrong dished on his ambit

Bill Maris has closed his new fund with $150 million, to accommodate ‘strong’ investor interest

Bill Maris, the former chief executive of Alphabet's venture arm, GV, has closed on $150 million in commitments for his own, San Diego-based venture firm. The outfit, Section 32, was expected to raise

Ex-GV CEO Bill Maris said to be launching health care investment fund, Section 32