(Fairview Capital) This year marks a significant milestone as the number of woman and minority-owned firms in the United States surpassed 1,000 firms for the first time, reflecting a nearly tenfold increase since Fairview began publishing this data in 2014. The pace of this growth has evolved consistently, amidst significant structural shifts in the private…

(Bloomberg) Korean chip startup FuriosaAI has turned down an $800 million takeover offer from Meta Platforms Inc., choosing instead to grow the business as an independent company, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Meta had been in discussions about acquiring Seoul-based FuriosaAI since the start of this year, said the person, who asked…

(Fortune) Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capital firms, is laying off its Washington, D.C.-based policy team and shuttering its office there, just as some tech-related companies try to increase their visibility in the U.S. capital after President Trump’s re-election. The changes will take effect at the end of March and impact…

(Axios) The SEC has issued new general solicitation guidance that makes the process much less onerous for private equity and venture capital. The big picture: We may not see Times Square billboards advertising new funds, but it’s at least theoretically possible. Catch up quick: The Obama administration had tried to open the floodgates to general…

(Pitchbook) Mounting amounts of dry powder held in three- to five-year-old venture capital funds have reached levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis, according to a new PitchBook research report. These large untapped capital commitments stem from limited partners piling into funds in venture’s 2020 and 2021 boom. But the market’s prolonged downturn since…

(TechCrunch) The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is investigating the data-labeling startup Scale AI for compliance with the Fair Labor Standards Act, TechCrunch has learned. That’s a federal law that regulates unpaid wages, misclassification of employees as contractors, and illegal retaliation against workers. The investigation has been active since at least August 2024, a document…

(TechCrunch) Alec Radford, a researcher who helped develop many of OpenAI’s key AI technologies, has been subpoenaed in a copyright case against the AI startup, according to a court filing Tuesday. The filing, submitted by an attorney for the plaintiffs to the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, indicated that Radford was…

(Financial Times) If you are a parent you are probably on a few group chats. And in between chatter about school fundraisers and the weather, one major topic persists: How much screen time is too much for kids? Parents are immensely concerned about their children’s exposure to screens and social media. So much so that…

(Financial Times) Institutional investors with $1.5tn in funds have told asset managers to step up on climate action or risk being dumped, in a sign of a split in the investment industry over how to deal with the financial risks of global warming. A group of 26 financial institutions and pension funds from Australia to…

(Platformer) As someone who believes that effective content moderation is a prerequisite for building good social products and promoting actual free expression, I’ve been depressed by platforms’ reactionary turn away from building them. But then last week, I learned of an initiative that might actually begin to reverse this slide — and some big platforms…