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HiddenLayer nabs $100M as enterprises rush to secure their AI deployments
AI security startup HiddenLayer raised a $100 million Series B led by Delta-v Capital as enterprise spending on securing AI deployments accelerates.
HiddenLayer, which protects AI models, agents, and workflows from adversarial attacks, vulnerabilities, and code injections, raised a $100 million Series B led by Delta-v Capital with participation from Ten Eleven Ventures, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft's M12, and Booz Allen Hamilton. The company says annual recurring revenue grew more than 10x to the tens of millions of dollars, with customers including the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and a frontier model provider with over 700 million weekly users. Gartner estimates enterprise spending on AI security products will reach $2.83 billion in 2026, up 83% from 2025, and nearly $4.78 billion next year.
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The AI graveyard: a running list of projects and startups that didn’t make it
TechCrunch compiles a running list of failed AI products and startups, including Relay, OpenAI's Sora, Humane AI Pin, Notion Mail, and Microsoft's Recall.
TechCrunch's 'AI graveyard' tracks notable AI products and startups that shut down or underperformed, citing S&P Global data that about 42% of AI initiatives are abandoned. Examples include the Relay automation startup, OpenAI's Sora video platform (shut March 2026), ChatGPT Atlas browser (discontinued August 9), Notion Mail (shutting September 22), and Apple's delayed Siri AI that contributed to a $250 million settlement. Hardware failures include the Humane AI Pin ($230 million raised, assets sold to HP for $116 million) and the Rabbit R1, which sold 100,000 units but received poor reviews. Microsoft's Recall feature remains controversial after a researcher demonstrated a tool extracting its captured data.
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AEO startup Profound hits unicorn valuation, raises $180M Series D 7 months after last round
AEO startup Profound raised a $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins.
Profound, which builds marketing software to help brands appear in AI search results, raised a $180 million Series D at a $1.8 billion valuation, seven months after its $96 million Series C. Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins led the round, with Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, and South Park Commons participating. The company reports 3x revenue growth in six months and over 1,000 enterprise customers including Comcast, The Estée Lauder Companies, and Walmart. It operates in the generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) space.
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India’s Pocket FM doubles revenue run rate to $500M as AI powers 93% of audio content
Indian audio platform Pocket FM doubled its annualized revenue run rate to $500M, with AI now producing 93% of its catalog.
Pocket FM, an Indian serialized audio storytelling platform, doubled its annualized revenue run rate to $500 million in a year, with AI powering 93% of its catalog and 99% of new content. The company says generative AI, including in-house creative-writing and text-to-speech models, made production roughly 80 times cheaper, letting 550,000+ creators produce about 2.5 million hours of content annually across 770,000 audio series for 250 million listeners. Parent Pocket Entertainment is reportedly in talks to raise $100-120 million at about a $2 billion valuation, is profitable on an adjusted basis, and its AI-only microdrama app Pocket Saga has reached a $15 million annualized run rate.
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Sequoia doubles down on Cymphony as AI agents create new enterprise security risks
Cymphony emerges with $30M from Sequoia and SMBC to give security teams unified visibility into AI agent and non-human identities.
Cymphony, a New York- and Tel Aviv-based startup, raised a $25 million Series A co-led by Sequoia and SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund, valuing it above $100 million. Its platform builds a "workforce graph" unifying identity, data, and activity signals for employees, AI agents, and other non-human identities. The company says it found roughly 85,000 files exposed to AI tools at one US public company and reached seven-figure ARR in its first year of sales with customers including KKR and Syngenta. Sequoia previously led its undisclosed seed round, betting on Israeli Talpiot program alumni founders.
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XDOF, just 3 months out of stealth, is in talks for a Series B at a $1.2B valuation
Robotics data startup XDOF is in talks for a Series B at a $1.2B valuation led by 8VC, three months after emerging from stealth.
XDOF, co-founded in 2024 by UC Berkeley researchers Philipp Wu and Fred Shentu, collects real-world teleoperation data for training general-purpose robots. It raised a $70M Series A in June from Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lux, and Spark Capital, and annualized revenue is approaching $50 million. The company is partnering with UC Berkeley's AI Research lab to release the ABC robot training dataset and already serves about 20 customers, including several frontier AI labs. Terms of the Series B are not final.
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Supporting Thailand’s next generation of AI startups
OpenAI and Thailand's MHESI launched an eight-week accelerator for ten health, wellness, and education AI startups.
OpenAI announced a program with Thailand's Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI) to support the country's next generation of AI startups. The eight-week accelerator will help ten startups in health, wellness, and education turn AI prototypes into trusted products.
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Researchers Built a Fake Crypto Startup and Hired Three Suspected North Korean IT Workers
Security researchers hired three suspected North Korean IT workers at a fake DeFi startup, documenting forged IDs, AI-edited images and post-hire system access.
Researchers from BCA LTD, NorthScan and ANY.RUN built a fake DeFi protocol called Ballena Azul and hired three suspected Famous Chollima operatives through a real recruiting pipeline. The hires submitted inconsistent or AI-processed identity documents, including a driver's license whose metadata showed Google Gemini processing and a SynthID watermark. On day one the workers profiled their assigned VMs, checked their egress country, and one installed Chrome Remote Desktop and logged into GitHub. The findings were presented at DEF CON 34 and align with a July 31 joint government alert on DPRK IT worker schemes.
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