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**Startups Weekly: Startups raised funding to help others navigate challenges**

Anna Heim 10:05 AM PST - March 7, 2025

Welcome to Startups Weekly - your weekly recap of everything you can't miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here.

Sometimes problems are just that: problems. But often, they are also fodder. This week brought us a mix of startups facing adversity, sometimes of their own doing, and others that are thriving.

**Most interesting startup stories from the week**

Some startups racked up revenue and contracts; others racked up lawsuits.

- **Ramping up:** Fintech startup Ramp more than doubled its annualized revenue to $700 million. In a recent secondary share sale, it also nearly doubled its valuation to $13 billion.

- **Bang a gong:** Revenue prediction startup Gong surpassed $300 million in annualized revenue, putting the AI company on the path to a potential IPO.

- **Mach speed:** Mach Industries, a defense tech startup backed by Sequoia, landed a contract with the U.S. Army and has plans for its first factory, its 21-year-old founder Ethan Thornton said.

- **Boomerang:** After years of controversy, including a now-settled legal battle, Ryan Breslow is once again the CEO of Bolt, the fintech company he founded, which was once valued at $11 billion.

**Most Popular**

- SpaceX Starship spirals out of control in second straight test flight failure

- Google co-founder Larry Page reportedly has a new AI startup

- Scale AI is being investigated by the US Department of Labor

- Hugging Face's chief science officer worries AI is becoming 'yes-men on servers'

- ChatGPT on macOS can now directly edit code

- Mistral adds a new API that turns any PDF document into an AI-ready Markdown file

- OpenAI reportedly plans to charge up to $20,000 a month for specialized AI 'agents'

**Most interesting VC and funding news this week**

Several startups announced large rounds this week—in AI as usual, but also in different categories that help others navigate hairy situations.

- **AI maker:** Anthropic raised a $3.5 billion Series E led by Lightspeed Venture Partners at a $61.5 billion post-money valuation.

- **AI partner:** Turing, which contributes to the building of LLMs, raised a $111 million Series E led by Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad at a $2.2 billion valuation.

- **HR competition:** Indian HR unicorn Darwinbox raised $140 million to expand internationally and challenge competitors like Deel.

- **Counter drones:** U.S. defense tech startup Epirus raised a $250 million Series D to counter drone swarms. Germany-based Alpine Eagle secured around $10.96 million in funding for its airborne solution to the same problem.

- **Avoiding volatility:** Tel Aviv-based startup Grain emerged from stealth with $50 million in funding to help businesses hedge against FX volatility.

- **Navigating tariffs:** With cross-border trading barriers in the spotlight, Swap raised $40 million to build tools that help merchants deal with tariffs and other hurdles.

- **Avoiding chemo:** New York-based startup Ataraxis AI raised a $20.4 million Series A to predict the cancer outcome of individual patients and whether chemo can be avoided.

- **Larger fund:** Thirty-year-old firm Foundation Capital, an early backer of Solana and Cerebras, raised an 11th flagship fund of $600 million - 20% more than its predecessor.

**Last but not least**

Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, has no patience for growth at all costs and what he calls the "rot economy," but don't mistake this for tech hate. In a recent episode of the Equity podcast, he argued there's an opportunity for startups to do better than Big Tech in putting users first.