Boop’s new app turns social recommendations into bookable itineraries

The region's startup market is hungry for its first trillion-dollar startup, and in many ways has set itself up to reach that goal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The quickly growing prediction betting market raised fresh capital from Sequoia and CapitalG, according to someone familiar with the deal. Also, Point One Navigation, now valued at $230 million, is building out well beyond automotive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Curastory’s founder and CEO, Tiffany Kelly, has resigned from the role and replaced herself with Dave Dickman, former CEO of the influencer marketing platform Tagger. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Anthony Sardain began developing Cavela in 2023, an AI startup that helps brands automate supplier sourcing, he did not foresee that new tariffs would drive customers to become increasingly wary of manufacturing products in China. Function Health, which offers a regular lab testing service to help people track their health, wants to change that by consolidating health data and making it usable for its customers by connecting that data to an AI model. To further that effort, the company recently raised $298 million in a Series B round led by Redpoint Ventures at a valuation of $2.5 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“The best ideas in drug discovery were often blocked not by biology, but by synthesis,” Boiko told TechCrunch. Synthesis is the creation of new molecules by using chemical reactions. It’s like a recipe or Lego pieces, where small pieces, ingredients, molecules, come together to form a wider puzzle picture, a food dish, a larger molecule. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Instead of getting an AI-generated travel plan, Boop aims to give users access to itineraries from real people who went on real trips. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With consumers increasingly asking questions to ChatGPT, not Google, product discovery is changing — and the promise to give brands visibility and control over this fast-growing search channel has made Peec AI one of Europe's hottest startups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Monday, Luminal announced $5.3 million in seed funding, in a round led by Felicis Ventures with angel investment from Paul Graham, Guillermo Rauch, and Ben Porterfield.  Also, as U.S. giants like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic race to develop the large language models that underpin their AI products, startups such as Sakana AI, Mistral AI, DeepSeek, and AI 21 Labs are carving out their own niche with specialized models designed for specific regions, industries, or unique features. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos seems to be getting his hands dirty once again: the billionaire is partly backing a new AI startup called Project Prometheus that has raised $6.2 billion in funding, and will take on duties as co-chief executive. Plus, Bone AI, a South Korean startup, is combining AI and manufacturing to build next-gen defense robotics and challenge the region’s industry giants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Israeli startup Milestone raised a $10 million seed funding round to correlate AI tool usage with engineering metrics, including code quality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices