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As we chronicled earlier this week, both startups and established food brands are making it simpler than ever to up protein intake. From sodas to snack bars to ice cream, it’s now possible to get a fix of this coveted macronutrient with foods and drinks more commonly associated with sugar, starch and fat. But, do they taste good? To find out, we hit up a local Target for a selection of protein foods sold by venture-backed startups and subjected them to a taste test. Here are our findings.

It was another big week for AI-related startup financings. Mirendil, a developer of agentic AI for R&D, led the pack with a $1 billion series A, followed by Mercor, which secured $750 million to connect AI developers with human experts.

Before it was thrust into crisis this week, Nvidia was steadily continuing its pace as one of the busiest startup investors around, including backing many of the biggest venture deals of 2026. We take a fresh look at where Nvidia and its venture arm NVentures have been investing and what the future could hold.

Founders should treat dependence on app stores as infrastructure risk, since a sudden removal can disrupt customer access, subscriptions and revenue with no reliable path to reinstatement. Sharing his experience, Yakov Filippenko, founder and CEO of Intch, suggests that building and testing alternative access and payment channels before a crisis can help keep the business operating.

Recent startup investment has shifted away from meat substitutes and toward stuffing more protein into other packaged foods and drinks. It’s a fad that’s obvious on supermarket shelves, where startups and established brands alike relentlessly tout the added protein in their noodles, pancakes, cereals, energy bars, popcorn and so on. We take a look.

Colombia-based startup, Palomma, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Mexican venture firm Cometa to expand its financial services business for landlords, tenants and property managers, Crunchbase News has exclusively learned.

Anthropic is seeking to secure up to $88.5 billion in its planned IPO and a concurrent private placement, potentially making it the largest-ever fundraise tied to a public market debut. On Tuesday, the AI giant submitted an updated S-1 filing for its upcoming public offering, unveiling new details including a proposed share price range offering size.

A total of 34 companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in October, adding more than $96 billion in value and $14.8 billion in total funding to the board. The board also reached a new record of 1,900 private companies last month, along with a new record for the U.S. with more than 1,000 private unicorn companies.

AI can help startups reduce patent preparation costs, but DIY applications may overlook critical issues. In this guest commentary, attorneys Michael Drapkin and Nathan Mutter of AI-Native law firm Landfall IP, argue that combining AI with legal expertise can produce more efficient, commercially valuable patent protection that withstands investor scrutiny and is harder for competitors to circumvent.

More money is pouring into Series A rounds, but it isn’t opening the door to more startups. U.S. companies have raised $42 billion at that stage this year through October, up roughly 60% year over year, while deal counts remain on pace with the past few years, Crunchbase data shows.

AI startups should be judged by durable revenue, full-price renewals and healthy margins after delivery costs, with embedded customer workflows providing stronger defensibility as model access gets cheaper, rather than their paper valuation, writes guest author Ilman Shazhaev, founder and CEO of Dizzaract, who suggests that founders should build global investor bases that support customer acquisition and market entry while weighing venture growth expectations against sovereign-backed investors’

This week brought another plethora of large funding rounds for startups and growth-stage companies. Shield AI, a defense tech player focused on autonomy and virtual simulations, secured the largest financing, bringing in $2 billion. Next on the list was drone delivery provider Zipline International, which pulled in a fresh $1.5 billion.