October 16, 2026

TechCrunch Top 3

The 2026 Startup Battlefield Top 20: From organs to orbit and everything in between: Twenty founders just earned their shot at Disrupt glory. They're headed to the main stage at TechCrunch Disrupt to compete for the $100,000 prize and the coveted Disrupt Cup. Read More

Apate sends AI agents undercover to get scammed so they can gather fraud intelligence: Most companies use AI agents to ship products faster or speed up workflows. Apate.ai sends them undercover to get scammed. Read More

Petra Power looks to modernize energy for data centers and defense vehicles: The startup says its fuel cells are super efficient and cut fuel costs during a time when the tech industry can’t get enough electricity. Read More

A message from Altum Sequencing

Altum Sequencing uses AI to scale cancer monitoring

Altum Atlas combines longitudinal molecular data, automated genomic workflows and AI-powered noise reduction to improve analysis efficiency and reduce costs. Built to make ultra-sensitive, personalized cancer monitoring scalable in pharma, clinical research and healthcare. Altum is part of Santander X 100, the global community of Santander X.

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Must-Reads

Veritas expands its anti-counterfeit chip to jewelry, trophies, and fragrance bottles: Counterfeiters are getting better at replicating brands' marks and passing off dupes, known as "superfakes," as genuine items. A startup called Veritas wants to tackle the problem with its own chip that verifies goods. Read More

Ramp reaches $60B valuation as it pushes deeper into AI: The funding comes as Ramp's annualized revenue crosses $2B, and its customer count reaches 85,000. Read More

And the winner of Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2026 is: Intero Biosystems: Intero Biosystems beat out 199 other Startup Battlefield companies to take home the $100,000 grand prize at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. Read More

Mosqitter is turning its mosquito traps into an AI-powered surveillance network: Mosqitter is turning its mosquito-trapping hardware into an AI-powered surveillance network designed to identify species, monitor populations, and provide earlier warnings of mosquito-borne disease risks. Read More

The maker of non-text AI model Jev valued at $7.5B just weeks after launch: What has users and large corporations so excited about Jev is TypeSafe’s claim that it works significantly faster and uses far fewer tokens than LLMs. Read More

A message from North.cloud

North.cloud brings automation to cloud, data, and AI spend at scale.

North.cloud unifies spend intelligence and enables full automation across cloud, AI, and data providers. Finance and engineering can now understand, optimize, and automate infrastructure spend. Understand every dollar, manage AI usage, and forecast with confidence. We just raised a $60M Series B to help every team spend smarter. Start saving.

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Last but Not Least

When it came to Cal AI's viral success, a small army of influencers paid off: The company generated over $30 million in revenue in two years and was acquired by MyFitnessPal for an undisclosed amount of money in March. Read More

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