Author: Arabian Media staff

1X found some big potential buyers for its humanoid robots designed for consumers — the portfolio companies of one of its investors. The robotics company announced a strategic partnership to make thousands of its humanoid robots available for EQT’s portfolio companies on Thursday. EQT is a large Swedish multi-asset investor, and its venture fund EQT Ventures, is one of 1X’s backers. This deal involves shipping up to 10,000 1X Neo humanoid robots between 2026 and 2030 to EQT’s more than 300 portfolio companies with a concentration on manufacturing, warehousing, logistics and other industrial use cases. 1X will sign individual deals…

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The way venture capitalists think about fund-raising can be a black box. But investors must think about their go-to-market strategy for raising their own funds, just as much as they think about how their portfolio companies find their market fit.   All season on Build Mode, we’ve explored how founders should approach marketing, but this week we’re exploring how VCs sell themselves to founders as trustworthy partners, and to LPs as worthwhile investments.   Isabelle Johannessen spoke with Graham & Walker’s Leslie Feinzaig and XYZ Venture’s Ross Fubini about raising their first funds and how that experience has given them empathy for the founder fundraising experience.   Feinzaig came into venture capital with very few industry connections.”It was hundreds of pitches.…

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Venture capitalists Ross Fubini (XYZ Ventures) and Leslie Feinzaig (Graham & Walker Ventures) pull back the curtain on how VCs build their own go-to-market strategies — not just how they evaluate startups, but also how they win over LPs and founders alike. In this episode of Build Mode, they share hard-won lessons from raising their first funds and how that experience allows them to empathize with founders. They discuss why “founder-market fit” applies to VCs too, how authentic thought leadership beats manufactured content, and why the best investor relationships start years before you need the money. Plus, the importance of building trust over transactions and why your network…

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AI DevOps tool Harness, founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal, is on track to exceed $250 million in annual recurring revenue in 2025, Bansal tells TechCrunch. The startup just raised a fresh $240 million Series E funding round that values the company at $5.5 billion post-money. The round includes a $200 million primary investment led by Goldman Sachs and a planned $40 million tender offer with participation from IVP, Menlo Ventures, and Unusual Ventures. The tender offer is intended to provide some liquidity to its long-term employees, Bansal said. The new valuation is a 49% jump from its…

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Image: Getty Images The UAE will introduce a nationwide change to Friday prayer timings from January 2, 2026, as part of a broader move to standardise schedules and support the country’s Year of the Family initiatives. The General Authority of Islamic Affairs, Endowments and Zakat has confirmed that Friday sermons and prayers will begin at 12.45pm across all emirates, replacing the current fixed timing of 1.15pm introduced in 2022. The new directive marks the second major adjustment to Friday routines since the UAE transitioned to a Monday–Friday working week nearly four years ago. At the time, the shift aligned the…

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Flaviu Radulescu started Runware in 2023 when he was testing a text-to-image company and realized that, though genAI tech was powerful, it was slow in generating images. So Radulescu teamed up with Ioana Hreninciuc and launched Runware as a dev tool platform that specializes in generating images, videos, and audio in real time. The company has seen much growth since it first launched. It has powered more than 10 billion creations for more than 200,000 developers, the company told TechCrunch. The product lets developers integrate Runware’s API into their apps and then generate media assets through one interface, so they don’t have to…

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Raoul Van Engelshoven, managing director, Kyndryl UAE/Image: Supplied Kyndryl, the global provider of mission-critical IT services, has released the UAE edition of its second annual Readiness Report, revealing a landscape where organisations are rapidly advancing their AI agendas while grappling with intensifying pressure to modernise core systems, strengthen cybersecurity, and address widening workforce skills gaps. “The UAE has set out one of the most ambitious AI agendas in the world, from its drive to build an AI-powered government to the transformation of key industries and the development of an AI-ready workforce,” said Raoul Van Engelshoven, managing director, Kyndryl UAE. “The…

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Spoor launched in 2021 with the goal of using computer vision to help reduce the impact of wind turbines on local bird populations. Now, the startup has proven its technology works and is seeing demand from wind farms and beyond. Oslo, Norway-based Spoor has built software that uses computer vision to track and identify bird populations and migration patterns. The software can detect birds within a 2.5-kilometer radius (about 1.5 miles) and can work with any off-the-shelf high-resolution camera. Wind farm operators can use this information to better plan where wind farms should be located and to help them better…

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