Startups

Boston-based AI startup ASI said Tuesday it has raised $325 million in a Series C round that values the company at $3 billion. The round, led by Spark Capital, is the latest sign that investors are paying up for AI that manages the physical world, not just the chat window. Spark Capital led the financing, with participation from affiliates of Citadel Securities, Meritech Capital, Craft Ventures, Energy Impact Partners and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), according to the company’s announcement. ASI said it would use the proceeds to expand deployments across energy, logistics and military environments and to add to its research and engineering teams in Boston. ...

Flock Safety plans to eliminate about 270 jobs — 18% of its roughly 1,500-person workforce — as public backlash over its AI-powered license-plate cameras finally catches up to the company itself, Reuters reported Thursday. The cuts are expected to take effect at the end of October. They follow a voluntary separation program Flock opened in September, and they land at a moment when the Atlanta startup’s technology is under sustained attack from the very communities it serves. Sources told Reuters reporters Krystal Hu and Helen Coster that the company declined to comment; the sources spoke anonymously because Flock has not made the plans public. ...

DeepSeek is about to get very rich. The Chinese AI startup is close to securing at least 80 billion yuan (roughly $12 billion) in its latest funding round, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. That’s nearly double what the company originally asked for. DeepSeek went in seeking about 50 billion yuan ($7.5 billion). Then it released its latest model last month, investors piled in, and now the final tally could approach 100 billion yuan, around $14.9 billion. ...