Recapping this week in startups

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October 30, 2026

 

TechCrunch Top 3

Billionaire Palmer Luckey isn't leaving California over the wealth tax

Billionaire Palmer Luckey isn't leaving California over the wealth tax: "It's causing a lot of people to run who I don't want to be running," native Californian Palmer Luckey said. "But I'm planning on staying in California. I'm going to keep fighting it." Read More

Nvidia backs Indian startup helping companies run AI models with fewer GPUs: Simplismart says its annualized revenue run rate has grown fourteenfold in six months, with the U.S. accounting for more than half its revenue. Read More

Ex-Palantir execs launch Dream with $17M from a16z to build AI world models for construction: Dream is grounded in real physics and construction standards. Just as LLMs learn from text, Dream's world model is trained on more than 100 million square feet of building data gathered from permit archives across the United States. Read More

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Must-Reads

Anduril, Qualcomm launch BlueChip, a new kind of US-made laptop

Anduril, Qualcomm launch BlueChip, a new kind of US-made laptop: Anduril founder Palmer Luckey is vowing to bring computer manufacturing back to the U.S., and by that he doesn't just mean assembly, but every individual component, some of which are exclusively made in China today. Read More

VCs will make billions on Anthropic's IPO, but Amazon is set to make much (much) more: Massive note conversions reveal the true extent of Amazon's ownership in Anthropic. Read More

Re:Build, which spun out Slate Auto, raises $2.1B: The manufacturing accelerator bills itself as "America’s answer to Shenzhen." Read More

Can AI data centers be mass-produced like cars? This startup aims to find out: Runware is building a factory to turn out prefabricated AI data centers on an assembly line. The real test will be whether it can deliver at that scale. Read More

Databricks co-founder shares his secrets for winning big enterprise customers: Turns out selling to big companies isn’t about having the shiniest tech: It’s about hitching a ride on a giant’s sales team. Read More

 

Last but Not Least

Meta AI director Rohit Patel leaves to take on Microsoft Office and Google Workspace

Meta AI director Rohit Patel leaves to take on Microsoft Office and Google Workspace: Rohit Patel is departing Meta after eight years working on AI evaluations and reinforcement learning, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. His startup, Ndoc, aims to take on Microsoft Office Suite. Read More

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