Francis Thumpasery (left), cofounder and CEO, and Samuel Lam, cofounder and CTO, started PermitFlow in 2021 to help automate the permitting process.

PermitFlow

One of the biggest roadblocks for home builders and construction developers is the gnarly process of obtaining permits, said Francis Thumpasery, CEO of AI-based permitting software startup PermitFlow. Filling out permits entails dealing with hundreds of documents and thousands of details, making it prone to errors. The rules and regulations are hyper localized and not easily accessible. All of that makes it a perfect problem for AI, Thumpasery said.

PermitFlow uses AI models to help both commercial and residential developers search through different municipal websites and confirm permitting requirements, pull data from various documents, prepare applications and submit them. Through a set of AI agents, it can also help with licensing and inspections. The startup, whose customers include Amazon, Ikea and Lennar, announced today that it has raised $54 million in a Series B funding round led by Accel with participation from Kleiner Perkins and Felicis. It’s now valued at roughly $500 million, according to a person familiar with the round.

Although the startup was founded in 2021, Thumpasery said the product has always used machine learning to help automate the permitting process. The only difference now is that the models are much better and can do more. “As an example, our voice AI agent is able to call a homeowner to schedule an inspection right after a project is permitted,” he said. Over the years, the company has built a large database of some 15 million data points including different permitting requirements and building codes that can help improve the accuracy of its software.

With billions of dollars flowing into major construction projects, largely thanks to AI, systems like PermitFlow could be more useful now than ever, said Accel Partner Vas Natarajan. “We are in this major capex supercycle in this country, we’re building datacenters and factories and buildings. We have so much infrastructure to reinvent in this country,” he said.

Now let’s get into the headlines.

ETHICS + LAW

Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl speaks during the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles on October 8, 2025.

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Warner Music Group (WMG), one of the world’s largest music companies, settled a lawsuit that accused AI music generation startup Suno of training its AI models on thousands of its copyrighted songs and struck a partnership with Suno. Under the new deal, Suno will train new AI models using licensed WMG music—with an option for songwriters to opt in to the use of their voice in AI-generated songs. Suno still faces lawsuits from music giants Sony and Universal Music. Billboard reported that the $2.5 billion-valued startup has spent $32 million on compute but only $2,000 on licensing data since January 2024.

BIG PLAYS

In an aerial view, the IAD71 Amazon Web Services data center is shown on July 17, 2024 in Ashburn, Virginia.

Nathan Howard/Getty Images

$100 billion. That’s roughly how much debt companies have undertaken to build data centers for OpenAI, a startup with mounting costs that is still far from profitability, according to the Financial Times. Softbank, Oracle and CoreWeave alone have borrowed at least $30 billion, while Crusoe and Blue Owl Capital set up a special purpose vehicle to borrow $10 billion from J.P. Morgan to build OpenAI’s Stargate datacenter in Abilene, Texas. It sure looks like OpenAI is leveraging other startups’ balance sheets to fund its infrastructure buildout.

PEAK PERFORMANCE

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Enterprises seem to love using Anthropic’s Claude—60% of its enterprise customers use more than one Anthropic product including its marquee coding tool, Claude Code, its Claude chatbot and the developer platform that lets companies build apps on top of the Claude models. Thanks to customers like Uber, Rakuten and Intuit, the company recorded $7 billion in revenue this year through October and is on track to hit $9 billion by year end, Forbes reported.

HUMANS OF AI

Mateusz Staniszewski

CODY PICKENS FOR FORBES

Polish entrepreneurs and cofounders of AI voice generation startup ElevenLabs, Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski, are both freshly minted billionaires, each worth about $1 billion each, Forbes reported. The pair got the idea for the company in 2023 after struggling to sit through badly-dubbed movies. With a library of 10,000 human-sounding synthetic voices, the $6.6 billion-valued startup is profitable and has some $190 million in revenue.

DEEP DIVE

This 28-Year-Old AI Founder Thinks His Customer Service Startup Can Beat Out Companies 10x His Size

Decagon cofounders Jessie Zhang (left) and Ashwin Sreenivas

CODY PICKENS FOR FORBES

On a Friday afternoon in late October, Jesse Zhang, the 28-year-old cofounder and CEO of AI customer service startup Decagon, strides through the lush greenery of San Francisco’s Salesforce Park, a sprawling rooftop garden in the shadow of the 1,070-feet Salesforce Tower—named for one of his biggest rivals. But he’s nonchalant in the face of stiff competition from public giants 10 times the size of his tiny upstart. “What’s there to be intimidated about?…We like competing,” he said. “We enjoy winning.”

That’s evident. A few moments ago in his South of Market office, Zhang and cofounder Ashwin Sreenivas’ team of 200 erupted in hoots and cheers after a team lead rang a sales gong, touting a freshly signed deal. Blinds manufacturing giant Hunter Douglas had agreed to use Decagon’s AI software for customer support tasks like ordering replacements for damaged parts and answering questions about rebates and warranties.

That’s nothing compared to how the company commemorated a win last year. “I sat in a chair in the middle of the office and Ashwin and Jesse shaved my head,” recalls Accel partner and early investor Ivan Zhao, who promised to go bald if the company increased its revenue tenfold. Now after hitting yet another revenue milestone, Zhang is taking his employees on a trip to Hawaii in early 2026. “It’s going to be expensive,” he said.

Decagon has cause for celebration. Founded just two years ago, the startup’s AI-powered customer service agents are used by more than 100 companies including Notion, Bilt, Duolingo, Substack and Rippling to answer questions about how a product works, process refunds, order replacements and cancel subscriptions. Last valued at $1.5 billion in June, Decagon has picked up $255 million in funding from prominent VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Accel and Bain Capital Ventures. The company had $10 million in annualized revenue in 2024 and has crossed at least $30 million in annualized revenue this year. Forbes estimates Decagon’s 2024 revenue came in at $3 million, and it’s on track for $12 million by the end of 2025. (Decagon spokesperson Emilie Cole said that while Decagon does not disclose financial information, in Q3 2025 the business more than tripled both GAAP revenue and ARR year over year and continues to grow.)

Read the full story on Forbes.

MODEL BEHAVIOR

AI and crypto czar David Sacks attends The White House Digital Assets Summit at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 7, 2025.

Allison Robbert for The Washington Post via Getty Images

Tech CEOs and founders spoke out publicly against a viral story in The New York Times claiming White House AI and crypto advisor David Sacks has crafted policies that directly benefit his investments and those of his friends. Sacks said the paper “willfully mischaracterized or ignored the facts,” while a host of Trump-leaning Silicon Valley mainstays spoke up to support him, including Marc Andreessen, Elon Musk and Marc Benioff. Even Sam Altman waded in: “David Sacks really understands AI and cares about the US leading in innovation. I am grateful we have him.” The New York Times has said it stands by its reporting.