AI accounting startup Rillet announced a $100 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation on Tuesday, led by Iconiq. Returning investors included Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia. Rillet, which emerged from stealth in 2024, is quickly becoming one of the hottest AI startups in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) industry. 

The company’s software deploys AI to help finance professionals manage a company’s books. It says it can, for instance, automatically and continuously pull data from sources like Salesforce or Brex.

Rillet touts more than 600 companies as customers and says it has doubled its ARR in the past three months. Nicolas Kopp, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said on X that this latest round came together in “less than 48 hours.” The company wasn’t planning to raise, he said, but interest grew because so much had happened since its last round, like an alliance with EY and the jump in ARR and customers.  

“A year ago, we backed a bold vision for Rillet: that the general ledger could become more than a system of record and instead the operating system for finance,” Seth Pierpont, General Partner, ICONIQ, said in a statement shared with TechCrunch. “That vision is now reality.” 

Rillet last raised a $70 million Series B last year in a round led by ICONIQ and Andreessen Horowitz. Shortly before that round, it announced a $25 million Series A led by Sequoia. The company has raised more than $200 million to date. The rapid growth of AI startups — and how quickly they can raise large sums — shows how feverish investors remain about AI, especially regarding those poised to disrupt legacy SaaS players like NetSuite. Though reports of a SaaSpocalypse might be overplayed, smoke indeed hints at a fire.

Sam Altman is headed to the Hamptons, according to Puck. Gwyneth Paltrow is reportedly sending invites for a “private, off-the-record” dinner honoring the tech mogul on August 29th at her home out East. 

Paltrow is an actress and founder of the wellness brand Goop. But she’s also a noted investor through her Kinship Ventures, which she launched in 2021 alongside Moj Mahdara. In 2023, reports said the firm was raising a $75 million fund, though it remains unclear whether it has closed. Kinship is also an investor in OpenAI (per SEC filings, her investment in OpenAI dates back to 2023) and other AI companies, including the vibe coding tool Lovable and the AI-powered marketing platform Nectar Social. 

We’ve reached out to Goop and OpenAI for comment. Over the past few years, Paltrow has become more outspoken about AI — she’s spoken about how she uses the tools to run her company, and her Goop Kitchen has signed a lease for the ground floor of Anthropic’s San Francisco HQ. Earlier this year, OpenAI hired Charles Porch, whom Vanity Fair called the “celebrity whisperer.”

Have we tried turning off society and turning it back on again? We need a complete cultural reset, because there are actually sports betting providers that let people gamble on Little League World Series (LLWS) outcomes.

For the uninitiated, the LLWS is an annually televised tournament where ten- to twelve-year-old baseball players from around the world face off. It’s a pretty wholesome event, though hopefully not too traumatizing for the kids who drop routine fly balls on a global broadcast that everyone they know is watching.

State-regulated sportsbooks and federally regulated prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket do not allow bettors to gamble on the LLWS (though Polymarket did offer LLWS bets in 2024). But offshore sportsbooks like BetOnline Sports & Casino don’t have to adhere to U.S. laws, so they can offer the opportunity to gamble on children.

“We offer Little League World Series odds because there’s a massive demand for it,” BetOnline Brand Manager Dave Mason said in a press release, which added that bettors gambled twice as much money in 2025 as they did in 2024. “Our customers request these odds every year, and we’ll take more bets on the LLBWS over the next two weeks than on established markets such as the WNBA, Major League Soccer, pro tennis or golf.”

Mason claimed in a post on X that more users are wagering on a Little League matchup between teams from South Korea and Canada than on certain Major League Baseball games.

Whether it’s technically legal or not, we should be able to agree that this is gross and anyone betting on kids should feel bad.

Last year, the LLWS put out a statement about sports betting, which it reposted on Wednesday as a reminder.

“Little League is a trusted place where children are learning the fundamentals of the games and all the important life lessons that come with having fun, celebrating teamwork, and playing with integrity, and no one should be exploiting the success and failures of children playing the game they love for their own personal gain,” the organization said.