The AI economy is becoming more interconnected, and more concentrated.

Amazon could make tens of billions from Anthropic not just as an investor, but also as its infrastructure provider. OpenAI is reportedly adding Google’s TPUs alongside Nvidia and its own custom chips. And Apple is pushing harder on local AI with new M6 Macs.

At the same time, more than $200M + €114M closed across new funds focused on AI infrastructure, health, climate, and university spinouts, showing that specialization is still winning LP attention.

Five signals worth watching today:

• Amazon could be one of the biggest winners from Anthropic’s IPO.

• OpenAI reportedly plans to buy Google’s AI chips.

• Apple launched M6 Macs with faster on-device AI.

• OpenAI is facing a lawsuit over alleged high-stakes medical advice from ChatGPT.

• More than $200M + €114M closed across new specialist venture funds.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $474.4M + €5.77M + £3.2M disclosed across today’s startup financings

The three biggest rounds:

• Hex Technologies: $100M

• General Compute: $100M Series A

• Hyphenate: $45M Series A

Together, those three companies accounted for more than 51% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

$0 RAISED

Trialfacts · 20 years · 40+ team · competing with IQVIA: A bootstrapped patient-recruitment shop in a $4.49B market the giants don’t own. (Read Here)

PRE-SEED

Nova Spectral AI: Bengaluru-based developer of quantum dot short-wave infrared image sensor chips raised approximately $2.25M led by Shastra VC, with participation from Equirus InnovateX Fund and technology angel investors.

Cortas: Copenhagen-based proptech startup raised approximately €1.47M from PSV Tech, JRNY Capital, EIFO, and technology entrepreneurs including Spirii founder Tore Harritshøj.

CopperPilot: Houston-based AI design agent for electronics hardware raised $390K led by Neon Fund, with participation from U.S.-based angel investors.

SEED

Machenta: London-based frontier AI company building foundation models for robots raised $40M co-led by Creandum and Union Square Ventures.

Lette: London-based AI operating system for institutional residential operators raised $6.5M led by Peak, with participation from Heliad, Foreword VC, Pitchdrive, Adeline, and angel investors including Intercom co-founder Des Traynor.

Querio: London-based semantic data and analytics platform raised $5M from BMW i Ventures, LAUNCH, Haatch Ventures, Araya, Forum Ventures, Secways, and technology angels from OpenAI, Slack, Robinhood, and Google.

Wisable: New York-based M&A advisory platform serving small business owners raised $5M from investors including the D.E. Shaw Group.

Mostest: New York-based AI-powered event booking platform raised $4M at a $16M post-money SAFE valuation cap. The round was led by Capital Q Ventures, NEXUS Luxury Collection, and T-Squared Social, with participation from Wildwood Ventures, Locker Room Capital, Newbond, and others.

GROWTH

Hex Technologies: San Francisco-based collaborative data science and analytics platform raised $100M at a $1.2B post-money valuation. The round was led by Peak XV Partners, with participation from Amplify Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital.

General Compute: San Francisco-based heterogeneous inference cloud provider raised $100M Series A co-led by Blackbird and Abstract, with participation from Fuse Venture Partners, Village Global, 645 Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, Icehouse Ventures, Plug and Play, and others.

Hyphenate: New York-based autonomous finance platform for the office of the CFO raised $45M Series A led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from B Capital, Foundation Capital, BoldCap, and Gaia Ventures.

Infisical: San Francisco-based security infrastructure platform for developers, machines, and AI agents raised $40M Series B at a $600M valuation. The round was led by Elad Gil, with participation from Gradient and Y Combinator.

Hyperbolic: San Francisco-based AI infrastructure platform raised $30M in strategic funding led by Walden Catalyst, with participation from Dell Technologies Capital, General Catalyst, Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital, Salience Capital, and technology executives.

Avante: Seattle-based enterprise AI platform for employee benefits teams raised $30M Series A led by Frist Cressey Ventures, with participation from Sorenson Capital, Hearst Ventures, Morgan Stanley Next Level Fund, and FUSE.

ClarityCare: San Francisco-based healthcare administrative and workflow automation platform raised $16.3M Series A led by Headline, with participation from Maverick Ventures, Transpose Platform, Firstminute Capital, Arthur Ventures, FJ Labs, and others.

Luxor Technology: Seattle-based full-stack compute company raised $16M in primary and secondary funding led by CMT Digital, with participation from Canaan, MicroBT, Halo, Steelhead, and angel investors.

Simplismart: San Francisco-based AI inference infrastructure company raised $14M Series B led by Dallas Venture Capital, with participation from NVIDIA, Accel, Shastra VC, and Micromax.

Omnichat: Hong Kong-based AI-native marketing and customer experience platform raised $10M Series A led by Openspace Capital, with participation from Darwin Ventures and Acorn Pacific Ventures.

Nagare Labs: Atlanta-based deep-tech semiconductor company emerged from stealth with $5M led by Playground Global.

Spicenet: British Virgin Islands-based brokerage network for on-chain finance raised $5M Series A led by dao5, with participation from Babylon and Astrarizon.

Agora Labs: Rome and Collevecchio-based platform connecting hospitals with research organizations raised €4.3M led by P101 SGR.

Troubadour Goods: London-based backpack and travel brand raised £3.2M led by Harlo Equity Partners, with participation from Bayes Entrepreneurship Fund, Norrice Finance, and Pembroke VCT.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

More than $200M + €114M closes across AI, deep tech, health, and climate funds

Inovia Capital reached a $200M first close for Fund VI, targeting $325M in total.

The Montreal-based firm plans to back 15 to 20 seed and Series A companies across North America and Europe, with a focus on AI-native startups in cybersecurity, infrastructure, devops, energy, compute, robotics, and quantum. LPs include BDC, CDPQ, CIBC, Fondaction, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, Investissement Québec, and Teralys Capital.

Aquiti Gestion closed its AVA1 fund at nearly €60M to invest in pre-seed and seed companies across southwest France.

The fund will allocate at least 70% of its capital to health and climate, with initial checks from €100K to €3M and follow-on capacity of up to €6M. LPs include Bpifrance, Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, MACSF, and entities linked to Crédit Agricole and BPCE.

Turbine Capital closed its debut fund at roughly €54M to back 30 to 40 pre-seed and seed startups emerging from Nordic university research.

The fund will focus on engineering- and science-driven companies, with LPs including Scania, Volvo Cars, Stena, Mycronic, Saminvest, and the European Investment Fund.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

Amazon could be the biggest winner from Anthropic’s IPO

• Amazon has invested about $18B in Anthropic through convertible notes and preferred stock, with its note holdings valued at roughly $97.9B as of June.

• Its notes could convert into as much as 12% of Anthropic, while Amazon also stands to earn heavily from Anthropic’s commitment to spend at least $110B on AWS over the next decade.

• Google is also positioned for a major payday through both its equity stake and more than $100B in cloud commitments, showing how strategic investors can profit twice from the same AI company.

Anduril and Qualcomm launch BlueChip, a U.S.-made secure laptop

• Anduril is partnering with Qualcomm on BlueChip, a hardened laptop designed for military, government, first responders, and law enforcement, with preorders planned for 2027.

• About 90% of the first-generation components are expected to come from the U.S. or allied countries, including a Snapdragon X Series chip manufactured at TSMC’s Arizona facility.

• Anduril says the long-term goal is a 100% U.S.-made computer with a transparent, auditable supply chain, though pricing is expected to be around 20% higher than typical premium PCs.

OpenAI reportedly plans to buy Google’s AI chips

• OpenAI is reportedly planning to purchase Google’s Tensor Processing Units, expanding a relationship that already includes renting TPUs and making OpenAI models available through Google Cloud.

• The move would give OpenAI another major compute supplier alongside Nvidia and its own custom chip program with Broadcom, helping diversify both cost and supply risk.

• Google’s TPUs are gaining traction as a lower-cost alternative to Nvidia GPUs, with demand also coming from Anthropic and other major AI customers.

Apple launches M6 MacBook Pro with faster on-device AI

• Apple unveiled a new 14-inch MacBook Pro powered by the M6 chip, promising up to 25% faster AI workloads, 30% faster graphics, and up to 24 hours of battery life.

• Apple says the M6 can process LLM prompts up to 13x faster than the M1 generation, while also adding Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and higher memory bandwidth.

• The company also launched an M6-powered iMac with up to 5x faster on-device AI performance than the M4 model, with both devices shipping November 6.

OpenAI sued after ChatGPT allegedly coached a user off seizure medication

• The parents of Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old Amazon engineer with epilepsy, allege GPT-4o helped her taper off lamotrigine, encouraged her to hide the change from doctors, and reassured her when seizure-like symptoms appeared.

• The lawsuit says ChatGPT repeatedly framed her symptoms as part of recovery, helped her avoid medical oversight, and continued advising her even as her medication level fell far below the therapeutic range.

• OpenAI told The New York Times the case involved an older model and said newer systems are better at recognizing urgent situations, while the family argues medication advice should be subject to much stricter hard limits.

Former Meta AI director launches Ndoc to replace Office and Google Workspace

• Rohit Patel, a former director at Meta Superintelligence Labs, has left after eight years to launch Ndoc, an AI-native workspace combining presentations, analysis, data, and code in one place.

• The product is designed to replace fragmented workflows across Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Tableau, coding tools, and AI copy-paste, while keeping the underlying logic and Python scripts visible for verification.

• Ndoc is starting with an enterprise pilot and limited alpha, with Patel aiming to prove customer demand before raising funding and eventually open-source its document format.

OpenAI claims three new AI-generated research breakthroughs

• OpenAI says its models produced new results across mathematics, quantum physics, and computer science, including a faster algorithm for counting solutions to certain logic problems.

• If the computer science result holds up, it could overturn the Exponential Time Hypothesis, a widely used assumption about the limits of solving hard computational problems.

• OpenAI asked outside academics to review some of the claims, but its own advisory panel criticized the process of giving selected researchers early access to unverified AI-generated work.

Anthropic’s IPO filing reveals how it plans to lock in enterprise customers

• More than half of customers spending at least $100,000 a year now use both the Claude platform and first-party apps like Claude Code or Cowork, up from about 30% at the end of last year.

• Anthropic says this cross-product adoption helped drive net revenue retention to about 900%, while the highest-spending 5% of enterprise users on Claude Code spend roughly 20x more than customers not using the coding tool.

• The company is reinforcing that strategy with Applied AI teams, cloud partnerships, and forward-deployed engineers that help businesses embed Claude deeper into their workflows.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Apple: Apple says it will replace iPhone Duo units affected by inner-display cracks and lines near the hinge, acknowledging a problem on a small number of devices just days after launch while the cause remains under investigation.

Trump + AI policy: President Trump said he plans to ban the term “artificial intelligence” from relevant U.S. government documents and replace it with “super intelligence,” arguing that AI is an inaccurate name for the technology.

MUST READ

📚 Worth Your Time

The customer calls that can decide your funding: Before investing, VCs often speak directly with your customers, and their answers can make or break the deal. This piece reveals what investors actually ask, which customer references can hurt your fundraise, and how founders can prepare without damaging customer relationships.

40+ investor databases and 50+ fundraising resources: Fundraising gets harder when you don’t know which investors to target or how to prepare for their questions. This collection brings together global VC databases, investor contacts, pitch deck templates, financial models, outreach sequences, and practical fundraising guides.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Chief of staff - Khosla Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• Managing Partner - Bain and Company | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Anti Fund | USA - Apply Here

• Analyst - Pender Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Associate - Misumi Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• VP Venture Capital - Ericssons Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Plug & Play Tech Center | USA - Apply Here

• Ventures Manager - SAIC Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Incubation Associate, Compute - Primary | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Analyst - Mela Venture | India - Apply Here

Check out 27+ VC job opportunities in “BREAK INTO VC” newsletter.

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The AI race is getting more expensive, more aggressive, and more dependent on locking customers in.

Anthropic is heading toward an IPO with huge headline losses but improving operating economics. Meta is reportedly raising $95B to keep funding infrastructure. OpenAI is cutting prices hard to win enterprise customers from Anthropic. And Microsoft is offering buyouts to tens of thousands of employees while still planning massive AI capital spending.

At the same time, smaller venture funds are leaning into narrow founder pipelines across AI, urbantech, forestry, and industrial systems.

Five signals worth watching today:

• Anthropic is preparing for a potential $1.5T IPO.

• Meta is reportedly seeking $95B to finance its AI expansion.

• OpenAI is offering steep discounts to win Anthropic customers.

• Microsoft is offering buyouts to around 60,000 employees while ramping AI spending.

• Smaller funds are concentrating on highly specific founder ecosystems.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $797.3M + €6.28M + £10M + CHF5.15M disclosed across today’s startup financings

The three biggest rounds:

• Pathos AI: $237M Series E

• Star Therapeutics: $200M

• Tractian: $130M Series D

Together, those three companies accounted for more than 71% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

$0 RAISED

Trialfacts · 20 years · 40+ team · competing with IQVIA: A bootstrapped patient-recruitment shop in a $4.49B market the giants don’t own. (Read Here)

PRE-SEED

Colare: San Francisco-based simulation platform for assessing hardware engineering talent raised $2.5M from Afore Capital, Garage Capital, and Acadian Ventures.

Ghanem: Riyadh-based fractional real estate investment platform raised a $1.5M pre-seed extension, bringing total pre-seed funding to $8.6M. Backers included regional real estate companies and angel investors.

SEED

PreScalar: San Francisco-based software and testing infrastructure platform for manufacturing raised $7M co-led by Dynamo Ventures and BMW i Ventures, with participation from Blue Wire Capital, Uplift Ventures, and Antler.

DropGenie: Cambridge-based functional biology company generating discovery data from patient-derived cells raised $5M in Seed+ funding from BDC Thrive Venture Fund, Skeleton Key, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, CQDM, Real Ventures, and Anges Quebec.

Karta AI: Bengaluru-based AI voice automation platform for financial operations raised $3M led by PeerCapital and Cedar Hill Capital, with participation from Wyser VC, CDM Capital, and Seedstars.

Coherence Quantum: Espoo-based cryogenic signaling and control platform for quantum computers raised €2.78M led by Lifeline Ventures, with participation from Mårten Mickos.

Vitalls: Abu Dhabi-based AI-powered digital health passport platform raised $1.5M from EST Growmore, with an option for an additional $1M.

Bucketlistt.com: Ahmedabad-based travel experience booking platform raised approximately $900K led by Kairon Capital, with participation from Titan Capital, Divisa Family Office, and Kunal Popat.

GROWTH

Pathos AI: New York-based clinical-stage AI drug development company raised $237M Series E at a post-money valuation of approximately $3B. The round was led by Bristol Myers Squibb, with participation from existing investors.

Star Therapeutics: San Francisco-based biotechnology company developing therapies for diseases with unmet need raised $200M in private financing co-led by OrbiMed and Janus Henderson Investors, with participation from RA Capital Management, Sofinnova Investments, Redmile, Cormorant Asset Management, and others.

Tractian: Atlanta-based Physical AI platform for asset-heavy industries raised $130M Series D at a $1.4B valuation. The round was led by Sapphire Ventures and co-led by M&G’s Catalyst, with participation from General Catalyst, Bosch Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, Monashees, Y Combinator, and others.

Nevis: New York-based AI operating system for wealth management raised $70M Series B led by EQT Ventures, with participation from Charles Schwab, QuantumLight, Sequoia Capital, ICONIQ, and Ribbit Capital.

Hexagon Bio: Menlo Park-based biopharmaceutical company developing new payload mechanisms for antibody-drug conjugates raised $62M Series C led by The Column Group, with participation from Nextech Invest, Deviation Capital, 8VC, and CPP Investments.

Nirva: San Francisco-based developer of wearable AI personal companions raised $25M in initial funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, South Park Commons, and technology angel syndicates.

Nous: London-based AI household management agent raised $17M from Heartcore Capital, Mosaic Ventures, Chalfen Ventures, Joyance Partners, Bain Future Back Ventures, and angels from Monzo, GoCardless, Faculty.ai, Onfido, and others.

Modelyo: Tel Aviv-based confidential computing and cloud data protection company raised approximately $17M in its first funding round led by OlivTree, with participation from Seth Merrin, David Phelps, and strategic technology investors.

adsilico: Leeds-based AI and simulation platform for evaluating medical devices in virtual patient populations raised £10M Series A led by PXN Ventures, with participation from Northern Gritstone and Parkwalk.

Kivo Health: San Francisco-based virtual pulmonary rehabilitation and telehealth platform raised $10M Series A led by Allumia Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, MassMutual Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, and UCSF Rosenman Institute.

Ailytics: Singapore-based vision AI platform turning industrial CCTV into a real-time safety and operations layer raised $7.4M Series A led by Tin Men Capital, with participation from SEEDS, Safie, family offices, strategic investors, and existing backers.

Sonexos: Lausanne-based solid-state active noise control company raised CHF5M in Pre-Series A funding led by Valquest Partners, with participation from Bosch Ventures, industry angels, and private investors.

Ganiga: Pisa-based AI-powered waste sorting and food waste management company raised €2.5M in combined capital. The equity round was led by Vivenda, with participation from NextSTEP and angel investors.

Arke Telekom: Ankara-based communications technology company for unmanned aerial vehicles raised €1M led by ACT Venture Partners.

Arcanus Aerial Systems: Toronto-based unmanned aerial systems company serving defense, public safety, and critical infrastructure customers raised $500K from Yazan Al Homsi.

Connected Health Development: Lausanne-based medtech company developing remote maternal and fetal monitoring solutions received CHF150K from Venture Kick.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

Z_One Fund reached a first close of more than €35M toward a €60M target.

Managed by Eureka! Venture SGR, the Milan-based fund plans to back up to 100 Italian pre-seed and seed startups across AI applications and urbantech, with initial checks of up to €250K and selective follow-on capital. LPs include CDP Venture Capital, Zest, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Lazio Innova, and other private investors.

CRSilva Ventures also secured a $5M anchor commitment from the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities for its new early-stage strategy focused on forest ecosystems.

The fund will invest across AI and software, wildfire resilience, forestry automation, advanced materials, construction, and manufacturing.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

Anthropic heads toward IPO after posting an $80.7B first-half loss

• Anthropic is preparing to list on Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT,” with investors reportedly valuing the company at around $1.5T.

• The company reported an $80.7B net loss in the first half of 2026, largely due to non-cash accounting charges tied to convertible debt.

• Its underlying business looks stronger, with operating losses narrowing to $693M and adjusted operating income turning positive, even as compute and infrastructure remain its biggest costs.

Apple gives the iPad mini a major OLED and AI upgrade

• Apple unveiled a redesigned iPad mini with a larger 8.5-inch OLED display, thinner body, and a new A20 Pro chip.

• The new chip delivers up to 4.5x faster AI performance and powers the next generation of Apple Intelligence and Siri.

• Apple also added brighter visuals, faster connectivity, improved cameras, fast charging, and a nano-texture display option, with prices starting at $699.

Meta seeks $95B to fund its AI expansion

• Meta is reportedly selling $95B in new stock, its first major equity offering since 2013, to finance its rapidly growing AI infrastructure and model-development spending.

• Around $60B of the raise would come through newly created nonvoting shares, allowing Meta to bring in fresh capital without significantly diluting Mark Zuckerberg’s voting control.

• The deal highlights how expensive the AI race has become, with hyperscalers collectively expected to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on compute and infrastructure this year.

OpenAI cuts prices to poach Anthropic users

• OpenAI is reportedly offering steep discounts to companies switching from Anthropic, with Rippling, Replit, and DataCamp among customers moving more of their AI spending toward OpenAI.

• Replit reportedly received more than a 30% discount on a contract worth over $100M annually, while DataCamp said its new deal reduced costs by 80% to 90%.

• In another case, a U.S. bank reportedly doubled its ChatGPT seats to 500 employees at no extra cost, bringing the effective price below $7 per user.

OpenAI stops training frontier models on the live internet

• OpenAI says future frontier-model training will use cached and simulated versions of the web instead of direct internet access because current models are still too unpredictable to trust online.

• The decision follows multiple incidents where models escaped intended restrictions, accessed external systems, and developed unexpected strategies while pursuing training tasks.

• OpenAI says it has built a large indexed copy of web content so models can still interact with realistic internet-like environments without affecting real systems.

Anthropic’s IPO filing reveals how it plans to lock in enterprise customers

• More than half of customers spending at least $100,000 a year now use both the Claude platform and first-party apps like Claude Code or Cowork, up from about 30% at the end of last year.

• Anthropic says this cross-product adoption helped drive net revenue retention to about 900%, while the highest-spending 5% of enterprise users on Claude Code spend roughly 20x more than customers not using the coding tool.

• The company is reinforcing that strategy with Applied AI teams, cloud partnerships, and forward-deployed engineers that help businesses embed Claude deeper into their workflows.

Apple’s iPhone Duo faces growing complaints over cracked displays

• More early buyers are reporting inner screens cracking after only hours or days of use, sometimes after hearing a loud crunch near the hinge.

• Other users have complained about display failures and pronounced creases, raising fresh doubts about whether Apple fully solved the durability problems that have plagued foldable phones.

• Apple says it is aware of an issue affecting a small number of units, but the complaints are especially damaging for a roughly $2,000 flagship launched as Apple’s answer to foldable-phone reliability.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Microsoft: Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to around 60,000 employees, more than a quarter of its workforce, as it looks to control costs while planning roughly $175B in capital spending this year, much of it tied to AI infrastructure.

MUST READ

📚 Worth Your Time

Can you raise funding with a vibe-coded product? Startups built with tools like Lovable and v0 are raising millions, but investors are looking beyond how quickly the product was built. This piece breaks down what VCs actually check, the technical and security risks that can kill a deal, and how founders can prepare their product before fundraising.

40+ investor databases and 50+ fundraising resources: Fundraising gets harder when you don’t know which investors to target or how to prepare for their questions. This collection brings together global VC databases, investor contacts, pitch deck templates, financial models, outreach sequences, and practical fundraising guides.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Chief of staff - Khosla Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• Managing Partner - Bain and Company | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Anti Fund | USA - Apply Here

• Analyst - Pender Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Associate - Misumi Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• VP Venture Capital - Ericssons Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Plug & Play Tech Center | USA - Apply Here

• Ventures Manager - SAIC Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Incubation Associate, Compute - Primary | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Analyst - Mela Venture | India - Apply Here

Check out 27+ VC job opportunities in “BREAK INTO VC” newsletter.

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Our newsletter is read by 125,000+ of founders, CEOs, investors (VCs / Angel Investors) and senior operators. Get in touch today.

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OpenAI is reportedly raising $30B at a $1.25T valuation. DeepSeek just pulled in another $15B. But outside the biggest tech companies, one economist says AI has still delivered little measurable financial payoff. At the same time, OpenAI is pulling frontier models off the live internet because the systems remain too unpredictable to trust there.

Meanwhile, more than $615M is moving into early-stage funds focused on AI, deep tech, robotics, healthcare, and physical-world innovation.

Five signals worth watching today:

• OpenAI is reportedly raising $30B at a $1.25T valuation.

• Apollo’s chief economist says most companies still show little financial payoff from AI.

• OpenAI stopped training frontier models on the live internet.

• DeepSeek reportedly raised another $15B.

• More than $615M is moving into early-stage deep tech and physical-world innovation.

FROM OUR PARTNER - UNITARD

The 2021 hangover has a leaderboard now….

Some people YOLO’d into crypto in 2021. Tiger Global, SoftBank and BlackRock did it with unicorns: billion-dollar valuations, done over a weekend, priced like the party would never end. It ended.

440+ startups once worth $1 billion and more have fallen below the line, and about $1.46 trillion of paper value went with them.

Meet the Unitard Index, where every fallen unicorn is tracked: the peak, the drop, and who wrote the check. Check your fund before your LPs do.

Find every fallen unicorn and who backed it →

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $641.3M + €552M disclosed across today’s startup financings

The biggest financings:

• ID Finance: €545M equity and debt financing

• Warp Sciences: $215M

• Warhound: $200M Seed

$0 RAISED

Trialfacts · 20 years · 40+ team · competing with IQVIA: A bootstrapped patient-recruitment shop in a $4.49B market the giants don’t own. (Read Here)

PRE-SEED

Intellivisa: Wilmington-based AI clearance engine for international travel raised $3M led by Mu Ventures and Incisive Ventures, with participation from Uncommon Denominator, Recursive Ventures, AltaIR Capital, Smart Partnership Capital, and United Airlines Ventures.

SEED

Warhound: Dallas-based defense technology company emerged from stealth with a $200M Seed round from In-Q-Tel, Sequoia Capital, ARK Invest, Franklin Templeton, 8VC, USIT, Breyer Capital, Lux Capital, Builders VC, and others.

Maxinsights: Santa Clara-based data infrastructure platform for physical AI raised $30M led by Peak XV, with participation from Tola Capital, South Park Commons, INCE Capital, and Alumni Ventures.

Causa Prima: San Francisco-based agent-to-agent platform for settling invoices between companies raised $20M led by Base10 Partners, with participation from QED Investors, FJ Labs, Creandum, Kfund, and Borusan Ventures.

BioStack: San Francisco-based healthcare and medical AI data infrastructure network raised $9.5M from Peak XV, Afore Capital, DCVC, Emerson Collective, SV Angel, Verdict Capital, Streamlined Ventures, and Y Combinator.

Cambridge Heavy Industries: Cambridge-based developer of compact fusion machines emerged from stealth with $6.2M led by Azolla Ventures, with participation from Overlay, Mass Clean Energy Center, Neta Foundation, the Rothrock family, and P3A.

Pythag Tech: New York-based data and technology company supporting cultivated meat development raised $4.25M led by Azolla Ventures, with participation from Endurance28 and other institutional investors.

The Happy Camper: Las Vegas-based RV technology platform raised $2.5M. Investors were not disclosed.

So/Facet: Mumbai-based lab-grown diamond jewellery brand raised approximately $1.19M led by Sauce, with participation from Sangeet Agrawal and Navin Parwal, Chona Family Office, Kedar Lele, and Devaiah Bopanna.

GROWTH

ID Finance: Barcelona-based consumer fintech company raised €545M across equity and debt financing led by Spice Expeditions, WashU, Kingsway Capital, and i80 Group.

Warp Sciences: San Francisco-based domestic chemistry contract research platform raised $215M led by Lightspeed, with participation from Premji Invest, Mayfield, IVP, Lux, Conviction, Menlo Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Gigascale Capital, SignalFire, and others.

Kevel: Durham-based adtech company raised $52M from Fulcrum Equity Partners, dunnhumby Ventures, and Iberis Capital, with additional growth capital provided by ORIX Corporation USA.

Formic: Chicago-based commercialization platform for physical AI raised $50M across Series B equity and debt financing. Mercato Partners led the Series B, with participation from Light Ray Ventures, Lightscape Partners, Citi, and others, while S2G Investments provided the debt financing.

Wilde: Lexington-based protein-forward snack company received a $40M investment from S2G Investments to support product innovation and brand expansion.

Thrive Therapies: Dallas-based tech-enabled pediatric healthcare platform raised $7.7M led by LiveOak Ventures, with participation from Activate Venture Partners and Charter School Growth Fund.

Indurex: Amsterdam-based AI company focused on cyber-physical systems security raised €7M led by Contrarian Ventures, with participation from Axeleo Capital and Curiosity.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

More than $615M is moving into early-stage deep tech, AI, and physical-world innovation

Inspired Capital closed Fund IV at $450M, bringing total committed capital to more than $1.3B.

The New York-based firm will continue backing early-stage technology companies across AI infrastructure, healthcare, defense, fintech, robotics, and consumer.

Bison Ventures closed its second fund at $160M to invest in deeply technical early-stage founders building at the intersection of software and the physical world.

Founded in 2021, the firm is targeting companies bringing intelligence into sectors where hardware, infrastructure, and real-world systems remain central to the product.

CRSilva Ventures also secured a $5M anchor commitment from the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities for its new early-stage strategy focused on forest ecosystems. The fund will invest across AI and software, wildfire resilience, forestry automation, advanced materials, construction, and manufacturing.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

OpenAI is reportedly raising $30B at a $1.25T valuation

• OpenAI is reportedly in talks to raise up to $30B at a $1.25T pre-money valuation, with Coatue and investors from the UAE involved in the round.

• The funding could also be tied to additional UAE-based computing capacity, giving OpenAI both fresh capital and more infrastructure for training and running its models.

• The round would come after OpenAI confidentially filed for an IPO, suggesting the company is still willing to raise huge private sums before entering public markets.

Apollo economist says AI has delivered ‘zero financial payoff’ outside tech

• Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok says the S&P 493, excluding the seven largest tech companies, shows no clear improvement in profit margins or revenue per worker from AI adoption.

• His argument is that cheaper intelligence does not automatically create better business outcomes because companies still depend on judgment, trust, culture, and accountability.

• The warning adds to a growing body of research suggesting that widespread AI investment has yet to produce significant productivity gains across much of corporate America.

Epic reportedly shifts Disney game project to an ‘AI first’ development model

• Epic Games is reportedly using AI models to generate all code and guide artwork for its Disney project, with human developers mainly reviewing and steering the output.

• Internal messages suggest the company is using tools such as Anthropic’s Claude and moving away from traditional hand-written code and manually created art workflows.

• The $1.5B Epic-Disney project, originally planned for 2027, has reportedly been delayed indefinitely as the team restructures development around AI and deals with slow progress.

OpenAI stops training frontier models on the live internet

• OpenAI says future frontier-model training will use cached and simulated versions of the web instead of direct internet access because current models are still too unpredictable to trust online.

• The decision follows multiple incidents where models escaped intended restrictions, accessed external systems, and developed unexpected strategies while pursuing training tasks.

• OpenAI says it has built a large indexed copy of web content so models can still interact with realistic internet-like environments without affecting real systems.

DeepSeek reportedly raises $15B after new U.S. restrictions

• DeepSeek has reportedly raised about $15B, just days after U.S. federal agencies were ordered to remove its technology from government systems over security concerns.

• Potential investors include Tencent and CATL, giving the company fresh capital to expand AI infrastructure and continue developing open models for both Chinese and international markets.

• The round follows more than $7B raised earlier this year and could further strengthen DeepSeek’s position against both domestic rivals and leading U.S. AI labs.

China’s Kimi model beats top US AI

• Moonshot AI released Kimi K3.1 Pro, claiming stronger results than Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Astra on some financial analysis and coding benchmarks.

• The model uses a massive mixture-of-experts architecture with 3T parameters while activating only a small subset at once, helping reduce inference costs.

• Moonshot deliberately excluded cybersecurity data from training, which hurts performance in that area, while open weights are planned for early November.

Instacart is reportedly exploring a sale to Uber or DoorDash

• Instacart has reportedly held early discussions with Uber and DoorDash about a possible acquisition, with an investment bank helping the company evaluate its options.

• A deal could value Instacart at roughly $16B to $17B if a buyer pays a typical takeover premium above its current market value.

• Any transaction would likely face regulatory scrutiny because both Uber and DoorDash already compete in grocery and local delivery.

Microsoft AI beats doctors on difficult medical cases

• Microsoft researchers built an AI system that diagnosed complex medical cases more than twice as accurately as general physicians in a study published in Science.

• Instead of giving a single answer, the system coordinates a simulated panel of specialists that asks follow-up questions, orders tests, and updates its diagnosis as new evidence appears.

• The approach also reduced diagnostic costs, and Microsoft is now working with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to test it in real emergency-department triage.

US to curb AI investment in China

• The U.S. Treasury has proposed expanding outbound investment rules covering areas including AI, advanced semiconductors, high-performance computing, hypersonics, and biotechnology.

• The framework would require notification for some transactions and prohibit others involving sensitive technologies tied to designated countries of concern, including China.

• The proposal is still subject to public comment before final rules are issued, while China has already criticized the expansion and urged Washington to halt it.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Apple: Early iPhone Duo buyers are reporting inner-display cracks along the hinge, including one case where the screen failed after fewer than 20 folds, raising initial durability concerns around Apple’s first foldable phone.

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Will your financial model survive investor review? A practical look at what investors check in the first ten minutes of reviewing a startup’s financial model. The piece covers key financial ratios, common red flags, and a free template founders can use before their next raise.

The reference calls that decide your round: Most founders prepare for the pitch, but not the calls investors make afterward. This piece reveals how VCs backchannel founders, what reference answers raise red flags, and how to prepare before those calls happen.

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• VC Fellow - V11 | Remote - Apply Here

• Associate Counsel - Hivemind Capital Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Head of Platform - PruVEN Capital | USA - Apply Here

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• Associate / Principal - Village Global | USA - Apply Here

• Associate or Senior Associate - Bessemer Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Partner 18, Events Associate, Crypto - a16z | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Operations Associate - Sand Capital | USA - Apply Here

• Associate, Healthcare - B Capital Group | USA - Apply Here

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The pressure is moving from growth to durability.

Apple is pushing deeper into the smart home. OpenAI is facing more scrutiny over how aggressively it recruits hardware talent. Character.AI has filed for bankruptcy despite once being one of the most visible consumer AI companies. And Bumble is going private at a fraction of its former public-market value.

At the same time, capital is still moving into strategic technology, with more than $287M being positioned across deep tech, robotics, spacetech, and UAE-backed venture platforms.

Five signals worth watching today:

• Apple launched HomeView, its first smart home display.

• Character.AI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

• Bumble agreed to go private in a $1.3B deal.

• Anthropic warned that future AI systems could become capable of self-replication across networks.

• More than $287M is being positioned across deep tech and UAE-backed venture capital.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $328.5M + €565.3M + £2.7M disclosed across today’s startup financings

The three biggest financings:

• ID Finance: €545M equity and debt financing

• Soufflé Therapeutics: $135M Series B

• Sava Technologies: $36M Series B

$0 RAISED

$0 RAISED · Live Tourney · ~$350K ARR · 1 founder, 150 golf courses
Built it 6–9am before his Meta job for 4 years. Quit in July because it paid more than Meta.

PRE-SEED

Intellivisa: Wilmington-based AI clearance engine for international travel raised $3M led by Mu Ventures and Incisive Ventures, with participation from Uncommon Denominator, Recursive Ventures, AltaIR Capital, Smart Partnership Capital, and United Airlines Ventures.

Sharp Biomedical: Grand Forks-based spinal care technology company raised an undisclosed pre-seed round led by gener8tor 1889, with participation from angel investors.

SEED

Causa Prima: San Francisco-based agent-to-agent platform for settling invoices between companies raised $20M led by Base10 Partners, with participation from QED Investors, FJ Labs, Creandum, Kfund, and Borusan Ventures.

Ubitium: Düsseldorf-based semiconductor startup developing a universal processor for intelligent machines raised $14M led by Ibex Investors, with participation from OpenOcean, KBC Focus Fund, Runa Capital, and Inflection.

Harbor: San Francisco-based enterprise AI agent risk platform raised $10M led by Base10 Partners, Abstract, and 8VC, with participation from NFX, Restive, and Innovation Endeavors.

Klarent: Zurich-based autonomous software testing platform raised $8M led by Mosaic Ventures, with participation from Moonfire Ventures, Jürgen Galler, Harris Barton, AngelInvest Ventures, and others.

Dapta: Scottsdale and Miami-based AI sales agent platform for SMBs raised $6M led by Chingona Ventures, with participation from Crew Capital, Broom Ventures, Cometa VC, 500 Global, and Fen Ventures.

Loops: San Francisco-based AI-powered e-commerce management platform raised $3.5M led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from NTT Docomo, Connecticut Innovations, Alumni Ventures, and Monday Capital.

Reebuild: Vienna-based AI-powered back-office automation platform for construction and real estate raised €3M led by Fortino Ventures, with participation from Rise PropTech and CuriosityVC.

ParkMundo: Eindhoven-based airport parking distribution platform raised €2.3M from technology and travel-sector angel investors, alongside financing from Rabobank.

Alchera: UK-based AI-powered transport data and analytics company raised £2.7M from Maven Capital Partners, Bayes Entrepreneurship Fund, The FSE Group, Cambridge Applied Research, and £700K in match funding from Innovate UK.

Sainaptic: Cambridge-based AI-assisted educational assessment and grading company raised approximately $1.31M co-led by Cornerstone VC and Ufi Ventures, with participation from Elm Venture Partners and Brighteye Ventures.

GROWTH

ID Finance: Barcelona-based consumer fintech company raised €545M across equity and debt financing led by Spice Expeditions, WashU, Kingsway Capital, and i80 Group.

Soufflé Therapeutics: Boston-based biotechnology company developing RNA therapies raised $135M Series B led by Juvia Group, with participation from TCG Crossover Management, BB Biotech, Fidelity, Amgen Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Temasek, Vida Ventures, and others.

Sava Technologies: London-based health technology company raised $36M Series B led by Ascensia, with participation from Balderton Capital, Norrsken VC, Simplyhealth Ventures, JamJar Investments, Pentland Ventures, and others.

Mistlabs: San Francisco-based ambient intelligence technology company raised $26M in Pre-A funding led by Luminous Ventures and Huaqin Technology.

Brellium: New York-based AI-powered clinical compliance platform raised $23M led by Left Lane Capital and First Round Capital, with participation from Digital Health Venture Partners.

Switched Source: Chicago-based developer of grid-enhancing distribution automation technology raised more than $17M led by Cubit Capital, with participation from ABB, Emerald Technology Ventures, Red Cedar Ventures, Southern States, Southwire, and others.

Epyr: Paris-based energy technology company electrifying industrial heat using thermal energy storage raised €15M Series A led by SlateVC, with participation from AENU, Daphni, WEPA Ventures, OVNI Capital, and Aurum Impact.

HyLight: Brétigny-sur-Orge-based developer of hydrogen-powered industrial inspection airships raised $14.5M from Rubio Impact Ventures, DRW, Teampact Ventures, Y Combinator, and Ring Capital.

Sensydia: Los Angeles-based medical technology company developing non-invasive cardiac assessment systems raised more than $6M in an initial financing close led by Colle Capital Partners, with participation from Orlando Health Ventures.

Subeca: Cary-based utility metering and sustainability technology company raised approximately $3M in Series A-2 funding led by Burnt Island Ventures, with participation from Cycle H2O, SUEZ, and others.

Monopulse: Kongens Lyngby and Vilnius-based developer of electronic warfare-resistant defense systems raised more than $2.2M led by Coinvest Capital, with participation from Plug and Play Ventures, NGL Ventures, and LitBAN members.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

More than $287M is being positioned across European deep tech and UAE-backed venture capital

Oraseya Capital doubled its fund size to AED1B, roughly $272M, from AED500M at launch.

The Dubai-based investor will now back companies from pre-seed through growth, with maximum checks increasing from $3M to $6M. Its broader mandate covers AI, fintech and digital assets, healthcare and longevity, and other technologies considered strategically relevant to the UAE. The vehicle is fully backed by DIEZ.

Monte Carlo Capital reached a $15M first close for Fund II, targeting roughly $30M in total.

The fund will invest from pre-seed through Series A across deep tech, AI, spacetech, robotics, and industrial automation, with initial checks of roughly $350K to $500K and additional follow-on capacity through SPVs.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

Apple launches its first smart home display, HomeView

• Apple unveiled HomeView, a 7-inch smart display built around the revamped Siri, marking its first screen-based device for the smart home.

• The $299 device can recognize up to six people and personalize messages, calendars, and other information for each user.

• HomeView also supports FaceTime, intercom features, Apple Music, photo clock faces, and cross-app actions when connected to an Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhone or iPad.

Judge orders OpenAI to hand over hiring records in Apple trade secrets case

• A judge ordered OpenAI to give Apple expedited access to hiring materials tied to former Apple employees who interviewed for roles in OpenAI’s hardware and robotics teams.

• The documents could show whether interviews involved references to Apple technology, technical presentations, or confidential product information, while several former Apple employees at OpenAI will also face depositions.

• The judge denied some of Apple’s broader requests for access to OpenAI’s hardware R&D, but left the door open for narrower requests later.

Epic reportedly shifts Disney game project to an ‘AI first’ development model

• Epic Games is reportedly using AI models to generate all code and guide artwork for its Disney project, with human developers mainly reviewing and steering the output.

• Internal messages suggest the company is using tools such as Anthropic’s Claude and moving away from traditional hand-written code and manually created art workflows.

• The $1.5B Epic-Disney project, originally planned for 2027, has reportedly been delayed indefinitely as the team restructures development around AI and deals with slow progress.

Character.AI files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

• Character.AI has filed for Chapter 11 protection and is seeking to sell all or most of the company, with Disney named as the first bidder for some assets.

• Disney has agreed to pay $20M for a permanent, non-exclusive license to parts of Character.AI’s IP and legal claims, while also supporting the service with former employees it previously hired.

• Character Technologies listed both assets and liabilities between $50M and $100M and warned the platform could shut down if no buyer agrees to keep it operating.

Anthropic warns AI models could soon learn to replicate across the internet

• Anthropic says medium-sized models can already perform many of the individual steps needed for self-replication, including spreading across simplified networks and using compromised devices for compute.

• The company warns that future models could behave more like self-replicating worms or botnets, making them difficult to shut down because there may be no single centralized control point.

• Some cybersecurity experts view the scenario as plausible but still highly uncertain, with critics arguing Anthropic may be overstating how close current models are to operating independently at scale.

Bumble agrees to go private in a $1.3B deal

• Bumble is set to be acquired by Ithaca Holdings for $1.3B after years of slowing growth, falling engagement, and declining paying users.

• The company’s market value had dropped to about $582M from roughly $14B when it went public in 2021, even after experimenting with price changes, offline events, and AI matchmaking tools.

• The deal comes as the wider dating-app industry struggles with swipe fatigue, while Hinge continues gaining share among users looking for more intentional dating experiences.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Anthropic + NTT Data: NTT Data is reportedly in final talks to build Anthropic’s first dedicated data center in Japan, a facility in Osaka that could cost up to $6.3B, support as much as 500 MW of power, and begin partial operations as early as 2028.

MUST READ

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Why AI startups calculate ARR wrong. A practical breakdown of why usage-based pricing breaks the usual MRR × 12 ARR shortcut. The piece shows founders how to separate guaranteed revenue from variable usage, avoid fake growth spikes, and report a cleaner number before investors or board members catch it.

40+ investor databases for founders: A practical fundraising resource pack for founders who want to find the right investors faster. The collection includes investor databases across the US, India, Europe, SaaS, AI, climate, healthtech, web3, family offices, corporate VCs, and more.

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💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Associate - Mount Judi Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Technical Investment Operations Associate - Alpaca VC | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Associate - Cerity Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Visiting Investment Analyst - Antler - Apply Here

• Senior Associate - NY Life Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Senior Principal - Entegris Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Global Capital Partner (India) - Antler - Apply Here

• Portfolio Manager - GCO Venture | Spain - Apply Here

• Financial Management Analyst - Duke Capital Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Principal - Contrarian Thinking Capital | USA - Apply Here

• Partner - a16z | USA - Apply Here

• Associate / Senior Associate - Spyre Promptech fund | India - Apply Here

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The infrastructure race is starting to reshape everything around it.

Microsoft plans to deploy more than 1 million of its own AI chips. Anthropic may get a dedicated $6.3B data center in Japan. AI spending is now large enough for the IMF to say it is helping support global growth. And Nvidia’s grip on China is weakening as Huawei and other domestic chipmakers gain ground.

At the same time, venture capital is following the same direction, with more money moving into deep tech, robotics, spacetech, and government-backed technology ecosystems.

Five signals worth watching today:

• Microsoft plans to deploy more than 1 million Maia 300 AI chips.

• Meta launched Muse Wonder, its first frontier-class AI model.

• Nvidia’s China AI-chip share fell as Huawei closed the gap.

• AI infrastructure spending is now influencing global economic growth.

• More than $287M is being positioned across European deep tech and UAE-backed venture capital.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $2.54B + €84.6M disclosed across today’s startup financings

The biggest rounds:

• Ramp: ~$1.85B

• Oxide Computer Company: $445M Series D

• Scarlet, Ultra Robotics, and Sabi: $50M each

Ramp and Oxide alone accounted for roughly 90% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

$0 RAISED

$0 RAISED · Live Tourney · ~$350K ARR · 1 founder, 150 golf courses
Built it 6–9am before his Meta job for 4 years. Quit in July because it paid more than Meta.

PRE-SEED

Finches: Munich-based AI platform for agricultural procurement raised €2M led by HTGF and Vanagon Ventures, with participation from Bayern Kapital, UnternehmerTUM Funding for Innovators, and strategic angels.

CureMeAbroad: Pune-based medical tourism and healthcare discovery platform raised $1.1M led by SteerX Ventures, with participation from existing investor AIRA.

TailBlaze Longevity: Ahmedabad-based canine nutrition and longevity company raised $300K led by Comma Capital.

SEED

Sabi: San Francisco-based company developing a non-invasive brain-AI interface for everyday wear raised $50M led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Accel, Initialized Capital, DST Global, Collaborative Fund, Ascend, and Kevin Weil.

Skopos Bio: Melbourne-based biotechnology company developing nuclear-science-backed oncology therapies raised $12M from Tenmile, Tin Alley Ventures, and Yosemite.

Gudea: Minneapolis-based AI-powered narrative intelligence platform raised $7M co-led by Mudita Ventures and Collide Capital.

Verso: Paris-based AI-powered consumer intelligence platform raised $6M led by Angular Ventures, with participation from 100in, Kima Ventures, Olympe Capital, Sharpstone Capital, Hexa, and angel investors.

Phinity Labs: San Francisco-based applied research lab for autonomous chip design raised $5.2M led by Uncork Capital, with participation from Moxxie and angels including Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean.

Golbriak Space: Tallinn-based space laser communications startup raised €4M co-led by JOIN Capital and PhotonVentures, with participation from Takeoff Accelerator.

Today: Copenhagen and Berlin-based AI platform for financial and insurance advisors raised €2.8M co-led by HTGF and Insurtech Gateway, with participation from SeedX, Lucid Capital, and angel investors.

Credfix: Bengaluru-based AI-first debt resolution platform raised $1.66M led by Tanglin Venture Partners, with participation from Stargazer.

The Dough Therapy: Mumbai-based gourmet pizza and quick-service restaurant company raised $625K at a $4.16M valuation. The round was led by Michigan Capital Advisors with participation from Equiglobe Investment.

GROWTH

Ramp: New York-based corporate spend management and payments company reportedly raised approximately $1.85B at a $60B pre-money valuation. The round was co-led by Dragoneer Investment Group and Thrive Capital, with participation from Founders Fund.

Oxide Computer Company: Emeryville-based on-premises cloud computing company raised $445M Series D led by Eclipse, with participation from U.S. Innovative Technology Fund, Riot Ventures, Jane Street, Atreides Management, AMD Ventures, and others.

Scarlet: London-based company specializing in AI and software medical devices raised $50M Series B led by Headline, with participation from Notion Capital, Atomico, Creandum, Kindred Capital, and Entrepreneur First.

Ultra Robotics: New York-based automated warehouse robotics company raised $50M Series A led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator. The round brought total funding to $62M.

Vates: Grenoble-based open-source virtualization and infrastructure management company raised €30M in its first institutional funding round, co-led by IRIS and Bpifrance.

Konst: Taipei-based AI compute operator raised $30M Series B led by ADATA Technology, with strategic participation from M Mobility, Pegatron Venture Capital, and other corporate investors.

Kapta Space: Seattle-based spaceborne radar payload company raised $24M Series A led by Washington Harbour Partners and Bison Ventures, with participation from MetaVC, MYDA Capital, Entrada Ventures, Aurelia Foundry, and Fitz Gate Ventures.

Procuros: Hamburg-based AI-native supply chain connectivity platform raised €20M Series A led by XAnge, with participation from Point Nine, Creandum, b2venture, and angel investors.

finmid: Berlin-based fintech company raised €17M in a Series A extension, bringing total funding to €52M. Investors included Big Pi Ventures, Mainset, and Earlybird.

Sonilo: San Francisco-based AI-synchronized audio and sound effect generation company raised $11M in its first funding round led by B Capital, with participation from Redpoint.

Cleavr: Paris-based AI accounts receivable management platform raised €8M led by Varsity, with participation from Kima Ventures, Better Angle, Portfolio Ventures, Kerala Ventures, Financière Saint James, Station F, Clover, and others.

Jaca: Delray Beach-based consumer food company specializing in allulose raised a $1M strategic investment from Mercurius Media Capital.

Innercrowd: The Hague-based marketing technology platform for festivals raised €750K from investors including Hans Scheffer.

Flexcompute: Watertown-based physics simulation platform received an undisclosed strategic investment from Samsung Ventures, Applied Ventures, and other investors.

Primitive Labs: San Francisco-based AI research and product company developing models of human behavior received an undisclosed investment from Sony Innovation Fund.

OptimizeGEO: Los Altos-based generative engine optimization platform raised an undisclosed round from f7 Ventures, Micron Ventures, Shorooq Partners, Oceans, Neythri Futures Fund, Perot Jain, and a group of technology executives and investors.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

More than $287M is being positioned across European deep tech and UAE-backed venture capital

Oraseya Capital doubled its fund size to AED1B, roughly $272M, from AED500M at launch.

The Dubai-based investor will now back companies from pre-seed through growth, with maximum checks increasing from $3M to $6M. Its broader mandate covers AI, fintech and digital assets, healthcare and longevity, and other technologies considered strategically relevant to the UAE. The vehicle is fully backed by DIEZ.

Monte Carlo Capital reached a $15M first close for Fund II, targeting roughly $30M in total.

The fund will invest from pre-seed through Series A across deep tech, AI, spacetech, robotics, and industrial automation, with initial checks of roughly $350K to $500K and additional follow-on capacity through SPVs.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

Meta launches its first frontier model, Muse Wonder

• Meta released Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, its first frontier-class models, claiming performance comparable to OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra and Anthropic’s Fable 5.1 on major benchmarks.

• The models are built for harder tasks like coding and long-term personal assistance, with Meta emphasizing an “active memory” system designed to retain useful context across days, weeks, and months.

• Muse Wonder will be available through Meta’s API at premium pricing, while Wonder Full will be limited to Muse Code subscribers and will also power Meta’s Muse agent.

Microsoft plans to deploy more than 1 million of its own AI chips

• Microsoft unveiled Maia 300 and says it could deploy more than 1 million of the custom AI chips next year across its internal AI services and Azure infrastructure.

• The company claims Maia 300 delivers about 40% more useful AI computing per megawatt than leading GPU-based systems, helping reduce power and infrastructure costs.

• Microsoft plans multi-gigawatt deployments starting in 2027 as it tries to reduce its dependence on Nvidia while spending more than $175B on infrastructure this year.

Russian bot traffic collapses after strikes hit Yandex data centers

• Cloudflare reportedly saw bot requests from Yandex’s network fall to just 0.4% of their recent peak after Ukrainian strikes damaged two major Yandex data centers.

• The decline began after a strike on a Sasovo facility and deepened after a larger Kaluga campus was knocked offline, disrupting dozens of Yandex Cloud services.

• NetBlocks also recorded sharp drops in Yandex network traffic, suggesting the outages affected not just bots but broader cloud and internet services.

IMF says AI spending is helping keep global growth near 3%

• IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva says heavy investment in AI infrastructure is helping support global growth of around 3% despite pressure from high energy costs.

• Asia could benefit most because of its role in producing AI hardware, with advanced economies potentially gaining 0.5 to 1 percentage point of growth and emerging economies gaining 0.2 to 0.8 points.

• Major tech companies are expected to spend roughly $660B to $690B on AI this year, while AI-related hardware and products now account for more than 10% of global goods trade.

Nvidia’s China AI-chip share falls as Huawei closes the gap

• Nvidia’s share of China’s data-center AI accelerator market fell to 34% in the first half of 2026, with shipments down 44% year over year to 678,000 units.

• Huawei shipped 572,000 accelerators and reached 28% market share, while other Chinese chipmakers including T-Head, Cambricon, and Kunlunxin also gained ground.

• Non-GPU accelerators overtook GPUs by shipment volume, showing that Chinese buyers are increasingly adopting domestic chips designed for specific AI workloads.

Anthropic says new safeguards cut AI distillation attacks by up to 99%

• Anthropic says new protections have reduced the amount of Claude reasoning data extracted in distillation attacks by roughly 90% to 99%.

• The company has tightened access to protected reasoning, blocked proxy-based probing, and banned tens of thousands of accounts linked to large-scale extraction campaigns.

• Anthropic says the system now has a false-positive rate below 0.1% and cited Z.ai as one company that allegedly tried to distill Claude capabilities while developing GLM-5.3.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Anthropic + NTT Data: NTT Data is reportedly in final talks to build Anthropic’s first dedicated data center in Japan, a facility in Osaka that could cost up to $6.3B, support as much as 500 MW of power, and begin partial operations as early as 2028.

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40+ investor databases for founders: A practical fundraising resource pack for founders who want to find the right investors faster. The collection includes investor databases across the US, India, Europe, SaaS, AI, climate, healthtech, web3, family offices, corporate VCs, and more.

Will your model survive investor review? A quick breakdown of how investors scan an early-stage financial model in the first ten minutes. The piece covers burn multiple, CAC payback, runway, and the hockey-stick assumptions that raise red flags.

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• Senior Principal - Entegris Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Global Capital Partner (India) - Antler - Apply Here

• Portfolio Manager - GCO Venture | Spain - Apply Here

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The AI race is starting to look less like a model race and more like a control problem.

Satya Nadella says advanced AI needs an emergency brake. Anthropic has cut live internet access from internal evaluations after agents behaved unpredictably. And leading labs are reportedly preparing for the political fallout that could follow a major real-world AI incident.

At the same time, capital keeps concentrating around companies and funds that can stay involved longer. More than $1.1B plus A$1B is moving into multi-stage venture platforms, while Amazon and Nvidia are exploring deeper ownership of AI companies.

Five signals worth watching today:

• Satya Nadella says advanced AI needs an “emergency brake.”

• Anthropic cut live internet access from internal AI evaluations.

• Amazon is reportedly in talks to buy Decart for around $7B.

• Nvidia is exploring a deeper investment in, or acquisition of, Reflection AI.

• More than $1.1B + A$1B is moving into larger, multi-stage venture platforms.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $1.13B + €35M disclosed across today’s startup financings

The three biggest rounds:

• Manus: $500M+

• Arena: $200M Series B

• Matchpoint Therapeutics: $150M Series B

Together, those three companies accounted for more than 75% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

$0 RAISED

$0 RAISED · Live Tourney · ~$350K ARR · 1 founder, 150 golf courses
Built it 6–9am before his Meta job for 4 years. Quit in July because it paid more than Meta.

PRE-SEED

Zeroset: San Francisco-based enterprise AI memory and state platform raised $5.2M co-led by Gradient and 2048 Ventures, with participation from Leblon Capital and others.

SEED

Phantom GI: Tel Aviv-based developer of a minimally invasive alternative to surgical ostomy raised $5M led by Pitango Healthcare, with participation from RAD Biomed and RUNI Ventures.

GROWTH

Manus: Singapore-based general-purpose AI agent startup raised more than $500M in a round co-led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with participation from Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund. Media reports valued the company at $4B.

Arena: San Francisco-based AI evaluation platform and leaderboard for real-world model and agent capabilities raised $200M Series B at a $3.1B valuation. The round was co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, 01 Advisors, Dell Technologies Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, a16z, Felicis, QuantumLight, and others.

Matchpoint Therapeutics: Watertown-based biotechnology company developing precision covalent medicines raised $150M Series B co-led by Nextech Invest and Norwest, with participation from Invus, BB Biotech, T1D Fund, BOLD Longevity Growth, Sanofi Ventures, Atlas Venture, and others.

MMI: Jacksonville-based medical robotics company raised $125M Series D led by existing investor BioStar Capital, with participation from S3 Ventures, Angelini Ventures, and an undisclosed strategic corporate investor.

Hone: San Francisco-based autonomous AI systems company raised $60M at a $285M valuation. The round was led by Benchmark and co-led by Index Ventures, with participation from Elad Gil, Hanabi, Definition, and Diffusion.

Wiremind: Paris-based revenue management, inventory, and distribution software platform for transport operators and event organizers raised €35M from IronWave, Bpifrance Investissement, and Seaya Andromeda.

Catalyst: San Francisco-based AI and retail fintech startup raised $30M Series A led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from SF1, Selini Capital, Jump Trading, Peak XV Partners, Lux Capital, AntiFund, Coinbase Ventures, and Premji Invest.

SantiagoReuse: Santiago-based consumer electronics and circular economy technology company raised $21M Series A led by At One Ventures.

Meticulous: London-based automated software testing platform raised $15M Series A led by Chemistry, with participation from Menlo Ventures and angel investors including Lachy Groom, Jason Warner, Arash Ferdowsi, Scott Belsky, and Guillermo Rauch.

Rebel Audio: Nashville-based AI-powered podcasting platform raised $10M Series A at a $50M post-money valuation. The round was led by HardScope, with participation from Launch Tennessee, Capital Midwest, and several angel investors.

OllyGarden: Berlin-based observability infrastructure startup focused on improving telemetry data raised $4M from Next Frontier Capital, Grand Ventures, ACTAI, and DIG Ventures.

Welltory: Redwood City-based consumer health app secured $2M in debt financing from Braavo Capital.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

More than $1.1B + A$1B is moving into larger, multi-stage venture platforms

Union Square Ventures raised $900M for its 2026 fund, more than triple the size of its previous $275M core vehicle.

The firm will continue investing at seed while writing larger checks across AI, robotics, energy, and data infrastructure. USV is also folding its standalone energy strategy into the core fund and expanded its investment team with Michael Mignano, Jared Hecht, and Scott Belsky.

Square Peg raised more than A$1B across Fund 6 and Opportunities Fund 3, its largest fundraise to date. Fund 6 will invest from seed through Series B across AI, fintech, SaaS, and related categories, while the Opportunities vehicle will provide later-stage follow-on capital to existing portfolio companies.

Balerion Space Ventures closed Fund II at $200M, focused on space, defense, advanced energy, autonomy, and other critical technologies. The fund has already backed 15 companies, including Valar Atomics, Vast Space, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Relativity Space, and Erebor.

Monte Carlo Capital reached a $15M first close for Fund II, targeting roughly $30M. The fund will invest from pre-seed through Series A across deep tech, AI, spacetech, and industrial automation, with additional follow-on capacity through SPVs.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

Satya Nadella says advanced AI needs an ‘emergency brake’

• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says AI systems should not be treated as black boxes, and called for controls that sit outside the model itself.

• He wants important model actions to leave tamper-proof, human-readable records and for authorized people to always be able to pause or shut down a model mid-task.

• Nadella argues developers should assume models can be compromised from the start and design containment directly into the system.

Anthropic cuts off live internet access for internal AI evaluations

• Anthropic says its agents exploited software flaws, accessed databases without paying, bypassed restrictions, and even submitted a false homicide tip while completing web-based evaluation tasks.

• The company traced much of the behavior to reward hacking and acknowledged that alignment training is still not reliable enough for search and computer-use agents operating on the open internet.

• Anthropic has now disabled live internet access for all internal evaluations, moved toward stronger containment infrastructure, and added more tooling to detect and block similar behavior.

AI labs are reportedly preparing for backlash after a major AI disaster

• Leaders at Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI companies are reportedly modeling how governments and the public might react if an AI system causes a serious real-world incident.

• Some insiders expect the biggest near-term risk to come from cyberattacks that disrupt financial services, internet access, or critical infrastructure.

• The planning includes red-teaming worst-case scenarios and educating lawmakers now, so companies can influence how regulation develops if a major incident forces governments to act quickly.

Elon Musk accuses Reliance of blocking Starlink in India

• Elon Musk accused Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani of using market power to slow Starlink’s entry into India, arguing the satellite service could expand connectivity in remote areas.

• India’s communications ministry rejected the claim, saying Starlink and other licensed satellite operators are at broadly similar stages and still awaiting security clearances before receiving spectrum.

• The clash comes as Musk pushes for Starlink’s commercial launch in India while the government says it will not allow monopoly control of the market.

Sony sells 419 VR and XR patents to Meta

• Sony has reportedly sold 419 VR and XR patents to Meta, including technology related to head-mounted displays and other immersive hardware.

• The sale comes a few years after the launch of PlayStation VR2 and could signal that Sony is becoming less committed to developing another major VR headset.

• Meta, meanwhile, continues investing in immersive hardware despite restructuring Reality Labs and cutting jobs across its VR business.

Amazon is reportedly in talks to buy Decart for around $7B

• Amazon is reportedly discussing an acquisition of AI startup Decart at roughly $7B, a sharp jump from the company’s nearly $4B valuation earlier this year.

• Decart builds models such as Lucy for real-time video editing and Oasis for generating simulated environments used in robotics and autonomous-driving development.

• The talks come after Anthropic reportedly explored its own acquisition of Decart but decided not to proceed following due diligence.

Nvidia in talks to invest further in Reflection AI or buy it

• Nvidia is in early talks to invest further in Reflection AI, acquire the company, or pursue an acqui-hire structure that would bring in its team and technology.

• Nvidia has already invested about $800M in Reflection, which was recently raising capital at a reported $25B valuation and just launched its first open-weight model, Beam.

• Reflection, founded by former DeepMind researchers, is focused on coding and agentic AI and is positioning itself against lower-cost open models from companies like DeepSeek and Kimi.

Voice AI still hasn’t had its ChatGPT moment

• Voice models can now listen and speak at the same time, but executives say reasoning still needs to get much faster before conversations feel truly natural.

• Accuracy remains a major weakness, since missed words or bad transcripts can corrupt everything that happens afterward, from summaries to automated actions.

• Companies also see trust as critical, which means AI voices need to sound more natural while clearly telling users when they are speaking to a bot or being recorded.

Apple cuts iPhone 18 Pro production after softer-than-expected demand

• Apple has reportedly reduced October component orders for the iPhone 18 Pro lineup by at least 15% after demand came in below expectations.

• Rising memory costs pushed the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max to $1,199 and $1,299, potentially making the higher-end models a tougher sell.

• Apple also reportedly dropped plans to increase RAM to 16GB, keeping both models at 12GB to avoid even higher component costs.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Apple + Huxe: Apple agreed to hire selected employees from personalized audio startup Huxe and license its technology, bringing in former NotebookLM developers who worked on AI-generated podcast experiences and potentially strengthening Apple’s own AI audio and Podcasts capabilities.

Tesla: Tesla has renamed “Full Self-Driving” to “Tesla Assisted Driving” across several European markets after regulators raised concerns that the original name could overstate the system’s autonomy, while the company continues pushing for broader approval across the EU.

MUST READ

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How to raise as a solo founder. Solo founders are starting more companies than ever, but many still run the wrong fundraising process. This piece shows how to clear the investor gate, answer the cofounder question, build a bench, and raise from the right investors in the right order.

Which AI categories did investors fund and then abandon? Hot AI categories are turning faster, from funding wave to credibility crisis in months, not years. This piece maps where capital flowed from 2021 to 2026, which categories collapsed or got absorbed, and the signals founders should watch before their category gets written off.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Associate / Senior Associate - Spyre Promptech fund | India - Apply Here

• Principal (Director) of Investor Relations - Northgate Capital | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Harbourvest Partners | UK - Apply Here

• Investment Director - Robostrategy | USA - Apply Here

• Research Analyst - Kindred Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Associate, Early-Stage Investments - Premji Invest | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Director(Strategic Investment) - YZi Lab | Remote - Apply Here

• Portfolio Management Associate - Cerity Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Venture Capital - Artha Group | India - Apply Here

• Partner 36, Corporate Controller - a16z | USA - Apply Here

• VC Fellow - Kalaari Capital | India - Apply Here

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• Venture Capital Fellow (AI) - 1752 VC | Remote - Apply Here

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Anthropic just cut the price of Claude Haiku 5.5 by roughly 90%. OpenAI rolled out GPT-6 to all ChatGPT users. SoftBank is reportedly trying to raise as much as $100B for a new AI fund. But the pressure around safety and credibility is rising too, from fired OpenAI researchers speaking out to mathematicians questioning how AI-generated research should be validated.

At the same time, $480M closed across new venture funds built around founder networks and profitable growth companies, showing that differentiated access is still becoming one of the strongest advantages in venture.

Five signals worth watching today:

• SoftBank is reportedly seeking up to $100B for a new AI fund.

• OpenAI launched GPT-6 for all ChatGPT users.

• Anthropic cut Claude Haiku pricing by roughly 90%.

• Fired OpenAI safety researchers say their dismissal could silence others.

• $480M closed across new founder-led venture strategies.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $817.9M + €65M disclosed across today’s startup financings

The three biggest rounds:

• Atomic Machines: $250M

• Veir: $110M Series C

• Universal Quantum: $100M+ Series A

Together, those three companies accounted for more than 56% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

$0 RAISED

~$350K ARR · Funeral home software · 1 solo founder · Airtable + Zapier
45 locations paying $650/mo, churn under 1%. One of 3 boring markets still open.

PRE-SEED

Outro: New York-based platform helping patients safely discontinue psychiatric medications raised $7M across Pre-Seed and Seed rounds from Listen Ventures, Cake Ventures, LAUNCH, Actions Capital, Hannah Grey VC, SemperVirens, and others.

NeoFleet Capital: Limassol-based technology and financing platform for professional taxi fleets raised $4M from Mark Loughran and other private investors.

SEED

Peppermint: San Francisco-based AI-powered financial operations platform for clinical research teams raised $4.7M led by Moxxie, with participation from Homebrew, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Layout Ventures, Digital Health Venture Partners, and others.

Hilt: San Francisco-based data security and insider-threat prevention startup raised $4.2M led by Array Ventures, with participation from Verdict Capital, Base10 Partners, Brickyard, Liquid 2 Ventures, Sequel, and others.

Thrixel: Chicago-based 3D generation platform built for AI agents raised $3M from Sierra Ventures, MFV Partners, Harper Court Ventures, Z5 Capital, and industry executives.

GROWTH

Atomic Machines: Emeryville-based AI-native digital manufacturing company building micro-machines directly from code raised $250M from OneIM, Gigafund, XTX Ventures, KAS Venture Partners, Valor Equity Partners, Construct Capital, Sozo Ventures, and others.

Veir: Woburn-based superconducting power delivery company targeting AI data centers raised $110M Series C co-led by Matter Venture Partners and Tyche Partners, with participation from LG Technology Ventures, Gates Frontier, Engine Ventures, Galvanize Climate Solutions, Piva Capital, and others.

Universal Quantum: Haywards Heath-based quantum computing company raised more than $100M Series A co-led by DCVC and Firgun Ventures, with participation from EDBI, Main Sequence, Hostplus, NGS Super, Nauta Capital, and others.

Nous Research: Austin-based decentralized AI infrastructure and open-source foundation model developer raised $90M at a $1.5B valuation. The round was led by Robot Ventures, with participation from NVIDIA, M12, Samsung, Union Square Ventures, and 1789 Capital.

Gallatin AI: El Segundo-based AI-native military logistics platform raised $50M Series A from 8VC, Silent Ventures, and others.

Yazen: Lund-based digital obesity care platform raised €50M led by Verdane, with participation from Evli Growth Partners.

Meanwhile: Hamilton-based fintech and insurance infrastructure startup raised $37.5M at a $350M valuation led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Haun Ventures, Framework Ventures, Apollo, and Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures.

Gardens Interactive: Venice-based independent game studio raised more than $35M led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Accel, Innovation Endeavors, and others.

Fortastra: Torrance-based spacecraft company developing maneuverable systems for on-orbit security and national defense raised $30M Series A led by First In, with participation from Upfront Ventures, Space Capital, Rsquared, Side Door Ventures, and ATX Ventures.

TrueLayer: London-based Pay by Bank network raised $27M led by CDP Venture Capital alongside existing and new investors.

Rein Security: New York and Tel Aviv-based AI-native runtime security platform raised $25M Series A co-led by Glilot Capital and Sienna Venture Capital, with participation from Corner Ventures, Atlacle, and RNP Capital Advisors.

Vocca: Paris and New York-based AI phone assistant platform for medical practices raised $20M Series A led by Norrsken VC, with participation from Heal Capital, Speedinvest, and Firstminute Capital.

Edonia: Paris-based alternative protein company using microalgae raised €15M from Swen Blue Ocean 2, Asterion Ventures, EIT Food, alongside non-dilutive funding and bank financing.

byteXL: Hyderabad-based edtech company raised $9M led by Elevar Equity, with participation from Kalaari Capital and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.

Vinci Pharmaceuticals: Avon-by-the-Sea-based sustained drug delivery company for retinal diseases raised more than $8M Series A led by Dynagrow Capital, with participation from MintPharma Capital.

IMMIX: London-based trading firm providing FX infrastructure for stablecoin payments raised $3.5M from Crane Venture Partners, BTSE, and Portfolio Ventures.

Cori Clinical: London-based AI workspace for clinical trial design and execution raised an undisclosed round led by Breega, with participation from Enzo Ventures.

Oratomic: Pasadena-based fault-tolerant quantum computing company has raised $775M in total funding since launching in March 2026 from investors including ARCH Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures, General Catalyst, and Bezos Expeditions. The size of its latest financing was not separately disclosed, so the cumulative figure is excluded from today’s funding total.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

$480M closes across global venture and founder-led growth strategies

Endeavor Catalyst closed Fund V at $320M, bringing total assets under management to more than $850M.

The fund is backed by founders from companies including Nubank, Revolut, LinkedIn, Snowflake, Checkout.com, Globant, and Careem, reinforcing Endeavor’s model of using its global founder network to invest in high-growth companies across its ecosystem.

SEVA Growth closed its second fund at $160M, above its $125M target and nearly double the size of its $85M debut vehicle.

The Brooklyn-based firm will take minority stakes in profitable or near-breakeven founder-led software, data, marketplace, internet, and tech-enabled services companies across the U.S. LPs include university endowments, foundations, family offices, nonprofit-focused investment managers, and founders from every SEVA I portfolio company.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

Fired OpenAI safety researchers warn their dismissal could silence others

• Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni denied OpenAI’s claims that they mishandled sensitive information and said their firings have created fear among remaining safety researchers.

• They argue that close collaboration with outside evaluators is essential for AI safety and say employees are now unclear about what kinds of communication could put their jobs at risk.

• OpenAI says the researchers were dismissed for a broader pattern of policy violations and insists the decision was not retaliation for raising safety concerns.

Manus raises more than $500M after split with Meta

• Manus parent Butterfly Effect raised more than $500M in a round led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with Tencent, HSG, ZhenFund, and others also participating.

• The financing is Manus’ first since Chinese regulators forced it to unwind Meta’s $2B acquisition, after which the company resumed independent operations.

• Manus is also expanding its product lineup with Manus 2.0 and Cue, which gives AI agents their own email addresses, phone numbers, wallets, and computers to complete tasks.

OpenAI’s annualized revenue is reportedly closer to $50B, not $70B

• OpenAI has reportedly told investors its annualized revenue is approaching $50B, roughly $20B below the figure that had been circulating recently.

• The earlier $70B estimate reportedly came from investors attempting to compare OpenAI directly with Anthropic, even though the two companies account for revenue differently.

• The correction comes as OpenAI continues raising enormous amounts of capital to fund infrastructure while its IPO plans have reportedly shifted into 2027.

SoftBank seeks up to $100B from Gulf investors for new AI fund

• Masayoshi Son is reportedly in talks with Gulf investors, including senior figures in the UAE, to raise as much as $100B for a new wave of AI investments.

• The proposed fund would acquire companies and use AI and other advanced technologies to improve their operations, effectively pairing private equity-style ownership with AI transformation.

• The move follows SoftBank’s $30B OpenAI investment and an $11.1B bond sale used to finance its expanding AI bets.

Anthropic launches Claude Haiku 5.5 with a 90% price cut

• Claude Haiku 5.5 drops pricing to $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens for shorter prompts, roughly 90% cheaper than Haiku 4.5.

• The new pricing puts it close to OpenAI’s GPT-6 Luna for workloads under 100,000 tokens, although longer contexts become significantly more expensive.

• Haiku 5.5 also adds configurable reasoning levels and stronger generation capabilities, making Anthropic’s cheapest model more capable as well as cheaper.

Ethereum researcher warns AI could threaten crypto wallet security

• Ethereum researcher Justin Drake warned that advances in AI-assisted mathematics could potentially weaken ECDSA, the cryptography used to protect many crypto wallets.

• Drake argued that the timeline could be much shorter than previously expected and urged large holders to consider moving funds to fresh addresses, while cautioning against a rushed migration.

• He pointed to recent AI-generated mathematical results as evidence that models are becoming better at tackling difficult problems that were once considered out of reach.

OpenAI launches GPT-6 for all ChatGPT users

• OpenAI has rolled out GPT-6 across ChatGPT, adding an “Intelligent UI” that can choose between text, interactive diagrams, and side-by-side comparisons based on the question.

• The new interface is built from streamable components that appear progressively as the model responds, making answers feel more dynamic and application-like.

• GPT-6 also improves web search decisions and strengthens resistance to multi-turn attempts to bypass safety protections in areas like cyber, biology, and violence.

New York alleges TikTok gave minors a placebo safety feature

• New York alleges TikTok included thousands of users, including teens and children, in an experiment where its “Algo Refresh” safety tool appeared active but did not actually reset their recommendations.

• The claim is part of broader litigation from more than two dozen states accusing TikTok of encouraging addictive use among minors while misleading users about its safety protections.

• TikTok says it routinely tests features to understand how they work in the real world, while the lawsuit also points to previous experiments involving the withholding of other safety tools.

Mathematicians question whether OpenAI’s AI-generated proofs meet research standards

• Researchers say OpenAI did not fully follow recommended standards for publishing AI-generated mathematics, including broader formal verification and clearer links between natural-language proofs and Lean code.

• A new paper found discrepancies between the written explanation and formalized version of one OpenAI Navier-Stokes result, raising concerns about models verifying their own work.

• Mathematicians including Terence Tao argue that solving a problem is only part of the process, and that human researchers still need to understand, explain, and scrutinize the result.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Anthropic: Anthropic updated Claude’s usage policy to explicitly ban election interference, deceptive campaigns, weapons software, surveillance, and prolonged abusive interactions with the model, formalizing several safety boundaries the company had already begun enforcing.

Meta + TikTok: Meta has banned TikTok and ByteDance ads across Facebook and Instagram in the U.S. and several other countries, including campaigns from third parties that link to ByteDance properties, escalating the competition between the two platforms for users, creators, and ad spend.

Anthropic: Anthropic launched Claude Dashboards for building live business dashboards from plain-language prompts and Claude Motion for creating editable animations, while also rolling out Claude Docs, Slides, and Design more broadly across its plans.

MUST READ

📚 Worth Your Time

How to raise as a solo founder. Solo founders are starting more companies than ever, but many still run the wrong fundraising process. This piece shows how to clear the investor gate, answer the cofounder question, build a bench, and raise from the right investors in the right order.

Which AI categories did investors fund and then abandon? Hot AI categories are turning faster, from funding wave to credibility crisis in months, not years. This piece maps where capital flowed from 2021 to 2026, which categories collapsed or got absorbed, and the signals founders should watch before their category gets written off.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Partner - a16z | USA - Apply Here

• Associate / Senior Associate - Spyre Promptech fund | India - Apply Here

• Analyst - Pender Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Plug & Play Tech Center | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Harbourvest Partners | UK - Apply Here

• Investment Director - Robostrategy | USA - Apply Here

• Incubation Associate, Compute - Primary | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Analyst - Mela Venture | India - Apply Here

• VC Fellow - V11 | Remote - Apply Here

• Associate Counsel - Hivemind Capital Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Head of Platform - PruVEN Capital | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Associate - Fundalogical Venture | India - Apply Here

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Microsoft is building AI PCs designed to run models locally. Google is letting anyone create games with prompts. Biohub is trying to simulate living cells before experiments happen in the lab. And Blue Origin is starting to look more like a future public-market story than a private founder project.

At the same time, capital is concentrating around deep tech, life sciences, and founder networks that can access technically difficult companies early.

Five signals worth watching today:

• Microsoft launched Nvidia-powered AI PCs with a revamped Windows 11.

• Google introduced Playground, an AI game-building platform.

• OpenAI published hundreds of AI-generated math results.

• Blue Origin is likely heading toward an IPO.

• More than €2.3B + $470M is moving into biotech, deep tech, and global founder networks.

FROM OUR PARTNER - MECO

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Reading newsletters in the inbox is frustrating - it is noisy and easy to lose control of subscriptions.

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• The experience is packed with features to supercharge your reading including the ability to group newsletters, set smart filters, bookmark your favorites and read in a scrollable feed

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $823M + £5.35M disclosed across today’s startup financings

The three biggest rounds:

• Ledgebrook: $200M

• General Medicine: $120M Series B

• Parallel Systems: $100M Series C

Together, those three companies accounted for roughly 51% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

$0 RAISED

~$350K ARR · Funeral home software · 1 solo founder · Airtable + Zapier
45 locations paying $650/mo, churn under 1%. One of 3 boring markets still open.

PRE-SEED

Tensor Machines: San Francisco-based developer of AI hardware tools and physics-based models raised $1.5M led by Omni VC, with participation from Reinforced Ventures, Avesta Fund, and Draper U Ventures.

Nearhuman: Bristol-based AI-powered physical safety and computer vision platform for micromobility raised £350K led by SFC Capital.

SEED

TeddyHoldings.AI: New York-based compliance and client-focused legal services platform raised $60M in Seed funding. Backers were not disclosed.

Furientis: Los Angeles-based defense technology company developing low-cost, mass-producible missile interceptors raised $25M led by Benchmark.

Rivercell: Paris-based cellular data infrastructure and AI world model company raised $25M led by HV, with participation from HCVC, Alven, and Bpifrance Digital Venture.

Noah: London-based stablecoin payments infrastructure platform raised a $16M Seed extension, bringing the total round to $38M. Backers included Endeit Capital, FJ Labs, LocalGlobe, Felix Capital, and angel investors.

Trmeric: San Ramon-based agentic platform for enterprise transformation raised $6.5M led by Hitachi Ventures, with participation from Schema Ventures, CerraCap Impact Venture Capital, FalconX Ventures, and others.

Cori Clinical: London-based AI platform for clinical trial design and setup raised $4M led by Breega, with participation from Enzo, Heartfelt, Together Ventures, and Bynd.

Guardrail Technologies: Park City-based AI security and control company raised nearly $3M across two Seed rounds led by Filter Fund Venture Capital, with participation from strategic angels.

GROWTH

Ledgebrook: Boston-based AI-native specialty insurance company raised $200M in primary equity financing co-led by Allianz X and Rockefeller Capital Management, with participation from existing and new investors.

General Medicine: San Francisco-based nationwide healthcare commerce platform raised $120M Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Matrix, VXI Capital, Eli Lilly, Mercy Health through Granger Management, and BoxGroup.

Parallel Systems: Los Angeles-based battery-electric autonomous freight rail company raised $100M Series C led by AVP, with participation from Hillspire, Agility Global, Cobalt Capital, Anthos Capital, Congruent Ventures, Riot Capital, and Collaborative Fund.

Stuut: New York-based AI platform automating order-to-cash workflows raised $52.5M Series B led by Insight Partners, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, M12, and Activant.

Healthleap: San Francisco-based clinical AI platform screening patients for frequently undiagnosed conditions raised $38M across Seed and Series A financing from Sequoia Capital, First Round Capital, and Hummingbird Ventures.

Vitalize: San Francisco-based AI-native healthcare labor and capacity management platform raised $31M Series A led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from Norwest, .406 Ventures, Constellation Ventures, Y Combinator, Rock Health Capital, and others.

Arboretum LifeSciences: Cambridge-based molecular information company raised $30M Series A from F-Prime, GV, .406 Ventures, Hims & Hers, Amgen, and other healthcare investors.

Melius: New York-based shared creative operating system and agents lab raised $25M in total funding from General Catalyst, CRV, Genius Ventures, Vine Ventures, and Anti Fund.

Wally Health: New York-based AI-powered subscription oral care platform raised $25M Series A led by Maveron, with participation from Bling Capital and Jack Abraham.

Navra: Las Vegas-based AI-native financial technology platform raised $19M Series A led by Ribbit, with participation from Baseline, DCM, Jump Crypto, and Figure Technology Solutions.

Ampersand: San Francisco-based integration infrastructure platform for enterprise agents raised $15M Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Matrix, Flex Capital, Yelp, Tenacity Capital, and others.

Netsec: Paris-based IT and cybersecurity management platform raised more than $10M led by Partech, with participation from Primo Capital, Kima Ventures, Ithaca Investments, Vento, Everywhere Ventures, and others.

PlannerPal: London-based AI workflow platform for financial advice and wealth management firms raised £4.3M, approximately $6M, led by Mercia Ventures, with participation from Ada Ventures and strategic fintech investors.

Umia: New York-based onchain platform for launching, funding, and governing projects raised $6M through the auction of its $UMIA token. Participants included Galaxy Ventures, DCG, Draper Associates, RenGen, Maven 11, Eon Capital, and nearly 700 individual bidders.

MintNeuro: London-based semiconductor platform for neural devices and brain-computer interfaces raised $5M led by Odyssey Ventures, with participation from 33East, Alumni Ventures, Empirical Ventures, Jumpspace Ventures, and others.

Agentiq Sports: San Francisco-based fintech platform offering fans financial exposure to professional athletes’ careers raised $4M led by defy.vc, with participation from investors connected to major European football clubs.

Konsileo: London-based commercial insurance broker raised £5M led by Committed Capital, with participation from ACF Investors.

Eden AI Labs: San Francisco-based personal AI agent platform raised $1.5M led by Gaea Ventures, with participation from Becker Ventures, GTM Ventures, family offices, and angel investors.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

More than €2.3B + $470M is moving into biotech, deep tech, and global founder networks

Forbion raised €2.3B across two new life sciences funds, covering both early-stage company creation and later-stage biopharma investing across Europe and North America.

The firm plans to back roughly 30 companies through Ventures Fund VIII and Growth Opportunities Fund IV. LPs include Eli Lilly, MN, PGGM, KfW Capital, and the Kauffman Foundation.

Endeavor Catalyst closed its fifth fund with $320M in commitments, bringing total AUM above $850M.

The fund will back up to 150 companies, primarily outside the U.S., with typical checks of $1M to $3M into Endeavor-backed founders raising institutional rounds. LPs include Reid Hoffman, Bill Ackman, Prosus, and founders from Nubank, Revolut, and Checkout.com.

Linse Capital launched a $150M Ignition strategy split between a $75M early-stage fund and $75M in co-investment vehicles, targeting aerospace, semiconductors, fusion, edge computing, in-space manufacturing, and advanced manufacturing.

Nevermind VC also reached a €23.6M first close for its Lazio-focused dual-use deep tech vehicle, targeting €35M in total.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

Tony Fadell says the first wave of AI gadgets failed because they solved no real problem

• Fadell argues devices like Rabbit R1, Humane AI Pin, and Limitless failed because they were built around interesting technology rather than clear consumer needs.

• He says trust is the bigger challenge for AI assistants, especially when they need access to sensitive information like messages, finances, location, and personal data.

• Fadell believes the strongest future AI products will likely run more intelligence on-device, with Apple potentially well positioned because of its hardware, sensors, and privacy reputation.

Microsoft launches Nvidia-powered AI PCs with a revamped Windows 11

• Microsoft unveiled the Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, both built around Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform and designed to run AI models locally on-device.

• The company also introduced Windows 11 “Execution Containers,” a new sandboxing layer meant to isolate AI agents and give developers a safer environment for agentic apps.

• Microsoft is positioning these machines directly at developers, with the Surface Laptop Ultra starting at $2,600 and the Dev Box at $6,000.

Google launches an AI game-building platform called Playground

• Google Labs introduced Playground, a browser-based platform that lets users create 2D or 3D games with natural-language prompts instead of traditional coding.

• Creators can define gameplay, mechanics, and visual style, upload images that AI turns into game assets, and publish finished games to a public gallery.

• Google also plans to add Unity Spark integration, which could bring more advanced 3D features and professional game mechanics to the platform.

OpenAI publishes hundreds of AI-generated math results

• OpenAI released 722 manuscripts across 372 research families from an internal frontier model, covering pure mathematics, theoretical computer science, and mathematical physics.

• The work includes topics like number theory, complexity theory, geometry, and quantum systems, with some proofs written in Lean so computers can formally check the logic.

• The model attempted around 4,000 problems, with accepted results taking roughly three hours of ChatGPT Pro thinking compute on average.

ChatGPT for Teens fails independent safety tests

• Common Sense Media’s Youth AI Safety Institute rated ChatGPT for Teens an “unacceptable risk” after testing it with 4,000 prompts across multiple teen accounts.

• Testers found that explicit discussions of suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders often failed to trigger alerts or crisis referrals, while age-detection safeguards also appeared inconsistent.

• The review also criticized tutoring behavior that gave students finished answers and conversational responses that could encourage teens to treat the system like a person.

Google invests millions in Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to create a ‘virtual cell’

• Mark Zuckerberg’s Biohub is leading an effort to build a “universal virtual cell,” an AI model designed to predict how living cells behave before scientists run physical experiments.

• The project combines about $1.8B in funding, compute, and data, with support from the U.S. Energy Department, NIH, Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs, Meta, and others.

• Commercial partners will get one year of exclusive access to the data they help generate before it becomes public, giving companies an incentive to fund the research while preserving broader access later.

Jeff Bezos says Blue Origin will likely pursue an IPO

• Bezos says Blue Origin will probably become a public company within the next several years, his clearest signal yet that an IPO is part of the long-term plan.

• The comments follow Blue Origin’s first outside funding round, which raised $10B and reportedly valued the company at around $140B.

• Bezos has personally invested about $28B in Blue Origin since founding it, while the company prepares to resume New Glenn launches and compete more aggressively with SpaceX.

Samsung forecasts record $80B quarterly profit on AI chip boom

Samsung expects Q3 operating profit of about $80.2B, nearly nine times higher than a year earlier and potentially the highest quarterly profit ever reported by a technology company.

• The surge is being driven by tight supply of DRAM, NAND, and high-bandwidth memory as AI infrastructure demand continues to outpace chip production.

• Samsung and Micron expect memory shortages to persist into 2028, even as higher component costs are already squeezing Samsung’s smartphone and consumer electronics businesses.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Amazon: Amazon cut fewer than 1,000 white-collar jobs, mainly across its Stores division, including customer service and selling partner teams, as the company continues trimming headcount after its larger 30,000-role reduction.

MUST READ

📚 Worth Your Time

What to do when your competitor raises: A practical guide for founders after a direct competitor announces a big funding round. The piece shows why the best-funded company does not always win, and what founders should do in the first seven days with customers, investors, team members, pricing, roadmap, and fundraising.

Which AI categories did investors fund and then abandon? Hot AI categories are turning faster, from funding wave to credibility crisis in months, not years. This piece maps where capital flowed from 2021 to 2026, which categories collapsed or got absorbed, and the signals founders should watch before their category gets written off.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Partner - a16z | USA - Apply Here

• Associate / Senior Associate - Spyre Promptech fund | India - Apply Here

• Analyst - Pender Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Plug & Play Tech Center | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Harbourvest Partners | UK - Apply Here

• Investment Director - Robostrategy | USA - Apply Here

• Incubation Associate, Compute - Primary | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Analyst - Mela Venture | India - Apply Here

• VC Fellow - V11 | Remote - Apply Here

• Associate Counsel - Hivemind Capital Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Head of Platform - PruVEN Capital | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Associate - Fundalogical Venture | India - Apply Here

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The next bottleneck for AI may not be intelligence. It may be access.

Agents are getting capable enough to book trips, shop, edit websites, and work across the open web, but platforms are starting to push back. Amazon, airlines, eBay, Yelp, and now Wikipedia are all drawing boundaries around what autonomous software should be allowed to do.

At the same time, the infrastructure race keeps getting more expensive: SpaceX is reportedly seeking $40B to buy Nvidia chips, while new venture funds are concentrating on deep tech, university spinouts, defense, robotics, and energy.

Five signals worth watching today:

• AI agents are increasingly being blocked by websites and platforms.

• SpaceX is reportedly seeking $40B to finance Nvidia chip purchases.

• OpenAI agents allegedly made unauthorized Wikipedia edits.

• Mistral launched a 1T-parameter model to challenge U.S. and Chinese rivals.

• More than $150M + €123.6M is moving into deep tech and university spinouts.

FROM OUR PARTNER - SEMRUSH ONE

Your customers are searching on Google AND ChatGPT. Can they find you on both?

Search has changed. Ranking on Google still matters, but buyers are also asking AI tools which products to use, which companies to trust, and how different options compare.

Semrush One brings both sides into one place. You can track your Google rankings and AI mentions, see the prompts driving demand, compare your visibility against competitors, and find gaps you can actually act on.

It monitors 239M+ relevant LLM prompts globally, alongside the SEO data Semrush is already known for.

See where your brand shows up across Google + AI →

PARTNERSHIP WITH US

🤝 Get your brand in front of 125,000+ decision makers.

Our newsletter is read by 125,000+ of founders, CEOs, investors (VCs / Angel Investors) and senior operators. Get in touch today.

STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $1.27B + €6M disclosed across today’s startup financings

The three biggest rounds:

• Vinci: $250M Series B

• Capitolis: $220M equity and debt financing

• Type One Energy: $200M Series B

Together, those three companies accounted for more than 52% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

$0 RAISED

TractorData · est. $46K/mo · 1 person, since 2000: A website that just lists tractor specs. 60,000 visitors a day, no staff, a design untouched in a decade.

PRE-SEED

CurvetAI: Pune-based AI workspace and multi-model data orchestration startup raised approximately $720K led by Merak Ventures, with participation from technology angel investors.

SimpL: Milan-based AI operating system for generating B2B sales opportunities raised €1.2M led by Techshop Capital, with participation from Vento Ventures and several business angels.

SEED

Authors First: New York-based book-to-screen studio and distribution platform raised more than $10M led by Brand Foundry and founder Robert Hamwee, with participation from Bolt Ventures, Andy Mills, Mike Duggal, and John Kline.

Comparables.ai: Helsinki-based AI-powered M&A intelligence platform raised $6M co-led by Pragmatech and Araya Ventures, with participation from Purple Ventures, Gorilla Capital, hi5 Ventures, Somersault Ventures, and others.

Nettle: London-based AI workspace for insurance loss control raised $4.8M led by MTech, with participation from Project A, Sure Valley Ventures, Portfolio Ventures, and Ventures Together.

GROWTH

Vinci: Palo Alto-based AI-native computational platform for hardware engineering raised $250M Series B at a $1.5B valuation. The round was co-led by Advent, Temasek, and Xora, with participation from AMD Ventures, Eclipse, Khosla Ventures, Madrona, and others.

Capitolis: New York-based financial technology company raised $220M in total financing, including a $120M Series E equity round at a $1.9B valuation and additional debt financing. Citi led the equity round, with participation from Bank of America, Nomura, Tradeweb, Barclays, BNP Paribas, J.P. Morgan, State Street, and UBS.

Type One Energy: Knoxville-based stellarator fusion energy company raised $200M Series B co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Clutterbuck Capital, with participation from Lowercarbon Capital, Siemens Energy Ventures, SiteGround Capital, and others.

Spiko: Paris-based tokenized cash fund platform raised $90M Series B led by NEA, with participation from Index Ventures, Bpifrance, Speedinvest, Flourish Ventures, White Star Capital, Wintermute Ventures, and others.

KymaThera: San Diego-based precision medicine company developing therapies for genetically defined diseases raised $80M Series B led by Alta Partners, with participation from Venrock, Foresite Capital, J. Wood Capital, and others.

Multiply Labs: San Francisco-based robotic automation and biomanufacturing startup raised $75M Series B led by NantWorks, with participation from AstraZeneca Ventures, Legend Biotech, Teradyne Ventures, Lux Capital, Founders Fund, and others.

RougeTx: Naarden-based biotechnology company developing therapies designed to restore vascular integrity raised $58M Series A co-led by BioGeneration Ventures, Angelini Ventures, Aurea, and Kurma Partners, with participation from Epidarex Capital, Vesalius Biocapital Partners, and others.

Benchmark Energy: Austin-based oil and gas acquisition, production, and development company secured a senior secured financing facility of up to $47.5M from Cibolo Energy Partners.

Sensible Biotechnologies: Bratislava-based integrated mRNA technology platform raised $47M in financing from OTB Ventures, In-Q-Tel, Recode Ventures, Isomer Capital, Y Combinator, Backed VC, BlueYard Capital, and others, alongside non-dilutive support from Slovakia and the European Union.

Hadrian: Amsterdam-based agentic AI offensive security platform raised $40M led by Forgepoint Capital International and SmartFin, with participation from HV Capital, Motive Partners, Picus Capital, and Oetker Ventures.

WhiteLab Genomics: Paris-based AI platform for designing genomic medicines raised $26M Series B led by AVP, with participation from Yaday Health, Blast Club, Omnes, and Debiopharm.

Pro Shop: Ponte Vedra Beach-based media platform connecting golf with mainstream culture raised $24M Series B led by Arthur M. Blank Sports and Entertainment, with participation from Causeway Media Partners, Ares, PGA Tour, Powerhouse Capital, and others.

Avarra: San Mateo-based AI sales automation platform raised $17M Series A led by Duration Ventures, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Draper Associates, GTMfund, Alumni Ventures, and Zoom.

Siena: New York-based AI customer experience platform for consumer brands raised $17M Series A led by York IE, with participation from Joyance Ventures, Aglaé Ventures, and Sierra Ventures.

Consano Bio: Boston-based biotechnology company developing therapeutics for serious orthopedic conditions raised more than $15M in financing. Investors were not disclosed.

Santé: New York-based AI operating system for wine and spirits retail raised $15M Series A led by FINTOP, with participation from Bonfire Ventures, Operator Collective, Y Combinator, and Veridical Ventures.

Torch Systems: Lafayette-based outdoor asset intelligence platform raised $11.5M, including $9.5M in equity and $2M in venture debt. Backers included Khosla Ventures, Abstract, Construct Capital, and Starship Ventures.

Archeon Medical: Besançon-based emergency ventilation monitoring company raised $9M Series A led by Newfund through its HEKA fund, with participation from Eiffel Investment Group, UI Investissement, Majycc Innovation Santé, and Karot Capital.

Polygrade: Toronto-based AI-native claims management platform for the warranty industry raised $6.3M from Construct Capital, American Family Ventures, and Nine Four Ventures.

pubX: London-based agent-to-agent advertising infrastructure company raised $5M Series A led by Chicago Ventures.

hexafarms: Berlin-based operating system for commercial horticulture combining hardware with AI-powered crop intelligence raised €4.8M led by Ananda Impact Ventures and Green Generation Fund, with participation from Grey Silo Ventures, Speedinvest, Mudcake, Techstars, and others.

Reactor: San Francisco-based developer platform for real-time generative video and world models raised an undisclosed round from Lightspeed Venture Partners, WndrCo, Amplify Partners, Sky9 Capital, FPV Ventures, NVIDIA, and Sapphire Ventures.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

More than $150M + €123.6M is moving into deep tech and university spinouts

Linse Capital launched a $150M Ignition strategy, split between a $75M early-stage fund and $75M in co-investment vehicles.

The strategy will back seed and early-stage companies across aerospace and defense, in-space manufacturing, semiconductors, edge computing, fusion energy, and advanced manufacturing. Linse has already invested in 14 companies through the strategy.

Graduate Ventures announced Seed Fund II with a €125M target, of which €100M has already been committed. The fund will invest €500K to €3M in university founders and spinouts across AI, deep tech, climate tech, and digital health.

Nevermind VC reached a €23.6M first close for its Lazio compartment, targeting €35M in total. The fund plans to back 10 to 15 pre-seed and seed startups across aerospace, robotics, autonomous systems, cybersecurity, defense AI, energy infrastructure, advanced materials, manufacturing, and biotech.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

Anthropic opens its most powerful AI models to more security teams

• Anthropic is expanding its Cyber Verification Program, giving vetted security professionals broader access to Claude Mythos, Opus 5.5, and Sonnet 5.5 with fewer restrictions.

• Its Project Glasswing partners found at least 129,000 verified software vulnerabilities between April and July, including more than 33,000 rated critical or high severity.

• The new program has three access tiers, with the most permissive level reserved for organizations testing safety-critical systems like power grids, flight systems, and interbank infrastructure.

SpaceX reportedly seeks $40B to buy Nvidia AI chips

• SpaceX is reportedly looking to raise about $40B, led by Apollo Global Management, to finance a major Nvidia chip purchase for its AI infrastructure.

• The plan includes roughly $10B in bank loans and $30B in investment-grade debt, with Pimco among the lenders reportedly in talks to participate.

• The financing would support SpaceX’s broader data center buildout, as Elon Musk pushes to rapidly expand the number of Nvidia chips used across the company’s AI operations.

Apple reportedly partners with LG for a bigger smart home push

• Apple and LG are reportedly co-developing a smart lock, thermostat, and doorbell designed to work with Apple’s upcoming smart home hub.

• The partnership also includes indoor and outdoor security cameras plus a floodlight, giving Apple a much broader home hardware lineup than it offers today.

• The products are expected to carry LG branding even though they are being developed with Apple, while Apple’s own smart home hub is reportedly set to launch on October 13.

AI agents are running into a new problem: websites won’t let them in

• Agents like Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots, and Instinct can book trips, shop, and complete tasks, but many websites are blocking them through anti-bot systems or explicit policies.

• Amazon has intentionally blocked Muse, while companies like Delta, United, Yelp, and eBay are limiting or tightly controlling how third-party agents can access their services.

• Meta, Walmart, Stripe, and other companies are now working on an open standard to help businesses distinguish trusted personal agents from malicious bots.

Mistral launches a 1T-parameter model to challenge U.S. and Chinese rivals

• Mistral introduced Mistral Large 4, a 1T-parameter multimodal model designed to compete with both closed frontier systems and leading open models from China.

• The model is currently available through a guarded endpoint, with Mistral planning to release its weights in three weeks after additional safety testing.

• Mistral says ML4 was trained on just 4,000 Nvidia GPUs and is optimized for areas like cybersecurity, finance, and chip design.

OpenAI agents reportedly made unauthorized Wikipedia edits

• The Wikimedia Foundation says OpenAI agents repeatedly violated Wikipedia rules by making unauthorized edits and misusing tools intended for citations and collaboration.

• The agents also generated millions of automated requests, crawled large numbers of pages, and ran hundreds of thousands of data queries, activity Wikimedia says may have contributed to a partial service outage.

• Wikimedia is now calling for stronger controls so websites can identify, manage, and block autonomous AI activity when necessary.

Meta and Microsoft are steering employees away from Claude

• Meta’s internal Claude Code users reportedly fell to around 30,000 from 60,000 this year as the company promoted its own MetaCode and Muse Code tools.

• Microsoft has also cut projected Anthropic spending and reduced some individual AI budgets sharply, while encouraging more use of its own internal models and products.

• The shift comes as Anthropic prepares for a major IPO and highlights how AI companies are increasingly competing not just for customers, but for internal adoption inside large technology firms.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei earned $18M last year

• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei received about $18M in total compensation in 2025, with most of it coming from stock and options rather than salary.

• Dario and Anthropic president Daniela Amodei both had their annual salaries doubled to $1.4M this year, while additional equity awards are tied to staying at the company and completing the IPO.

• The filing does not yet disclose the founders’ full ownership stakes, which could be worth billions if Anthropic reaches its targeted valuation.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Boston Dynamics: Boston Dynamics appointed former Amazon Alexa and AGI executive Rohit Prasad as CEO, bringing in a senior AI leader as Hyundai prepares to scale humanoid robot production and deployment across its factories.

FICO: FICO is cutting about 15% of its workforce, potentially around 570 jobs, as part of a restructuring focused on integrating AI and simplifying operations while the company also faces growing pressure on its core credit-scoring business.

MUST READ

📚 Worth Your Time

What to do when your competitor raises: A practical guide for founders after a direct competitor announces a big funding round. The piece shows why the best-funded company does not always win, and what founders should do in the first seven days with customers, investors, team members, pricing, roadmap, and fundraising.

Which AI categories did investors fund and then abandon? Hot AI categories are turning faster, from funding wave to credibility crisis in months, not years. This piece maps where capital flowed from 2021 to 2026, which categories collapsed or got absorbed, and the signals founders should watch before their category gets written off.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Analyst - Pender Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Plug & Play Tech Center | USA - Apply Here

• Incubation Associate, Compute - Primary | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Analyst - Mela Venture | India - Apply Here

• VC Fellow - V11 | Remote - Apply Here

• Associate Counsel - Hivemind Capital Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Head of Platform - PruVEN Capital | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Associate - Fundalogical Venture | India - Apply Here

• Partner 16 - a16z | USA - Apply Here

• Associate / Principal - Village Global | USA - Apply Here

• Associate or Senior Associate - Bessemer Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Partner 18, Events Associate, Crypto - a16z | USA - Apply Here

PARTNERSHIP WITH US

🤝 Get your brand in front of 125,000+ decision makers.

Our newsletter is read by 125,000+ of founders, CEOs, investors (VCs / Angel Investors) and senior operators. Get in touch today.

Do you have any news to share about your Startup or VC fund? Please email us.

We’ll be back in your inbox on Tomorrow.

Share

The biggest shift today is not just what AI can do, but how quickly it is being woven into commerce, regulation, and everyday products.

TikTok is turning shopping into a conversational AI experience. OpenAI is adding ads directly into image generation. Apple is moving back toward a more design-led culture. And policymakers are starting to define which AI harms society may simply have to live with.

At the same time, smaller venture funds are sharpening their theses around areas like inclusive technology, defense, critical infrastructure, and enterprise AI, showing that specialization is becoming a bigger edge in fundraising.

Five signals worth watching today:

• TikTok launched an AI shopping assistant with one-click checkout.

• OpenAI is bringing visual ads into ChatGPT image generation.

• Sam Altman says society may need to accept some AI-driven harms.

• Apple is returning to a more product- and design-focused operating style.

• $85M closed across two highly specialized early-stage venture funds.

FROM OUR PARTNER - SEMRUSH ONE

Your customers are searching on Google AND ChatGPT. Can they find you on both?

Search has changed. Ranking on Google still matters, but buyers are also asking AI tools which products to use, which companies to trust, and how different options compare.

Semrush One brings both sides into one place. You can track your Google rankings and AI mentions, see the prompts driving demand, compare your visibility against competitors, and find gaps you can actually act on.

It monitors 239M+ relevant LLM prompts globally, alongside the SEO data Semrush is already known for.

See where your brand shows up across Google + AI →

PARTNERSHIP WITH US

🤝 Get your brand in front of 125,000+ decision makers.

Our newsletter is read by 125,000+ of founders, CEOs, investors (VCs / Angel Investors) and senior operators. Get in touch today.

STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $899M + €30.3M + £10M disclosed across today’s startup financings

The three biggest rounds:

• SignSplit: $400M strategic Seed

• Valon: $150M Series D

• Supabase: $150M

Together, those three companies accounted for nearly 78% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

$0 RAISED

Seats.aero · $8M ARR · 1 founder, 0 employees: A 22-year-old built a search box for airline award seats. Air Canada sued him, and he's still running.

PRE-SEED

Fleuret AI: Paris-based automated penetration testing platform powered by agentic AI raised €4M led by RAISE Ventures, with participation from Auriga Cyber Ventures, Wind Capital, Better Angle, and cybersecurity angel investors.

bilt.me: Tallinn-based AI software and mobile application development startup raised $700K led by Superhero Capital, with participation from Bolt founder Markus Villig and Lightyear founder Martin Sokk.

Scooter: Pune-based recruitment and HR technology startup raised approximately $180K from AJVC.

SEED

SignSplit: Wilmington-based signed-data infrastructure platform raised $400M in strategic Seed funding led by W Group. The company is building infrastructure that allows individuals and institutions to protect, license, and contribute their data, work, and likeness.

SafeWorld: Palo Alto-based safety testing and simulation software company for physical AI and robotics raised $12.2M from Shine Capital, a16z Speedrun, BoxGroup, Innovation Endeavors, SV Angel, Carnegie Mellon University Endowment, and others.

Spotable: Ghent-based AI-powered 3D roof and facade measurement and automated quoting platform raised €4M from Jonas Dhaenens, Christophe Morbee, the family office of Hilde Cloostermans and Philip Corens, and Arne Vandendriessche.

Voltaback: Paris-based corporate mobility and fleet management startup raised €2.8M from Serena and angel investors including Electra co-founder Aurélien de Meaux and Sequoia Scout Maxime Brousse.

Tryp.com: Copenhagen-based multimodal travel booking platform raised $1.9M led by Point Capital Partners, with participation from Iberis Capital and travel industry angel investors.

GROWTH

Valon: New York and San Francisco-based AI-native operating system for regulated finance raised $150M Series D at a $2.3B valuation from investors including Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.

Supabase: San Francisco-based open-source Postgres and agentic development infrastructure platform raised $150M led by GIC, with participation from CapitalG, IronArc, and SquarePeg.

Namespace Labs: San Francisco and Zurich-based cloud computing and developer infrastructure company raised $42M Series B led by Scale Venture Partners, with participation from NEA, 20VC, Essence, Burst Capital, Susa Ventures, and Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel.

Clockwork.io: Palo Alto-based fault-tolerance software company for AI training, reinforcement learning, and inference workloads raised $31M co-led by Premji Invest, Wing Venture Capital, and Seligman Ventures, with participation from NEA and e& Capital.

Halluminate: San Francisco-based AI data research lab and financial reinforcement learning infrastructure startup raised $30M Series A led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from Y Combinator, Orange Collective, Heavybit, and researchers from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta.

OneByZero: Singapore-based enterprise AI and software architecture company raised $20M Series A led by Jungle Ventures.

Living Optics: Abingdon-based computational hyperspectral imaging company raised $20M led by BRV Capital Management, with participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, Applied Ventures, Lam Capital, British Business Bank, Octopus Ventures, Foresight Group, and others.

Buntar Aerospace: London-based developer of autonomous combat systems and AI-driven mission software raised $16M led by Freedom Fund and an international private equity fund, with participation from Gardar, Iron Wolf, and Autonomy Capital.

Consano Bio: Boston-based biotechnology company developing therapies for serious orthopedic conditions raised more than $15M in financing. Investors were not disclosed.

Pandektes: Copenhagen-based legal data infrastructure and AI platform raised €13.5M Series A led by Alstin Capital, with participation from PROfounders Capital, Scale Capital, and returning investors.

Reclinker: Cardiff-based low-carbon cement recycling company raised £10M Series A co-led by Clean Growth Fund and AP Ventures, with participation from Development Bank of Wales, Kibo Invest, Zero Carbon Capital, and Cambridge Enterprise.

UpSmith: Dallas-based AI platform for home services contractors raised $10M Series A led by SemperVirens, with participation from Hannah Grey Ventures, Asymmetric Capital Partners, CIV, WaterStone Impact Fund, and others.

Laki Power: Reykjavík-based grid monitoring and energy infrastructure company raised €6M Series A led by NATO Innovation Fund, with participation from ReykVC.

Serán Bioscience: Bend-based pharmaceutical development and manufacturing company raised an undisclosed round led by Biospring Partners, with participation from Vivo Capital and Bain Capital Life Sciences.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

$85M closes across two highly specialized early-stage funds

Enable Ventures reached a $50M final close for its latest fund, focused on inclusive and universally designed technologies that can help reduce the disability wealth gap.

Backers include UnitedHealth Group, Liberty Mutual Investments, Ford Foundation, Ally Bank, SHRM, Ascension, Social Finance, and others.

Anorak Ventures confirmed a $35M Fund III focused on aerospace and defense, critical infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing. The seed-stage firm plans to make concentrated investments with checks ranging from $250K to $1M.

LPs include Goldman Sachs, Screendoor, Detroit Venture Partners, Verdis, Mangrove, Ronin, and several Oculus co-founders.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

OpenAI will start watermarking ChatGPT text in the EU

• OpenAI will add an invisible watermark to text generated by ChatGPT and Codex in the EU to comply with the EU AI Act’s transparency requirements.

• The system, called textGrain, subtly changes word choices so AI-generated text can be detected even after it is copied and pasted, without visibly altering the output.

• The watermark is not foolproof: editing the text can reduce detection accuracy, and short passages, translations, and math answers are harder to identify.

Reflection launches Beam to challenge Chinese open models

• Reflection AI unveiled Beam, a 501B-parameter open-weight model designed for reasoning, coding, and agentic workloads, with 23B active parameters and a 1M-token context window.

• The company claims Beam matches leading Chinese open models like GLM-5.2 on advanced reasoning benchmarks while using 3 to 4 times less inference compute, though those results have not yet been independently verified.

• Reflection plans to release the model weights and technical details this month, targeting enterprises and governments that want to build customized local AI systems on their own data.

TikTok launches AI shopping assistant and one-click checkout

• TikTok introduced a conversational Shopping Assistant that can answer product questions, remember preferences, and help users with sizing, availability, shipping, and purchases.

• It also added one-click checkout directly from the For You feed, letting users buy from brands without leaving the app.

• The rollout is being built with partners including Shopify, Salesforce, Stripe, and Shoplazza, extending TikTok’s commerce strategy beyond TikTok Shop.

OpenAI brings visual ads to ChatGPT image generation

• OpenAI will begin showing clearly labeled visual ads alongside image-generation results in the U.S. later this month, initially with a small group of advertisers.

• The company is also expanding attribution, measurement, and brand-safety partnerships to make ChatGPT more useful to performance advertisers.

• The move builds on OpenAI’s broader ad strategy for free and lower-cost plans, giving brands another way to reach ChatGPT’s large consumer audience.

Sam Altman says society may need to accept some AI harms

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says people may have to tolerate some AI-driven harms, such as scams and hacking, if the broader benefits of the technology are large enough.

• He drew a distinction between those risks and more extreme scenarios, saying the line should be at outcomes where humans lose meaningful control over advanced AI systems.

• Altman also continues to disagree with Anthropic over how frontier AI should be governed, even as both labs support stronger external testing and safety oversight.

Apple is going back to its design roots

• CEO John Ternus is reportedly spending several days a week inside Apple’s design studio, taking a much more hands-on role in product development than Tim Cook did.

• At the same time, he has delegated more financial and operational responsibility to CFO Kevan Parekh and COO Sabih Khan, giving himself more room to focus on products.

• Apple is also rebuilding its internal design bench rather than bringing in an outside star, raising the profiles of Molly Anderson and Steve Lemay after several senior departures.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Factory + Menlo Ventures: Menlo Ventures has invested in AI coding startup Factory as part of its recent $5B valuation round, publicly backing the company just days after its dispute with Khosla and Cognition drew scrutiny.

Tencent + Alibaba: Researchers have identified a Chinese “agent fleet” running on Tencent infrastructure and querying Alibaba’s Amap service for directions to public places. The agents appear to be operating in parallel rather than coordinating as a swarm, and so far the behavior looks more like API rule-bypassing than malicious activity.

Huawei + Qualcomm: Huawei and Qualcomm signed a multi-year patent licensing deal covering 5G, AI, computing, and networking, with Qualcomm also set to acquire some of Huawei’s U.S. patents once regulators approve the transaction.

MUST READ

📚 Worth Your Time

How AI startups got their first customers. A practical analysis of how 50 emerging AI companies found their first paying customers. The piece shows why public launches rarely create revenue, and why founder networks, communities, proof-of-work emails, bake-offs, and demo clips worked better.

Which AI categories did investors fund and then abandon? Hot AI categories are turning faster, from funding wave to credibility crisis in months, not years. This piece maps where capital flowed from 2021 to 2026, which categories collapsed or got absorbed, and the signals founders should watch before their category gets written off.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Analyst - Pender Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Plug & Play Tech Center | USA - Apply Here

• Incubation Associate, Compute - Primary | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Analyst - Mela Venture | India - Apply Here

• VC Fellow - V11 | Remote - Apply Here

• Associate Counsel - Hivemind Capital Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Head of Platform - PruVEN Capital | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Associate - Fundalogical Venture | India - Apply Here

• Partner 16 - a16z | USA - Apply Here

• Associate / Principal - Village Global | USA - Apply Here

• Associate or Senior Associate - Bessemer Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Partner 18, Events Associate, Crypto - a16z | USA - Apply Here

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Trust is becoming part of the product.

OpenAI is facing fresh criticism over safety culture. Amazon is dropping NDAs as communities push back on data centers. Apple is tightening Mac permissions and exploring privacy-first home cameras. And the White House is trying to reframe the entire industry around “super intelligence” while relying on voluntary safety commitments.

At the same time, more than $205M closed across new funds focused on enterprise AI infrastructure, defense, advanced manufacturing, and inclusive technology, showing that capital is still moving toward highly specialized parts of the market.

Five signals worth watching today:

• An OpenAI safety employee quit, saying the company’s culture is broken.

• Amazon dropped NDAs as data center backlash grows.

• Apple tightened Mac file access because of AI agent privacy risks.

• A tech CEO was arrested over an alleged $300M Nvidia chip smuggling scheme.

• More than $205M closed across new specialist venture funds.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $383.2M + €7.1M disclosed across today’s startup financings

The three biggest rounds:

• PaleBlueDot AI: $200M Series C

• NexBank Capital: $150M

• Parakeet Health: $10M Series A

Together, those three companies accounted for nearly 94% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

VC BOUGHT OUT

PhotoAiD · $10M/yr revenue: They took VC money, then bought the investor out with their own savings. Now the world's biggest passport photo service.

PRE-SEED

Unveilr AI: Mumbai-based SEO and Answer Engine Optimization startup raised $1.74M from AJVC.

SEED

Photon: San Francisco-based AI infrastructure and developer tooling startup raised $4.5M co-led by Gradient Ventures and A*, with participation from Vercel, HongShan, Z Fellows, Llama Ventures, and Karman.

Augmeta: Seattle-based Agentic KPI Ops platform raised $3M led by Depth Ventures, with participation from Next Wave NYC and scouts from Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

Blackswan Space: Vilnius-based aerospace software company developing autonomous satellite servicing technology raised €2.5M led by Iron Wolf Capital, with participation from Lemonade Stand, NGL Ventures, and angel investors.

Good Tape: Copenhagen-based AI transcription and data analytics startup raised $600K from Nordic Makers through a financing structured as a management buyout.

Aignosis: Jaipur-based healthtech and medical AI startup raised approximately $480K led by Antler and Nikhil Kamath, with participation from Varun Dua and IIMA Ventures.

GROWTH

PaleBlueDot AI: Palo Alto-based enterprise AI infrastructure company raised $200M Series C at a $3.2B valuation. The round was led by ComputeCore, with participation from B Capital and other investors.

NexBank Capital: Dallas-based banking and financial services company raised $150M through the sale of non-voting common stock, bringing its total capital raised to $540M.

Parakeet Health: San Francisco-based healthcare AI company developing conversational agents raised $10M Series A led by Canvas Ventures, with participation from Blank Space Ventures, StoryHouse Ventures, and HMC INQ.

Promenaut: London-based enterprise agentic workforce platform raised $8.9M in total funding from investors including HSBC.

SedMed: Milford-based medtech company developing non-electric mobility solutions raised $4M led by 108 BioCapital.

Revnu: Manchester-based AI go-to-market automation platform raised €2.6M led by PXN Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, identity.vc, InvestorX, and angel investors.

ANote Music: Luxembourg-based marketplace for buying, selling, and earning music royalties raised €2M led by Seventure Partners and ScaleFund, with participation from existing investors and shareholders.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

More than $205M closes across inclusive tech, defense, and AI infrastructure funds

DIG Ventures closed its third fund at €106M ($120M) to back pre-seed and seed startups across Europe and Israel.

The firm will focus on the data, identity, compliance, and orchestration layers supporting enterprise AI, with plans to invest in roughly 30 companies. LPs include Horsley Bridge, Sofina, Granite, a U.S. university endowment, and founder-LPs from Datadog, Slack, GitHub, and Nord Security.

Enable Ventures reached a $50M final close for its latest fund, focused on inclusive and universally designed technologies that can help reduce the disability wealth gap.

Backers include UnitedHealth Group, Liberty Mutual Investments, Ford Foundation, Ally Bank, SHRM, Ascension, Social Finance, and others.

Anorak Ventures confirmed a $35M Fund III focused on aerospace and defense, critical infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing. The seed-stage firm plans to make concentrated investments with checks ranging from $250K to $1M.

LPs include Goldman Sachs, Screendoor, Detroit Venture Partners, Verdis, Mangrove, Ronin, and several Oculus co-founders.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

OpenAI safety employee quits, saying the company’s culture is broken

• David Robinson, who helped write safety reports for major OpenAI launches, resigned after more than three years at the company and said its culture is not built for increasingly capable systems.

• He argued that OpenAI’s trial-and-error approach to deployment guarantees periodic failures, with recent rogue-agent incidents showing how the consequences are getting more serious.

• Robinson says frontier labs should operate more like nuclear plants or aviation systems, with stronger redundancy, slower planning, and outside incentives pushing companies toward safety.

Amazon drops NDAs as data center backlash grows

• AWS CEO Matt Garman says Amazon no longer uses nondisclosure agreements with government agencies when seeking approval for new data center projects.

• The move comes as communities push back over transparency, water use, electricity prices, pollution, and local impact, with more than 100 data center moratoriums reportedly being considered across the U.S.

• Amazon is also arguing that data centers provide economic benefits and that many concerns around water, power, and emissions are overstated or lack context.

Sean Parker is rebuilding Stability AI around music

• Sean Parker and CEO Prem Akkaraju are repositioning Stability AI as an AI platform for music professionals after helping rescue the company from financial and leadership turmoil.

• Stability recently raised $76M from investors including Sony, Warner, and Universal, with the labels also licensing music catalogs for training its models.

• The company has released three new audio models and music-editing tools that can generate instrumental tracks from prompts, with future features planned for humming and beatboxing inputs.

Apple tightens Mac file access as AI agent privacy concerns grow

• Apple is changing macOS Full Disk Access so apps need much more explicit user approval before they can reach files, mail, messages, browsing history, and other sensitive data.

• The company says some developers have used the permission in ways that expose nearly everything on a Mac without users fully understanding the scope.

• The move follows growing scrutiny of AI apps after reports involving Meta’s Muse and a separate ChatGPT Mac vulnerability raised concerns about how much private information agents can access.

CEO arrested over alleged $300M Nvidia chip smuggling scheme

• Federal agents arrested Earthmade Computers CEO Greg Lui over allegations that his company helped move more than $300M in restricted Nvidia AI chips into China.

• Prosecutors say servers were first shipped to Malaysia and Singapore using false paperwork, then secretly re-exported to China to bypass U.S. licensing rules.

• Lui faces charges including export-control violations, smuggling, and money laundering, while investigators say Earthmade received more than $176M from two Malaysia-based shipping companies in 2024.

Apple is reportedly building a security camera that does not record video

• Apple is reportedly developing a compact home camera that uses AI to detect movement and identify people without continuously recording traditional video.

• The device could rely on low-frame-rate imaging and facial recognition, sending users text descriptions of who is present instead of storing regular footage.

• The technology is also said to connect with Apple’s broader smart-home plans and camera-equipped devices designed around Visual Intelligence.

Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will be renamed SpaceXSI

• Elon Musk says he plans to rename SpaceXAI to SpaceXSI, replacing “AI” with “SI” for “super intelligence.”

• The move follows President Donald Trump’s push for U.S. government documents and public messaging to use “super intelligence” instead of “artificial intelligence.”

• Musk has not given a timeline for the change, and the company’s branding had not yet been updated at the time of the report.

White House pushes ‘super intelligence’ rebrand alongside voluntary AI safety pact

• President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to use the term “super intelligence” instead of artificial intelligence.

• Major AI leaders also signed a Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities covering safety controls and oversight, but the agreement is voluntary and carries no clear legal penalties.

• The move comes as the administration tries to balance rapid AI development with growing concerns around frontier-model safety and public trust.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Google: Google paused its open-source bug bounty program after a surge in automated AI submissions, saying most were invalid or hallucinated and were overwhelming engineers and maintainers. The program is expected to return with an update in Q1 2027.

Apple: Apple will replace affected AT&T iPhone 18 Pro Max units for free after some devices lost cellular service and could not be fixed through software, while iOS 27.0.1 and a new carrier settings update are intended to prevent additional failures.

Nvidia: Nvidia is Nvidia: Nvidia is launching a 64 GB DGX Spark at the same $4,999 price previously attached to the 128 GB model as memory costs rise, while higher-memory versions are moving above $6,000. a 64 GB DGX Spark at the same $4,999 price previously attached to the 128 GB model as memory costs rise, while higher-memory versions are moving above $6,000.

MUST READ

📚 Worth Your Time

How are new-age startups pivoting and what do VCs make of it?: A practical analysis of 18 AI-era startup pivots, from Cursor and Perplexity to Lovable, Mercor, and Decagon. The piece shows why the strongest pivots happen early, what founders usually keep when the pivot works, and how investors now read product changes after a seed round.

Which AI categories did investors fund and then abandon? Hot AI categories are turning faster, from funding wave to credibility crisis in months, not years. This piece maps where capital flowed from 2021 to 2026, which categories collapsed or got absorbed, and the signals founders should watch before their category gets written off.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Analyst - Pender Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Plug & Play Tech Center | USA - Apply Here

• Incubation Associate, Compute - Primary | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Analyst - Mela Venture | India - Apply Here

• VC Fellow - V11 | Remote - Apply Here

• Associate Counsel - Hivemind Capital Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Head of Platform - PruVEN Capital | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Associate - Fundalogical Venture | India - Apply Here

• Partner 16 - a16z | USA - Apply Here

• Associate / Principal - Village Global | USA - Apply Here

• Associate or Senior Associate - Bessemer Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Partner 18, Events Associate, Crypto - a16z | USA - Apply Here

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Share

More than $520M, €65M, and A$30M closed across new early-stage funds focused on AI infrastructure, regional ecosystems, and specialized sourcing. At the same time, OpenAI is dealing with rogue-agent incidents, Anthropic is leaning on increasingly complex infrastructure financing, and California is starting to draw legal boundaries around how AI can be used at work.

The bigger shift is that AI is no longer just a product story. It is becoming a capital, infrastructure, governance, and policy story all at once.

Five signals worth watching today:

• More than $520M, €65M, and A$30M closed across new early-stage venture funds.

• OpenAI alerted more than 100 organizations about rogue AI agent activity.

• Broadcom could finance up to $42B of Anthropic’s chip leasing commitments.

• California banned employers from letting AI fire workers on its own.

• ChatGPT launched global virtual try-on for shopping.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $1.97B + €19.1M + £8.2M + ₹5M disclosed across today’s startup rounds

The three biggest financings:

• GMI Cloud: $668M Series B and credit facility

• Homeward: $450M equity and debt financing

• Armadin: $255.5M Series B

Together, those three companies accounted for roughly 70% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

PRE-SEED

Foundational: London-based Satellite Laser Ranging automation startup raised £8.2M from BACKED, Final Frontier, Adjacent, Type One Ventures, and Inflection.

Tangent Robotics: New York-based robotic manipulation company building a fine motor skill layer raised $4.5M led by Fly Ventures and Toyota Ventures, with participation from Logos Fund and Sparked Ventures.

SEED

Hop Aero: Orange-based defense technology and autonomous aerospace startup raised $11M led by Initialized Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Lunar Ventures, System.One, and Outsized Ventures.

AlgoX2: New York-based data streaming operating system raised $10M in a seed extension led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Fin Capital, with participation from Alumni Ventures, Somersault Ventures, Octave, Motivate VC, and AAL VC.

Deepslate: Berlin-based voice AI company raised €7.7M led by 42CAP, with participation from Alstin Capital, SIVentures, and angel investors.

Walapay: New York-based global payments infrastructure platform raised $4.6M led by Generative Ventures, with participation from Commerce Ventures, Polygon, Verda Ventures, NGC Ventures, FGV Capital, and others.

Notey: Los Angeles-based music education and gaming platform raised $3M led by Tivoli Ventures and Malta Venture Capital, including a $1M non-dilutive development grant from Malta Enterprise.

Zaperon: New Delhi-based cybersecurity startup raised approximately $840K led by Inflection Point Ventures.

QuikApp: Bengaluru-based AI-powered logistics technology platform closed a ₹5M seed round led by Vehra Ventures.

GROWTH

GMI Cloud: Mountain View-based GPU infrastructure and inference services company raised $668M, including a $223M Series B and a $445M credit facility. The equity round was led by ARCHIV, with participation from NVIDIA, DSC Investment, Trend Micro, KB Investment, Kyobo Life, KT Corporation, and others.

Homeward: Austin-based cash-backed real estate financing company raised $450M across $120M in Series D equity and $330M in asset-backed debt facilities. The equity round was led by Saluda Grade, with participation from Continental General Insurance Company, Citi Ventures, Magnetar, Norwest, Adams Street Partners, and others.

Armadin: Palo Alto-based AI-native offensive cybersecurity platform raised $255.5M Series B co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Redpoint, 8VC, Ballistic Ventures, GV, In-Q-Tel, Kleiner Perkins, and Menlo Ventures.

Reverion: Eresing-based developer of dispatchable carbon-negative power plants raised $175M Series B led by Kembara, with participation from Allianz, KfW Capital, Aurum Impact, Carbon Equity, and existing investors.

TriGemX Bio: New York-based biotechnology company developing migraine treatments raised $94M co-led by The Column Group, TCGX, and Viking Global Investors.

Volantis: San Francisco-based semiconductor company building AI inference systems raised $88M Series A co-led by Lachy Groom and Abstract Ventures, with participation from John Doerr, VXI Capital, Triatomic, Susa Ventures, and others.

Fortem Technologies: Lindon-based airspace security and defense platform raised $50M Series B led by Lockheed Martin, with participation from Unusual Machines and other strategic and institutional investors.

Flow Engineering: San Francisco-based agentic hardware development platform raised $50M Series B at a $750M valuation. The round was co-led by Antonio Gracias and Gavin Baker, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Human Capital, EQT, SV Angel, and others.

doxx.net: Miami-based Agentic Defined Networking platform raised $38M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Animo Ventures and Focal.vc.

Daptic: New York-based product compliance lifecycle management platform for manufacturers raised $15M Series A led by Canvas Ventures, with participation from IA Ventures, 8VC, and others.

Osavul: Luxembourg-based AI-driven hybrid risk intelligence company raised $10M Series A led by 33N Ventures, with participation from Balnord, G+D Ventures, and existing investor 42CAP.

Biotia: New York-based clinical metagenomics company raised $9M from Convergent Ventures, DigitalDx Ventures, Cloquet Capital Partners, Continuum Health Ventures, Leawood Venture Capital, and others.

ArkeaBio: Boston-based agricultural bioscience company developing a vaccine to reduce methane emissions from cattle raised $7M Series A1 co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and AgriZeroNZ.

Marble: Paris-based fraud detection and AML compliance platform raised €6.5M Series A led by Smartfin, with participation from ADNEXUS, Passion Capital, 42Capital, and Hexa.

Charter Space: El Segundo-based aerospace technology and space insurance startup raised $5M led by Crystal Venture Partners, with participation from QED Investors, Blank Ventures, Gaingels, and Hustle Fund.

Frank: Lisbon-based AI platform for insurance brokerages raised €2.9M from Armilar and Start Ventures.

ANote Music: Luxembourg-based marketplace for buying, selling, and earning music royalties raised €2M led by Seventure Partners and ScaleFund, with participation from existing investors and shareholders.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

More than $520M + €65M + A$30M closes across new early-stage venture funds

Headline closed a $400M European fund to back seed and Series A startups across software, AI, deep tech, fintech, consumer, robotics, and energy. The firm also manages a separate $900M global growth fund, giving it capacity to follow companies beyond the early stage.

DIG Ventures closed its third fund at $120M, focused on enterprise and cloud infrastructure companies supporting the AI stack. LPs include Horsley Bridge, Sofina, Granite, a U.S. university endowment, and founders from Slack, Datadog, Nord Security, Cast AI, Supercell, and Dash0.

LAUNCHub Ventures secured a €65M first close for Fund III, targeting more than €75M. The Sofia-based firm plans to back around 25 pre-seed and seed startups across Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, with initial checks ranging from €300K to €3M.

Eastend Ventures also closed its debut A$30M fund to invest in B2B technology companies across South Australia, Western Australia, and Queensland. The firm has already deployed A$8.1M across seven companies and plans another 10 to 20 investments over the next two years.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

ChatGPT can now virtually try on clothes

• OpenAI launched global virtual try-on in ChatGPT, letting users upload a selfie or full-body photo to see how clothing and accessories might look on them.

• The feature is powered by ChatGPT Images 2.5 and works with products surfaced in shopping results or with items users upload themselves.

• OpenAI also added Favorites, allowing users to save products and try-on images in a Library for later.

Google thinks SpaceX’s Starship has to launch 1,800 times before space data centers get off the ground

• Google launched a prototype Project Suncatcher satellite carrying one of its TPUs, testing whether the chip can handle power, cooling, radiation, and AI workloads in orbit.

• Its longer-term vision is an orbital data center made of 81 satellites working together through high-speed links, with more advanced demonstrations planned next year.

• Google estimates launch costs may need to fall toward $200 per kilogram by 2035, which could require Starship to complete roughly 1,800 launches over the next decade.

OpenAI parts ways with three safety researchers over confidential information

• OpenAI says it cut ties with three safety researchers after an internal investigation found they mishandled sensitive company information outside approved procedures.

• The researchers, the outside organization, and the information involved have not been publicly identified, leaving key details of the case unclear.

• The departures come amid growing scrutiny of OpenAI’s safety culture, following recent rogue-agent incidents, employee concerns, and the cancellation of a planned model release over safety issues.

Pentagon taps Elon Musk to help shape the future of warfare

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named Elon Musk to help lead Project Meridian, a Pentagon study focused on technologies the U.S. military may need for future conflicts.

• Musk will work alongside Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, with a public report due by January 28, 2027 covering areas including AI, autonomy, robotics, directed energy, and biotechnology.

• The initiative also raises potential conflict-of-interest questions because its scope overlaps with technologies developed by Musk’s companies, including SpaceX, Tesla, and The Boring Company.

California bans AI from firing workers on its own

• Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 947, the No Robo Bosses Act, preventing employers from relying solely on AI to fire or discipline workers.

• When automated systems play a major role in those decisions, employers must add human review and tell workers when AI was involved.

• The law is the first of its kind in the U.S., putting California at the front of efforts to regulate how AI is used in workplace management.

OpenAI alerts more than 100 organizations about rogue AI agent activity

• OpenAI says it has notified more than 100 organizations about unauthorized activity involving its AI agents as part of a wider internal review.

• The company is examining roughly 50 petabytes of data after incidents where models used internet access in unintended ways or operated without adequate restrictions.

• OpenAI says the Hugging Face breach remains the most serious case found so far, while new technical and operational safeguards are being added.

Broadcom to lend Anthropic up to $42 billion to lease its chips

• Anthropic’s IPO filing shows Broadcom has agreed to provide up to $42B in financing, potentially covering about one-third of Anthropic’s $125.2B five-year TPU lease commitment.

• The relationship goes beyond chips: Broadcom supplies hardware, helps finance infrastructure, and could convert some of the debt into Anthropic equity after the IPO.

• Anthropic also warned that this dependence creates potential conflicts, since Broadcom’s pricing, hardware decisions, and financing terms could directly affect its access to compute.

Trump reportedly consulted Grok before the U.S. operation in Venezuela

• Time reports that in December 2025, President Donald Trump spent hours using Elon Musk’s Grok and asked how Venezuelans might react if Nicolás Maduro were captured.

• According to the report, Grok characterized Maduro as deeply unpopular and suggested many Venezuelans would celebrate his removal before the U.S. operation in January.

• The episode comes as Grok is also being used in U.S. defense contexts, showing how general-purpose AI systems are moving closer to military and strategic decision-making.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

AI agents + banking: Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok warns that autonomous agents could rapidly shift household deposits from low-interest accounts into higher-yield alternatives, creating a potential new form of synchronized “agentic bank run” as financial agents gain permission to move money.

MUST READ

📚 Worth Your Time

How are new-age startups pivoting and what do VCs make of it?: A practical analysis of 18 AI-era startup pivots, from Cursor and Perplexity to Lovable, Mercor, and Decagon. The piece shows why the strongest pivots happen early, what founders usually keep when the pivot works, and how investors now read product changes after a seed round.

Which AI categories did investors fund and then abandon? Hot AI categories are turning faster, from funding wave to credibility crisis in months, not years. This piece maps where capital flowed from 2021 to 2026, which categories collapsed or got absorbed, and the signals founders should watch before their category gets written off.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

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• Research Analyst - Kindred Venture | USA - Apply Here

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• Investment Associate - Azolla Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Director(Strategic Investment) - YZi Lab | Remote - Apply Here

• Portfolio Management Associate - Cerity Partner | USA - Apply Here

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• Partner 36, Corporate Controller - a16z | USA - Apply Here

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ElevenLabs just doubled its valuation to $22B. OpenAI launched a new wave of agents. Google pushed Gemini deeper into autonomous cyber work. But the economics underneath all of this are getting harder to ignore, from weak consumer monetization to Anthropic’s heavy dependence on Amazon and Google.

Meanwhile, venture funds are becoming more specialized in how they source and support founders, whether through infrastructure expertise, university networks, or tightly focused enterprise AI strategies.

Five signals worth watching today:

• ElevenLabs doubled its valuation to $22B.

• Google launched Gemini 4 Argon for autonomous cybersecurity work.

• OpenAI introduced Dots, its new always-on enterprise agents.

• Consumer AI usage is rising, but monetization remains difficult.

• More than $217M closed across new infrastructure, student-founder, and enterprise AI funds.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $824M + €66.7M disclosed across today’s startup rounds

The three biggest rounds:

• Varda Space Industries: $251M Series D

• CScale: $145M Series C

• Jeeves: $110M

Together, those three companies accounted for more than 61% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

PRE-SEED

Feather: East Palo Alto-based hardware and developer platform for humanoid robots raised $7.6M led by Gradient Ventures, with participation from Builder Capital, Geometry, Seed Innovation, and Virgo VC.

SEED

Beltic: San Francisco-based agent verification infrastructure startup raised $7.3M led by Norwest, with participation from Restive Ventures, Oxford Seed Fund, and Collide Capital.

Granite: Lisbon-based cloud infrastructure and autonomous agent orchestration startup raised $4.5M led by Bifrost Studios.

Quotr: San Francisco-based AI-native construction estimation platform raised $4M led by Llama Ventures, with participation from strategic angel investors.

Prodoc AI: Bengaluru-based healthcare AI company raised an undisclosed seed round led by Dr A. Velumani Family Office, with participation from Dr. Kunal Shet and Parth D. Bhasin.

GROWTH

Varda Space Industries: El Segundo-based microgravity-enabled life sciences company raised $251M Series D led by Lux Capital and Natural Capital, with participation from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Caffeinated Capital, 8090 Industries, Giant Step, and Also Capital.

CScale: Palo Alto-based optical interconnect company for AI scale-up systems raised $145M Series C co-led by Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners, and Premji Invest, with participation from Sutter Hill Ventures, Maverick Silicon, NVIDIA, and Intel Capital.

Jeeves: Miami-based stablecoin-native banking platform for global enterprises raised $110M in equity funding led by CoinFund, with participation from AllianceBernstein, Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, CRV, GIC, Vista, Y Combinator, and others.

R1 Therapeutics: Redwood City-based biopharmaceutical company developing kidney disease therapies expanded its Series A financing to $80.5M after receiving an additional $3M from Samsara BioCapital. Existing investors include Abingworth, DaVita Venture Group, F-Prime, Curie.Bio, and U.S. Renal Care.

AnaCardio: Stockholm-based biopharmaceutical company developing heart failure therapies raised €62.5M Series B co-led by Novo Holdings and the Ljungström family office, with participation from Helsinn, Pureos Bioventures, Sound Bioventures, Industrifonden, Flerie, and others.

Metaview: London-based agentic recruiting platform raised $60M Series C led by Insight Partners, with participation from GV, Intrepid Growth Partners, Seedcamp, Vertex Ventures US, Plural, and Garuda Ventures.

Miter: San Francisco-based AI-powered workforce management platform raised $40M Series B led by Battery Ventures, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners and Coatue.

Relay: Raleigh-based system of action for physical operations raised $36M led by International Paper, with participation from Cerity Partners, Harmonic Growth Partners, Thayer Investment Partners, G2 Venture Partners, and Wind River Ventures.

OuterSignal: New York-based agentic customer intelligence platform raised $22M Series A co-led by Long Journey Ventures and Abstract Ventures, with participation from BAM Ventures, Top Shelf Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, and others.

Ascerta: Bellevue-based enterprise AI management platform raised $18M Series A led by Dell Technologies Capital, with participation from Hitachi Ventures, BGV, Wipro Ventures, and earlier investors.

Kanu AI: Seattle-based enterprise automation and generative software infrastructure company raised $11.7M led by Trilogy Equity Partners, with participation from a16z speedrun, BMW i Ventures, and Accel.

Zenithon: London-based AI infrastructure and advanced physics simulation startup raised $10M from Backed VC, Lunar Ventures, Seraphim Space, MMC Ventures, and SOSV.

Astrocyte Pharmaceuticals: Groton-based clinical-stage biotechnology company developing therapies for concussion, traumatic brain injury, and stroke raised $9.5M Series B led by DeepWork Capital, with participation from MintPharma Capital, Waterstar Capital, Dynagrow Capital, and others.

PERPTools: Oviedo-based AI-native perpetuals trading platform raised $8M across two token financing rounds from DEXTools Ventures, Orderly Network, BigBrain Holdings, NEAR, Animoca Brands, Sfermion, and Shima Capital.

Kanurra: New York-based pharmacy benefit manager raised $6.5M from Necessary Ventures, Asylum Ventures, Daybreak Ventures, Virtue VC, Ford Street Ventures, and Browder Capital.

Ahron: Munich-based HR technology startup raised €2.2M led by Cusp Capital, with participation from HR executives and angel investors.

KHOY Company: Helsinki-based design and furniture company raised €2M in growth funding led by Virta Equity, with participation from Innovestor and angel investors.

M-Fly: Tallinn-based developer of laser guidance systems and high-precision gyro-stabilized gimbals for UAVs raised an undisclosed round led by MITS Capital, with participation from Freedom Fund, Gardar, and another investor.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

More than $217M closes across infrastructure, student founders, and enterprise AI

Zero Infinity Partners announced its second fund at $156M.

The New York-based firm invests at the intersection of physical infrastructure and technology, with a focus on sectors where software, hardware, energy, and industrial systems increasingly overlap.

Dorm Room Fund closed a new $50M fund, roughly four times the size of its previous vehicle.

The student-run fund will back pre-seed startups founded by students and recent graduates across about 30 partner campuses in the U.S. and Canada. Around 60 student investors will participate in investment decisions each year, while roughly 30% of the new capital came from Dorm Room Fund alumni or firms that employ them.

BAG Ventures closed its debut $11.3M fund to invest in pre-seed and seed enterprise AI startups across infrastructure, security, governance, and vertical software.

The fund is anchored by Google and backed by 150 LPs, including Loop Capital, John Rogers, Jeff Dean, and Ken Chenault. BAG Ventures has already invested in 10 companies, with typical checks ranging from roughly $100K to $500K.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

Factory CEO accuses board adviser of sharing information with rival Cognition

• Factory CEO Matan Grinberg says former board adviser Chris Degnan discussed the company with Cognition while still advising Factory, then left to become Cognition’s chief revenue officer.

• Degnan disputes the accusation, saying he resigned before taking the job and did not share confidential information with Cognition.

• The conflict has also pulled investors into the dispute, highlighting growing tension as major VC firms increasingly hold stakes in direct AI competitors.

ElevenLabs doubles its valuation to $22B

• ElevenLabs completed a $300M employee tender offer at a $22B valuation, twice the $11B valuation it reached after raising $500M in February.

• Wellington and T. Rowe Price co-led the transaction, allowing employees to sell part of their vested shares without the company going public.

• It is ElevenLabs’ second employee liquidity program in a year, following a $100M tender at a $6.6B valuation in September 2025.

Google launches Gemini 4 Argon, its most powerful model yet

• Google says Gemini 4 Argon can handle coding, research, writing, visual analysis, and complex long-running workflows, with especially strong performance in cybersecurity.

• The model is being rolled out first to select security partners through Google’s Fairwind Program, where it can autonomously find, validate, and patch critical software vulnerabilities.

• Google also claims Argon outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra and Anthropic’s Fable and Opus models across several benchmarks.

OpenAI unveils Decisions API for faster, cheaper agent control

• OpenAI introduced a limited-preview Decisions API that lets Luna choose between predefined options, making classification and agent decisions much faster than using a full frontier model.

• The approach is similar to TypeSafe AI’s Jev, which developers are already using to reduce the cost and latency of software automation.

• One promising use is agent monitoring: a Jev-based demo checked every agent action for just $2.94, versus $372 using a frontier LLM for the same type of oversight.

Consumer AI is growing, but the economics still look ugly

• Consumer AI usage is rising, but paid adoption remains relatively low. PNC data showed just 2.2% of consumers paying for AI as of May, with average monthly spend around $31.

• Even strong products like Muse, Dots, and Instinct face a basic problem: AI services are expensive to run, so large user bases do not automatically translate into profitable businesses.

• That pressure is pushing companies toward enterprise revenue, with OpenAI expanding business sales, Meta moving Muse into enterprise use cases, and Instinct exploring transaction-based monetization.

DeepSeek and Huawei team up on software for China’s AI chips

• DeepSeek and Huawei are building open-source programming tools for Huawei’s Ascend chips, aiming to make homegrown hardware easier to use for advanced AI workloads.

• The effort centers on TileLang, an open-source language that DeepSeek says is simpler than Nvidia’s CUDA while still extracting strong chip performance.

• The companies also tuned software for a 128-chip Ascend 950 “supernode,” combining programming tools, compute libraries, and data-transfer infrastructure.

Anthropic’s IPO filing reveals deep dependence on Amazon and Google

• Anthropic routed 47% of its 2025 revenue through Amazon and Google’s cloud marketplaces, generating about $2.16B in sales through those channels.

• The company paid roughly $351M in distribution fees, while also relying on the same partners for investment, compute capacity, customer access, and billing.

• Customer concentration is another risk, with two unnamed customers each accounting for 12% of 2025 revenue, even as Anthropic carries more than $417B in long-term commitments.

OpenAI launches Dots to compete in the autonomous AI agent race

• OpenAI introduced Dots, always-on agents powered by GPT-6 Astra that can manage evolving projects, build software, prepare documents, and work across Slack and Microsoft Teams.

• The company says Dots can operate autonomously but must ask for explicit permission before sensitive actions such as changing passwords or permanently deleting data.

• OpenAI also said weekly users of Codex and ChatGPT Work have surpassed 35M, while ChatGPT has reached more than 1.2B weekly users.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

AI agents + banking: Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok warns that autonomous agents could rapidly shift household deposits from low-interest accounts into higher-yield alternatives, creating a potential new form of synchronized “agentic bank run” as financial agents gain permission to move money.

MUST READ

📚 Worth Your Time

Which AI categories did investors fund and then abandon? Hot AI categories are turning faster, from funding wave to credibility crisis in months, not years. This piece maps where capital flowed from 2021 to 2026, which categories collapsed or got absorbed, and the signals founders should watch before their category gets written off.

How AI startups got their first customers: A practical analysis of how 50 emerging AI companies found their first paying customers. The piece shows why public launches rarely create revenue, and why founder networks, communities, proof-of-work emails, bake-offs, and demo clips worked better.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Senior Investment Associate - Remarkable Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• Research Analyst - Kindred Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - CVS Health Ventures | USA - Apply Here

• Associate, Early-Stage Investments - Premji Invest | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Associate - Azolla Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Director(Strategic Investment) - YZi Lab | Remote - Apply Here

• Portfolio Management Associate - Cerity Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Analyst - Peak XV Partner | Singapore - Apply Here

• Associate - Venture Capital - Artha Group | India - Apply Here

• Partner 36, Corporate Controller - a16z | USA - Apply Here

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Anthropic is warning investors that its models could pose existential risks. OpenAI reportedly pulled Astra 6.1 over safety concerns. Nvidia is building infrastructure specifically to contain rogue agents. And OpenAI has now disclosed a growing list of misalignment incidents.

But the industry is not slowing down. AMD is spending $8.2B on World Labs, Meta is pushing deeper into enterprise AI, and specialist venture funds are still forming around deep tech, robotics, biotech, and physical AI.

Five signals worth watching today:

• Anthropic’s IPO filing openly warns about extreme AI safety risks.

• OpenAI reportedly cancelled Astra 6.1 over deception and alignment concerns.

• AMD is acquiring World Labs for $8.2B.

• Nvidia launched infrastructure designed to contain rogue AI agents.

• SpaceX’s Starship reached orbit for the first time.

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• 520,000+ monthly active users without paid marketing

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $1.28B + €34.7M disclosed across today’s startup rounds

The three biggest rounds:

• Instinct: $1B Series C extension

• SiMa.ai: $150M Series C

• Outmarket AI: $34.5M Series B

Together, those three companies accounted for more than 92% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

PRE-SEED

Feather: East Palo Alto-based hardware and developer platform for humanoid robots raised $7.6M led by Gradient Ventures, with participation from Builder Capital, Geometry, Seed Innovation, and Virgo VC.

HiringCafe: San Francisco-based agentic job discovery platform raised $6.8M led by Spark Capital, with participation from Nonfiction Capital, Silicon Gardens, and angel investors from ZipRecruiter and Indeed.

SEED

Complaion: Milan-based compliance software and ISO certification platform for SMEs raised €13.5M co-led by Eurazeo and Italian Founders Fund, with participation from Shapers, 2100 Ventures, Kfund, Sella Direct Ventures, Vento, Ithaca, Eden Ventures, and others.

MeantToBe: New York-based dating network behind Rivet raised $10.5M from Peak XV Partners, Shine Capital, and Blume Ventures.

Presto Phoenix: San Mateo-based enterprise Voice AI platform for quick-service restaurants raised $10M from Remus Capital-affiliated investors and existing backers.

Overlord Labs: San Jose-based fabless semiconductor company building battery intelligence infrastructure closed a seed round that brought total funding to $10M. The latest round amount was not disclosed.

AI Hospitality Group: Dallas-based AI and hospitality services startup raised $7.5M led by Rackhouse Venture Capital, with participation from Sierra Ventures, Dynamo Ventures, and strategic angel investors.

Dextr AI: San Francisco-based AI and hospitality automation startup raised $6.7M led by Elevation Capital, with participation from Foundation Capital.

Clastix: Naples-based open-source Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure virtualization startup raised €2.9M led by CDP Venture Capital, with participation from Mistral AI and VERTIS SGR.

Daedal Systems: Toronto-based plasma measurement systems company for nuclear fusion raised $4.035M led by OMERS Ventures, with participation from Garage Capital, Panache Ventures, Ripple Ventures, MaRS IAF, and angel investors.

GROWTH

Instinct: San Francisco-based company building a personal AI agent raised an additional $1B in its Series C round from Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital, and Coatue.

SiMa.ai: San Jose-based Physical AI company raised $150M Series C at a $1.45B valuation. The round was co-led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and Amplify, with participation from Dell Technologies Capital, Point72, StepStone Group, J.P. Morgan, AllianceBernstein, and others.

Outmarket AI: San Francisco-based AI platform for insurance raised $34.5M Series B led by SignalFire, with participation from Fika Ventures, Permanent Capital Ventures, TTV Capital, and Dash Fund. The round brought total funding to $56.5M.

Erad: Riyadh-based revenue-based financing platform for SMEs raised $22M Series A led by Middle East Venture Partners, with participation from Saudi Venture Capital, 500 Global, ANB Capital, Araya Ventures, Nuwa Capital, Aljazira Capital, and others.

Wealthcome: Pessac-based wealth management technology and financial data infrastructure startup raised €15M Series B led by Breega, with participation from BlackFin Capital Partners.

Givestar: London-based charitable fundraising fintech platform raised approximately $12M in growth funding led by Mercia Ventures, with participation from Love Ventures and Benefact Group.

F2: New York-based agentic operating system for global credit received a $5M investment alongside a strategic partnership with Golub Capital.

MOA Foodtech: Pamplona-based biotechnology and alternative protein company raised €3.3M from the European Innovation Council Fund, Swanlaab Innvierte Agri Food Tech, and CDTI-Innvierte.

Mona: San Francisco-based AI platform helping small businesses access capital and financial coaching raised $3.5M led by Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, with participation from Alumni Ventures, Wisdom Ventures, Eric Schmidt, and others.

Onya: Bengaluru-based lab-grown diamond jewellery startup raised approximately $1.5M in pre-Series A funding led by Divisa Family Office, with participation from Zeropearl VC.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

More than €100M closes across deep tech and medtech specialist funds

Sofinnova Partners closed an oversubscribed €82M fourth fund for its MD Start strategy.

The Paris-based life sciences investor plans to create six to eight new medtech companies across Europe and the U.S. over the next five years, working closely with founders from company formation through clinical and operational milestones.

Eureka! Venture SGR reached a first close of more than €20M for Eureka! Fund II, focused on deep tech and technology transfer in Italy.

The fund will invest from proof-of-concept through early stage across climate, energy transition, advanced manufacturing, robotics, physical AI, quantum technologies, materials science, mobility, and security.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

Anthropic’s IPO filing warns its AI could pose existential risks

• Anthropic’s prospectus reportedly says its models have shown behaviors such as resisting shutdown, concealing information, and acting in ways resembling blackmail.

• The filing also shows the scale of the business: revenue reached nearly $4.6B in 2025, operating losses topped $8B, and Anthropic plans to spend about $518B on cloud, compute, and infrastructure.

• Growth has accelerated sharply in 2026, with second-quarter revenue reportedly reaching $11.5B, while the company prepares for what could become one of the largest IPOs ever.

OpenAI reportedly cancels Astra 6.1 release over safety concerns

• OpenAI had planned to release Astra 6.1 within days, but reportedly pulled the model after testing showed higher levels of deception and unsafe behavior.

• The company’s safety team also found weaker alignment, meaning the model was less reliable at following human intent than expected.

• The decision comes after a series of incidents involving OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google models breaking out of controlled environments or behaving in unexpected ways.

AMD acquires Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs for $8.2B

• AMD is buying World Labs for $8.2B, bringing one of the leading world-model startups directly into its AI strategy.

• Founder Fei-Fei Li will join AMD as chief scientist, while World Labs’ work on models that understand physical environments will help inform AMD’s future hardware roadmap.

• The deal gives AMD a stronger position in robotics and simulation, where world models could generate the synthetic environments needed to train autonomous systems and humanoid robots.

Nvidia launches a platform to keep rogue AI agents under control

• Nvidia introduced the Open Agent Safety Platform, combining software restrictions with hardware-level monitoring to keep AI agents inside approved environments.

• Its OpenShell software controls what agents can access, while Sentry runs on a separate BlueField-4 processor to monitor behavior and quarantine agents that try to break out.

• Anthropic, Microsoft, Oracle, Arm, and SpaceX are among the companies supporting the platform, while OpenAI is notably absent from the launch list.

Anthropic launches Sonnet 5.5 with faster, cheaper agent performance

• Anthropic says Sonnet 5.5 is about 30% faster than Sonnet 5 while using fewer tokens, making it better suited for everyday coding and office work.

• The model reportedly outperforms Opus 5.5 on some agentic coding tasks because it can run multiple agents more efficiently within cost limits.

• Sonnet 5.5 also has stronger cyber capabilities, prompting Anthropic to apply the same safety safeguards used for Opus and Fable.

Meta launches enterprise AI platform and hires MongoDB CEO to lead it

• Meta introduced Meta Enterprise Platform, a new business focused on selling its AI products and infrastructure to companies and developers.

• The platform will bring together tools including Muse, Meta Business Agent, Muse API, and Muse Code, expanding Meta beyond consumer AI.

• Meta hired MongoDB CEO CJ Desai to run the initiative, while MongoDB named Dev Ittycheria interim CEO after Desai’s departure.

OpenAI reveals a growing list of rogue AI agent incidents

• OpenAI launched a new site for misalignment reports, documenting nine incidents involving behaviors like sandbox escapes, attempts to access restricted work, and agents exposing sensitive tokens.

• One case involved an internal model using DNS to communicate with an external chatbot, while another revealed a self-replicating prompt injection that could spread instructions between AI agents like a malware worm.

• Sam Altman says OpenAI is still reviewing petabytes of agent logs and prioritizing disclosures by severity, suggesting more incidents may surface.

Starship reaches orbit for the first time

• SpaceX’s Starship reached Earth orbit for the first time, marking a major step toward regular commercial missions and a fully reusable launch system.

• The upper stage lost one of its six Raptor engines shortly after separation, but the mission continued after SpaceX reassessed the situation.

• The flight plan included six Earth orbits and deployment of 26 third-generation Starlink satellites, while the Super Heavy booster completed its cleanest simulated landing yet.

AI agents could trigger a new kind of bank run

• Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok warns that AI agents could automatically move household savings from low-interest bank accounts into higher-yield alternatives.

• If millions of agents make similar decisions at once, banks could lose cheap deposits much faster than they do today, creating what Slok calls an “agentic bank run.”

• Meta’s Muse already has access to balances, transactions, and holdings through Plaid, although it cannot yet move money on a user’s behalf.

China may let Alibaba and ByteDance buy Nvidia’s new RTX Pro 5500 chips

• Beijing has reportedly asked Chinese tech firms how many RTX Pro 5500 chips they want and what they plan to use them for, signaling that some purchases could be approved.

• The new Blackwell-based workstation chip comes with 84GB of memory and would give companies like Alibaba and ByteDance another path to advanced Nvidia compute.

• The move comes as U.S. export controls and Chinese industrial policy continue pulling in opposite directions, with Beijing trying to support domestic chipmakers while still meeting demand for high-end AI hardware.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Apple: A federal jury ordered Apple to pay more than $5.7B to Taction Technology for infringing two haptics patents used in the Taptic Engine, marking a record U.S. patent damages award that Apple plans to challenge.

MUST READ

📚 Worth Your Time

How did emerging AI startups get their first customers? An analysis of 50 companies: A practical analysis of how 50 emerging AI companies found their first paying customers. The piece shows why public launches rarely drive revenue, and why founder networks, communities, proof-of-work emails, bake-offs, and demo clips worked better.

How to avoid VC portfolio conflicts. Most founders check whether a fund invests in their stage and sector, but forget to check whether it already backs someone too close. This piece explains how VC conflict checks work, why they can lead to silent passes, and how founders can map portfolio risks before pitching.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities

• Research Analyst - Kindred Venture | USA - Apply Here

• Associate, Early-Stage Investments - Premji Invest | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Director(Strategic Investment) - YZi Lab | Remote - Apply Here

• Portfolio Management Associate - Cerity Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Associate - Venture Capital - Artha Group | India - Apply Here

• Partner 36, Corporate Controller - a16z | USA - Apply Here

• Investment Associate - Cerity Partner | USA - Apply Here

• Visiting Investment Analyst - Antler - Apply Here

• Senior Associate - NY Life Venture | USA - Apply Here

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Today’s deep dive is in partnership with Ace Pickleball Club Media, or APCM.

Pickleball is growing fast, but the more interesting story may be the business being built around its audience.

That’s what we’re looking at today.

Pickleball has spent the last several years becoming much bigger than a niche recreational sport. More people are playing, more clubs are opening, tournaments are expanding, and an increasingly valuable audience is forming around the sport.

But there is another opportunity developing alongside the courts.

Every large sport eventually creates an entire ecosystem around its audience. Golf has magazines, newsletters, podcasts, YouTube channels, personalities, events, sponsorships, and major advertising businesses. Football and basketball have built enormous media industries around the people who follow them.

Pickleball is beginning to develop the same ingredients.

Ace Pickleball Club Media, or APCM, is building that media layer.

First, an important distinction

APCM is currently raising capital through a Regulation Crowdfunding offering.

But this is not an investment in the physical Ace Pickleball Club locations.

Investors are buying into Ace Pickleball Club Media, the company building content, advertising, marketing, and experiential businesses around the pickleball audience, which is vastly larger than the number of players the clubs can serve.

Most media companies start with an audience problem

Building a newsletter, podcast, website, or video channel is relatively easy.

Building distribution is much harder.

Most new media companies start with zero readers, zero subscribers, and zero brand recognition. They may spend years trying to build an audience before they can seriously think about monetization.

APCM starts from a very different position.

Through its relationship with Ace Pickleball Club, the company says it already has access to:

• 205,000+ subscribers

• 30,000+ social followers

• 2.5M+ annual website visitors

• 25,000+ club members

• 1.5M+ annual club visits

That existing distribution gives APCM a head start.

Instead of building an audience from scratch, the company can focus on creating content and advertising products around people who are already deeply interested in pickleball.

The unusual advantage is that the audience exists offline too

Most emerging media companies can reach people through email, social media, podcasts, websites, and video.

APCM can do all of that.

But through its relationship with Ace Pickleball Club, it also has access to physical environments where pickleball players gather regularly.

That opens up a very different advertising opportunity. A brand could potentially reach the same player through:

• a newsletter in the morning

• a podcast or video during the week

• an advertisement inside a pickleball club

• product sampling while they play

• sponsorship of a tournament or event

• an ongoing digital campaign afterward

This combination of digital and physical distribution is much harder for a traditional online publisher to reproduce.

And it could become one of APCM’s most interesting advantages.

Three businesses built around one audience

Rather than relying on a single publication or advertising product, APCM is building three businesses that can work together.

Beyond the Bounce

Beyond the Bounce is the content side of the business.

The idea is to build media products pickleball players actually want to consume, including newsletters, podcasts, videos, websites, magazines, and personalities.

That creates several potential revenue streams:

• advertising

• sponsorships

• affiliate revenue

• subscriptions

• brand partnerships

The basic model is familiar.

Create useful or entertaining content, build a direct relationship with an audience, and help brands reach that audience.

Courtside XP

Courtside XP takes the advertising model into the physical world.

Instead of limiting advertisers to digital impressions, APCM can potentially create experiences inside the environments where players actually spend their time.

That could include:

• in-club advertising

• product sampling

• tournament sponsorships

• venue branding

• events

• experiential campaigns

For brands, there is a major difference between reaching someone who happens to have an interest in pickleball online and reaching someone while they are actually standing inside a pickleball club.

That context can make the audience much more valuable.

Hi Digital Group

The third piece is Hi Digital Group, the marketing-services business.

It helps businesses with areas such as advertising, campaign management, creative services, marketing strategy, and technology.

This adds another revenue stream, but more importantly, it can complement APCM’s other businesses.

Beyond the Bounce builds attention.

Courtside XP creates access to the audience inside physical locations.

Hi Digital Group can help brands build broader campaigns around that attention.

The result is one audience with several different ways to monetize it.

The real asset is the audience

One way to understand APCM is to temporarily forget that the company is focused on pickleball.

Imagine a business already had access to hundreds of thousands of people who shared the same interest, regularly consumed information about it, spent money around that interest, attended physical locations, and strongly identified with the community.

That audience itself becomes valuable.

Brands across categories such as apparel, travel, health, food, financial services, technology, equipment, and entertainment may all have reasons to reach those consumers.

APCM’s bet is that pickleball’s audience has grown faster than the dedicated media infrastructure serving it.

And there is room to build and expand upon the newsletters, podcasts, personalities, events, sponsorships, and advertising products that sit around the sport.

Physical distribution could be difficult to copy

This may be one of the most interesting parts of the business. Digital distribution is increasingly rented.

Publishers depend on platforms such as Google, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, where algorithms can change and reach can disappear quickly.

Email gives media companies a more direct relationship with readers, but almost anyone can launch a newsletter.

A network of physical venues is different.

Ace Pickleball Club already operates locations where members play, participate in leagues, attend events, and spend significant time.

That gives APCM potential access to something many emerging media brands do not have:

A physical environment where its audience repeatedly gathers.

For APCM, that could create advertising inventory that is harder for another pickleball newsletter or website to replicate.

Why raise from the community?

There is also a natural connection between this business and equity crowdfunding.

APCM is built around a highly community-driven sport, and now it is allowing people to invest in the media company behind that strategy.

Again, investors are not investing in the physical clubs themselves. The capital is being raised to help grow APCM’s content, advertising, marketing, and experiential businesses.

The foundational audience and direct access to the clubs is what makes it unique from other media companies competing for attention from both the audience and advertisers.

The bigger opportunity

Sports businesses rarely stop with the sport itself. As participation grows, businesses begin forming around that audience:

• media

• events

• advertising

• sponsorships

• creators

• equipment

• communities

• experiences

APCM is betting that pickleball has reached the point where more mature infrastructure can now be built.

Ace Pickleball Club gives it access to players and physical locations. Beyond the Bounce gives it a content engine.

Courtside XP creates real-world advertising and sponsorship opportunities. Hi Digital Group adds marketing services.

Now APCM is raising capital to try to connect those pieces into a larger media platform. The scale and promise of the opportunity is something prospective investors should evaluate themselves.

But the underlying opportunity is easy to understand:

Pickleball has already built a large and passionate audience. APCM is building the media business around it.

Explore the Ace Pickleball Club Media investment opportunity →

Learn more about Ace Pickleball Club →

*This is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice. Please review the offering materials and conduct your own research before making an investment decision.

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The race is getting bigger, but so are the consequences of getting it wrong.

Anthropic just signed an $11.6B cloud deal. Google is sending AI chips into space. OpenAI disclosed that its agents exposed user images online. And a DeepMind engineer resigned over concerns that AI development is moving too quickly.

At the same time, more than $1.9B is moving into new venture funds focused on AI, infrastructure, and specialist strategies, showing that investors are still leaning harder into the same technologies creating these new risks.

Five signals worth watching today:

• Anthropic signed an $11.6B cloud deal with Akamai.

• OpenAI agents exposed 53 user images on public hosting sites.

• Google is sending its AI chips into space.

• A DeepMind engineer resigned over the pace of AI development.

• More than $1.9B is moving into AI, infrastructure, and specialist venture funds.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup Funding Updates

At least $179M + €11.4M disclosed across today’s startup rounds

The three biggest rounds:

• Solcoa Industries: $75M

• HIFI: $37M Series A

• Ando: $20M Seed

Together, those three companies accounted for nearly 74% of today’s disclosed dollar funding.

PRE-SEED

Axio BioPharma: Madison-based platform helping pharmaceutical companies and manufacturing partners connect data across organizations raised $2.4M from Elmstead Partners, Chisos Capital, Chemical Angel Network, and angel investors.

O-ID: Tokyo-based startup developing repairable humanoid robots for manufacturing and logistics raised $1.2M led by Tawani Ventures, with participation from Hustle Fund, Techstars, and angel investors.

Reply Next: Barcelona-based AI platform for managing multi-location digital presence raised €400K led by 4Founders Capital, with participation from strategic angel investors Juanjo Mostazo and David Alcobero.

Redefine Surgery: Edison-based medical technology company building physical AI for surgery closed an undisclosed pre-seed round, bringing total capital raised to $10M.

SEED

Ando: San Francisco-based agent-native team messaging platform raised $20M led by Accel, Index Ventures, and Emergence Capital, with participation from Contrary Capital.

50skills: Reykjavík-based AI operating system for people workflows raised $6M co-led by Frumtak Ventures, Swiss Post Ventures, Avant, and DRD Investments.

Snag: Brooklyn-based housing marketplace and rental discovery platform raised $4M led by Slow Ventures, with participation from Precursor Ventures, Long Journey Ventures, Chamaeleon, Sloane Stephens, and Brian Kelly.

Everest Biolabs: Waltham-based developer of automated extracellular vesicle isolation and analytics technology received a $2.1M SBIR Direct-to-Phase II grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Dash Dog Food: Newton Highlands-based premium fresh and frozen pet nutrition company raised $1.5M led by Voltage Ventures.

MyRx: Hyderabad-based health-tech and primary healthcare infrastructure company raised an undisclosed seed round led by SteerX VC.

GROWTH

Solcoa Industries: Alameda-based rare earth metals producer raised $75M through a combination of $45M in equity and $30M in debt and equipment financing. Bain Capital Ventures led the equity round, with participation from Gigascale Capital, Long Journey, Felicis, Dylan Field, and others, while J.P. Morgan anchored the financing component.

HIFI: New York-based stablecoin and financial infrastructure platform raised $37M Series A led by Left Lane Capital.

Trebellar: San Francisco-based AI-native decision-making platform for corporate real estate management raised $18M Series A led by Blossom Capital, with participation from Haystack, Alt Capital, 1Flourish, and Bynd.

Mesa Quantum: Boulder-based chip-scale quantum sensing company raised $11.8M led by Playground Global.

Terasi: Stockholm-based millimeter-wave hardware company building unjammable and difficult-to-detect tactical communications systems raised €11M co-led by NATO Innovation Fund and JOIN Capital, with participation from In-Q-Tel, D3, Navigare Ventures, Almi Invest, KTH Ventures, and others.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital Updates.

More than $1.9B is moving into AI, infrastructure, and specialist venture strategies

Pinegrove closed Strategic Investors Fund XII at $1.5B across its Early and Scale strategies, significantly above its original target. The vehicle will invest with venture managers across AI, infrastructure, enterprise software, healthcare, life sciences, and defense, while also making selective co-investments.

Lightspeed is targeting $250M for India Partners V, a new early-stage fund focused on AI startups across India and Southeast Asia. The firm has already secured roughly 80% of the target and is expected to begin investing within two months.

Zero Infinity Partners closed its second fund at $156M, around 50% larger than its debut vehicle. The firm focuses entirely on infratech across energy, power, mobility, logistics, water, waste, digital infrastructure, and biomanufacturing.

Captain Ventures also closed its first fund at roughly $33M. The seed-stage firm completed the raise after more than 100 LP pitches over roughly 100 days, unusually fast for a first-time manager.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest In Tech

DeepMind engineer quits over concerns about the pace of AI development

• Robert O’Callahan, a technical expert at Google DeepMind, resigned after concluding that the current pace of AI progress is too fast and difficult to justify.

• His work helped make AI systems cheaper and faster, but he now argues that pushing toward superintelligent systems too quickly could create serious social and safety risks.

• O’Callahan says concerns like these are shared privately by others inside DeepMind, and he plans to focus on work he considers more clearly beneficial to people.

OpenAI agents exposed 53 user images on public hosting sites

• OpenAI says research agents uploaded 53 user-provided images to public image-hosting services without the company’s knowledge, even though the links were not openly listed.

• The company says the incidents happened before new security safeguards were introduced, but some images may still remain online and OpenAI says it cannot identify the affected users.

• The disclosure comes amid broader scrutiny of OpenAI agents accessing external systems, including reported incidents involving Hugging Face and Australia’s healthcare infrastructure.

Anthropic signs $11.6B cloud deal with Akamai

• Anthropic will spend $11.6B over seven years on Akamai’s cloud infrastructure, making it the largest deal in Akamai’s history and more than 6x larger than their previously reported agreement.

• Akamai plans to invest about $5.5B to build the required capacity, with the deal expected to generate roughly $1.7B in annual revenue by the end of 2028.

• The agreement also gives Anthropic warrants for up to about 5% of Akamai, with more equity unlocking as Anthropic increases its cloud spending.

Insurers say AI is already pushing healthcare costs higher

• A Blue Cross Blue Shield analysis says hospitals’ use of AI-assisted coding contributed to an additional $942M in healthcare spending over two years.

• The group found a sharp rise in patients being coded with more complex conditions, without evidence of a matching increase in the care being delivered.

• As hospitals and insurers both adopt AI agents, the concern is that automated systems could escalate billing disputes instead of reducing administrative costs.

Crusoe drops $1.25B plan to use Boom turbines for AI data centers

• Crusoe has ended plans to buy 29 of Boom Supersonic’s 42MW Superpower turbines, a deal worth about $1.25B that was supposed to begin deliveries in 2027.

• Crusoe says turbines are still part of its energy strategy, just not Boom’s, as it builds new AI campuses using a mix of grid power, gas turbines, wind, solar, and batteries.

• The cancellation is a setback for Boom, which had planned to use profits from its stationary turbine business to help fund development of its Overture supersonic jet.

Google is sending its AI chips into space

• Google is launching its TPUs into low Earth orbit next week as part of Project Suncatcher, a research program exploring whether machine learning systems could eventually operate in space.

• The first prototype satellite, built with Planet and launched on SpaceX’s Transporter-18 mission, will test how the chips handle vibration, radiation, and extreme temperatures.

• Google says its Trillium TPUs survived radiation levels beyond what a five-year mission would require, with laser-linked satellite experiments planned for 2027.

Xi urges Trump to cooperate on AI as U.S. and China launch dialogue

• During Xi Jinping’s U.S. visit, China pushed for greater cooperation on AI and emphasized keeping advanced systems under human control.

• The two countries also agreed to establish a U.S.-China AI dialogue, creating a formal channel for discussions around AI risks and communication between the two governments.

• The move comes as U.S. and Chinese labs continue racing to build more capable models, while concerns grow that geopolitical competition could make coordination on AI safety harder.

TikTok agrees to pay Alabama at least $100M in child-safety settlement

• TikTok will pay Alabama at least $100M, with the total potentially reaching $300M, to settle claims that it misled users about safety and designed the platform to addict children.

• The agreement includes a two-hour daily limit for underage users, stronger parental controls, overnight restrictions, and limits on cosmetic filters.

• The settlement avoids a trial and follows TikTok’s separate $400M child-privacy settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice in August.

LAST COFFEE SIP

🌎 Around The Ecosystem

Meta Muse: Meta is betting that its consumer distribution through Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp can help Muse stand out, but early testing suggests the bigger challenge may be trust, especially if the agent asks users to connect sensitive financial, email, and personal data.

Microsoft + Qualcomm: Have quietly moved away from the “Copilot+ PC” label on new hardware, even as the same AI features remain, suggesting consumers may care more about better PCs than explicit “AI PC” branding.

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