☕ AI designs new viruses from scratch & China’s ByteDance trains massive AI model in bid to rival Anthropic.
OpenAI slows new model over cyber risks & Cloudflare launches a browser built for AI agents.
Breaking News
Researchers at Arc Institute used an AI model called Evo to design entirely new viral genomes, with 16 AI-generated viruses successfully infecting and spreading through bacteria in laboratory tests. The research could unlock new medical applications, but it also raises serious questions about whether biosafety rules are keeping pace with AI’s rapidly expanding capabilities.
OpenAI is reportedly slowing development of its upcoming Astra model after internal testing found it could potentially possess “critical” cybersecurity capabilities. The company is introducing stricter testing and isolation measures, making this a notable case of a major AI lab slowing its own frontier model because of capability-related security risks.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Inevitable AI Group (IAIG), a Tel Aviv, Israel-based AI-native venture studio that partners with solo entrepreneurs to build and scale software companies, raised $6M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Aleph.
SEED
Hulp, a New Delhi, India-based developer of an AI-powered personal assistance and concierge platform, raised $2.6M in Seed funding. The round was co-led by Sparrow Capital and BITKRAFT Ventures, with participation from DeVC (Z47) and strategic angel investors including Yashish Dahiya.
Fluxco, an Austin, TX-based developer of an AI-powered procurement platform for electrical grid infrastructure, raised $26M in Seed funding. The round was co-led by 8VC and Congruent Ventures, with participation from Trust Ventures, Overture Ventures, and industrial technology investors.
SiteVue AI, a Nashville, TN-based provider of AI-powered video cameras and analytics for manufacturing operations, raised $7.5M in Seed financing. The round was co-led by Penny Jar Capital and Overture, with participation from Silence, Spring Bank, Mana Ventures, Outset Capital, WaterStone, and Untapped Ventures.
GROWTH
Naïve, a Palo Alto, CA-based provider of an infrastructure platform for AI agents, raised $28.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from Y Combinator, Zetta, Liquid 2, Gokul Rajaram, Tim Zheng, JD Sherman, Gert Lanckriet, Robert Chatwani, and Zachary Sim.
Vexev, a Sydney, Australia-based provider of an autonomous robotic tomographic ultrasound platform, raised $6M in funding. Backers included Blackbird Ventures, Neotribe Ventures, Startmate, Horizon, TreeArc Investment Group, TEN13, Bioshore Ventures, and Alumni Ventures.
RevealDx, a Seattle, WA-based provider of medical imaging AI software for lung nodule characterization, received a $3.4M investment from 4DMedical.
Assured, a New York City-based AI-native platform for healthcare provider operations, raised $19M in Series A funding. The round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from First Round Capital and Kindred Ventures.
LifeMine Therapeutics, a Watertown, MA-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company leveraging digital genomics, raised $263M in funding, including a $188M Series E financing following a previously completed $75M Series D. The Series E was led by Milky Way Investments, with participation from Bezos Expeditions, Gates Frontier, RA Capital Management, GV, LoLa Capital Partners, GlaxoSmithKline, Invus, and ARCH Venture Partners.
Opal Therapeutics, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a patient-derived organoid platform for therapeutic and diagnostic development in women’s gynecological health, received a $1.25M investment from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
DAILY PICKS
🗞️ Must read post
How do you build personal and business AI agents with Claude if you can’t code?: A practical guide for founders on how to turn Claude from a blank chatbot into a useful personal or business assistant. The piece explains how to build no-code AI agents using Claude Projects, custom instructions, knowledge files, connectors, and reusable prompts - with examples for daily work, customer support, sales prep, and content repurposing.
How is your seed valuation actually decided? (It has almost nothing to do with your company): Most founders think valuation is decided by traction, market size, or the pitch. This piece shows why the real ceiling often comes from a VC’s fund size, check size, and ownership target. It gives founders a simple way to understand which funds can actually lead their round, how to avoid wasting time with structurally wrong investors, and why the option pool can quietly cost more than the pre-money they’re negotiating.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
South Park Commons, a San Francisco, CA-based venture capital firm, closed its newest fund, Fund IV, at $575M. The vehicle is focused on seed and Series A rounds to continue backing the breakout companies it helped create.
White Star Capital, a global multi-stage technology investment firm that backs entrepreneurs building international businesses, closed its Fund IV, at $250M. The new fund will invest in international startups at the Series A and B stages.
G Squared, a Chicago, IL-based global venture capital firm specializing in the private secondary market, closed G Squared VII, its seventh flagship fund, with $2.3B in capital commitments. G Squared VII will invest across direct secondary transactions, company-led tender offers, bespoke structured investments, and select primary financings in leading growth-stage technology companies.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
ByteDance trains massive AI model in bid to rival Anthropic
ByteDance is training an AI model with up to 10 trillion parameters, a size that could rival Anthropic’s most advanced Mythos system and push Chinese labs closer to the leading US companies.
The model is in early pre-training, a stage that usually runs three to six months before fine-tuning and release, and its final size will only be settled later, according to three people familiar with the work.
At 10 trillion parameters, it would be three times bigger than Moonshot’s Kimi K3, the largest Chinese model so far, and would top industry estimates of about 8 trillion for Anthropic’s Mythos 5.
OpenAI acquires presentation startup NextSlide
OpenAI has acquired NextSlide, an AI startup that turns prompts, notes, documents and research into polished, editable presentations.
NextSlide’s team has joined OpenAI and is now working on ChatGPT, continuing its mission of helping people create and communicate ideas through AI.
Financial terms were not disclosed. Founder Ahmed Beshry said the acquisition actually took place earlier in 2026 but was only recently announced.
Anthropic makes Claude Code’s auto mode the default
Starting August 14, Anthropic will enable auto mode by default for Claude Code users on Pro, Max, and Team plans, allowing the coding agent to take most actions without asking for approval.
Claude Code will only stop for confirmation when an action is considered irreversible, destructive, or aimed outside the user’s environment.
Anthropic says auto mode caught 89% of harmful actions in testing, compared with just 13.6% for human review, while adding safeguards such as prompt-injection screening and customizable hard-deny rules.
AI safety tests are becoming a security risk
AI agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Moonshot AI have escaped or exceeded testing boundaries, sometimes reaching the internet and accessing real-world systems during cybersecurity evaluations.
Researchers argue testing environments are failing to keep pace with increasingly capable models, especially when normal safeguards are disabled. They recommend stronger isolation, continuous monitoring and independent audits.
Experts warn that voluntary self-regulation may no longer be enough as competitive pressure pushes labs to test faster. The challenge is making environments secure without restricting them so much that dangerous model capabilities go undetected.
Cloudflare launches Kitesurf, a browser built for AI agents
Cloudflare launched Kitesurf, a cloud-hosted browser designed specifically for AI agents to navigate websites, fill forms and complete web-based tasks.
Unlike traditional browsers, Kitesurf is optimized around agent needs such as context windows, token costs, performance, scalability and protection against threats like prompt injection.
Kitesurf runs on Cloudflare Workers and is currently free in beta. Cloudflare says it uses significantly less CPU and memory than Chromium for common agent tasks such as screenshots and HTML extraction.
Trump hits solar material with 15% tariff
President Trump placed a 15% tariff on imported products made from polysilicon, the key material in solar panels, aiming to shield U.S. solar supply chains from Chinese competition and boost domestic production.
Alongside the duty, Trump set minimum prices for some related imports and used Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, acting on advice from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, as part of a wider push against China in energy and AI.
U.S. solar stocks rose in Friday premarket trading, with First Solar climbing more than 7%, Solaredge Technologies up 1%, and the Invesco Solar ETF gaining 4%.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
iPhone 17 may cost more next week
Apple could raise iPhone 17 prices as soon as Monday, August 10, according to a new rumor, well before the widely expected increases tied to next month’s iPhone 18 Pro launch.
The claim comes from Weibo leaker Fixed Focus Digital, who wrote only that “rumors are circulating” without naming a direct source, though the leaker has a solid track record of accurate information.
Apple raised prices on many products earlier this summer but left the iPhone untouched, and it remains unclear whether all iPhone 17 models would cost more or just some of them.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
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Financial Management Analyst - Duke Capital Partner | USA - Apply Here
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Technical Investment Operations Associate - Alpaca VC | USA - Apply Here
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