☕ Airbnb’s Brian Chesky plans to launch a new AI lab & Apple has abandoned most of its Vision Pro roadmap.
US officials explore government stakes in AI companies & Apple approves Poke as first AI agent on Messages.
Breaking News
Apple has reportedly abandoned most of its Vision Pro roadmap, shrinking plans from seven headset-related products to just two smart glasses projects. The move marks a major strategic retreat from Apple’s biggest post-iPhone hardware bet and signals that the company now sees AI-powered glasses — not mixed-reality headsets, as the future of wearable computing.
U.S. officials have reportedly discussed taking equity stakes in major AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, with potential profits funding public programs or even payments to citizens. If pursued, it would represent one of the most unusual government-industry partnerships in modern tech history and could reshape how the public shares in the economic gains from AI.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
What should founders say when investors ask about valuation? (Link)
All-in-one fundraising & investor database system for founders - curated by leading VCs. (Link)
What 500 unicorns reveal about where great founders come from? (Link)
Why are Investors betting billions on Brain-computer interfaces despite an adoption problem? (Link)
Why the next billion-dollar sales companies won’t own the database. (Link)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
ZeroDrift, a NYC-based AI compliance firewall platform, raised $10M in Seed funding. Backers included a16z Speedrun, Reign Ventures, PitchDrive Ventures, and others.
SEED
Willow, an Israel-based startup building an agentic access platform, raised $7M in Seed funding. The round was led by Hetz Ventures.
Offroad, a NYC- and Tel Aviv-based agentic identity security company, raised $7M in Seed funding. The round was led by Ibex Investors and Skywell Capital.
Cense, a Switzerland-based crypto compliance platform for financial institutions, raised €6.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by G+D Ventures and Rabo Investments.
Shifters, a Washington DC-based company building autonomous robotic teams, raised $10.2M in Seed funding. The round was led by Ace Capital Partners.
Kodesage, a Budapest-based enterprise AI platform for understanding and modernizing legacy software, raised $6.6M in Seed funding. The round was led by VentureFriends.
GROWTH
Innovorder, a Paris-based restaurant technology platform, raised €20M in funding. The round was led by UL Invest.
Tripo AI, a Chinese AI company building 3D foundation models and world models, raised nearly $200M across Series A+ and Series A++ rounds.
Suno, the AI music generation company, raised $400M+ in Series D funding at a $5.4B valuation. The round was led by Bond Capital.
Lila Sciences, a scientific superintelligence and automated lab platform, raised $350M in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Braidwell and Collective Global.
Helion, the fusion energy company, raised $465M in Series G funding at a $15.5B valuation. The round was led by Thrive Capital.
Honeycomb Insurance, a digital insurer focused on apartment buildings and condo associations, raised $40M in funding. The round was led by Zeev Ventures.
Ramp, the financial operations platform, raised $750M in Series F funding at a $44B valuation. The round was led by ICONIQ, GIC, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
Kalogon, a smart seating technology company, raised $5.75M in funding. The round was led by Enable Ventures.
WasabiCard, a Singapore-based stablecoin payment infrastructure company, raised ~$10M in Pre-A funding.
Scotch, a POS platform for liquor retailers, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by VMG Partners.
CereVasc, a clinical-stage neurovascular medical device company, raised $85M in Series C funding. The round was led by Piper Sandler Merchant Banking.
Scispot, an AI-native operating layer for modern laboratories, raised $8M in Series A funding. The round was led by Avenue Growth Partners.
Airspeed, a London and NYC-based agent-native GTM execution platform, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by DN Capital.
Town, a personalized AI assistant platform, raised $55M in Series A funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz.
AlphaSense, a market intelligence and financial research platform, raised $350M at a $7.5B valuation. The round was led by Vitruvian Partners, Accenture Ventures, and J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
Lassie, a startup building autonomous systems for small businesses, raised $35M in Series A funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
Semble, a healthcare technology platform, raised £30M in Series C funding. The round was led by Revaia.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Gigascale Capital, a Palo Alto, CA-based venture capital firm focused on the physical economy, closed its first institutional fund, at $250m. Founded in 2023 by former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer, Victoria Beasley, and Evaline Tsai, Gigascale is focused on such areas as clean energy and grid infrastructure, the supply chains that support them, and AI applied to the design, manufacturing, and deployment of physical systems.
Benchmark Capital, the Silicon Valley venture firm behind early bets in eBay, Uber, Snap, and Twitter, has raised $2 billion across two new funds, including its first-ever $1.25 billion growth fund for later-stage investments. The firm is expanding beyond its traditional early-stage strategy to back larger AI and growth-stage companies, while its new $750 million early-stage fund gives it more firepower to compete in today’s increasingly expensive startup market.
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KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Apple approves Poke as first AI agent on Messages for Business
Poke became the first AI agent approved to run on Apple’s Messages for Business platform, allowing users to interact with the AI directly through iMessage instead of SMS, Telegram, or WhatsApp.
The startup helps users with tasks like scheduling, calendar management, fitness tracking, smart home control, and photo editing. Since launching in March, it has processed over 100 million messages.
Poke will pay Apple a per-user fee to operate on the platform, creating a potential new revenue stream for Apple while introducing a new distribution cost for AI agent startups. The company recently raised an additional $10 million and is now valued at $300 million.
Anthropic’s Daniela Amodei defends AI spending ahead of IPO
Anthropic says frontier AI companies will increasingly need public-market capital as training and serving advanced models becomes more expensive.
The company’s annualized revenue reached $47 billion in May, up from about $9 billion at the end of 2025, ahead of its planned IPO.
Amodei dismissed concerns about AI ROI, arguing businesses are still early in adoption and will unlock more value as AI becomes part of daily workflows.
Airbnb’s Brian Chesky plans to launch a new AI lab
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is backing a new AI lab, signaling his interest in building AI products despite previously saying existing models were not yet ready.
Chesky has been a close advisor to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and played a key role in helping Altman return after his brief removal in 2023.
The lab’s focus remains unclear, though it may center on AI interfaces and user experience. Chesky will remain CEO of Airbnb and won’t run the lab directly.
Meta builds AI data centers in tents to speed expansion
Meta has built six large tent-like structures in Ohio to house AI infrastructure, aiming to cut data center construction times roughly in half.
The approach resembles Tesla’s temporary factory tents and xAI’s use of modular power systems, helping Meta deploy AI capacity faster.
The move comes as Meta plans to spend up to $145 billion on AI infrastructure while facing delays in releasing its latest AI model APIs to developers.
OpenAI and Anthropic urge DNA sales tracking
The CEOs of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Microsoft AI signed a public letter pushing Congress to pass laws that would require companies selling synthetic DNA and RNA to screen their customers and orders.
Organized by the Institute for Progress and the Foundation for American Innovation, the letter warns that AI could erode the knowledge barriers that have stopped bad actors from building biological weapons using mail-order genetic material.
A bipartisan Senate bill introduced this year would require all US gene synthesis providers to screen orders, though Microsoft researchers showed last year that AI protein design tools can generate dangerous sequences that slip past existing screening software.
71% of Americans oppose nearby data centers
A new Heatmap Pro survey shows 71% of Americans would oppose a data center being built near their home, with 55% “strongly” against such projects going up in their neighborhoods.
Opposition has climbed fast, jumping from 42% in August 2025 to 51% three months ago and now 71%, while 53% blame data centers for rising electricity costs, up from 28% nine months back.
A separate Gallup poll in May found 70% opposed local data center construction, up from 47% in late 2025, with respondents citing water and energy use and saying they’d rather live next to a nuclear plant.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Apple says App Store ecosystem generated $1.4T in sales and billings
Apple reported that the App Store facilitated $1.4 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2025, up from $1.3 trillion a year earlier, with 90% of transactions generating no commission for Apple.
The total included $1.1 trillion from physical goods and services, $149 billion from digital goods, and $151 billion in in-app advertising revenue, highlighting the scale of the broader app economy.
Apple also noted that AI-powered apps are gaining momentum, with 40 of the top 100 apps featuring consumer AI capabilities and showing faster revenue growth than their peers ahead of WWDC 2026.
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