☕ Alibaba launches its most advanced open-source AI coding model, Musk’s xAI seeks $12B in debt & Gemini wins gold medal at Math Olympiad.
Apple rolls out iOS 26 beta 4 with Liquid Glass updates & More.
Ian Fleming wrote the first James Bond novel to distract himself from getting married.
Because when faced with commitment, some people plan a wedding, while he created a spy with a license to kill.
Peak avoidance. Peak fiction.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Startup metrics that mislead, legal docs for founders, ChatGPT’s lie turned feature, pitch deck & memo tips, Shopify’s AI playbook, bootstrapped vs VC stress, B2B AI to $10M ARR.
Betaworks, a New York-based VC firm, closed $66 million for its third fund.
OpenAI agreed to pay Oracle $30B a year for data center services.
Musk’s xAI seeks $12B in debt to scale Grok data centers.
Tesla's first Supercharger diner is now open.
Google solves its Pixel 10 leaks by just showing us the phone.
Gemini wins gold medal at Math Olympiad.
Alibaba launches Qwen3-Coder, its most advanced open-source AI coding model.
Amazon acquires Bee, the $50 AI wearable that records your conversations.
Apple rolls out iOS 26 beta 4 with Liquid Glass updates and AI news summaries.
Apple’s App Store changes likely to be approved by EU, avoiding daily fines.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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All-In-One Guide To Pitch Deck Storytelling - Free Template & Curated Resources'.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Glīd Technologies, an Oakland, Calif.-based company pioneering autonomous road-to-rail solutions within the first mile, raised $3.1m in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Outlander VC, with participation from Draper U Ventures, Antler, The Veteran Fund, M1C, and mission-aligned angel investors.
Poseidon, a San Francisco, CA – based full-stack decentralized data layer built for AI training workflows, raised $15m in seed funding. The round was led by a16z crypto.
Cooler Heads, a San Diego, CA-based medical device company, raised $11M in Series A funding. The round was led by Mutual Capital Partners, with participation from SHD Partners, Crescent Ridge VC, Cal Innovation Fund, NuFund, Robin Hood Ventures, Golden Seeds, HIP VC, and an unnamed strategic investor.
Phlow, a Richmond, VA-based pharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), raised $37M in Series C funding. The round was led by Align Private Capital LLC, with participation from other undisclosed investors.
Octup, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based developer of a real-time AI operations platform for third-party logistics providers (3PLs), raised $12M in Seed funding. The round was led by Shine Capital and JAL Ventures, with participation from Stone Capital, Tal Ventures, and HCS Capital.
Provectus Algae, a Noosaville, Australia-based biomanufacturing technologies company, raised $12.6M in Series a funding. The round was led by At One Ventures and included Methane Mitigation, Mort & Co, and existing shareholders, such as Hitachi Ventures, among others.
Yieldstreet, a NYC-based provider of a private markets investment platform, raised $77M in new capital. The investment was led by Tarsadia Investments, with participation from Mayfair Equity Partners, Edison Partners, Cordoba Advisory Partners (CAP), and Kingfisher Investment Advisors, alongside new investor RedBird Capital Partners.
Nevoya, a San Francisco, CA-based electric trucking carrier, raised $9.3M in seed financing. The round was led by Lowercarbon Capital with participation from Floating Point, LMNT Ventures, and existing investors Third Sphere, Stepchange, and Never Lift, alongside angels including Qasir Younis, Founder and CEO of Applied Intuition.
Composio, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a learning infrastructure using AI Agents, raised $25M in Series A funding. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Guillermo Rauch (Vercel CEO), Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot CTO & Founder), Gokul Rajaram, and Soham Mazumdar (Rubrik Co-founder), alongside SV Angel, Blitzscaling Ventures, Operator Partners, and Agent Fund by Yohei Nakajima and existing investors Elevation Capital and Together Fund also participated.
Delve, a San Francisco, CA-based AI agents company, raised $32M in Series A funding. The round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from CISOs at Fortune 500 companies.
BetterComp, a Walnut Creek, CA-based provider of compensation management software, raised $33M in Series A funding. The round was led by Ten Coves Capital.
CandorIQ, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-powered platform for for compensation and headcount planning, raised $4.8M in seed funding. The round was led by Array Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, CRV, and Switch Ventures.
Asylon, Inc., a Philadelphia, PA-based provider of robotic perimeter security technology, raised $24M in Series B funding. The round was led by global software investor Insight Partners, with participation from Veteran Ventures Capital, Allegion Ventures, and the GO PA Fund.
Flend, a Cairo, Egypt-based provide of a digital and FRA-regulated SME financing platform, raised $3M in Equity and Debt in Seed funding. The equity round was led by Egypt Ventures, with participation from Camel Ventures, Sukna Ventures, Plus VC, Banque Misr, and regional family offices including El Sewedy and Baalbaki, alongside strategic corporate bankers.
xLight, a Palo Alto, CA-based company building lasers for the semiconductor industry, raised $40M in Series B funding. The round was led by Playground Global, and joined by Boardman Bay Capital Management. Morpheus Ventures and others also joined the round.
Magentic, a London, UK-based provider of an AI agent platform that hunts and delivers savings across global manufacturing supply chains, raised $5.5M funding. The round was led by Sequoia Capital with participation from The Westly Group, First Momentum Ventures, and angel investors from SAP, Airbus, McKinsey & Company, Hugging Face, Ironclad, and Rosberg Ventures.
Qlub, a Dubai, UAE-based fintech company offering a payment system in restaurants, raised $30M in funding. The round was led by Shorooq, and Cherry Ventures, with participation from strategic partners including e&, Mubadala Investments, and Legend Capital.
Makersite, a Stuttgart, Germany-based data software company that develops product data management tools for the global manufacturing industry, raised €60M in Series B funding. The round was led by Lightrock and Partech, with new participation from SE Ventures and all Makersite’s Series A investors including Hitachi Ventures, KOMPAS VC, Translink Capital and Planet A.
Everlab, a Melbourne, Australia-based provider of an AI-powered health platform for preventive care, raised US$10M in Seed funding. The round was led by Left Lane Capital.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Omega Funds, a Boston, MA-and Geneva, Switzerland-based international healthcare venture capital firm focused on delivering impactful medicines to patients, closed its eighth fund, with $647m in capital commitments. The new fund, Omega Fund VIII, L.P., received support from both new and existing limited partners.
Betaworks, a New York-based VC firm, closed $66 million for its third fund focused on early-stage AI startups. Fund III will back at least 25 seed-stage companies and fund 50+ startups through its Betaworks Camp program, with average checks around $500K. The fund will invest in areas like AI agents, native AI interfaces, and application-layer AI. Previous investments include Hugging Face, Granola, Tumblr, and Kickstarter.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
OpenAI agreed to pay Oracle $30B a year for data center services:
OpenAI signed a $30 billion annual cloud infrastructure deal with Oracle to support its Stargate project, securing 4.5 gigawatts of capacity—roughly equal to the output of two Hoover Dams.
The agreement was previously hinted at in an SEC filing, but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has now confirmed it, though without disclosing the exact dollar figure.
The massive investment dwarfs OpenAI’s reported $10 billion in annual revenue and reflects the intense capital demands of building the next generation of AI infrastructure.
Musk’s xAI seeks $12B in debt to scale Grok data centers:
Elon Musk’s xAI is working with Valor Equity Partners to raise up to $12 billion in debt to purchase Nvidia chips for training its AI model, Grok.
The chips will power a new supercluster and be leased to xAI; a second supercluster with 550,000 GPUs is also in the works.
Despite Musk’s earlier claim that xAI has “plenty of capital,” the company is expected to burn through $13 billion in 2025 and is reportedly valued at up to $200 billion.
Tesla's first Supercharger diner is now open:
The long-awaited Tesla Diner & Drive-In has finally opened in Hollywood, combining a restaurant, a movie theater, and a Supercharger station for electric vehicles.
The retro-futuristic space features the humanoid robot Optimus, sells Cybertruck-inspired food containers, and serves a menu with items like the "Tesla Burger" with "Electric Sauce".
Devoted fans waited for nearly ten hours to enter the new location, with some of the most enthusiastic supporters arriving at 5:30 a.m. for the opening.
Google solves its Pixel 10 leaks by just showing us the phone:
Google posted a short clip on its store's homepage revealing the Pixel 10's back, which features an oval-shaped camera bar described as an island design.
Rumors indicate the Tensor 5 chip will be made by TSMC on a 3nm process, a key manufacturing change from the previous chips made by Samsung.
The main camera array reportedly features a 50-megapixel Samsung GN8 wide-angle lens, an 11MP 3J1 telephoto, and Sony's 13-megapixel IMX712 ultrawide sensor.
Gemini wins gold medal at Math Olympiad:
An advanced version of the Gemini model earned an official gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad, correctly solving five of six exceptionally difficult problems.
The system operated entirely in natural language, using a method called “parallel thinking” to explore many possible solutions simultaneously before producing a final mathematical proof.
Despite its high score, Gemini failed on the competition's hardest challenge, which five of the teenage human contestants were able to answer correctly.
Alibaba launches Qwen3-Coder, its most advanced open-source AI coding model:
Alibaba has released Qwen3-Coder, an open-source AI model for software development, claiming it’s their most advanced coding tool yet.
The model is optimized for “agentic AI coding tasks” and outperforms Chinese rivals like DeepSeek and Moonshot AI’s K2 in coding benchmarks.
Alibaba says Qwen3-Coder matches U.S. leaders like Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT-4 in several coding capabilities.
Amazon acquires Bee, the $50 AI wearable that records your conversations:
Amazon has acquired Bee, a startup that makes a $50 AI bracelet which records audio to help users remember tasks and conversations; the deal is not yet closed.
Bee aims to act as a personal "cloud phone" with ambient intelligence, though privacy concerns remain around always-on recording and how user data is handled.
Amazon’s move signals deeper interest in AI wearables, potentially competing with efforts by OpenAI, Meta, and Apple in the smart assistant hardware space.
Apple rolls out iOS 26 beta 4 with Liquid Glass updates and AI news summaries:
iOS 26 beta 4 brings tweaks to the Liquid Glass design and reintroduces AI-powered news summaries with added user warnings.
A new setup flow includes onboarding screens for Siri, the revamped Camera app, and notifications, as well as a redesigned dynamic Notification Center and wallpapers.
The AI summarization feature now includes a disclaimer after past misreporting issues; public beta expected to launch later this week.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕Other news
Apple’s App Store changes likely to be approved by EU, avoiding daily fines:
Apple’s revised App Store rules, including reduced fees and external payment links, are expected to gain EU approval and prevent daily fines of up to €50 million.
Changes include a 20% fee for in-app purchases, with reductions to 13% for small businesses, and 5–15% fees for developers using outside payment links.
The revisions follow a €500 million EU fine in April for violating the Digital Markets Act; final regulatory approval is anticipated in the coming weeks.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & startup job opportunities
All-In-One VC Interview Preparation Guide: With a leading investors group, we have created an all-in-one VC interview preparation guide for aspiring VCs. Don’t miss this. (Access Here)
Investment Lead - DCG | USA - Apply Here
Director of Fundraising - Crosscut Venture | USA - Apply Here
Partner 34 - a16z | USA - Apply Here
Fund Accounting Manager - Elevation Capital | India - Apply Here
Associate- Portfolio Management - Stepstone Group | USA - Apply Here
Chief of Staff - Grey Line Partner | USA - Apply Here
Investment Principal - Cota Capital | USA - Apply Here
Investment Fellow - Indian Fund | India - Apply Here
Corporate Development & Strategy - Figma Venture | USA - Apply Here
Value Creation - Cadeumen Capital | Spain - Apply Here
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