☕ Anthropic CEO warns AI rivals are ‘YOLOing’ into bubble territory & OpenAI secretly fast-tracking ‘Garlic’ to rival Google.
Meta plans to slash Metaverse budget by 30% & Sam Altman wants to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
France has 12 time zones, more than any country on Earth. One nation, twelve different chances to be late.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Startup legal docs for founders, investor Q&A prep kit, AEO vs GEO vs AI SEO debate, AI-made marketing assets, 2700+ US investor database, GenAI in enterprise.
Nexus Venture Partners closed $700M fund.
Micro1, a Scale AI competitor, touts crossing $100M ARR.
Anthropic CEO warns AI rivals are ‘YOLOing’ into bubble territory.
Meta reportedly plans to slash Metaverse budget by up to 30%.
Anthropic signs $200M deal to bring its LLMs to Snowflake’s customers.
Sam Altman wants to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
OpenAI is secretly fast-tracking ‘Garlic’ to rival Google.
After nearly 30 years, Crucial will stop selling RAM to consumers.
AMD chief says company ready to pay 15% tax on AI chip shipments to China.
Chicago Tribune sues Perplexity.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
Startup Legal Document Pack – Essential Legal Docs for Founders.
What investors ask and how to answer: A practical Q&A prep kit for founders.
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2700+ US angel investors & VC firms contact database (Email + LinkedIn Link).
Gen AI fast-tracks into the enterprise.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Lumia, a NYC-based provider of an AI Security and Governance platform helping enterprises safely adopt AI and autonomous agents, raised $18m in seed funding. The round was led by Team8 with participation from New Era.
imper.ai, a NYC-based real-time cyber impersonation prevention startup, publicly launched with $28m in funding. The round was led by Redpoint Ventures and Battery Ventures, with participation from Maple VC, Vessy VC, and Cerca Partners.
Govstream.ai, a Seattle, WA–based startup building AI-native permitting tools for local governments, raised $3.6m in Seed funding. The round was led by 47th Street Partners, with participation from Nellore Capital and Ascend, as well as Kevin Merritt (founder and former CEO of Socrata) and Andreas Huber (co-founder and CEO of First Due).
Ostium Labs, the NYC-based developer of the Ostium protocol for perpetual swaps on global markets, raised $24M in new funding. The round included a $20M Series A co-led by General Catalyst and Jump Crypto.
Sphotonix, a Newark, DE-based company which specializes in optical storage and photonics technology, raised $4.5M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Creator Fund, and XTX Ventures.
Ply, a NYC-based provider of an inventory and purchasing platform for the trades, raised $8.5M in funding. The round was led by Ferguson Ventures, with participation from Primary and SignalFire.
Find Your Grind, a Los Angeles, CA-based provider of a career and future ready learning solution for middle and high school students, raised $5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Echo Investment Capital, with participation from Gross Labs.
OceanSaver, a Leeds, UK-based ecological cleaning brand, raised £1.9M in funding. The round was led by NPIF II – Mercia Equity Finance.
7AI, a Boston, MA-based company building dynamic AI agents to get security work done at scale, raised $130m in Series A funding. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from new investor Blackstone Innovations Investments. Greylock, CRV, Spark, and all other existing seed investors also participated in the round.
Azoma, a London, UK-based company providing generative engine optimisation (GEO) for ecommerce, raised $4M in Pre-Series A funding. Backers included Ignite Ventures, Rank Ventures, eBay Ventures x Techstars, Twinpath, MaRS IAF, angel investors from both Retail and AI, such as the Chairman & CEO of The Winn-Dixie Company, and senior leadership at Google DeepMind, and non-dilutive funding.
Addis Energy, a Cambridge, MA-based company that focuses on the clean ammonia production, raised $8.3M in Seed funding. The round was led by At One Ventures, with existing investors Engine Ventures and Pillar VC also participating.
Eikona, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based enerative AI company for lifecycle marketing, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by StageOne Ventures with participation from Crescendo Venture Partners, Wix Ventures, Clarim Ventures, and others.
IMTC, a NYC-based fixed income technology and fintech provider, raised $12M in Series A funding. The round was led by Nyca Partners with participation from Tribeca ESP and existing investors.
Brevo, a Paris, France-based provider of a customer engagement platform, raised €500M in funding, becoming a unicorn. The round was led by General Atlantic, and Oakley Capital with participation from Bpifrance and Bridgepoint, via Bridgepoint Development Capital V, and Partech.
Paradigm Health, a Columbus, OH-based technology company supporting the clinical research ecosystem, raised $78M in Series B funding. The round was led by ARCH Venture Partners, with participation from new investor DFJ Growth and existing investors F-Prime, General Catalyst, GV, Lux Capital, Mubadala Capital, the American Cancer Society’s BrightEdge Fund, and others.
Guide Labs, a San Francisco, CA-based developer of interpretable and auditable AI systems, raised $9M in seed funding. The round was led by Initialized Capital, with participation from Tectonic Ventures, Y Combinator, and Lombardstreet Ventures, E14 Fund, Pioneer Fund, Brett Gibson, Kulveer Taggar, Richard Aberman JJ Fliegelman, Jonathan Frankle, Eric Norman, and more.
Lemurian Labs, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a platform that works across any hardware for AI development, raised $28M in Series A funding, including capital previously raised from convertible securities. The round was co-led by Pebblebed Ventures and Hexagon, with participation from Oval Park Capital, which led Lemurian’s 2022 seed round, as well as Origin Ventures, Blackhorn Ventures, Uncorrelated Ventures, Untapped Ventures, Planetary Ventures, 1Flourish Ventures, Animal Capital, Stepchange VC and Silicon Catalyst Ventures.
Unlimited Industries, a San Francisco, CA-based AI-native construction company, raised $12M in Seed funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and CIV, with participation from other investors.
Fin, a NYC-based payments company enabling global transactions, raised $17M in Series A funding. The round was led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital and Samsung Next.
Curvestone AI, a London, UK-based provider of a workflow automation platform for the financial services, legal and insurance sectors, raised $4m in seed funding. The round was led by MTech Capital, with participation from Boost Capital Partners, D2 Fund, and Portfolio Ventures.
Supper, a NYC-based provider of an agentic data platform, raised $11M in Seed funding. The round was led by Union Square Ventures with participation from BoxGroup, Inspired Capital, Torch Capital, and Avid Ventures.
Track Titan, a London, UK-based provider of an AI-powered online coaching platform, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Partech and Game Changers Ventures with participation from Colton Parayko, Trevoh Chalobah, Sequel, Martin Hoffmann, Emmanuel Tahar and APX.
Micruity, a NYC-based infrastructure company developing retirement and lifetime income solutions across workplace savings system, raised $20M in Seris A funding. The round was led by Rebalance Capital and Nationwide Ventures.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Nexus Venture Partners, a Menlo Park, CA-based venture capital firm investing in startups across the United States and India, closed Nexus Ventures VIII, at $700m. The fund will back founders building AI, enterprise software, consumer and fintech startups at inception, seed, and Series A stages in the US and India. The firm already has a strong track record of investing in AI stack innovators, developer platforms, open-source infrastructure, AI agents, consumer, and fintech companies.
Anti Fund, a San Francisco, CA-based investment firm that invests in technology companies, closed its Anti Fund I, at $30m. LPs include Aquarian Holdings, Autilus Partners, Marc Andreesseen, and Chris Dixon. With the close of Fund I, the firm’s assets under management now exceed $65m.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
Micro1, a Scale AI competitor, touts crossing $100M ARR
Micro1 has surged from $7M to over $100M ARR this year, fueled by AI labs and Fortune 100 companies needing expert human feedback for post-training and reinforcement learning.
The startup is expanding into two emerging, high-value markets: enterprise AI agent evaluation and robotics pre-training datasets — which it believes will help push human-data spend toward a $100B market.
Despite rapid growth, Micro1 still trails Mercor (~$450M ARR) and Surge (~$1.2B ARR); it’s betting that its early moves in robotics data and domain-expert recruiting will help it capture future market share.
Anthropic CEO warns AI rivals are ‘YOLOing’ into bubble territory
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said the AI market isn’t a simple “yes/no” bubble — the tech’s long-term potential is real, but some companies are taking “unwise,” “YOLO-style” risks by over-betting on uncertain economic timelines.
He warned that poor planning around data-center buildout and rapidly depreciating AI chips could hurt players who assume growth will continue indefinitely — a veiled critique clearly aimed at OpenAI.
Anthropic forecasts $8–10B in 2025 revenue but is planning conservatively; Amodei said some rivals “pull the risk dial too far,” especially those who “just like big numbers,” referencing Sam Altman without naming him.
Meta reportedly plans to slash Metaverse budget by up to 30%
Meta is considering cutting Reality Labs’ Metaverse budget by as much as 30%, a move that could also include layoffs, Bloomberg reported.
The potential cuts reflect weak industry and consumer interest in Horizon Worlds and VR hardware, which have lost billions each quarter since Meta’s 2021 pivot.
Investors welcomed the possibility of reduced Metaverse spend, as Meta’s AI and smart glasses efforts show stronger traction.
Anthropic signs $200M deal to bring its LLMs to Snowflake’s customers
Anthropic and Snowflake have expanded their partnership in a $200M multi-year deal that embeds Claude models directly into Snowflake’s platform for enterprise use.
Snowflake will use Claude Sonnet 4.5 to power its Snowflake Intelligence service, enabling multimodal analysis and custom AI agent creation on customers’ existing secure data.
The deal adds to Anthropic’s enterprise push, following major partnerships with Deloitte and IBM, as businesses increasingly prefer Claude for secure, context-aware AI workflows.
Sam Altman wants to compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX
Sam Altman recently held talks to partner with a competitor to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, driven by his long-term interest in building massive AI data centers in orbit to harness the power of the sun.
The proposal involved OpenAI making equity investments to take a controlling stake in Stoke Space, a startup founded by former Blue Origin employees working on a fully reusable rocket called Nova.
Altman believes that insatiable demand for computing resources means humanity must eventually build a Dyson sphere around the solar system because it makes no sense to put these systems on Earth.
OpenAI is secretly fast-tracking ‘Garlic’ to rival Google
OpenAI is rushing to build a new model codenamed Garlic to compete with Gemini 3 after Sam Altman declared a code red to address Google’s rise on the LMArena leaderboard.
OpenAI’s Chief Research Officer Mark Chen told colleagues that adjustments to pretraining allow this smaller system to rival Opus 4.5 on coding and reason by prioritizing broader connections before training for specific tasks.
The team plans to release the project “as soon as possible” for consumers, a path that differs from Anthropic, where Dario Amodei says his focus remains on serving enterprises.
After nearly 30 years, Crucial will stop selling RAM to consumers
Micron is shutting down its Crucial brand after decades of business and will stop shipping consumer hardware like RAM sticks and solid state drives to retail stores for good.
The company says it must shift production capacity to data centers because the current generative AI boom has caused a massive surge in demand for flash memory and storage components.
Product shipments will officially end in February 2026, leaving fewer competitors against brands like Samsung, though Micron promises to still provide warranty service and support for all existing devices.
AMD chief says company ready to pay 15% tax on AI chip shipments to China
AMD CEO Lisa Su said the company has licenses to ship certain MI 308 chips to China and is prepared to pay the U.S. government’s proposed 15% fee on those exports.
The fee stems from a Trump administration deal allowing Nvidia and AMD to resume limited chip shipments to China, though legal experts have questioned whether such an export tax is constitutional.
Su’s remarks signal AMD’s willingness to comply as it navigates tightened U.S. export controls while continuing to serve the Chinese market.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
Chicago Tribune sues Perplexity
The Chicago Tribune has sued Perplexity in federal court, alleging the AI search engine is scraping and reproducing its articles verbatim, including bypassing paywalls through Perplexity’s Comet browser.
The Tribune argues Perplexity is using its copyrighted material in RAG systems without permission — raising new legal questions about whether RAG itself creates liability beyond model training.
Perplexity faces a growing wave of lawsuits from publishers including Reddit and Dow Jones; the Tribune’s parent groups have also sued OpenAI and Microsoft over similar issues.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
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