☕ Anthropic confidentially files for IPO & China approves the world’s first invasive brain-computer chip.
Alphabet plans $80B raise to fund AI infrastructure expansion & Apple targets eyewear market with 2027 smart glasses.
Breaking News
Anthropic has confidentially filed for an IPO just days after raising $65B at a $965B valuation, setting up one of the most anticipated public listings in tech history. With revenue reportedly surging past a $47B run rate, the move intensifies the coming public-market showdown between Anthropic and OpenAI.
Alphabet plans to raise $80B to fund its AI infrastructure expansion as demand for Gemini and cloud AI services outpaces available compute capacity. The raise highlights the staggering scale of the AI arms race, with Big Tech expected to spend roughly $700B this year on data centers, chips, and AI infrastructure.
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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
Voxmind, a London-based startup building voice biometrics and deepfake detection software, raised £546K in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Ascension Ventures.
Quantum Tiger, a Kolkata-based startup building an AI-native strategic intelligence operating system, raised a Pre-Seed round at a $2M valuation. The round was backed by a Middle East-based family office.
SEED
SpeedLabs, a NYC-based real-time market engine for sports, raised $6.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Parlay Capital.
Veritas Aortic Solutions, a Costa Mesa-based medical device company and inQB8 spinout, raised $12M in Seed funding.
Flexprice, a Bengaluru-based open-source billing and metering platform for AI and API-first companies, raised $1.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Shastra VC.
Human Archive, a San Francisco-based startup building a data platform that models human embodied intelligence, raised $8.2M in Seed funding. Backers included Wing Venture Capital and Y Combinator.
Perceptic, a London-based AI platform for drug development, raised $12M in Seed funding. The round was led by Accel.
Inherent, a London-based AI company focused on scientific research and discovery, raised $50M in Seed funding. The round was led by Index Ventures.
Invisix, an Eindhoven-based semiconductor metrology company, raised €20M in Seed funding. The round was led by Hitachi Ventures, Transition Ventures, and imec.xpand.
GROWTH
Converge Bio, a Boston-based company developing generative AI foundation models for life sciences, received a $2.5M non-dilutive grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Sekai, a San Francisco-based consumer platform for AI-generated software creation, raised $26M across Seed and Series A funding. The round was co-led by Khosla Ventures and Connect Ventures.
Return Helper, a Taipei-based ecommerce returns platform, raised $4M in Series A funding.
Picogrid, an El Segundo-based defense technology company building integration infrastructure for military systems, raised $45M in Series A funding. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners.
Omniscient, a Sydney-based AI-driven brain analysis company, raised $27.2M in Series D funding. The round was co-led by OIF Ventures and Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund Corporation.
Anthropic, a San Francisco-based AI company behind Claude, raised $65B in Series H funding, one of the largest AI financings ever. The round was led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, and Sequoia Capital, with participation from Amazon and major institutional investors.
Gray Swan, a Pittsburgh-based AI security platform provider, raised $40M in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Wing Venture Capital and Madrona.
Edify, a London-based AI operations platform for restaurants and hospitality chains, received a £2.5M investment from Calculus.
XCENA, a Santa Clara-based memory-centric computing company for AI infrastructure, raised $135M in Series B funding at a $570M valuation. The round was co-led by Atinum Investment and IMM Investment.
Handshake, a London-based AI-powered retail agreement platform, raised $3.2M in funding. The round was led by Triple Point Ventures.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Transition Ventures, a London, UK and NYC-based early stage investment firm, closed its second fund, at $150m. Fund II took the firm’s assets under management to over $300m. Transition Ventures invests from inception to Series A in companies advancing energy systems powering AI, robotics for industrial efficiency, and next-generation solutions for critical minerals refining across Europe and the US.
Atomus, a Menlo Park, CA-based newly formed venture capital firm, is reportedly raising a $500m fund. The vehicle will presumably be focused on growth stage investing as its Founder Ethan Choi was at Khosla Ventures and Accel.
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KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Nvidia unveils AI PCs to target $200B CPU opportunity
Nvidia introduced its new RTX Spark AI PC chip at Computex, with AI-powered laptops from Microsoft, Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, MSI, and others expected to launch this fall.
The chip is designed to run AI agents and local AI models directly on devices, featuring secure agent sandboxes developed with Microsoft and support from over 100 software companies.
CEO Jensen Huang sees AI PCs as a major growth driver beyond GPUs, arguing that billions of future AI agents will need their own computing platforms, creating a potential $200 billion CPU market.
Apple targets eyewear market with 2027 smart glasses
Apple is preparing to enter the eyewear market in 2027 with smart glasses that will compete not only against Meta and Samsung but also traditional brands like Oakley, Ray-Ban, and Warby Parker in the $200-$500 range.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is skipping the luxury end of eyewear, a market worth an estimated $180 to $200 billion annually, after its $10,000 gold Apple Watch failed to gain traction with high-end buyers.
Apple is betting that its brand, industrial design, iPhone integration, ecosystem of over 2 billion active devices, global retail footprint, and artificial intelligence features will convince regular glasses shoppers to pick an Apple pair instead.
China approves first invasive brain-computer chip
China has cleared NEO, the world’s first invasive brain-computer interface approved for use outside clinical trials, giving patients aged 18 to 60 with limb paralysis from spinal cord injuries access to the implant.
Built by Shanghai startup Neuracle Technology with Tsinghua University, the coin-size NEO places eight sensors on the dura mater rather than piercing the cortex like Neuralink’s N1, lowering the risk of hemorrhage and scarring.
The device reads brain signals and sends them to a computer that drives a soft robotic glove during daily 2.5-hour training, and China is already adding NEO to its health insurance system through a unique code.
Strava declares war on scrapers
Strava is cracking down on AI scrapers by locking public profiles and fitness club listings behind logins, and charging developers a flat $11.99 monthly fee for API access that used to be free under a tiered program.
The company will retire some API endpoints that let outside apps pull data like club details, give developers a 90-day grace period, and add support for Model Context Protocol so AI assistants get structured, controlled access.
CEO Michael Martin said Strava refused data licensing deals from leading AI labs and called out Perplexity for routing scraping through aggregator services to hide its origin after being turned away by the company.
Nvidia launches RTX Spark chip to bring AI agents directly to PCs
Nvidia unveiled RTX Spark, a new AI-focused PC chip built with MediaTek and Microsoft, designed to run AI agents locally on laptops and desktops.
The chip will launch this fall in devices from Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, Microsoft Surface, and MSI, enabling users to run AI models and autonomous agents without relying heavily on the cloud.
CEO Jensen Huang said AI agents will drive demand for CPUs, calling Nvidia’s Vera CPU a major growth driver and part of a $200 billion market opportunity.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Florida sues OpenAI and Sam Altman over alleged ChatGPT-linked harms
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, claiming the company ignored safety concerns while aggressively expanding ChatGPT.
The lawsuit alleges ChatGPT contributed to incidents including mass shootings, suicides, addiction, and harmful user behavior, citing last year’s Florida State University shooting among its examples.
OpenAI denies responsibility for such crimes, but the case marks the first state-led lawsuit targeting an AI company over alleged real-world harms linked to chatbot interactions.
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