☕ Anthropic nears $1.5 billion joint venture with Wall Street firms & Apple raises Mac mini price.
Meta acquires robotics startup to push humanoid AI ambitions & SpaceX has spent over $15B on Starship.
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Breaking News
Anthropic is setting up a ~$1.5B joint venture with firms like Blackstone and Goldman Sachs to embed its AI tools directly into private equity portfolios. This marks a big shift — AI isn’t just being sold as software anymore, but distributed deep inside entire companies at scale.
The U.S. Department of Defense has signed AI deals with seven companies including OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft to bring AI into classified military systems. The move shows governments are rapidly becoming major AI customers, turning the technology into core national infrastructure.
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Ecodetect, an Anglesey, Wales, UK-based company specialising in AI-driven marine monitoring for offshore infrastructure, raised £490k in equity funding. The round included £245k from a six-strong angel syndicate led by Bobby Williams, a member of the M-SParc Angel Network, which also included £25k from climate-focused investor OnePlanet Capital.
Jupid, a Los Angeles, CA-based AI-native small business accounting platform provider, raises $840k in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Pre-Seed to Succeed, an investment program for early-stage startups backed by AltaIR Capital, Yellow Rocks, Smart Partnership Capital and I2BF Global Ventures, with participation from Michigan State University Research Foundation.
Mosaic SoC, a Zurich, Switzerland-based perception chip startup, raised $3.8M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Founderful, with participation from Kick Foundation.
SEED
Kibu, a Washington, DC-based human network and app-based platform that enables individuals and organizations to know exactly who they’re interacting with when it matters most, raised $10.5m in seed funding. The round was co-led by Cubit Capital and Construct Capital with participation from Slow Ventures and Helena, and joined by angels like Nicole Perlroth, Judy Estrin, and David Carrico.
Illuminant Surgical, a Los Angeles, CA-based surgical visualization company, raised $8.4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Wing 2 Wing Ventures, with participation from NSF, National Cancer Institute, Soma Capital, and others.
Ctruh, a Bengaluru, India-based deeptech company building the infrastructure layer for the spatial internet, raised $2.5m in Seed funding. The round, which brought its total capital raised to $4.5m, was led by IPV (Inflection Point Ventures) and Avinya Ventures.
DEPTH Health, a La Jolla, CA-based hospital operations startup, closed its $1m Seed funding round. Green Harvest Capital Industries (GHC Industries) made the investment.
pmtbox, an Orem, UT-based enterprise commerce platform, raised $15M in Seed funding. The round was led by Tandem Ventures, with participation from Element Ventures, Cynosure Investment Partners, and others.
Fermeate, a San Francisco, CA-based industrial biotech startup, raised $2M in Seed funding. The round was led by Newfund Capital, with participation from SOSV, Ajinomoto Ventures, and others.
Dreambase, an Austin, TX-based AI analytics platform, raised $3.7M in Seed funding. The round was led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from multiple investors and angels.
Shiprazor, a Cape Town-based logistics platform, raised $2.65M in Seed funding. The round was led by Norrsken22, with participation from AAIC, E4E, Tremis Capital, and others.
Blomma, a San Francisco, CA-based AI career coaching platform, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from angel investors.
GROWTH
Axoft, a Boston, MA-based neurotechnology company, raised $55m in Series A funding. The round, which brought total funding raised to date to more than $60m in total, was led by C.P. Group Innovation, with participation from Alumni Ventures, the Stanford President’s Venture Fund, Hillhouse Investment and Gaorong Ventures.
Techcyte, an Orem, UT-based provider of AI-powered digital diagnostics for anatomic and clinical pathology, closed a $15m capital raise. The round was led by Van Tuyl Companies, with participation from existing investors Zoetis and Mayo Clinic.
Online Oceans, a London, UK-based company building autonomous surface vessels and fleet software for defence and maritime security, raised £4m in funding. The round was led by Seraphim Space with participation Peter Rive, co-founder of SolarCity, Frank Thieser and Florian Seibel, founders of Quantum Systems, and Koro Capital.
Netomi, a San Francisco, CA-based customer service AI startup, raised $110M in funding. The round was led by Accenture Ventures, with participation from Adobe Ventures, WndrCo, NAVER Ventures, and others.
Creati Gen AI, a San Francisco-based AI video editing startup, raised $20M in funding. The round was led by Redpoint Ventures.
StudentCrowd, a UK-based student data platform, raised $9M in Series A funding. The round was led by YFM Equity Partners, with participation from Mercia Ventures.
Manifest OS, a NYC-based legal AI platform, raised $60M in Series A funding at a $750M valuation. Backers included Menlo Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, First Round Capital, and Quiet Capital.
Netomi, a San Francisco, CA-based customer service startup, raised $110m in funding. The round was led by Accenture Ventures, with participation from Adobe Ventures, WndrCo, SLW, NAVER Ventures, Metis Strategy, and Fin Capital.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Crescent Cove Advisors, LP, a San Francisco, CA-based investment firm providing growth capital solutions to technology companies, closed Crescent Cove Fund IV, with more than $446m committed. Backers included participation from existing limited partners and a diversified base of new institutional investors, including Ventura County Employees’ Retirement Association and Keebeck, the wealth management firm.
137 Ventures, a U.S.-based growth-stage VC firm founded by Justin Fishner-Wolfson, has raised $700M across two new funds to back high-impact startups. The firm focuses on sectors like AI, defense, and industrial systems, and has invested in companies like SpaceX, Anduril, Cognition, and Hadrian Automation, continuing its strategy of doubling down on breakout late-stage bets.
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KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
SpaceX has spent over $15B on Starship as it bets on the future of space and AI
SpaceX has poured $15B+ into Starship, far exceeding the ~$400M spent on Falcon 9 — signaling how critical the rocket is to its long-term strategy.
Starship underpins everything from Starlink expansion to Mars missions — and even future space-based AI data centers, a core part of Elon Musk’s vision.
But major challenges remain: repeated test failures, complex in-orbit refueling, and massive infrastructure needs — meaning the success of SpaceX’s $1.75T IPO ambitions heavily depends on Starship working at scale.
AI outperforms doctors in emergency diagnosis study, but real-world use still unclear
A study by Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center found OpenAI models (like o1) matched or outperformed physicians in ER diagnosis scenarios — especially during early triage.
The AI delivered correct or near-correct diagnoses 67% of the time, compared to 55% and 50% for two human doctors — showing a clear edge when information is limited.
But researchers caution this isn’t ready for real-world deployment: no accountability frameworks exist yet, and AI still lacks clinical judgment beyond text-based reasoning.
Meta acquires robotics startup to push humanoid AI ambitions
Meta has acquired Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI), bringing its team into Meta’s Superintelligence Labs to accelerate humanoid robotics research.
ARI was building foundation models for robots capable of real-world tasks like household work — aligning with Meta’s long-term vision of AI learning through physical interaction.
The move signals Meta’s deeper bet that AGI may require embodiment (robots learning in the real world), joining a broader industry race toward humanoid systems.
Apple raises Mac mini price
Apple has quietly removed the $599 base Mac mini from its U.S. online store, pushing the entry price for its smallest desktop up to $799 as the 256GB configuration disappears from standard, education, and military storefronts.
On Apple’s April 30, 2026 earnings call, Tim Cook said demand for Mac mini and Mac Studio has outpaced supply and will take months to stabilize, driven partly by interest in running AI workloads locally on compact Macs.
With the Mac mini no longer offering a $599 starting point into macOS, that role shifts to the MacBook Neo, though refurbished listings still carry lower-priced Mac mini units when limited inventory allows.
xAI launches Grok 4.3 with voice cloning
xAI has released Grok 4.3, a new base large language model with a 1 million-token context window and always-on reasoning, alongside a Custom Voices suite that clones a person’s voice from a reference clip as short as 120 seconds.
Grok 4.3 costs $1.25 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens, roughly 40% and 60% cheaper than Grok 4.2, and xAI now charges a $0.05 fee for requests blocked by safety filters.
The model ranks #1 on Vals AI’s CaseLaw v2 and CorpFin benchmarks, but Andon Labs reported “narcolepsy problems” on Vending-Bench 2, and it scored just 11% on ProofBench for difficult math.
GameStop makes bold $56B bid for eBay, ready to go hostile
GameStop has offered ~$56B to acquire eBay at $125/share (20% premium), with CEO Ryan Cohen ready to take the offer directly to shareholders if the board resists.
The move is highly unusual — GameStop is ~4x smaller than eBay — but Cohen argues the merger could create a serious competitor to Amazon, with $2B in cost cuts and retail-store-driven logistics advantages.
Financing includes ~$20B in debt plus cash and external backing, signaling one of the most aggressive and unconventional takeover attempts in recent tech history.
Zuckerberg links layoffs to AI spending, signals more cuts possible
Mark Zuckerberg said layoffs at Meta are directly tied to rising AI infrastructure spending, calling compute and headcount the company’s two biggest cost centers.
Meta plans to cut ~10% of its workforce in May, with additional layoffs possible later this year as it reallocates capital toward AI.
The shift reflects a broader transformation into an “AI-native” company — but has sparked internal backlash, especially amid increased employee monitoring and uncertainty around future cuts.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
People are finally using Reddit’s search
Reddit’s long-criticized search function is finally catching on with users, with CEO Steve Huffman reporting a 30% year-on-year jump in weekly search users after the company poured money into its search engine and added AI features.
Huffman said search DAUs, WAUs, and queries are all up meaningfully year-over-year, crediting the team for better integrating Reddit Answers into the product and calling search a major driver of user acquisition and retention.
Reddit ended the quarter with 493 million weekly active unique users and 126 million daily active unique users, and posted $663 million in revenue, beating Wall Street’s expectation of $609.8 million.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
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