☕ Anthropic’s annualized revenue surges to $65 billion & Stripe is in talks to buy PayPal.
Amazon destroys books for AI & Nvidia offers $105B guarantee for OpenAI’s massive AI data center.
Breaking News
Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate reportedly reached $65 billion at the end of July, up from just $9 billion at the end of 2025 and now well ahead of OpenAI’s reported $40 billion. Investors expect Anthropic could reach $100–$120 billion by year-end and potentially pursue an IPO at a valuation exceeding $2 trillion.
Nvidia is providing up to $105 billion in guarantees supporting OpenAI’s 20-year lease of an Ohio data center that could eventually reach 8 GW of capacity. Nvidia will exclusively supply the facility’s chips, with Jensen Huang estimating the project alone could generate as much as $200 billion in revenue for Nvidia.
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Swedish AI startup Incredible has raised extra $2.5m pre-seed funding behind the scenes since 2024, with backing from investors connected to Anthropic, Lovable and Legora.
The company is building a voice-first desktop assistant for Mac and Windows that allows people to carry out tasks across their existing apps simply by speaking. Instead of navigating menus, switching between windows or relying on complex integrations, users can describe what they want done and let the assistant handle the execution. Incredible calls this approach “Vibe Computing,” a new way of interacting with computers that puts natural language at the center of everyday work.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Ocean Intelligence, a Nelson, New Zealand-based marine technology startup, raised an undisclosed amount in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Quidnet Ventures, with participation from Andrea Neitzer and Guido Neitzer.
Astute, a Belgrade, Serbia-founded B2B marketing technology startup, raised over €1.03M in Pre-Seed funding. Backers included Flyer One Ventures, Silicon Gardens, Marathon Fund, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA), and angel investors.
Lemma, a San Francisco, CA-based AI agent observability and automated telemetry platform, raised $2.3M in Pre-Seed funding. Backers included Matrix Partners, Y Combinator, Liquid 2 Ventures, Vermilion Cliffs Ventures, Irregular Expressions, Cervin Ventures, Comma Capital, Position Ventures, Eight Capital, and angel investors from OpenAI, xAI, Meta, and DoorDash.
Molt AI Corp., a Miami, FL-based provider of an enterprise AI assurance platform, raised $1M in Pre-Seed funding. Backers included technology founders and operators, long-term supporters, and individual investors including Patrick Comer.
SEED
VastAdvisor, an Austin, TX-based provider of an AI-powered organic growth platform for wealth management firms, raised $1M in SAFE funding. Backers included Dani Fava, Jason Pereira, and Sally George.
Xpander, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a vendor-neutral, all-in-one AI enablement platform, raised $7.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Pico Venture Partners, with participation from Emerge Ventures, Samsung Next, and SeedIL.
Sterling, a Wellington, New Zealand-based B2B SaaS autonomous financial accounting automation startup, raised A$3.15M in Seed funding. The round was led by Blackbird, with participation from Hoku Group, Rowan Simpson, Eliot Crowther, and other technology angel investors.
Terra Industries, a Danville, CA-based provider of autonomous security systems for critical infrastructure, raised an additional $18M, bringing its Seed round to $52M. Investors included 8VC, Silent Ventures, Nova Global, Belief Capital, SV Angel, Norleo Space Investments, and Grant Gordon.
Sophiie AI, a Gold Coast, Australia-based provider of an AI operating system for trades and service businesses, raised A$5M in Seed funding. Backers included Archangel Ventures, Admiralty Capital Group, Antler, Gandel Invest, and Aussie Angels.
Worldscape.ai, a Seattle, WA-based developer of AI-powered geospatial intelligence software for defense, government, and enterprise applications, raised $10M in Seed extension funding. The round was led by Scout Ventures, with participation from Radius Capital.
GROWTH
Gravis Robotics, a Zurich, Switzerland-based autonomous construction machinery and physical AI developer, raised $200M in Series A funding. The round was backed entirely by SoftBank Group.
Groq, a Mountain View, CA-based provider of an AI infrastructure platform, raised $350M in Series A financing. The round was led by Disruptive, with participation from NVIDIA.
Palona AI, a Palo Alto, CA-based provider of a multimodal AI operating layer for physical businesses, closed its Series A financing. Backers included Ardenwood Ventures, CrimsonOx, UpHonest, Turbo, Llama Ventures, Neo, Fusion Fund, Defy, and Maynard Webb.
Trajectory, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI infrastructure and agent optimization platform, raised $40M in Series A funding at a $300M post-money valuation. The round was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from NVIDIA and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Takt, a Reston, VA-based provider of a warehouse labor management and intelligence platform, raised $9.25M in Series A funding. The round was led by Ballast Point Partners.
Wispr, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI voice dictation and human-AI interaction platform, raised $280M in Series B financing at a $2B valuation. The round was led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Notable Capital, NEA, Neo Ventures, 8VC, MVP Ventures, Acrew, Forerunner, Goodwater, Peak XV, Together Fund, PLUS Capital, and other investors.
Higgsfield, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI video and image creation platform, raised $400M in Series B funding at a $5.4B valuation. The round was led by DST Global, with participation from Tribe Capital, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Smash Capital, Fifth Wall, Valor Capital, Intel Capital, Liberty Global Tech Ventures, Mirae Asset Capital, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Accel, Menlo Ventures, and others.
Ranchbot, a Fort Worth, TX-based remote water monitoring company for ranchers and producers, raised over $15M in funding. The round was led by Lewis & Clark Partners, with participation from Fulcrum Global Capital, Lever VC, and others.
DAILY PICKS
🗞️ Must read post
Before VCs invest, they’ll call your customers. But what do they really ask?: Before writing a check, serious investors often call your customers to understand usage, renewal intent, defensibility, buying process, and whether your revenue is truly repeatable. This piece shows founders how to manage that process without burning customer trust - from gating intros to choosing the right references and framing the raise as a decision they are making.
How is your seed valuation actually decided? (It has almost nothing to do with your company) : Most founders think valuation is decided by traction, market size, or the pitch. This piece shows why the real ceiling often comes from a VC’s fund size, check size, and ownership target. It gives founders a simple way to understand which funds can actually lead their round, how to avoid wasting time with structurally wrong investors, and why the option pool can quietly cost more than the pre-money they’re negotiating.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
WovenEarth Ventures, a Palo Alto, CA-based investment firm backing early-stage cleantech companies, held the final close of its second fund, WovenEarth Fund II, at $155M. The investor syndicate includes The Pennsylvania State University, Glenmede, Mortenson Family Foundation, and M.A. Mortenson Companies. WovenEarth Fund II also welcomed additional partners, including foundations, family offices, and the J.M. Huber Corporation.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Reddit tests TikTok-style audio and video versions of viral posts
Reddit is testing new audio and video formats that turn selected text posts into narrated experiences, similar to the popular Reddit-story videos already common on TikTok and Reels.
Users will be able to choose between reading or playing supported posts, making it possible to listen while exercising, walking, or doing other activities without replacing the original text and comments.
The early experiment will cover select English-language posts on Reddit’s iOS and Android apps, helping the company determine whether narrated content can become a larger part of the platform.
US tells allies to pick US or China
The US is set to tell 35 partner countries they must pick between American and Chinese AI systems, according to a draft State Department letter, warning that belonging to both is no longer allowed.
The pressure runs through Pax Silica, a US-led effort to secure supply chains for AI models, chips and critical minerals, offering members shared investment deals while threatening to shut out any nation that joins China’s rival framework.
About two dozen countries have signed on, including Japan, Australia and South Korea, while Kazakhstan sits in both camps because of its critical minerals, and Europe is stuck trying to keep its “strategic autonomy” without picking a side.
Alibaba's Qwen leads AI model downloads
Alibaba’s Qwen family of open-weight AI models has become the most downloaded in the world, drawing more than 3 billion downloads over the past six months and passing rivals including Meta, Google and Chinese competitor DeepSeek.
Alibaba said Qwen has released over 460 open-source models, spawning more than 300,000 derivative versions, while Hugging Face data showed Google reached 418 million downloads for the year and Meta 227 million.
Because open models can be used to build new AI products, download counts serve as a gauge of developer influence, and Hugging Face said Qwen has become a default choice for developers deciding which models to fine-tune and deploy.
Stripe is in talks to buy PayPal
Stripe and private equity firm Advent International are in talks to buy PayPal, after their July offer of $60.50 a share, valuing the payment system at $53 billion, failed to close a deal.
Stripe and Advent are now discussing a higher price and could announce a deal within weeks, with each holding an equal stake and no plans to break up PayPal, keeping its parts together.
A merger would make Stripe one of the world’s biggest payment companies, handling roughly $3.7 trillion a year, and let it fold in Venmo, PayPal’s checkout and crypto tools while leaning less on Visa and Mastercard.
Google to buy Spirit Airlines’ business data for $10M to train AI
Google has agreed to acquire $10 million worth of internal data from bankrupt Spirit Airlines for product development and AI model training, subject to approval by a U.S. bankruptcy judge.
The dataset includes employee emails, Microsoft Teams messages, spreadsheets, calendars, and marketing, operations, and productivity data. It will be de-identified and exclude customer information and personally identifiable data.
AI data company Mercor also submitted a $7.5 million bid. Spirit is selling assets through bankruptcy after shutting down operations in May amid high debt and fuel costs.
AI automation startup Relay shuts down as team members join Google Chrome
Relay, an AI workflow automation startup launched in 2021 as a potential Zapier competitor, is shutting down. Paying customers will lose access on September 14, while free access has already ended.
Founder and CEO Jacob Bank is returning to Google as VP of Product for Chrome, leading its product and developer relations teams. Other Relay employees are also joining the Chrome organization.
Bank says Chrome is an ideal place for people to collaborate with AI agents, suggesting Google plans to push deeper into agent-powered browsing and task automation as Gemini becomes increasingly integrated into Chrome.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Amazon destroys books for AI
An investigation by 404 Media found that Amazon buys printed books in bulk, scans them to train its Nova AI models, and destroys the copies in the process by cutting off their spines.
Reporters tracked a shipment of rare books using a hidden AirTag to an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, run by a team called VGT3, where workers said they slice off spines to scan books faster.
Amazon isn’t alone: Anthropic ran a similar effort called “Project Panama,” and a judge ruled its scanning was fair use partly because destroying the printed originals meant they weren’t copied and resold.
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