☕ Apple accelerates development of three AI wearables & Thrive Capital raises $10 billion fund.
Nvidia to sell Meta millions of chips in multiyear deal & Micron invests $200B to break the AI memory bottleneck
Breaking News
Apple is accelerating development of three AI-powered wearables, including an AirTag-sized AI pendant, upgraded AI-enhanced AirPods, and smart glasses code-named N50. The glasses could enter production as early as December for a 2027 launch, positioning Apple directly against Meta and Snap in the AI wearables race. All devices are designed to integrate tightly with the iPhone and use Siri as the core interface layer, signaling Apple’s shift toward ambient, hardware-first AI distribution.
Nvidia has signed a multiyear deal to supply Meta with millions of AI chips, including Blackwell GPUs and next-generation Rubin chips, in an agreement analysts estimate could reach $50 billion. The deal extends beyond GPUs into Nvidia’s Grace and Vera CPUs, reinforcing Nvidia’s grip on hyperscaler AI infrastructure while expanding its competition with Intel and AMD across broader data center workloads.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
Startup legal document pack – essential legal Docs for founders. (Link)
The VC scorecard that early-stage investors use to evaluate startups. (Link)
Vinod Khosla’s brutally honest quote about investors (Link)
How should a founder tell their story (Link)
The 3 rules that every good app idea follows (Link)
Writing a memo for investors after your first meeting (Link)
Hunter Isaacson on the importance of onboarding (Link)
Marketplaces in the Age of AI, Take Two: Graveyard to Greenfield. (Link)
What Early Stage Founders Should Know About Comp: The Rules To Break (And A Few You Should Actually Follow). (Link)
Five practices to strengthen your cofounder relationship. (Link)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
The Compression Company, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a data compression platform, raised $3.4M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Long Journey.
Maestro AI, a Parkland, FL-based provider of a vertical artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform built for mortgage origination, raised $1.2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by New Stack Ventures, with participation from Family VC, ZFO, Roark’s Drift, and a group of local angel investors.
SEED
Sphinx, a San Francisco, CA-based company building browser-native compliance agents for financial institutions, raised $7.1M in Seed funding. The round was led by Cherry Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Rebel Fund, Deel Ventures, and Singularity Capital.
GelMEDIX, a Cambridge, MA-based biotechnology company developing regenerative therapies to restore vision, raised $13M in Seed funding. The round was led by Safar Partners, with participation from HTL Biotechnology, Beacon Angels, TiE Boston Angels, Boston Harbor Angels, and other investors.
Breaker, an Austin, TX-, and Sydney, Australia-based defense technology startup, raised $6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from Australian venture firm Main Sequence.
Certivo, a Seattle, WA-based provider of an AI-powered supply chain compliance management platform, raised $4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Suffolk Technologies with participation from Pioneer Square Ventures and other investors.
Tangible, a London, UK-based provider of a platform that enables hardtech companies to access and manage debt financing, raised $4.3M in Seed funding. The round was led by Pale Blue Dot, with participation from MMC, Future Positive Capital, Unruly, SDAC, Prototype Capital, and Aperture.
Onodrim Industries, an Amsterdam, the Netherlands–based European defence technology company, raised €40M in Seed funding. The round was led by Founders Fund, Lakestar, and General Catalyst, with participation from funds and angels across Europe and the US.
GROWTH
Render, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a cloud for application developers, raised $100M in Series C extension funding, at $1.5 Billion valuation. The round was led by Georgian, with participation from existing investors, including Addition, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and 01 Advisors.
ChipAgents, a Santa Clara, CA-based provider of an agentic AI platform for the semiconductor design industry, raised $50M in Series A1 funding. The round was led by Matter Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Micron, MediaTek, and Ericsson.
Temporal, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an open-source platform for reliable agentic applications, raised $300M in Series D funding, at $5 Billion valuation. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and joined by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sapphire Ventures, with participation from insiders Sequoia Capital, Index, Tiger, GIC, Madrona, and Amplify.
Utility Global, a Houston, TX-based global economic industrial decarbonization company enabling practical solutions for hard-to-abate sectors, raised a first close of $100M in its Series D financing. The round was led by Ara Partners and APG Asset Management.
SurrealDB, a London, UK-based company developing a multi-model, AI-native database, raised $23M in additional Series A funding. New investors Chalfen Ventures and Begin Capital joined existing investors FirstMark and Georgian.
Seasats, a San Diego, CA-based company which specializes in small uncrewed surface vehicles (sUSVs), raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Konvoy Ventures, with participation from Shield Capital, DNS Capital, Techstars, Tanis Venture Management, Crumpton Ventures, Dorado Group, and other strategic investors.
QuadSci, a NYC-based predictive and prescriptive AI for customer intelligence, raised $8M in Series A funding. The round was led by Crosslink Capital, with participation from Alumni Ventures, Correlation Ventures, and angel investors.
Dataro, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-driven fundraising intelligence platform, raised $14.28M in Series A funding. The round was led by Blueprint Equity.
Moab, a NYC-based software company building operating systems for equipment rental and dealership businesses, raised $16M in funding across Seed and Series A rounds. Both rounds were $8M, led by Elad Gil, with investment from Ironspring Ventures and participation from angel investors.
FYLD, a London, UK-based provider of an AI-powered frontline intelligence platform for the global infrastructure sector, raised $41M in Series B funding. The round was led by Energy Impact Partners with participation from Partech through its Growth Impact Fund.
VulnCheck, a Lexington, MA-based exploit intelligence company, raised $25M in Series B funding. The round was led by Sorenson Capital, with participation from National Grid Partners and existing investors, including Ten Eleven Ventures and In-Q-Tel (IQT).
Autosana, a San Francisco, CA-based agentic QA platform for iOS, Android, and web apps, raised $3.2M in funding. Backers included Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Phosphor Capital, DeVC, 468 Capital and angel investors.
Codoxo, a Duluth, GA-based provider of AI and generative AI-powered healthcare payment integrity solutions, raised $35M in Series C funding. The round was led by VS Health Ventures, with participation from Echo Health Ventures and existing investors.
Fluent Commerce, a Sydney, Australia-based provider of order management systems (OMS), raised A$46M in new funding. Bain Capital made the investment.
Lightworks, a Toronto, Canada-based company which specializes in AI control systems and infrastructure, raised up to $12M in funding. The round was led by Round13 Capital.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Thrive Capital, a New York-based venture firm founded by Josh Kushner, has raised $10B for Thrive X, its largest fund to date. Of the total, $1B is earmarked for early-stage investing and the remainder for growth-stage bets, with the fund reportedly oversubscribed. The firm is known for concentrated investments in companies like OpenAI, Stripe, SpaceX, Databricks, Anduril, and Cursor, and has incubated 12 startups, six of which are now unicorns.
Jack Altman, founder of Alt Capital and chair of Lattice, is joining Benchmark as a general partner. Altman previously raised $150M Fund I (2024) and a $274M Fund II in just a week, backing 52+ companies including Rippling and Antares Nuclear. His Alt Capital team is expected to move with him to the Silicon Valley–based firm, though details around the fund’s future remain unclear. He will retain his existing board seats while stepping into his new GP role at Benchmark.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Anthropic releases Sonnet 4.6
Anthropic has launched Sonnet 4.6, the latest version of its midsized model, with improvements in coding, instruction-following, and computer use. It will become the default model for Free and Pro users.
The beta version includes a 1 million token context window — double the previous maximum — enabling entire codebases, long contracts, or dozens of research papers to fit into a single prompt.
Sonnet 4.6 posts new benchmark highs, including strong results on OS World, SWE-Bench, and a 60.4% score on ARC-AGI-2. It follows the recent release of Opus 4.6, with an updated Haiku model expected next.
Running AI models is turning into a memory game
As AI infrastructure expands, memory is becoming as critical as GPUs. DRAM prices have surged roughly 7x over the past year, adding new pressure to hyperscalers building multi-billion-dollar data centers.
Companies like Anthropic are increasingly optimizing prompt caching. Pricing tiers (5-minute vs 1-hour cache windows) create cost arbitrage opportunities — but poor cache management can evict valuable data and drive up token usage.
The emerging discipline of memory orchestration — from hardware layers like DRAM vs HBM to software-level cache optimization (e.g., startups like Tensormesh) — could significantly lower inference costs. Firms that manage memory efficiently will reduce token usage and unlock new, previously unprofitable AI applications.
OpenAI adds Lockdown mode to ChatGPT
OpenAI has added a new Lockdown Mode and an “Elevated Risk” warning label to ChatGPT, both designed to protect users from prompt injection attacks that can trick AI into leaking sensitive data.
Lockdown Mode is optional and deterministically limits or fully disables high-risk features like web browsing, while the “Elevated Risk” label warns users before actions like opening unverified external links.
Business plan users on ChatGPT Enterprise, Edu, Healthcare, and Teachers already have the protection, but OpenAI said it will roll out to other users in the coming months across unknown payment tiers.
Micron invests $200B to break the AI memory bottleneck
Micron Technology is spending $200 billion to expand its U.S. manufacturing, including two new fabs in Boise and a $100 billion complex near Syracuse, to address the AI memory chip shortage.
Demand for high-bandwidth memory chips has far outpaced supply as AI data centers have grown, with DRAM contract prices rising over 170% and DDR5 prices jumping nearly 500% since September.
Micron’s gross margins have climbed from 18.5% in early 2024 to 56% recently as it shifted toward data-center HBM chips, and its share price has risen more than sixfold since last April.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Apple takes on YouTube and Spotify with new video podcasting push
Apple announced it will launch a new integrated video podcast experience in Apple Podcasts this spring, directly competing with YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix in the growing video podcasting market.
The update lets users switch between watching and listening from the same feed, with picture-in-picture mode, offline downloads, and support for HLS, Apple’s streaming protocol enabling adaptive playback.
Apple will not charge creators or hosting providers to distribute content, but it will charge ad networks an impression-based fee for delivering dynamic video ads through the new HLS format.
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