☕ Apple prepares for Tim Cook’s retirement, OpenAI launched GPT-5 Pro, Sora 2, and a cheaper voice model & Tesla hints at a new affordable car model.
OpenAI and Jony Ive’s AI device delayed over technical issues & More.
📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Growth model vs freemium, legal docs, market study tactics, SaaS financial model, a16z hiring guide & US VC midyear outlook.
OpenAI ramps up developer push with more powerful models in its API.
Deloitte goes all in on AI — despite having to issue a hefty refund for use of AI.
OpenAI launches AgentKit to help developers build and ship AI agents.
Apple prepares for Tim Cook’s retirement.
Tesla hints at a new affordable car model.
OpenAI and Jony Ive’s AI device delayed over technical issues.
US Supreme Court allows order forcing Google to make app store reforms.
Apple removes ICEBlock and similar tracking apps from the App Store.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
FROM OUR PARTNER - ROCKET
🤝Build Real Products from Your Prompt
Rocket.new is a vibe solutioning tool that gives you more than just UI.
Describe your idea or upload designs, and you’ll get a full stack web or mobile app: backend logic, workflows, clean code, and AI-powered flows. It frees you from engineering friction so you can focus on vision and growth.
Use 1M free tokens to launch your first app and see what rapid product building really feels like. Great for founders, investors, and technical leaders who want to turn ideas into live products fast.
Discover Rocket.new →
PARTNERSHIP WITH US
💪 Get your startup in front of over 95,000+ audience.
Our newsletter is read by thousands of tech professionals, founders, investors (VCs / Angel Investors) and managers around the world. Get in touch today.
DAILY PICKS
🗞️ What else is brewing
The counterintuitive model: The growth model that outperforms freemium and free trials.
Startup legal document pack – essential legal docs for founders.
How to study a new market and build expertise — tactics from a Twitter PM turned healthcare founder.
SaaS startup financial model: All-in-One excel template.
a16z guide: How to hire a strong founding team?
Building Cap Table as a founder: template to download.
Investor CRM Template – The ultimate fundraising tracker.
US Venture Capital Outlook: Midyear Update.
40 real startup pitch decks that raised $350M+ (Including leading startups decks)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Trogenix, an Edinburgh, Scotland, UK-based biotech company founded by 4BIO and dedicated to developing new cancer therapies, raised £70M in Series A funding. The round was led by IQ Capital with participation from new investors Eli Lilly and Company, Meltwind, LongeVC, and Calculus Capital.
Cookiy AI, a Palo Alto, CA-based agentic voice AI company, raised over $7M in Pre-Seed funding. Backers included Liquid2, Converge, GoAhead, and UpHonest, alongside other venture funds and strategic angels.
Climax Foods, a Berkeley, CA-based food technology company in the cheese market, raised $6.5M in initial closing of its Series A funding. The round was led by S2G Investments (“S2G”), with additional participation from new and existing investors that include At One Ventures, Gratitude Railroad, Manta Ray Ventures, and Toba Capital.
Bee Maps, a San Francisco, CA-based company providing map data, raised $32M in funding. The round was led by Pantera Capital, LDA Capital, Borderless Capital, and Ajna Capital.
MediView XR, a Cleveland, OH-based company which specializes in augmented reality (AR) surgical navigation, guidance, and image fusion, raised $24M in Series A funding. The round was led by GE HealthCare with investment from Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Edge Ventures, the investment arm of Emplify Health, and JobsOhio Growth Capital Fund.
Agio Ratings, a London, UK-based provider of a platform for risk insights in digital assets, raised $6m in funding. The round, which brought the total raised to over $11M, was led by AlbionVC with participation from Portage Ventures and MS&AD.
SafeHill, formally known as Tacticly, a Chicago, IL-based cybersecurity startup, raised $2.6m in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Mucker Capital and Chingona Ventures, with participation from Techstars, Chicago Early Growth Ventures, The Source Groups, Virginia Union University, and angel investor Eddie Lou.
Aerska, a Dublin, Ireland-based biotechnology company improving the treatment of neurological diseases, raised $21M in seed financing. The round was co-led by Age1, Backed VC and Speedinvest, with participation from Blueyard, Lingotto (Exor), Norrsken VC, Kerna, PsyMed and Ada Ventures.
Filigran, a Paris, France-based cybertech company supporting cybersecurity teams, raised $58M in Series C funding. The round was led by Eurazeo’s Growth team, part of the European investment group Eurazeo, with the support of Deutsche Telekom (T.Capital), Accel and Insight Partners.
Heidi, a Melbourne, Australia-based healthcare AI company, raised $65M in Series B funding. The round was led by Point72 Private Investments with participation from Blackbird, Headline, and Latitude, the growth fund of Phoenix Court.
NanoPhoria Biosciences, a Milan, Italy-based biotech company developing a nano-in-micro and lung-to-heart delivery platform, raised €83.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by XGEN Venture, Sofinnova Partners, and CDP Venture Capital, with Panakès Partners.
FROM OUR PARTNER - MECO
The best new app for newsletter reading
Reading newsletters in the inbox is frustrating - it is noisy and easy to lose control of subscriptions. Now with Meco you can enjoy your newsletters in an app built for reading, while giving your inbox space to breathe.
Meco connects to Gmail & Outlook, allowing you to instantly move your newsletters to the app (and clear your inbox)
The experience is packed with features to supercharge your reading including the ability to group newsletters, set smart filters, bookmark your favorites and read in a scrollable feed.
You can try the experience for free and available on iOS, Android and web (desktop)
Over 30k readers are enjoying their newsletters (and decluttering their inbox) with Meco - try the app today!
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Sugar Free Capital, a new VC firm founded by solo GP Sheena Jindal, has raised $32 million for its first fund to back technical founders from MIT. Jindal, an MIT alum and former investor at Bessemer and Comcast Ventures, aims to invest in 15 early-stage startups, writing checks from $1M to $5M. The fund focuses on AI-native infrastructure, with rotating quarterly themes — this quarter includes physical AI, data center optimization, and AI agents. LPs include tech execs from Nvidia and Citadel.
Wave Function Ventures, a Los Angeles, CA-based early stage venture capital firm, closes its $15M Fund I. LPs included founders, engineers, HNW individuals, as well as institutional support from Fund of Funds and large Family Offices. The fund backs deep tech founders building hardware solutions to the world’s most important problems.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
OpenAI ramps up developer push with more powerful models in its API
At Dev Day 2025, OpenAI launched GPT-5 Pro, Sora 2, and a cheaper voice model called gpt-realtime mini to attract developers across industries like finance, legal, and healthcare.
GPT-5 Pro offers higher reasoning depth, while gpt-realtime mini enables low-latency, expressive voice interactions at 70% lower cost.
Developers can now access Sora 2 in API preview — the same model behind OpenAI’s viral video app — featuring realistic visuals, synchronized audio, and cinematic creative control.
Deloitte goes all in on AI — despite having to issue a hefty refund for use of AI:
Deloitte announced a major enterprise partnership with Anthropic to deploy Claude across its 500,000 employees, even as it refunds the Australian government for an AI-generated report containing fabricated citations.
The deal will focus on developing compliance tools and AI “personas” for departments like finance and engineering, marking Anthropic’s largest enterprise rollout yet.
The episode highlights both Deloitte’s deep bet on AI adoption and the growing risks enterprises face from AI hallucinations in critical work.
OpenAI launches AgentKit to help developers build and ship AI agents
OpenAI unveiled AgentKit, a toolkit designed to help developers quickly prototype, deploy, and optimize AI agents with less friction.
The toolkit includes Agent Builder (a visual interface for designing agents), ChatKit (for embedding chat experiences), Evals for Agents (for performance testing), and a connector registry for secure integrations.
The launch underscores OpenAI’s push to dominate the enterprise agent space, offering developers tools to build production-ready AI workflows directly within its ecosystem.
Apple prepares for Tim Cook’s retirement
With CEO Tim Cook turning 65 soon, Apple’s board is reportedly considering Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering John Ternus as the leading candidate for his replacement.
The board might favor a leader with a technical background since Apple has stumbled in areas including generative AI, mixed reality, the smart home, and autonomous vehicles.
At 50 years old, Ternus is younger than other senior executives and is now getting more public exposure from the company, such as when he introduced the iPhone Air.
Tesla hints at a new affordable car model:
Tesla’s mysterious teaser video has sparked speculation that the company will announce its new affordable model, which has been seen uncovered recently and is described as a stripped down Model Y.
The potential launch of a more affordable EV comes as the $7,500 tax credit ends, providing a logical way for the automaker to maintain growth in its upcoming delivery numbers.
Other theories suggest the October 7 announcement could instead be a demo for the delayed Roadster, which may feature a SpaceX package with cold-gas thrusters for rapid acceleration.
OpenAI and Jony Ive’s AI device delayed over technical issues:
OpenAI and Jony Ive are creating a palm-sized, screen-less AI gadget that faces delays from unresolved issues with its personality, privacy, and required computing infrastructure.
The team is struggling with an “always on” approach because the hardware has difficulty knowing when to speak up and how to end conversations at the appropriate moment.
The product is designed to interpret audio and visual cues from the physical environment, responding to user requests without needing a display or any specific verbal prompts.
US Supreme Court allows order forcing Google to make app store reforms
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Google’s request to pause a judge’s order requiring major Play Store changes following Epic Games’ antitrust victory.
The injunction compels Google to let users download rival app stores through Play and allow external payment links in apps — the latter taking effect later this month.
Google called the order “unprecedented” and warned of security risks but plans to continue appealing, while Epic hailed it as a win for developer freedom and consumer choice.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
Apple removes ICEBlock and similar tracking apps from the App Store
Apple has taken down ICEBlock and other apps that let users anonymously report sightings of ICE agents, following pressure from the Trump administration.
U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said Apple complied after the Justice Department raised “safety risks” concerns, though ICEBlock reportedly didn’t collect or store user data.
The move follows heightened tensions after a Dallas ICE detention center shooting, with officials arguing such apps endanger federal agents by revealing their locations.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & startup job opportunities
All-In-One VC Interview Preparation Guide: With a leading investors group, we have created an all-in-one VC interview preparation guide for aspiring VCs. Don’t miss this. (Access Here)
ESG Intern - ESG Enterprise | UK - Apply Here
Senior Associate, Vertical AI - Primary | USA - Apply Here
Investment Analyst - Capital Oven | India - Apply Here
Capital Formation Associate - B Capital Group | USA - Apply Here
Trade Operations Lead - Manhattan Venture Partner | USA - Apply Here
VP of Fundraising - Scale Asia Venture | Japan - Apply Here
Research Analyst - Positive Sum | USA - Apply Here
Fund Operations Associate - TNB Aura | Singapore - Apply Here
Analyst - Nightdragon | USA - Apply Here
Valuation & Investment Data Analyst - Techstar | USA - Apply Here
WHEN YOU’RE READY, HERE’S HOW I CAN HELP:
💁 You might need our help!
Reach 95,000+ Founders & Investors: Partner with our newsletter to reach a highly engaged audience.
Build Your Pitch Deck: We write, design and model your pitch deck into a storyteller book within 4-5 days.
Do you have any news to share about your Startup or VC fund? Please email us.
We’ll be back in your inbox on Tomorrow.