☕ Apple sues OpenAI for stealing hardware secrets & Google sold AI to blacklisted Chinese firms.
Humanoid robots perform surgery for the first time & China lands a reusable rocket for the first time.
Breaking News
Apple has sued OpenAI, alleging former Apple engineers took confidential designs and engineering documents to help build OpenAI's hardware products. The lawsuit escalates competition between the two companies as both race to define the future of AI devices.
Researchers at UC San Diego used a humanoid robot to assist in gallbladder surgery on a living patient—the first documented case of its kind. While fully autonomous surgery is still years away, the milestone highlights how humanoid robots are beginning to enter real-world healthcare.
FROM OUR PARTNER - FINLESS FOODS
Investors are backing Finless Foods, and the timing makes sense. 🐟
Wild bluefin tuna is one of the most prized ingredients in the world, and also one of the most at risk. Decades of overfishing have pushed populations to a fraction of their historic levels. Add contamination concerns and the hard limits of ocean-based supply chains, and you’ve got a $2B premium market that can’t sustain the demand being placed on it.
Finless Foods is building a new path: sushi-grade tuna, cultivated without the catch. They’re starting with bluefin for premium sushi restaurants, where quality standards are the highest and the market is willing to pay for it, and expanding from there into the broader $360B+ global seafood market, plus adjacent categories like protein, collagen, and functional foods.
Why investors are paying attention:
FDA review is already underway for Finless sashimi-grade tuna product
Patent-pending technology that can expand across other seafood categories
Backed by Draper Associates, SOSV/IndieBio, At One Ventures, and Sustainable Ocean Alliance
First US cell-cultured seafood company, founded in 2017, with nearly a decade of R&D behind them
As ocean ecosystems face more pressure and global demand for premium seafood keeps climbing, the case for cultivated seafood gets a lot stronger. Finless Foods has spent years building toward this moment.
Invest in Finless Foods on Republic →
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Sherpa, a Munich, Germany-based provider of an AI operating system for external workforce management, raised $2.2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was co-led by Seedcamp, DN Capital, Activant Capital, and Brighteye.
SEED
Marker, a London, UK-based developer of an AI-native word processor and collaborative authoring platform, raised $13M in Seed funding. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from LocalGlobe and strategic angel investors including Steve Newman, Cal Henderson, and Thomas Wolf.
Piq Energy, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an agentic grid planning platform, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Active Impact Investments, with participation from Cisco Foundation, Mobilize AI x Energy Ventures, New Climate Ventures, Ascent Energy Ventures, Umami Capital, CLAI Ventures, and 9Zero.
GROWTH
Aria, a Paris, France-based embedded invoice financing platform, raised €7M in Series A extension funding. The round was led by 115K, with participation from 13books Capital.
Lissi GmbH, a Frankfurt, Germany-based provider of EUDI wallet and verifiable credentials services, raised €3.5M in funding. The round was led by Ventech, with participation from BM H Beteiligungs-Managementgesellschaft Hessen, main incubator, and Ninepointfive Ventures.
Bohr Energie, a Toulouse, France-based renewable energy aggregation platform, raised €10M in Series A funding. The round was led by Suma Capital.
Hephae Energy Technology Corp., a Houston, TX-based geothermal robotics company, raised $17.8M in Series A funding. The round was led by Susquehanna Sustainable Investments and Underground Ventures, with participation from alfa8, Baruch Future Ventures, Centaurus Capital, Elemental Impact, Exa Ventures, Future Ventures, Grantham Foundation, New System Ventures, True North Institute, and Nabors Industries.
Kraken Technology, a Fareham, UK-based maritime defense startup, raised $175M in Series B funding at a $1B valuation. The round was led by DTCP, with participation from British Business Bank, NATO Innovation Fund, Rheinmetall, Inocea Group, HICO, Thesiger Capital Group, BOKA Capital, Supernova Invest, Hakluyt Capital, NIF, UK National Security Strategic Investment Fund, SmartCap, Notion Capital, and Speedinvest.
Digantara Industries, a Bengaluru, India-based space surveillance company, raised $50M in Series B funding. Backers included 360 ONE Asset, SBI Investments Co Japan, Ronnie Screwvala, Peak XV Partners, and Kalaari Capital.
Alchemab Therapeutics, a Cambridge, UK-based clinical-stage biotechnology company, raised £25M in Series A extension funding. The funding came from British Business Bank, with participation from existing investors SV Health Investors, Dementia Discovery Fund, RA Capital, DCVC Bio, Eli Lilly, Lightstone Ventures, Ono Venture Investment, and Camford Partners.
Hippo Harvest, a Pescadero, CA-based robotics-powered greenhouse company, raised $30M in Series C funding. The round was led by Cox Farms.
Axle Energy, a London, UK-based virtual power plant software company, raised $25M in Series A funding. The round was led by Energize Capital, with participation from Accel, Picus Capital, and Eka Ventures.
Prime Intellect, a San Francisco, CA-based decentralized AI training infrastructure company, raised $130M in Series A funding. The round was led by Radical Ventures, with participation from NVIDIA Ventures, Intel Capital, Dell Technologies Capital, and existing institutional investors.
Vendelux, a NYC-based AI-powered B2B event intelligence platform, raised $50M in Series B funding. The round was led by Tribeca Venture Partners, with participation from S3 Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, HubSpot Ventures, FirstMark Capital, and Cervin Ventures.
DAILY PICKS
🗞️ Must read writeups
What founders should never automate: AI can save founders hours, but automating the wrong tasks can quietly kill product-market fit. This piece explains how to separate low-signal busywork from high-signal customer interactions, so founders automate internal repetition first and protect the conversations that reveal what customers actually need. (Read Here)
Get hired in VC before the interview: Most VC applicants send resumes. This piece shows how to stand out by doing the actual work first: finding startups, speaking with founders, writing deal snapshots, and sending useful opportunities to investors. It gives aspiring VCs a 30-day system to build proof of judgment, sourcing ability, and founder access before asking for a job. (Read Here)
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Isogon Ventures, a New York City and Madrid, Spain-based early-stage venture capital firm, is raising its first fund. According to a regulatory form filed with the SEC, Isogon Ventures I, L.P., is targeting up to $150m in commitments but has not raised any sum, yet.
Vermilion Cliffs Ventures, a U.S.-based venture firm founded by solo GP Ashley Smith, raised $25 million for its second fund. The firm invests in technical founders building AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, and developer tools, with plans to back at least 25 early-stage startu
Paradigm, a U.S.-based venture capital firm founded by Matt Huang and Fred Ehrsam, raised $1.2 billion for its latest fund. The firm will invest in startups across crypto, AI, robotics, and other technical frontier technologies, expanding beyond its traditional cryptocurrency focus.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Hugging Face CEO says enterprises are moving toward open-source AI
Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue says many companies begin with proprietary frontier AI models but increasingly switch to open-source alternatives as usage scales and API costs become too expensive.
Speaking on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Delangue argued that open-source AI is gaining momentum, with Hugging Face now serving roughly half of the Fortune 500 as organizations seek greater control over their AI infrastructure.
Delangue also warned against a future where a small number of AI companies control the ecosystem, arguing that open-source models are essential for maintaining competition, transparency, and long-term innovation.
OpenAI expands ChatGPT beyond individuals to families
OpenAI is hiring a product manager focused on building ChatGPT experiences for families, caregivers, and older adults, signaling a shift toward household-focused AI products.
ChatGPT’s user base is getting older, with people aged 35+ now accounting for 31% of users globally. In the U.S., nearly one in four parents used ChatGPT in the last quarter.
The move comes as OpenAI strengthens safety features for younger users, including parental controls, trusted contacts, and age-appropriate experiences, amid growing scrutiny over AI’s impact on children.
Meta pulls Instagram AI feature days after launch
Meta removed a feature from its new Muse Image app days after launch, following backlash over users being able to generate AI images from public Instagram accounts through a simple @ mention.
The toggle allowing this was automatically switched on without users’ knowledge, meaning anyone could turn photos into AI images, while people were never told when someone created an AI image of them.
Opting out only stops future generations and leaves existing images live, and users can disable it under Sharing and Reuse in settings, though the toggle is still rolling out and unavailable to some.
OpenAI and Google sold AI to blacklisted Chinese firms
Google and OpenAI sold their advanced AI models to Singapore-based subsidiaries of Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent, Chinese companies the US Pentagon has blacklisted over alleged ties to the Chinese military, according to a Financial Times report.
The transactions are legal because current US regulations do not fully ban Chinese-headquartered firms from using advanced US-based AI models outside mainland China, though this may push the US to bring in stricter rules for sanctioned companies.
OpenAI told the Financial Times that it blocks direct access to its AI models from mainland China, but allows some Chinese-owned businesses to use its services in other jurisdictions where proper safeguards can be enforced.
Fed names Marc Andreessen to co-lead AI task force
The Federal Reserve has picked venture capitalist Marc Andreessen to co-lead a new task force studying how artificial intelligence and other general-purpose technologies affect the economy, with the group set to inform the Fed’s policy decisions.
Chairman Kevin Warsh personally chose the three external advisors leading the AI task force: Andreessen, economist Charles I. Jones, and Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, all of whom have recently spoken in strongly positive terms about AI’s economic effects.
The AI group was one of five task forces the Fed announced Thursday, all expected to finish by year’s end, though some FOMC members remain uncertain about the timing and size of any productivity gains from AI adoption.
China lands a reusable rocket for the first time
China landed the booster stage of its Long March-10B rocket on Friday, the first time the country has launched and partly returned a reusable orbital rocket safely to Earth, matching SpaceX and Blue Origin.
The rocket lifted off from the Hainan commercial space launch site at 12:15 pm, and its first stage touched down on a barge roughly six minutes later, caught by a large net in what’s reportedly the world’s first “net-based recovery.”
China’s reusable Long March rocket still trails rivals, carrying a maximum payload of 16 tons compared to Falcon 9’s 25 tons and Starship’s planned 100-plus tons, with landings lowering launch costs by avoiding booster burn-up on reentry.
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Work to compete with Anthropic
OpenAI has unveiled ChatGPT Work, a new AI workspace powered by GPT-5.6 that combines ChatGPT and Codex to help users create documents, presentations, websites, and other work without coding expertise.
The product directly competes with Anthropic’s Claude Cowork and Microsoft’s Copilot, as AI companies race to offer autonomous workplace agents for enterprise customers.
ChatGPT Work is rolling out first to Pro, Enterprise, and Edu users before expanding to Plus and Business users, alongside new desktop and website-building capabilities.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Phia accused of faking affiliate credit on purchase
Phia, the shopping startup co-founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, has been accused of “cookie stuffing,” a practice that may have let it collect commissions and credit for sales it did not actually generate.
According to a Bloomberg investigation, Phia would open a new background tab when users shopped online and override other affiliates’ referral codes during checkout, injecting its own to take credit for purchases it didn’t earn.
The report led to Phia’s suspension from the affiliate platform Impact.com, and a company spokesperson said all necessary changes had been made to fix the issue, which Bloomberg confirmed was resolved.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities
Most aspiring VCs struggle with interviews, unclear expectations, no structured prep, and generic advice that doesn’t actually help. So we partnered with a leading investor group to build an all-in-one VC Interview Preparation Guide that gives you real clarity and frameworks. (Access Here)
Associate or Senior Associate - Bessemer Partner | USA - Apply Here
Associate - Primary VC | USA - Apply Here
VP — Finance & Compliance - Transition VC | India - Apply Here
Senior Associate - ICONIQUE CAPITAL | USA - Apply Here
Ventures Associate - Plug and Play Tech Centre | USA - Apply Here
Fund Operations Analyst - Indogen Capital | Indonesia - Apply Here
Investment Associate / Analyst - Flashpoint | UK - Apply Here
Venture Capital Analyst - MicroVentures | USA - Apply Here
Hard Tech Investment Associate - Upfront Venture | USA - Apply Here
Associate - Engine Venture | USA - Apply Here
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