☕ Brain implant lets paralysed man eat & Anthropic eyes $10B Meta compute deal.
AWS bug billed some customers billions & Xi pitches China to lead global AI.
They’re Challenging Big Pharma at a $560B+ Game…
Big Pharma companies spent $1B trying to cure osteoarthritis, a $560B+ global market. But Cytonics, an upstart biotech, may have actually done it.
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**Source: Merck
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Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. There is no guarantee of performance. Past performance does not predict future results. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal
*Phase 1 clinical trials are designed primarily to assess safety and tolerability and do not establish efficacy. Clinical trial results are preliminary, and there can be no assurance that future trials will be successful or that any product candidate will receive regulatory approval.
Breaking News
Meta is reportedly negotiating a deal worth up to $10 billion to provide AI computing capacity to Anthropic, potentially turning its massive AI infrastructure into a new revenue business. The agreement would also underscore the enormous demand for compute as frontier AI labs race to build more powerful models.
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for China to take a leading role in global AI development, advocating for a more open AI ecosystem and greater support for developing nations. His remarks come as AI increasingly becomes a geopolitical battleground shaped by export controls, chip restrictions, and national security concerns.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Arq, a Barcelona, Spain-based quantum networking hardware company, raised $1.4M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Ground State Ventures, with participation from Big Sur Ventures.
SEED
Pulse Security, a Los Altos, CA-based AI-driven cybersecurity platform, raised $8M in Seed funding. The round was led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Zetta Venture Partners.
Aina, a San Francisco, CA- and Bengaluru, India-based AI-native consumer hardware startup, raised $5.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Redstart Labs and 360 ONE Asset, with participation from MIXI Global Investments, Antler, Blume Founders Fund, and angel investors including Kunal Shah, Tikhon Bernstam, Harshil Mathur, Shashank Kumar, and Vaibhav Domkundwar.
microagi, a Munich, Germany-based industrial robotics automation company, raised $55M in Seed funding. The round was led by Hummingbird, with participation from Northzone, LocalGlobe, Village Global, and redalpine.
GROWTH
ENGO, a Grenoble, France-based smart eyewear company, raised €5.1M in funding. The round was led by Ventech, Odyssée Venture, and Bpifrance.
RapidPulse, a Miami, FL-based stroke treatment medical technology company, raised $48M in Series B funding. The round was led by Medtronic, TechWald Next S.p.A., and S3 Ventures, with participation from SBI Investment Company Ltd., Florida Opportunity Fund, Santé Ventures, Syntheon, Hatteras Venture Partners, and Epidarex Capital.
Applied Computing, a London, UK-based AI company for energy operators, raised $20M in funding. The round was led by KBR, with participation from Databricks Ventures.
Neko Health, a Stockholm, Sweden-based preventive healthcare technology company, raised $700M in Series C funding. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and O.G. Venture Partners, with participation from Atomico, General Catalyst, Lakestar, Liberty City Ventures, Positive Sum, BDT and MSD, Ari Emanuel, Claudia Schiffer, and Sir Matthew Vaughn.
SWISSto12, a Renens, Switzerland-based satellite communications company, raised $70M (€61M) in Series C funding.
Flex, a San Francisco, CA-based treasury management platform, raised $70M in Series B1 funding. The round was led by Halo Fund, with participation from Portage, Wellington Management, Crosslink Capital, 53 Stations, Titanium Ventures, Spice, and Florida Funders.
Juno Bio, an Oakland, CA-based precision multi-omics company, raised $3.8M in funding. Backers included Ada Ventures, Artesian, Entrepreneur First, and Illumina Accelerator.
LimX Dynamics, a Shenzhen, China-based humanoid robotics company, raised $200M in funding. Backers included Stone Venture, GGG, Redstone VC, Lens Technology, IDG Capital, WestSummit Capital, Nio Capital, and Hefei Binhu Industry Development Group.
DAILY PICKS
🗞️ Must read posts
What really happens in the 48 hours after you pitch a VC?: Most founders think the pitch meeting decides the round. In reality, the decision often happens later, when the fund debates an internal memo written about the company. This piece shows founders how to understand the hidden 48-hour process after a pitch and how to make their company easier for an investor to champion internally.
Why your CV keeps getting ignored for VC jobs (And how to fix it): Most VC applicants write resumes for consulting, banking, or student roles - not for venture capital. This piece shows how to reframe your experience into three signals VC firms care about: finding startups, forming investment views, and showing initiative through proof-of-work.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, hired former OpenAI VP of Product Policy Ryan Beiermeister as a partner. She will focus on investing in startups building AI infrastructure, agentic systems, defense, energy, climate, biotech, and other frontier technologies.
Greylock Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture firm, raised $1.5 billion for its 18th flagship fund. The firm will continue investing primarily in seed and Series A startups, while reserving a portion of the fund for select later-stage investments, including AI and high-growth technology companies.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Brain implant lets paralysed man eat
Keith Thomas, a New York man paralysed from the chest down after a 2020 swimming accident, can now feed himself and drink from a cup using a brain implant that bypasses his damaged spinal cord.
The “double neural bypass,” built by Prof Chad Bouton’s team at the Feinstein Institutes, uses brain electrodes to detect when Thomas wants to move his arms, while hand sensors send touch signals back to recreate the feeling of contact.
After 35 weeks of training his right arm grew 86% stronger and his left 62%, and a method called cortical mirroring restored feeling to a numb area, with these gains lasting more than two years even when switched off.
Apple lawsuit could complicate OpenAI’s hardware ambitions
Apple’s trade secrets lawsuit against OpenAI has raised questions about whether legal challenges could delay the company’s planned AI hardware products, including its rumored smart speaker.
Industry observers believe the case could create regulatory and product development risks, especially as OpenAI prepares for a potential IPO and expands beyond software into hardware.
OpenAI has denied Apple’s allegations, but the lawsuit adds uncertainty around its long-term hardware strategy and future product roadmap.
Jensen Huang’s Japan visit deepens Nvidia’s physical AI strategy
Nvidia announced major partnerships across Japan with robotics, automotive, and semiconductor companies, including a national AI factory, robotics collaborations, and expanded work with Toyota.
Japan is investing heavily in physical AI through Noetra, which will build Nvidia-powered infrastructure to develop sovereign AI models for robots, factories, and autonomous systems.
The agreements strengthen Nvidia’s position at the center of Japan’s AI ambitions while accelerating the country’s push to become a global leader in AI-powered manufacturing and robotics.
AWS bug billed some customers billions
An Amazon Web Services glitch in the billing portal shocked some cloud customers on Friday with estimates claiming they owed millions or even billions of dollars for services they never actually used.
Amazon said the trouble started late Thursday and traced it to its billing computation subsystem, but a rollback of a recent change failed to fix the problem, which was expected to drag on for several more hours.
Screenshots posted on Reddit showed one customer facing a roughly $2.5 billion estimate for the month, with others ranging into the hundreds of millions, though Amazon confirmed the numbers don’t reflect real usage or charges.
SpaceX may sell Pentagon AI computing
SpaceX is in talks with the Pentagon to rent out its data-center space for running AI models, an arrangement that could cost the Department of Defense billions of dollars, though the discussions could still collapse.
Musk has built up unused computing power in Memphis, with his AI startup xAI, now part of SpaceX, tapping only 11 percent of its total capacity, so selling the surplus could bring in badly needed money.
SpaceX lost $5 billion last year while xAI burned through $6.4 billion, and the deal would extend Musk’s ties to the military, which already gave him Space Force contracts worth $2.29 billion and $4.16 billion in May.
Apple warns ex-staff to keep data
Apple has sent legal letters to about 40 former employees now at OpenAI, ordering them to preserve documents and messages tied to its trade secrets lawsuit accusing OpenAI of stealing confidential company information.
The letters repeat Apple’s claims of “trade secret misappropriation and breach of contract” and require the ex-staff to meet with Apple’s lawyers, while overriding routine deletion policies so destroying the data becomes a legal offense.
The underlying suit names former Apple hardware VP Tang Tan, now OpenAI’s Chief Hardware Officer, and comes as OpenAI builds devices with former Apple designer Jony Ive; OpenAI denies knowing of any evidence supporting the claims.
Google delays Gemini 3.5 Pro over coding
Google has pushed back the launch of its next flagship AI model, Gemini 3.5 Pro, by several months while it tries to fix the model’s overall performance, especially its weak coding skills, according to people familiar with the matter.
The delay has reportedly worried Google engineers and researchers who fear falling behind Anthropic and OpenAI, and sources blame the company’s layered internal reviews plus the effort to weave AI across Search, Maps, and YouTube.
Google updated Gemini’s training data late last month to sharpen its coding, but the results disappointed, and employees say limited computing power for generating code continues to hold back their productivity on the model.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Apple in talks to settle DOJ case
Apple and the US Department of Justice are in talks to settle the government’s 2024 antitrust lawsuit, which accused the company of running an illegal “smartphone monopoly,” according to a Bloomberg report.
The lawsuit targets five parts of the iPhone experience: super apps, cloud gaming, third-party messaging, smartwatches, and digital wallets, and Apple has made “multiple offers” this year to close the case, though no deal is guaranteed.
Apple has already made changes to address some concerns, such as adding RCS to Messages, starting a Mini Apps Partner Program, and opening up the iPhone’s NFC chip to outside developers.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities
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