☕ ChatGPT ads pilot crosses $100M annualized revenue in weeks & Quantum computers could break encryption by 2029, warns Google.
Anthropic wins court ruling against U.S. government in defense dispute & More.
Breaking News
OpenAI’s ChatGPT ads pilot has already crossed $100M annualized revenue in just six weeks, with over 600 advertisers onboard. The early traction signals ads could become a massive new revenue stream — even as the company tries to balance monetization with user trust.
United States federal judiciary ruled in favor of Anthropic, ordering the government to reverse its “supply chain risk” label. The decision marks a major legal win, reinforcing that AI companies can push back against military use — and setting a precedent for how AI safety intersects with national security.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
BrainGrid, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI product planner service, raised $1M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Next Tier Ventures and Brainstorm Ventures.
Eunice, a London, UK-based company building due diligence infrastructure, raised $8M in Pre-Seed and Seed funding. The round was led by Moonfire Ventures and Speedinvest, with participation from Openspace Ventures.
SEED
Conntour, a Miami, FL-based provider of an AI video intelligence platform, raised $7M in Seed funding. Backers included General Catalyst, Y Combinator, SV Angel, and Liquid 2 Ventures.
Sigmas, a Los Angeles, CA-based fitness wear brand, raised $1M in Seed funding. The round was co-led by Mucker Capital and HongShan Capital.
Victus Technologies, a Washington, DC-based autonomy company, raised an undisclosed amount in Seed funding. The round was led by Bow Capital, with participation from Techstars, Marque Ventures, 10VC, and Intbox Ventures.
Payy Network, a NYC-based stablecoin blockchain developer, raised $6M in Seed funding. The round was led by FirstMark Capital, with participation from Robot Ventures and DBA Crypto.
Moda, a NYC-based AI design platform, raised $7.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Pear VC, WndrCo, and operators from major tech companies.
GROWTH
Terrestrial Bio, a Woburn, MA-based biotech company, raised $50M in Series C funding. The round was led by RA Capital, with participation from Engine Ventures, GHIC, and SiteGround.
KilgourMD, a Sacramento, CA-based scalp health brand, raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding. The round was led by Prelude Growth Partners, with participation from Willow Growth, Joyance Partners, and Able Partners.
Cents, a NYC-based laundry industry platform, raised $140M in Series C funding. The round was led by Sumeru Equity Partners, with participation from Camber Creek.
Xona, a Burlingame, CA-based space infrastructure company, raised $170M in Series C funding. The round was led by Mohari Ventures Natural Capital, with participation from Craft Ventures, ICONIQ, Woven Capital, NGP Capital, Samsung Next, Hexagon, and others.
Steno, a Los Angeles, CA-based litigation support platform, raised $49M in Series C funding. The round was led by Savano Capital Partners, with participation from First Round Capital, The Legal Tech Fund, and others.
Blossom Health, a NYC-based AI operating system for psychiatry, raised $20M in Series A and Seed funding. The Series A was led by Headline.
eMed, a Miami, FL-based digital healthcare company, raised $200M in funding at a $2B+ valuation. The round was led by AON Consulting, with participation from Tom Brady, Jeff Aronin, Ara Cohen, Antonio Gracias, Joe Lonsdale, R.J. Melman, Tom Ricketts, and Linda Yaccarino.
Scalvy, an Austin, TX-based power delivery company, raised $13.9M in Series A funding. The round was led by Silicon Badia, with participation from Azolla Ventures, Climate Capital, Skyriver Ventures, and others.
Pinnacle Medicines, a Doylestown, PA-based biotech company, raised $89M in Series B funding. The round was led by LAV and Foresite Capital, with participation from Quan Capital, Hankang Capital, RA Capital Management, Logos Capital, and others.
Mirage, a New York City-based AI video platform, raised $75M in funding. The round was led by General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund.
Theia Insights, a Cambridge, UK-based fintech infrastructure company, raised $8M in Series A funding. The round was led by MiddleGame Ventures, with participation from Further Ventures and Unusual Ventures.
DOSS, a San Francisco, CA-based operations cloud platform, raised $55M in Series B funding. The round was co-led by Madrona and Premji Invest, with participation from Greyhound, Commerce Ventures, Intuit Ventures, and others.
Cellbriks Therapeutics, a Berlin, Germany- and Boston, MA-based tissue engineering company, raised approx. $10M in funding. The round was led by Silicon Roundabout Ventures, with participation from SPRIND.
Miraterra, a Vancouver, Canada-based ag-tech company, raised CAD $16M in funding. The round was led by At One Ventures, with participation from Farm Credit Canada, S2G Investments, Sitka Foundation, and iSelect.
Qualified Health, a Palo Alto, CA-based enterprise AI healthcare platform, raised $125M in Series B funding. The round was led by NEA, with participation from Transformation Capital, GreatPoint Ventures, Cathay Innovation, and Menlo Ventures’ Anthology Fund.
Applied Atomics, a Los Angeles, CA-based nuclear power company, raised $8.3M+ in funding. The round was co-led by Morpheus and Transition.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Sonder Capital, a San Carlos, CA-based healthcare venture capital firm investing in companies enhancing the standard of care, closed its second fund, Futures II. The fund, backed by Mayo Clinic and Sutter Health, is anchored by an investment thesis focused on AI-enabled medical robotics and minimally invasive therapies, fueling companies creating entirely new care pathways and business models.
Overmatch Ventures, an Austin, TX-based early-stage venture capital firm investing in deeptech, defensetech, and spacetech, closed its second fund, at $250m. Fund II is backed by a broad base of investors including institutional allocators, family offices, and strategic partners, whom Overmatch works with as co-investors.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
OpenAI pauses ChatGPT ‘erotic mode’ amid broader strategic shift
OpenAI has indefinitely paused plans for an “adult” or erotic mode in ChatGPT following internal concerns and external criticism around safety and misuse.
The decision is part of a broader cleanup, with the company also shutting down Sora and deprioritizing other side features to focus on core areas like enterprise and coding.
The shift comes as competition intensifies with Anthropic, pushing OpenAI to double down on business use cases rather than experimental consumer features.
Mistral launches Voxtral TTS to compete in AI voice market
Mistral released Voxtral TTS, an open-source text-to-speech model supporting nine languages and designed for enterprise use cases like customer support and voice agents.
The model can clone voices with under five seconds of audio and run efficiently on edge devices like smartphones and laptops at a fraction of typical costs.
With real-time performance and multilingual capabilities, Mistral is expanding into voice AI to compete with players like ElevenLabs, Deepgram, and OpenAI.
Apple may build smaller AI models from Gemini
Apple has gained full access to Google’s Gemini model and plans to distill it into smaller models that can run directly on Apple devices without an internet connection.
The distillation process works by feeding Gemini’s high-quality answers and reasoning information into smaller, cheaper models that learn its internal computations while requiring less computing power.
Apple is building a smarter, chatbot version of Siri for iOS 27 using Gemini, but has hit issues because Gemini was tuned for chatbot and coding tasks that don’t always match Apple’s needs.
Quantum computers could break encryption by 2029, warns Google
Google published a formal plan to move all of its infrastructure to post-quantum cryptography by 2029, warning that quantum computers capable of breaking current encryption may arrive sooner than expected.
The company highlighted “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks as an already active threat, where bad actors steal encrypted data today planning to unlock it once quantum machines become powerful enough.
Over 6.8 million Bitcoin sitting in vulnerable addresses could eventually be at risk, but Bitcoin developers have started work on quantum-resistant upgrades through BIP 360, a new address format proposal.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Apple reportedly testing 200MP camera for future iPhones
Apple is reportedly testing a 200-megapixel telephoto camera sensor for a future iPhone, with the component potentially shipping in a device as early as next year, according to a known leaker.
The leaker, Digital Chat Station, said Apple is actively testing a 1/1.2” sensor similar to one rumored for Oppo’s Find X9 Ultra, marking progress from January when no engineering prototypes existed.
Samsung already shipped a 200-megapixel rear camera on its Galaxy S23 Ultra in 2023, and a Morgan Stanley report from January said Apple could bring one to the iPhone by 2028.
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