☕ Crypto.com's CEO paid $70M for ai.com - the biggest domain deal ever & Korean exchange accidentally sends $44 billion in Bitcoin.
EU says TikTok needs to drop "addictive design" & More.
Breaking News
European Commission says TikTok’s core design may be illegal, issuing preliminary findings that features like infinite scroll and weak parental controls breach the Digital Services Act. Regulators said TikTok’s screen-time warnings are “easy to dismiss” and called on the company to change the basic design of its service, a move that could reshape how major consumer apps are allowed to drive engagement in Europe and potentially lead to fines of up to 6% of global revenue.
Apple is reportedly preparing to allow third-party AI voice assistants like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini to run inside CarPlay, ending Siri’s exclusive hold on in-car voice interactions. While Siri will keep its wake word and button, the move signals Apple’s growing openness to becoming an AI platform layer rather than insisting on a single in-house assistant.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Naoma, a San Francisco, CA-based developer of an AI video sales agent, raised $440k in pre-seed funding. The round was led by ULTRA VC, with participation from Sparkle Ventures and several angel investors.
SEED
pHatom Technologies, a Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada-based climate technology company developing carbon capture solutions for existing coastal bioenergy and industrial facilities, raised $4M in funding. The round was led by Propeller Ventures, with participation from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation (NBIF), Invest Nova Scotia, and strategic investor Carmeuse Ventures.
Uplift360, a Bristol, UK- and Luxembourg-based materials startup developing chemical regeneration technologies, raised €7.4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Extantia, with participation from the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), Promus Ventures and Fund F.
Sapiom, a San Francisco, CA-based developer of a machine-native financial infrastructure platform, raised $15.75m in Seed funding. The round was led by Accel, with participation from Gradient, Array Ventures, Okta Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Anthropic, Coinbase Ventures, Formus Capital, and Operator Collective.
Cadastral, a NYC-based AI-native software company building vertically specific intelligence for the commercial real estate (CRE) industry, raised $9.5M in funding. Backers included Navitas, JLL Spark Global Ventures, AvalonBay, Equity Residential, and 1Sharpe.
Chiral, a Zurich, Switzerland-based nanotechnology company developing semiconductor and quantum technologies with nanomaterials, raised $12M in Seed funding. The round was led by Crane Venture Partners, with participation from Quantonation, HCVC, and Founderful, as well as public funding from Innosuisse.
Linkup, a San Francisco, CA-based developer of a web search and retrieval platform for AI products, raised $10m in Seed funding. The round was led by Gradient, with participation from Elaia, Leblon Capital, Weekend Fund, Seedcamp, Axeleo Capital, Motier Ventures, OPRTRS CLUB, and several angel investors including founders from Datadog, Mistral, Deel, and Dataiku.
Adaption Labs, a San Francisco, CA-based adaptive intelligence startup, raised $50m in seed funding. The round was led by Emergence Capital Partners with participation from Mozilla Ventures, Fifty Years, Threshold Ventures, Alpha Intelligence Capital, E14 Fund, and Neo.
Fintower, a Gothenburg, Sweden-based software company developing an AI-driven platform for financial planning, analysis, and reporting, raised €1.5M in Seed funding. Backers included Chalmers Ventures, Akka, the Stena family through William Olsson, Almi, Daniel Jonsson from Inet, Alexander Hars and angel investors.
GROWTH
Nixtla, a San Francisco, CA-based time series intelligence company, raised $16M in Series A funding. The round was led by Energize Capital, with participation from True Ventures and GreatPoint Ventures.
Forerunner, a San Francisco, CA-based AI-powered platform for governments that manage their built environment, raised $39M in funding. The amount consisted of $26.3M in Series B led by Wellington Management and a previously unannounced $12.7M Series A led by Union Square Ventures.
Capalo AI, a Helsinki, Finland-based sustainable technology company improving energy storage systems, raised €11M in Series A funding. The round was led by Heartcore Capital, with participation from Tesi (Finnish Industry Investment), VentureFriends, PROfounders, Inventure, Innovestor, as well as a few family offices.
Daytona, a NYC-based infrastructure company building programmatic, composable computers for AI agents, raised $24M in Series A funding. The round was led by FirstMark Capital, with participation from Pace Capital and existing investors Upfront Ventures, E2VC, Darkmode, Datadog and Figma Ventures.
Twaice, a Munich, Germany-based provider of predictive battery analytics for energy storage and electric mobility, raised €24m in venture debt financing. The funding was provided by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and is backed by the InvestEU programme.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates
2048 Ventures, a NYC and Boston, MA-based thesis-driven earliest stage venture capital firm, closed its third fund, at $82M. Fund III is backed by fund-of-funds, family offices, founders and executives from DigitalOcean, Duolingo, Duo Security, Google, IG Group, Kelso, MongoDB, Reddit, Red Hat, Tiger Global, Twitter, Tempus and others. The fund will lead pre-seed and seed rounds with $500K – $3M checks in Vertical AI, Deep Tech, Healthcare and Biotech startups in NYC and Boston.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Crypto.com founder buys AI.com in 'largest domain purchase in history'
Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek bought the AI.com domain for $70 million and launched a new AI agent platform under that brand, with a Super Bowl commercial planned for Sunday.
The company says AI.com will let users create a private, personal AI agent that can send messages, build projects, trade stocks, and even update a dating profile on their behalf.
The $70 million deal is called the largest domain purchase in history, though undisclosed sales may have been bigger, and Cars.com was once listed as an intangible asset worth $872.3 million.
Apple criticized for low-quality ads on Apple News
Apple is facing criticism for showing low-quality, scam-looking ads on Apple News, a problem linked to its controversial partnership with ad-tech company Taboola that was first reported in 2024.
Tech reporter Kirk McElhearn shared examples of suspicious ads on Apple News featuring AI-generated product images, recently created company domains, and one ad that still showed a Google Gemini watermark.
The situation is a bad look for Apple’s growing push to bring more ads across its ecosystem, especially since Apple News+ still shows ads despite costing $13 per month.
SpaceX prioritizes lunar ‘self-growing city’ over Mars project
SpaceX will prioritize building a “self-growing city” on the Moon, which Elon Musk says could be achieved in under 10 years, with an uncrewed lunar landing targeted for March 2027.
Musk said Mars remains a long-term goal, with work starting in five to seven years, but emphasized that “the Moon is faster” and critical to securing the future of civilization amid rising geopolitical competition, particularly with China.
The shift comes shortly after SpaceX acquired xAI, a move Musk sees as supporting future space-based data centers, and ahead of a potential SpaceX IPO later this year that could raise up to $50 billion.
Anthropic buys Super Bowl ads to take a swipe at OpenAI over ChatGPT ads
Anthropic spent millions on Super Bowl ads promoting Claude as ad-free, directly criticizing OpenAI for introducing ads in the free version of ChatGPT.
One commercial depicts a chatbot slipping a product promotion into fitness advice, ending with the line “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude,” a clear jab at OpenAI’s monetization plans.
Sam Altman called the ads deceptive, saying OpenAI would never insert ads into conversations, highlighting an increasingly public rivalry as both companies compete for users, enterprise customers, and future IPO attention.
Jack Dorsey’s Block may cut up to 10% of staff
Block, the payments and bitcoin-focused fintech founded by Jack Dorsey, is considering cutting up to 10% of its workforce during annual performance reviews, according to a Bloomberg report cited by Reuters.
The company did not immediately comment. Block recently missed Wall Street profit estimates amid economic uncertainty and rising competition in the payments space.
Growth in Block’s Square segment, which serves small and medium-sized businesses, slowed to 9% in the third quarter. Block is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter earnings on February 26.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Korean exchange accidentally sends $44 billion in Bitcoin
South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb confirmed it accidentally sent 620,000 bitcoin — worth roughly $43 billion — to 695 customers due to a clerical error involving a promotional reward.
Some customers immediately sold the misallocated funds, causing a temporary 10% price drop on the exchange, but Bithumb limited withdrawals and says it recovered 99.7% of the bitcoin.
The error highlights the concept of “paper bitcoin,” since Bithumb holds roughly $5.3 billion in assets according to Arkham Intelligence, far less than the $43 billion it mistakenly awarded.
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