☕ DeepSeek is reportedly using banned Nvidia chips & Meta AI team clashes with other company employees.
Nvidia is reportedly testing tracking software as chip smuggling rumors swirl & OpenAI warns new models pose ‘high’ cybersecurity risk.
Ants don’t have lungs.
They just breathe through tiny holes in their bodies like it’s no big deal.
📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Sam Altman’s fundraising guide, 2700+ US VCs, AI UX shift, $1M dorm-room product, 6000+ Euro VCs, IPO watchlist, agent economy, AI hallucinations. Valuation & financial model guides.
DeepSeek is reportedly using banned Nvidia chips.
OpenAI warns new models pose ‘high’ cybersecurity risk.
Meta AI team clashes with other company employees.
State attorneys general warn Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, and other AI giants to fix ‘delusional’ outputs.
Nvidia is reportedly testing tracking software as chip smuggling rumors swirl.
Google’s answer to the AI arms race, promote the guy behind its data center tech.
ChatGPT is Apple’s most downloaded app of 2025 in the US.
Facebook redesign makes the app look like Instagram.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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Sam Altman’s Guide to Startup Fundraising: What Really Works.
2700+ US Angel Investors & VC Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link).
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Making a Million-Dollar Product From a Dorm Room.
Excel Template: Early Stage Startup Financial Model For Fundraising.
AI Hallucinations Are Getting Worse.
Building the agent economy: How cloud leaders are shaping AI’s next frontier.
8 venture-backed IPO candidates to watch in 2025.
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All-In-One Guide To Venture Capital Interview Questions (And How to Answer Them)
Investor data room guide & templates for founders.
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Bobyard, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI platform helping contractors perform construction takeoffs and estimates, raised $35M in Series A funding. The round was led by 8VC, with participation from Pear VC, Primary Venture Partners, Tishman Speyer, RXR, Caffeinated Capital, and Merrick Ventures.
Allonnia, a Boston, MA-based bio-ingenuity company that develops scalable solutions to improve mineral recovery and reduce environmental impact, raised more than $20M in Series A extension funding. The round was led by Viking Global Investors, Bison Ventures, General Atlantic, BHP Ventures, and Pivotal Capital Partners, bringing Allonnia’s total funding to more than $100M.
Crisp, a Bentonville, Ark.-based provider of an AI platform for retail data, closed a $26M Series B1 funding round. The round was led by Paine Schwartz Partners with participation from Blue Cloud Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Cox, DNX, Prologis and Wellington Management.
EpilepsyGTx, a London, UK-based biotechnology company focused on research and development of gene therapies to treat refractory epilepsy, raised $33m in Series A financing. The round included investment from XGEN Venture, the British Business Bank, and a global biopharmaceutical company.
Fervo Energy, a Houston, TX-based geothermal energy development company, closed a $462m Series E funding round. The round was led by new investor B Capital with participation from AllianceBernstein, Atacama Ventures, Carbon Equity, Climate First, Google, Mitsui & Co., Dr. Kris Singh (Founder of Holtec International), JB Straubel, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, CalSTRS, Capricorn Investment Group, Centaurus Capital, Congruent Ventures.
Kilo Code, a San Francisco, CA-based open source coding agent services provider, raised $8M in Seed funding. The round was led by Cota Capital with participation from Breakers, General Catalyst, Quiet Capital, and Tokyo Black.
Quantum Art, a Ness Ziona, Israel-based developer of quantum computers based on trapped-ion qubits and a proprietary scale-up architecture, raised $100M in Series A funding. Bedford Ridge Capital led the round alongside Battery Ventures, Destra Investments, Lumir Growth Partners, Disruptive AI, Harel Insurance, Karen W. Davidson, GTV, Yasmin Lukatz, Corner Capital, and Qbeat Ventures.
Channel3, a NYC-based company providing a connected database for product on the internet, raised $6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Matrix, with participation from Ludlow Ventures, Paul Graham, Sri Batchu and Matteo Franeschetti.
Shapes (formerly known as DreamTeam), a Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup building an AI-native PeopleOS, raised $24m in Seed and Series A funding. The Series A round was led by Entrée Capital, with participation from NFX and F2 Venture Capital, which led the Seed round.
SuperCircle, a NYC-based provider of a textile waste management platform for retail brands, raised $24M in Series A funding. The round was led by Foundry, with other investors including BBG Ventures, Renewal Fund and Elemental Impact.
BoodleBox, a Colorado Springs, CO-based provider of a platform for collaborative AI in higher education, raised $5M in Funding. The round was led by Dogwood Ventures and Osage Venture Partners. Additional investors included JFFVentures, ECMC Group, Hivers and Strivers, Service Provider Capital, the UVU Wolverine Fund, and City Light Capital.
MetaComp Pte. Ltd., a Singapore based licensed stablecoin cross-border payments and treasury management service provider, raised US$22m in Pre-A funding round. Backers included Eastern Bell Capital, Noah, Sky9 Capital, Freshwave Fund and Beingboom Capital.
Vatn Systems, a Portsmouth, RI-based defense technology company, raised $60M in Series A funding. The round was led by BVVC, with participation from new investors such as Hanwha, Geodesic Capital, Airbus Ventures, Dauntless Ventures, Trousdale Ventures, and Veteran Ventures Capital.
Inlan, a Montreal, Canada-based technology company advancing next-generation battery-less IoT tags and AI-ready data infrastructure, raised US$5m in Series A funding. The round was led by Saas Fee, with participation from Shea Ventures, as well as contributions from TandemLaunch and several individuals.
Fresco, a Dublin, Ireland-based provider of a platform empowering cooking experiences for appliance brands, raised €15M in Series C funding. Backers included Samuel Dennigan (Strong Roots), Barry Napier (Cubic3), and Tyler Hu (Arda), Middleby, ACT Venture Capital, AE Ventures, Morpheus Ventures, and Alsop Louie Partners.
D3 Bio, a Shanghai, China-based clinical-stage biotechnology company, raised $108M in Series B funding. The round was led by IDG Capital and SongQing Capital. Existing investors WuXi AppTec’s Corporate Venture Fund, Temasek, HSG, MPCi, and Medicxi also participated.
Radial, a NYC-based developer of mental health treatments, raised $50M in funding. The round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Solari Capital, JSL Health Capital, Founder Collective, BoxGroup, Scrub Capital, and Diede van Lamoen.
GoDutch, an Amsterdam, The Netherlands-based fintech finance platform for SMEs, raised €3.6m in Seed funding. The round was led by Luxembourg Finance House with participation from current investor QuantumLeap Capital.
Bolt Insight, a London, UK-based market research company enabling brands discover consumer insights through AI-moderated research, raised £7m in funding. The round was led by Pembroke VCT, which invested £3.5m, with participation from 212, Active Partners, Velocity, and TIBAS Ventures.
Boom Supersonic, a Denver, CO-based turbine production company, raised additional $300M in funding. The round was led by Darsana Capital Partners, with participation from Altimeter Capital, ARK Invest, Bessemer Venture Partners, Robinhood Ventures and Y Combinator.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Fitz Gate Ventures, a Houston, TX-based early stage venture capital firm, closed its third venture capital fund. Rice University’s Office of Innovation was one of its anchor investors. Total AUM across Fitz Gate’s three funds is now approximately $70M. Fitz Gate Ventures III is an early-stage generalist fund with a sub-focus on deep tech. The fund will write initial checks of $500,000 to $1 million, reserving for follow-ons and will lead rounds, co-invest or invest alone.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
DeepSeek is reportedly using banned Nvidia chips
DeepSeek has reportedly acquired thousands of banned Nvidia Blackwell chips to train its reasoning models, suggesting enforcement efforts are lagging even as authorities disrupt a separate ring moving older restricted technology.
Federal prosecutors charged two men in Operation Gatekeeper with conspiring to smuggle $160 million worth of H100 and H200 GPUs by repackaging the hardware as generic computer parts to avoid detection.
The Information writes that next-generation silicon was routed through data centers in third countries, helping the lab bypass yield issues with Huawei Ascend 910C processors that previously hampered its R2 model.
OpenAI warns new models pose ‘high’ cybersecurity risk
OpenAI says its next-generation AI models could create or assist with advanced cyberattacks, including zero-day exploits and complex enterprise intrusions.
To mitigate the risk, the company is investing in defensive tools, stronger access controls, infrastructure hardening, and monitoring; it will also offer tiered access to enhanced capabilities for qualified cyber defenders.
OpenAI is launching a Frontier Risk Council to bring experienced security experts into close collaboration, starting with cybersecurity before expanding to other high-risk capability areas.
Meta AI team clashes with other company employees
Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to hire entrepreneur Alexandr Wang to lead a siloed artificial intelligence team has sparked internal disagreements with longtime executives like Chris Cox over the company’s strategic priorities.
The new TBD Lab team works in a siloed space surrounded by glass panels next to the CEO’s office because Zuckerberg wants to insulate them from the company’s corporate bureaucracy.
Wang privately argued that the group needs to catch up to rival models from OpenAI and Google before fulfilling executive requests to improve the advertising business and social media feeds.
State attorneys general warn Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, and other AI giants to fix ‘delusional’ outputs
Dozens of U.S. state attorneys general sent a letter to major AI companies urging them to address harmful “delusional” and sycophantic outputs linked to real-world mental health incidents, including suicides and violence.
The letter calls for mandatory third-party audits, pre-release safety testing, and clear incident-reporting systems that notify users when chatbots produce psychologically dangerous responses.
This state-level pressure comes as the federal government pushes pro-AI policies, with President Trump planning an executive order to limit states’ ability to regulate AI.
Nvidia is reportedly testing tracking software as chip smuggling rumors swirl
Nvidia is testing optional location-verification software for its AI chips, starting with Blackwell, using performance and communication delay signals to estimate where a chip is operating.
The move follows reports claiming China’s DeepSeek trained models on smuggled Blackwell chips, allegations Nvidia says it has not seen evidence for and continues to investigate.
This comes shortly after the US allowed Nvidia to export older H200 chips to approved customers in China, heightening scrutiny over illegal chip flows and compliance.
Google’s answer to the AI arms race, promote the guy behind its data center tech
Google has created a new role — chief technologist for AI infrastructure — and elevated Amin Vahdat, the architect behind Google’s TPU chips, Jupiter network, Borg systems, and data center CPUs, to report directly to Sundar Pichai.
The move comes as Google spends up to $93B in capex in 2025, racing to keep up with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia. Vahdat has spent 15 years building Google’s AI backbone, including the new Ironwood TPUs with 42.5 exaflops per pod.
This promotion is both a strategic and defensive move: Vahdat is central to Google’s AI competitiveness, and elevating him to the C-suite strengthens retention in a market where top AI infrastructure talent is fiercely fought over.
ChatGPT is Apple’s most downloaded app of 2025 in the US
ChatGPT topped Apple’s 2025 list of most-downloaded free iPhone apps in the U.S., surpassing Threads, Google, TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, and even core utilities like Google Maps and Gmail.
The app’s rise from No. 4 last year signals how deeply AI assistants have entered daily life and highlights ChatGPT’s growing potential to disrupt Google’s dominance in mobile search.
Earlier in the year, ChatGPT also became the most downloaded app globally, while Apple’s charts showed Block Blast! as the top free game and Minecraft as the top paid game across iPhone.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
Facebook redesign makes the app look like Instagram
Meta updates the Facebook app with visual changes that mimic Instagram, including a view where multiple photos appear in a grid and the ability to double tap to like them.
The company is redesigning how you make Stories and feed posts by highlighting tools such as music, while search results will now support all content types without causing you to lose your place.
An added feature lets users give feedback on why specific items may not be relevant, while promising continued adjustments in the coming months to ensure the interface is less cluttered and easier to use.
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)
Associate, Secondary Investments - Adam Street Partner | USA - Apply Here
Chief of Staff – DeVC - Z47 | India - Apply Here
VC Investment Intern - First Momentum Venture | USA - Apply Here
VC Investor - Quamtum Light | UK - Apply Here
Head of Operations - Sagest Capital | USA - Apply Here
Portfolio Management Lead - Yzi Labs | Remote - Apply Here
Office Manager - Seedcamp | USA - Apply Here
(Senior) Investment Manager - Finch Capital | USA - Apply Here
Partner - a16z | USA - Apply Here
Investment Associate - Energy Impact Partner | London - Apply Here
VC Intern | lvlp Venture | Remote - Apply Here
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