☕ Former Twitter CEO's startup raises $100M, Anthropic commits $50B to build U.S. data centers & Figma to open office in India.
‘Big Short’ investor accuses AI hyperscalers of artificially boosting earnings & German court rules ChatGPT broke copyright law.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: $300K accelerator with Stripe & Notion mentors, investor Q&A prep kit, AEO vs GEO vs AI SEO debate, AI for marketing assets, 2700+ US investor database, GenAI in enterprise.
Anthropic commits $50B to build custom U.S. data centers.
German court rules ChatGPT broke copyright law.
Figma expands in India to win over developers.
‘Big Short’ investor accuses AI hyperscalers of artificially boosting earnings.
IBM targets useful quantum computers by 2029.
Former Twitter CEO’s Parallel raises $100M to build AI-native web search.
ElevenLabs signs major celebrity voice deals to push authorized AI audio mainstream.
iOS 26.2 brings useful upgrades across customization, productivity, and real-time translation.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
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What investors ask and how to answer: A practical Q&A prep kit for founders.
AEO vs. GEO vs. AI SEO — what should we actually call marketing for LLMs?
2700+ US angel investors & VC firms contact database (Email + LinkedIn Link).
Gen AI fast-tracks into the enterprise.
It only took 20 years, but the Strategic Management Society now believes the Lean Startup is a Strategy.
How to evaluate a founding team member.
This is the TikTok growth marketing strategy every Gen Z founder is using right now.
The State of Impact 2025: A Decade in Transition.
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
TCab Tech, a Shanghai, China-based electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) firm, raised RMB 300M (approx. USD $43M) in Series B++ funding. The round was led by Meridian Capital, HuaHan Capital, and Puhua Capital.
Deductive AI, a Mountain View, CA-based company which specializes in AI-powered root cause analysis and resolution, raised $7.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by CRV, with participation from Databricks Ventures, Thomvest Ventures and PrimeSet.
WisdomAI, a San Francisco, CA-based developer of an AI Data Analyst for business insights in the enterprise, raised $50m in Series A financing. The round, which brought total capital raised to $73m was led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from new investor NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm) and existing investors Coatue, Latitude Capital, Madrona, GTM Capital, Menlo Ventures, and U First Capital.
OnRamp, a Boston, MA-based company providing a customer onboarding and engagement platform, raised $15M, completing its Series A funding. The round was led by new investor Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), as well as with participation from existing venture capital investors Contour, Javelin, Pear and others.
Theo Ai, a Palo Alto, CA-based provider of an AI-driven prediction platform for Am Law 200 and General Counsels, raised over $10M in total funding. The latest round was led by Run Ventures.
Tavus, a San Francisco, CA-based human computing company, raised $40m in Series B funding. The round was led by CRV with participation from Scale Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, HubSpot Ventures, and Flex Capital.
House Rx, a San Francisco, CA-based health tech company focused on making specialty medications more accessible and affordable for patients, raised $55M in Series B funding. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Town Hall Ventures and included participation from LRVHealth, First Round Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Silicon Valley Bank.
Lucky Energy, a NYC-based energy beverage brand, raised $25M in Series B funding. The round was led by Paine Schwartz Partners with participation from North Fifth Services, LLC, Sequel, and Joyance Partners, among others.
BoomPop, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-powered platform for company events, raised $41m in funding. The round, which included $16m of debt and credit via Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), was led by Wing VC.
d-Matrix, a Santa Clara, CA-based provider of a generative AI inference compute for data centers, raised $275M in Series C funding, at $2 Billion valuation. The round was co-led by a global consortium including BullhoundCapital, Triatomic Capital, and Temasek, with participation from the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), EDBI, M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund, as well as Nautilus Venture Partners, Industry Ventures, and Mirae Asset.
Foxglove, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a data and observability platform for Physical AI, raised $40m in Series B financing. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Eclipse and Amplify Partners.
Vend Park, a Boston, MA-based parking operation platform provider, raised $17.5m in Series A funding. The round was led by Blue Heron Capital, with participation from Nuveen’s Real Asset Ventures, Communitas Capital, and John McMahon, along with follow-on investments from Derive Ventures, Floating Point Capital, PagsGroup, Crossbeam, and others.
Joy, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a platform improving the parenting experience, raised $14M in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Forerunner and Raga Partners, with participation from Magnify Ventures, Ingeborg Investments, Shazi Visram, Rogue Venture Partners, and Next Legacy Partners.
Modulight Biotherapeutics, a Boston, MA-based developer of novel optogenetic platform for the treatment of neurological disorders, raised $12.2M in Seed funding. The round was led by Jibe Ventures and LocalGlobe, with participation from Nexus Neurotech Ventures, RedSeed VC, Secret Chord Ventures, Fresh Fund, Saras Capital, SilverArc Capital and Sha’ar Mivnim.
Sweet Security, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based provider of Runtime CNAPP and AI security solutions, raised $75m in Series B funding. The round, which brought total funding to $120m, was led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from Munich Re Ventures, Glilot Capital Partners, and Key1 Capital.
GC AI, a San Francisco, CA-based AI workspace company for in-house legal teams, raised $60M in Series B funding. The round was led by Scale Venture Partners and Northzone, with participation from Sound Ventures, Aglaé Ventures, SilverCircle Partners, News Corp, The Council, and strategic investors including Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel.
Attentive.ai, the Wilmington, DE-based company behind Beam AI, an AI-based takeoff platform for general contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers, raised $30.5M in Series B funding. The round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from Vertex Ventures, Tenacity Ventures, and InfoEdge Venture Fund.
HRS Navigation, a Bengaluru, India-based surgical navigation tech startup, raised $5M in Pre Series A funding. Backers included GVFL, Physis Capital, Sathguru Catalysers, India EXIM Bank and KITVEN.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Glasswing Ventures, a Boston, MA-based vc firm focused on AI-native and Frontier Technology startups, closed its Fund III, at over $200m. Existing and new limited partners participated in the raise. Fund III will continue to invest in enterprise applications, cybersecurity innovations, and AI-native productivity and automation, including ERP, procurement, and workflow systems.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
Anthropic commits $50B to build custom U.S. data centers
Anthropic signed a major partnership with U.K. neocloud provider Fluidstack to build $50B worth of custom data centers in Texas and New York, coming online through 2026 to support Claude’s growing compute demands.
The investment marks Anthropic’s first large-scale move into its own infrastructure, even as it maintains cloud partnerships with Google and Amazon, and aligns with internal projections of reaching $70B in revenue by 2028.
Despite the scale, Anthropic’s spend is still far smaller than rivals like Meta’s $600B buildout and the $500B Stargate plan, fueling broader concerns about an AI infrastructure spending bubble.
German court rules ChatGPT broke copyright law
A German court found OpenAI trained ChatGPT on licensed musical works without permission, siding with music rights group GEMA and ordering the company to pay damages.
GEMA called it Europe’s first major AI copyright ruling, saying it protects the rights and livelihoods of music creators.
OpenAI disagreed with the decision and is weighing its next steps as it faces similar lawsuits from artists and media groups globally.
Figma expands in India to win over developers
Figma is opening a Bengaluru office and hiring locally as it tries to shift its India user base — its second largest globally — from seeing Figma as just a design tool to viewing it as a full product-creation platform.
With India’s massive developer community, Figma is rolling out AI features like Figma Make and stronger code-export tools, driven heavily by Indian feedback and already generating over 800,000 prototypes in the country.
The company plans deeper on-ground engagement as Indian startups and enterprises rapidly adopt Figma, influencing its product roadmap and becoming central to its global expansion strategy.
‘Big Short’ investor accuses AI hyperscalers of artificially boosting earnings
Investor Michael Burry alleges that AI hyperscalers are boosting earnings by understating depreciation expenses on massive capex for new servers and Nvidia chips, a maneuver he calls a fraud.
Burry claims companies are extending the useful life of compute equipment to lower their yearly depreciation expense, despite the rapid 2-3 year product cycle of new Nvidia chips.
He estimates this accounting maneuver could understate depreciation by $176 billion through 2028, which would overstate profits at firms like Oracle and Meta by over 20 percent.
IBM targets useful quantum computers by 2029
IBM’s new experimental chip, called Loon, shows progress toward its 2029 goal by physically putting a proposed error correction algorithm directly into the hardware for the first time.
The design makes chips harder to build because it requires both basic qubits and new quantum connections between them to run the company’s specific error correction method.
IBM is also releasing its Nighthawk chip this year, inviting researchers to openly test its claims of beating classical computers on certain tasks by the end of next year.
Former Twitter CEO’s Parallel raises $100M to build AI-native web search
Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal’s startup Parallel raised $100M at a $740M valuation to build web search infrastructure designed specifically for AI agents, letting them pull live, structured “tokens” instead of human-focused search links.
Parallel says its system improves accuracy and reduces hallucinations for enterprise AI agents used in coding, sales analytics, and insurance, outperforming built-in search tools from major model providers.
The funding will fuel product expansion and deals with publishers as Parallel works on an “open market mechanism” to keep web content accessible for AI in a world of growing paywalls and restricted scraping.
ElevenLabs signs major celebrity voice deals to push authorized AI audio mainstream
ElevenLabs has partnered with actors Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey to create licensed AI versions of their voices, showing Hollywood’s growing comfort with AI after years of tension and strike-related concerns.
The company is also launching a marketplace where brands can legally use AI-generated celebrity voices — including Caine, Liza Minnelli, and Dr. Maya Angelou — marking a shift toward consent-based voice cloning.
McConaughey, an investor in ElevenLabs, will use the tech to translate his newsletter into Spanish audio, reflecting how AI voice models are becoming both commercial products and creator tools.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
iOS 26.2 brings useful upgrades across customization, productivity, and real-time translation
Apple’s new iOS 26.2 beta adds deeper Lock Screen personalization with Liquid Glass opacity controls, letting users fine-tune or fully disable the visual effect.
The update also boosts productivity, introducing alarm-triggered reminders, a new “Following” tab in Apple News, AI-generated podcast chapters, and expanded offline features in Music.
Live translation on AirPods is now rolling out to EU users as part of iOS 26.2, completing global availability and aligning with the region’s DMA requirements.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & startup job opportunities
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Investment Analyst - Caanan | USA - Apply Here
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