☕ Google releases Nano Banana Pro & Google DeepMind hires former Boston Dynamics CTO to build the ‘Android’ of robots.
Apple N1 chip beats Broadcom in all tests & Zuckerberg, Meta directors agree to $190 million settlement of shareholder privacy case.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Startup legal docs for founders, downside of high-valuation seed rounds, the VC firm behind Musk’s empire, $95B VC secondaries boom, should you hire an AI engineer, what investors evaluate at pre-seed.
Google releases Nano Banana Pro, its latest image-generation model.
ChatGPT launches group chats globally.
Google DeepMind hires former Boston Dynamics CTO to build the ‘Android’ of robots.
Apple N1 chip beats Broadcom in all tests.
Foxconn, OpenAI partner on AI hardware manufacturing.
Trump drafts executive order to block state AI laws.
Perplexity brings its AI browser Comet to Android.
Zuckerberg, Meta directors agree to $190 million settlement of shareholder privacy case.
Grok says Elon Musk is better than basically everyone, except Shohei Ohtani.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
Startup legal document pack – essential legal docs for founders.
The hidden downside of high valuation seed rounds.
The secretive VC firm behind Elon Musk’s empire.
Wall Street bets big as VC secondaries hit a record $95B.
Should you hire an AI engineer?: Linktree’s surprising results.
What are investors actually evaluating at pre-seed and seed?
The 5-step cold email playbook every founder should copy.
Investor CRM Template – The Ultimate Fundraising Tracker
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Perelel, a Los Angeles, CA-based doctor-founded, research-backed supplement company for women, raised $27m in funding. The round was led by Prelude Growth Partners with participation from existing investors Unilever Ventures, Willow Growth Partners and Selva Ventures.
Cavela AI, a San Francisco, CA-based company that helps brands access to suppliers, raises $6.6M in funding. The round was co-led by Susa Ventures and XYZ Venture Capital, with participation from Crossover Ventures. Other investors included Go Global Ventures and Propel Venture Partners.
NestAI, a Helsinki, Finland-based physical AI lab, raised €100m in funding. Backers included Nokia, which also announced a strategic partnership with the company to advance AI-powered defense solutions, and Finnish Industry Investment Ltd (Tesi).
Voio, a Berkeley, CA-based AI lab dedicated to healthcare, raised $8.6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Laude Ventures and The House Fund.
Kraken, a Cheyenne, Wyoming-based platform combining crypto and traditional assets, raised $800m in funding across two tranches. The primary tranche was led by institutional investors including Jane Street, DRW Venture Capital, HSG, Oppenheimer Alternative Investment Management, and Tribe Capital, along with a commitment from Arjun Sethi’s family office.
Wispr, a San Francisco, CA-based voice-to-text AI that turns speech into clear writing in every app, raised $25m in Series A extension. The round, which brought total funding to $81m, was led by Notable Capital, with participation from Flight Fund, the investment arm of entrepreneur and Diary of a CEO host Steven Bartlett.
Secure.com, a Dubai, UAE-based developer of AI-native agents built to help security teams handle operational crisis, raised $4.5m in first funding. Disrupt.com, the venture builder focused on MENA, made the investment.
Norm Ai, a NYC-based legal and compliance AI company, raised $50M in funding. The round was led by Blackstone, through Blackstone Innovations Investments and funds affiliated with Blackstone Growth.
Stuut Technologies, a NYC-based AI platform that automates accounts receivable work for companies, raised $29.5m in combined Series A funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Activant Capital, Khosla Ventures, 1984.vc, Page One Ventures, Vesey Ventures, Carya Venture Partners, and Valley Ventures.
Made Card, a NYC-based fintech company for homeowners, raised $8M in Seed funding. Backers included Jump Capital, Village Global, Recharge Capital, and Soma Capital.
EQORE, a Boston, MA-based distributed battery storage company, raised $1.7M in Seed funding. Backers included MassCEC, Henry Ford, Jonathan Kraft, Andrew Slifka, Mitch Coddington, and the Betti family, led by Nicholas Betti, Luke Merrow, Kent Helfrich and Kristin Welch.
Lumafield, a Cambridge, MA-based company which specializes in advanced manufacturing technology helping companies improve product quality, accelerate development, and automate operations, raised $50M in funding. The round was led by Silicon Valley Bank.
Archetype AI, a Palo Alto, CA-based physical AI company, raised $35M in Series A funding. The round was led by IAG Capital Partners and Hitachi Ventures, with participation from new and existing investors including Bezos Expeditions, Venrock, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, Samsung Ventures, Systemiq Capital, E12 Ventures, Higher Life Ventures, and others.
Revenium, a Herndon, VA-based provider of a financial intelligence platform for managing and optimizing AI spend, raised $13.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Two Bear Capital with participation from WestWave Capital.
FamilyWell Health, a Boston, MA-based women’s mental health company, raised $8M in Series A funding. The round was led by New Markets Venture Partners, with participation from existing and new investors, .406 Ventures, GreyMatter Capital, The Alix Foundation, The Donna Fund, and The Lee Foundation.
NcodiN, a Paris, France-based startup developing optical interposer technology with integrated nanolasers, raised €16M in Seed funding. The round was led by MIG Capital, with participation from Maverick Silicon, PhotonVentures, and Verve Ventures, and existing backers Elaia, Earlybird, and OVNI.
Automat, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an enterprise workflow automation platform, raised $15.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Felicis, with participation from Initialized, Khosla Ventures, and Y Combinator. This brought total capital raised to $19.25M.
Vyntelligence, a London, UK-based provider of an agentic video intelligence work platform, raised $30M in Series B funding. The round was led by Blume Equity and Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s (MSIM) 1GT climate private equity strategy.
Okami Medical, an Aliso, Viejo, CA-based medical technology company advancing novel vascular embolization solutions, closed a $45M financing round. The round was led by new investor Gilde Healthcare with participation from existing investors including Vensana Capital and U.S. Venture Partners.
Poly, a San Francisco, CA-based intelligent cloud file browser company, raised $8M in Seed funding. The round was led by Felicis, with participation from Bloomberg Beta, NextView, Figma Ventures, AI Grant, Wing Ventures, and MVP Ventures.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
R136 Ventures, a San Francisco, CA-based global venture capital firm backing B2B software and fintech companies, closed its third fund. More than 50 global investors participated in the raise, including leading financial institutions in the UAE, and founders and entrepreneurs from the firm’s portfolio companies and network.
Variant, a New York-based crypto venture firm led by a16z alum Jesse Walden, is targeting $250 million for its fourth flagship fund. Founded in 2020, Variant focuses on early-stage investments in crypto, blockchain, marketplaces, and Web3 companies, while also participating in select later-stage rounds aligned with its thesis. The firm has backed 66 startups to date.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
Google releases Nano Banana Pro, its latest image-generation model
Google launched Nano Banana Pro, a major upgrade with higher-resolution (2K/4K) image generation, better text rendering, advanced editing controls, and even web-search capabilities.
The model is built on Gemini 3 and supports fine-grained control (camera angles, lighting, depth, color grading), multi-object blending, and consistent person rendering—at a higher cost than the original Nano Banana.
Nano Banana Pro is rolling out across Google’s ecosystem, including the Gemini app, Search (AI mode), Workspace tools, NotebookLM, Flow, and via API; Google is also adding SynthID watermark detection and plans broader C2PA support.
ChatGPT launches group chats globally
OpenAI has rolled out group chats worldwide for all users — Free, Go, Plus, and Pro — allowing up to 20 people to collaborate with each other and ChatGPT in a shared conversation.
The feature supports planning, research, co-writing, and decision-making, with ChatGPT jumping in only when tagged; each participant keeps their own private settings and memory.
Users can start group chats via the people icon, create short profiles, and add participants by link; OpenAI says this is the first step toward making ChatGPT a collaborative, social environment rather than a one-on-one tool.
Google DeepMind hires former Boston Dynamics CTO to build the ‘Android’ of robots
Google DeepMind recruited former Boston Dynamics CTO Aaron Saunders to lead a new hardware engineering division, signaling a decisive shift toward making its multimodal AI a standard operating system for third-party machines.
CEO Demis Hassabis plans to create a foundational Gemini base that works out-of-the-box across any body configuration, effectively decoupling the intelligence layer from the chassis to focus value on the brain.
This move addresses the sim-to-real bottleneck by developing reference devices to test sensor noise and physical friction, ensuring models do not fail when encountering real-world unpredictability outside of digital simulations.
Apple N1 chip beats Broadcom in all tests
Apple’s first in-house N1 chip replaces Broadcom parts in the iPhone 17 to deliver a median download speed of 329.56Mbps, easily beating the 236.46Mbps average recorded by the previous model lineup.
Ookla found the N1 silicon made its largest impact in the bottom 10th percentile of testing data, suggesting this custom hardware lifts the performance floor for struggling connections rather than raising the ceiling.
While this new device beats older Apple models, it trailed the Pixel 10 Pro in global download charts and lost to a Xiaomi 15T Pro running MediaTek Wi-Fi silicon during upload speed tests.
Foxconn, OpenAI partner on AI hardware manufacturing
Foxconn and OpenAI will co-design and engineer data center racks, components, and other AI hardware, giving Foxconn early insight into the compute needs of frontier AI systems.
OpenAI will get early access to evaluate these systems with an option to buy, while Foxconn manufactures components — including power systems, cables, and networking gear — at its U.S. facilities to avoid future tariffs.
The partnership deepens OpenAI’s hardware ambitions as it chases its massive $1.4T compute plan, while Foxconn also launched a separate robotics joint venture with Alphabet’s Intrinsic to automate manufacturing.
Trump drafts executive order to block state AI laws
A draft executive order obtained by The Verge reveals a plan to centralize AI-related lawmaking under the federal government and stop US states from enacting their own local artificial intelligence regulations.
The document proposes creating an AI Litigation Task Force within the Department of Justice to sue regions enforcing laws like California’s safety requirements for risk assessments or Colorado’s ban on algorithmic discrimination.
If Congress fails to include a moratorium in the National Defense Authorization Act, the Department of Commerce may withhold broadband funding from the BEAD program to block policies hindering the AI industry.
Perplexity brings its AI browser Comet to Android
Perplexity has launched its AI-powered Comet browser on Android, bringing features like default AI search, tab-aware questions, voice queries, and cross-tab summaries, along with a built-in ad blocker.
The browser can research and shop on behalf of users, show its active steps, and will soon gain upgrades such as a conversational agent, quick-action shortcuts, and a full password manager.
Android was prioritized due to strong interest from carriers and OEMs, with an iOS version coming soon, as Perplexity joins other players pushing AI browsers against incumbents like Chrome and Safari.
Zuckerberg, Meta directors agree to $190 million settlement of shareholder privacy case
Mark Zuckerberg and current/former Meta directors will pay $190 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit alleging they harmed the company by failing to prevent major privacy violations, including the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Shareholders originally sought $8 billion, but the settlement — funded by directors’ and officers’ insurance — also includes new policies on director conduct, insider trading, and whistleblower protections.
The case stemmed from data misuse that led to Meta’s $5 billion FTC fine; shareholders argued executives failed oversight duties, while defendants denied wrongdoing.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
Grok says Elon Musk is better than basically everyone, except Shohei Ohtani
Grok 4.1 is going viral for absurdly overhyping Elon Musk — choosing him over Peyton Manning, Naomi Campbell, Monet, and nearly every MLB star except Shohei Ohtani.
Musk blamed the responses on “adversarial prompting,” though patterns suggest the model may have internal instructions or learned behavior that favor him specifically.
Despite the bias, Grok does set limits: it admits Ohtani, Simone Biles, Beyoncé, and Noah Lyles outperform Musk in their domains — but for most others, Grok defaults to Musk with unrealistic “innovation” arguments.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & startup job opportunities
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Investment Analyst - Caanan | USA - Apply Here
VC Associate UK - Breega | UK - Apply Here
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