☕ Intel seeks an investment from Apple, Meta poaches OpenAI scientist to help lead its AI lab & Anthropic's $1.5B copyright settlement got approval.
Meta launches ‘Vibes,’ a short-form video feed of AI slop & Trump signs executive order to facilitate TikTok deal.
Everything you’re experiencing right now actually happened 80 milliseconds ago.
A study conducted by Dr. David Eagleman at the Baylor College of Medicine found that our consciousness lags 80 milliseconds behind actual events.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Khosla’s VC pitch guide, investor must-see slide, SEO cheat codes, VC scorecard, Michel Lieben on B2B clients, Marty Kausas on founder pay, valuation guide
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Pulse to generate proactive morning briefs.
Elon Musk’s xAI offers Grok to U.S. government for 42 cent.
Databricks will bake OpenAI models into its products in $100M bet.
Meta launches ‘Vibes,’ a short-form video feed of AI slop.
Amazon to pay $2.5B in FTC settlement over ‘deceptive’ Prime tactics.
Intel seeks an investment from Apple.
Meta poaches OpenAI scientist to help lead its AI lab.
US judge preliminarily approves $1.5B Anthropic copyright settlement.
Trump signs executive order to facilitate TikTok deal.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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DAILY PICKS
🗞️ What else is brewing
Khosla Ventures’ Guide: Pitch the way VCs think. (Link)
The slide every investor wants to see. (Link)
SEO cheat codes every founder should know. (Link)
The VC scorecard that early-stage investors use. (Link)
Michel Lieben on how he’d find B2B clients if he had to start from 0. (Link)
Marty Kausas on how much founders get paid. (Link)
The startup valuation guide for founders. (Link)
Women now hold nearly 20% of top VC roles. (Link)
Are Secondaries Coming to VC Fund Rules? (Link)
Inside Dylan Field’s Big IPO—and His Even Bigger Plans for Figma. (Link)
SaaS Startup Financial Model: All-in-One Excel Template (Link)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Remedio, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based cybersecurity company developing a platform that delivers real-time device posture management, $65M in its first-ever funding. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from TLV Partners and Picture Capital.
PostSig, a San Francisco, CA-based company providing an AI-native system of intelligence for critical business documents, raised $4.1M in Seed funding. The round was led by Differential Ventures, with participation from Tandem Ventures, Denver Ventures, Frontier Venture Capital, Unbound Ventures, and SaaS Ventures.
Irregular, a San Francisco, CA-based frontier AI security lab, raised $80M in funding. The round was led by Sequoia Capital and Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Swish Ventures, as well as from angel investors including Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport, and Eon CEO Ofir Ehrlich. Formerly known as Pattern Labs.
Bonsai Health, a Santa Monica, CA-based provider of an agentic AI platform automating complex healthcare workflows, raised $7M in seed funding. The round was led by Bonfire Ventures and Wonder Ventures.
Sunrise Group, a Namur, Belgium-based sleep health technology company, raised $29M in funding. The round was led by Eurazeo, with participation from Amazon’s Alexa Fund, WE International, Kurma Partners, Vives Fund, Majycc (an UI Investissement fund), Namur Invest, Seventure Partners, Investsud, Sambrinvest, Noshaq, IMBC and Invest.BW.
Daymark Health, a Philadelphia, PA-based cancer care company, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Healthier Capital and Blue Venture Fund, with participation from existing investors including Yosemite, Maverick Ventures, and Oncology Ventures.
Inspiren, a NYC-based company which specializes in AI-powered solutions supporting senior living, raised $100M in Series B funding. The round was led by global software investor Insight Partners, with participation from Avenir, Primary Venture Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Story Ventures, Third Prime, and Studio VC.
Scorecard, a San Francisco, CA-based AI agent evaluation platform, raised $3.75m in seed funding. Backers included Kindred Ventures, Neo, Inception Studio, Tekton Ventures, and angel investors from OpenAI, Apple, Waymo, Uber, Perplexity, Meta, and others.
DOO, a Riyadh, Saudi Arabia-based AI-powered customer experience platform provider, raised $1.7M in funding. The round was led by Merak Capital, with participation from Plus VC and other strategic regional investors.
SocialPost.ai, a Miami, Florida-based AI-powered platform for small businesses to create, schedule, and analyze social media content, raised $1m in seed funding. The round was led by Ember Venture Capital.
SEON, an Austin, TX-based fraud prevention and AML compliance company, raised $80M in Series C funding. The round was led by Sixth Street Growth with participation from existing investors IVP, Creandum and Firebolt, and new investors including Hearst.
Alguna, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a platform improving pricing, quoting and billing for AI, SaaS and fintech companies raised $4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Mango Capital and Atlantic Labs with participation from startup founders and operators.
Beroe, a Raleigh, NC-based company which specializes in procurement decision intelligence, raised $34M in funding. The round was led by investors including Relativity Resilience Fund, Mukul Agrawal, Ashish Kacholia, Lashit Sanghvi and Alchemy Long Term Ventures Fund.
Light, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based provider of an AI-native finance platform, raised $30M in Series A funding. The round was led by Balderton Capital with participation from Atomico, Cherry, Seedcamp, Entrée, Thomas Wolf and Charles Songhurst.
Nscale, a London, UK-based global hyperscaler engineered for enterprise-grade AI infrastructure, raised USD $1.1 Billion in Series B funding. The round was led by Aker ASA, with continued support from existing shareholders, including Sandton Capital, and participation from Blue Owl Managed Funds, Dell, Fidelity Management & Research Company, G Squared, Nokia, NVIDIA, Point72 and T.Capital.
Trismik, a Cambridge, UK-based company developing a product for AI builders that provides its adaptive evaluation, raised £2.2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Twinpath Ventures, with participation from Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, Parkwalk Advisors, Fund F, Vento Ventures and angel investors from Ventures Together.
Emergent, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an agentic vibe-coding platform, raised $23M in Series A funding. The round was led by Lightspeed, with participation from YC, Together, Prosus, and AI angels, including Jeff Dean, Devendra Chaplot, Siqi Chen, Srinivasan Venkatachary, Prasanna, Edo Liberty, and Balaji Srinivasan.
Amplio, a San Francisco, CA- and Atlanta, GA-based AI company supporting how enterprise manufacturers manage surplus, raised $11.1M in Series a funding. The round was led by Hitachi Ventures and Yamaha Motor Ventures. Existing backers, including Construct Capital, Slow Ventures, Alpaca VC, and High Alpha Capital.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Touring Capital, a San Francisco, CA-based venture capital firm, closed its Fund 1, at $330m. LPs included global institutional LPs, family offices, and more than 30 former founders who have worked with the team before. Founded by industry veterans Nagraj Kashyap, Priya Saiprasad, and Samir Kumar, Touring Capital backs AI-powered software startups at the early-growth stage.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Pulse to generate proactive morning briefs:
OpenAI introduced Pulse, a feature in ChatGPT that generates five to ten personalized reports overnight, available first to $200/month Pro subscribers.
Pulse integrates with connectors like Gmail and Google Calendar, surfaces key updates, and uses memory to tailor briefs — from news roundups to travel itineraries and meal suggestions.
Designed to be proactive yet limited, Pulse aims to position ChatGPT as a daily assistant rather than just a chatbot, while competing indirectly with news apps and newsletters.
Elon Musk’s xAI offers Grok to U.S. government for 42 cents
xAI struck a deal with the General Services Administration to provide Grok to federal agencies at 42 cents for 18 months, undercutting OpenAI and Anthropic’s $1/year offers.
The discount includes xAI engineers for integration support, and the “42” pricing nods to Musk’s humor and “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
Despite earlier setbacks after Grok’s offensive outputs, the White House pushed for its approval, and xAI has also secured a $200M Pentagon AI contract.
Databricks will bake OpenAI models into its products in $100M bet
Databricks signed a $100M multi-year deal to integrate OpenAI’s models, including GPT-5, into its data platform and Agent Bricks product for enterprise AI adoption.
The deal guarantees OpenAI $100M whether or not Databricks’ customers generate equivalent revenue, giving OpenAI predictable income while it scales data centers.
Enterprise customers like Mastercard can now access OpenAI’s models natively in Databricks, with GPT-5 positioned as the flagship option for building AI apps and agents.
Meta launches ‘Vibes,’ a short-form video feed of AI slop
Meta introduced Vibes, an AI-generated short-form video feed inside the Meta AI app and on meta.ai, positioned as a TikTok/Reels alternative but filled entirely with AI-created clips.
Users can generate or remix videos, add visuals, music, and styles, then post to Vibes, DMs, or cross-post to Instagram and Facebook; Meta partnered with Midjourney and Black Forest Labs for early models.
The launch drew heavy criticism, with users calling it “AI slop” and questioning why Meta is pushing unoriginal content after previously urging creators to focus on authentic storytelling.
Amazon to pay $2.5B in FTC settlement over ‘deceptive’ Prime tactics
Amazon will pay $2.5 billion — $1B in civil penalties and $1.5B in refunds to ~35M consumers — to settle FTC claims it tricked users into Prime subscriptions and made cancellations intentionally difficult.
The settlement requires Amazon to stop “subscription traps,” clearly disclose costs and renewal terms, and provide a simple cancellation method matching the sign-up flow.
It marks one of the FTC’s largest settlements, following Meta’s $5B privacy fine in 2019, and comes as Amazon faces a separate antitrust lawsuit over alleged anti-competitive practices.
Intel seeks an investment from Apple:
Intel is in early talks with Apple, seeking an investment in its chipmaking business just days after securing a $5 billion commitment from its AI chip industry rival Nvidia.
An agreement could revive Intel’s struggling foundry by securing Apple as a top-tier customer, years after the iPhone maker dropped the company for its own custom-designed central processing units.
For Apple, the potential deal offers a way to diversify its chipmaking supplier base beyond Taiwan and bring more of its manufacturing operations back to America, offsetting geopolitical risks.
Meta poaches OpenAI scientist to help lead its AI lab
Yang Song, a researcher who led OpenAI’s strategic explorations team, is now the research principal at Meta Superintelligence Labs, reporting to another former OpenAI scientist, Shengjia Zhao.
Song’s new manager is Shengjia Zhao, an OpenAI alum who Meta appointed as chief scientist in July after he threatened to go back to his previous employer, WIRED reported.
The new hire’s past work includes a technique that helped inform OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 image generation model, while his recent research focused on processing large, complex datasets.
US judge preliminarily approves $1.5B Anthropic copyright settlement
A California judge gave preliminary approval to a $1.5B settlement between Anthropic and authors who accused the AI firm of using pirated books to train its Claude model.
The deal is the first major settlement in a wave of copyright lawsuits against AI companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta, and could influence how other cases unfold.
Final approval will come after affected authors are notified; plaintiffs say the outcome signals that AI firms cannot bypass copyright law to build their systems.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
Trump signs executive order to facilitate TikTok deal
President Trump approved a deal valuing TikTok US at around $14B, giving American investors majority control and blocking DOJ enforcement of a prior ban for 120 days.
Oracle will oversee security and provide cloud services, while TikTok’s algorithm, source code, and moderation systems transfer to U.S. ownership; Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi’s MGX are reported to take a 45% stake.
Trump said the move ensures TikTok remains available in the U.S. under “American-operated” leadership, with VP JD Vance claiming it will improve data security and user trust.
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)
VP of Fundraising - Scale Asia Venture | Japan - Apply Here
Research Analyst - Positive Sum | USA - Apply Here
Student Venture Scout - Strand Venture | UK - Apply Here
2026 Venture Capital Summer Analyst - Stepstone Group | USA - Apply Here
AI Venture Analyst Intern - Untaped Venture | USA - Apply Here
Investment Analyst - ECBF | France - Apply Here
Investor Relations Manager - Beco Capital | UK - Apply Here
Investor - AI Tools - Samsung next | USA - Apply Here
ESG Intern - ESG Enterprise | UK - Apply Her
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