☕ Former Twitter CEO - Parag launches AI Startup, Lovable targets $1 billion ARR, China hosts first World Humanoid Robot Games, Microsoft poaches Meta’s top AI talent & More.
US government in talks to take stake in Intel & Cohere reached $6.8 billion valuation.
Ants rest for about 8 minutes every 12 hours.
Researchers James and Cottell found they do this in short, synchronized pauses rather than continuous sleep.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Jack Dorsey’s VC advice, financial model template, fund IRRs, freemium rethink, pitch deck guide, sales metrics, investor update template, idea finding, investor list.
Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal launches AI startup Parallel.
Lovable targets $1B ARR within a year.
Cohere hires former Meta AI research head Joelle Pineau as chief AI officer.
US government in talks to take stake in Intel.
Apple Watch Blood Oxygen returns after 18 month absence.
Starlink rival announces $1.5 billion satellite plan.
China hosts first World Humanoid Robot Games with teams from 16 nations.
Microsoft targets Meta’s top AI talent with multi-million-dollar offers.
Google unveils Gemma 3 270M for hyper-efficient AI fine-tuning.
Meta AI guidelines allowed bots to flirt with kids, spread false medical info.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
Jack Dorsey’s advice to founders raising venture capital.
Financial modelling template to build your startup financial model that every investor wants to see.
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Reframing “Freemium” by charging the marketing department by a smart bear.
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On the Lifecycle of Industries.
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Write your monthly investor update (email template download).
Anand Sanwal on how to find startup ideas.
Verified 2700+ US angel investors & VC firm’s contact database (email + LinkedIn link).
Tim Denning on learnings from an 8-figure entrepreneur.
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Global expansion in Generative AI: a year of growth, newcomers, and attacks.
Startup legal document pack – essential legal docs for founders.
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Cohere, a Toronto-based enterprise AI startup, has raised $500 million in an oversubscribed round at a $6.8 billion valuation. The round was led by Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital, with participation from AMD Ventures, Nvidia, and Salesforce Ventures.
Citizen Health, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a patient-powered platform for rare disease care, raised $30M in Series A Funding. The round was led by 8VC, with participation from Transformation Capital and Headline, bringing the company’s total funding to $44M since its December 2023 launch.
Topline Pro, a NYC-based AI-powered engine improving how home service businesses grow and run online, raised $27M in Series B funding. The round was led by Northzone (Molly Alter), with new participation from Tactile Ventures, Industry Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Bonfire Ventures, TMV, Flybridge, and BBG Ventures.
OneCrew, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a purpose-built platform for paving contractors, raised $7.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Stage 2 Capital, with participation from existing investors Entourage and Bienville Capital.
Conduit, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based workforce management platform reimagining frontline scheduling and training for the modern workforce, secured $375,000 in funding from the Richard King Mellon Foundation.
Create, a San Francisco, CA-based AI agentic startup, raised $8.5m in funding. The funding included a $5.5m raise led by Bessemer Venture Partners and participation from Shopify founder Tobi Lütke and other angels. It follows a previous $3m pre-seed round.
Studio Atelico, a San Francisco, CA-based game studio building new AI-first gaming experiences, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Air Street Capital and angel investors including Chris Ré (Factory), Thomas Wolf (Hugging Face) and Alex Ratner (Snorkel).
Infinity Loop, a NYC-based AI-native contract intelligence platform built to help enterprises save money on vendor contracts, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Glasswing Ventures and TIAA Ventures, with participation from Plug and Play, Restive Ventures, and angel investors.
Cache, a San Francisco, CA-based fintech company that offers products for stock positions, raised $12.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Bill Trenchard at First Round Capital, with participation from solo investors from across technology and finance.
XOPS, a San Francisco, CA-based autonomous IT company, raised $40M in funding. The round was led by Activant Capital and FPV Ventures, with Andrew Steele (Activant) and Pegah Ebrahimi (FPV) joining the XOPS board of directors.
Computle, a London, UK-based provider of a subscription workstation platform, raised £500K in Pre-Seed funding. Mark Boost made the investment.
Titan, a NYC-based company providing IT services with its augmented AI platform, raised $74M in funding. The round was led by General Catalyst.
Transak, a Miami, Florida-based global leader in fiat-to-crypto infrastructure, raised $16m in funding. The round was led by Tether and IDG Capital, with participation from Primal Capital, 1kx, Protein Capital, CEiC, KX VC, 3KVC, Genting Ventures, Fuel Ventures and Umami Capital.
plancraft, a Hamburg, Germany-based SaaS construction tech platform, raised €38m in Series B funding. The round, which brought total funding to over €50m, was led by Headline, with participation from existing investors Creandum, HTGF, and xdeck.
Better Medicine, a Tartu, Estonia-based startup developing AI-powered diagnostic tools for radiology, raised €1M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Soulmates Ventures, with participation from Specialist VC, UT Ventures, and angel investors.
Drivepoint, a Boston, MA-based provider of an AI-powered strategic finance platform for consumer brands, raised $9M in funding. The round was led by Vocap Partners. Bling Capital, Vinyl VC, and Las Olas Venture Capital and Jefferies’ Family Office also participated.
Continua, a NYC-based company improving social AI with dynamic conversations, raised $8M in Seed funding. The round was led by GV with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners and angel investors including Jeff Dean, Adam Ghetti, Eoghan McCabe, Josh Reznick, Peter Mattis, Spencer Kimball, Daniel Loreto, Ben Sigelman, Dor Levi, Zach Lloyd, Eyal Manor, Lauryn Motamedi, Des Traynor, Dan Shipper, and more.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Hatteras Venture Partners, a Durham, NC-based human medicine focused venture capital firm, closed two funds, with over $200m in capital commitments from limited partners. The funds are: Hatteras Venture Partners VII (HVP VII), and Hatteras Opportunity Fund I, LP (HOF I) Led by Clay Thorp, and John Crumpler, General Partners.
GoalVest Venture Capital, a division of GoalVest Advisory LLC, a NYC-based female-founded boutique RIA and venture capital firm, announced the first close of GoalVest Venture Growth Fund II, targeting a $50m raise. Approximately 60 Limited Partners backed the fund.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
Former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal launches AI startup Parallel:
After being ousted by Elon Musk in 2022 without severance, ex-Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal spent time coding and researching instead of taking a break.
His new company, Parallel, is building products for AI agents, targeting this emerging category as its primary customers.
Agrawal began laying the groundwork in Palo Alto coffee shops, diving back into engineering rather than stepping away from tech.
Lovable targets $1B ARR within a year:
AI-powered coding startup Lovable projects $1 billion in ARR within 12 months, currently growing by at least $8 million in ARR monthly.
The company reached $100 million in ARR just eight months after its first $1 million and expects $250 million by the end of 2025.
Founded in 2023, Lovable recently hit a $1.8 billion valuation after raising $200 million in Series A funding.
Cohere hires former Meta AI research head Joelle Pineau as chief AI officer:
Canadian AI startup Cohere has appointed Joelle Pineau, former VP of AI research at Meta and McGill professor, as its first chief AI officer to lead research, product, and policy strategy.
Pineau will focus on enhancing Cohere’s enterprise-focused AI agent platform, North, and aims to recruit top talent following the departure of VP of AI Research Sara Hooker.
Cohere recently raised $500 million at a $6.8 billion valuation, competing with OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic but with a narrower focus on private, secure enterprise AI deployments.
US government in talks to take stake in Intel:
The Trump administration is in discussions to acquire a stake in Intel to support its U.S. manufacturing expansion, including the delayed Ohio chip plant.
Talks began after Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan met with the administration on August 11, following political pressure over alleged ties to China.
Intel expressed support for strengthening U.S. technology and manufacturing but declined to comment on the reported stake negotiations.
Apple Watch Blood Oxygen returns after 18 month absence:
Following an 18-month ban in the United States, the Blood Oxygen feature returns to Apple Watch Series 9, 10, and Ultra 2 models through iOS 18.6.1 and watchOS 11.6.1.
The Apple Watch now only measures the raw data before transmitting it to a paired iPhone, where the Health app will handle the final calculation and show the reading.
You can no longer see the results directly on your wrist, as the redesigned feature requires you to view your Blood Oxygen readings inside the Respiratory section of the Health app.
Starlink rival announces $1.5 billion satellite plan:
Texas startup AST SpaceMobile announced a $1.5 billion plan to launch 45 to 60 satellites by 2026, aiming to create a space-based cellular broadband network for mobile phones.
The firm has already tested its technology with the BlueWalker 3 prototype, making the first 5G phone call from space to an unmodified Samsung Galaxy S22 on the ground.
Its large satellites have drawn complaints from rival SpaceX, which has raised concerns to the FCC about the sustainability of low Earth orbit and the hardware's tennis court-sized array.
China hosts first World Humanoid Robot Games with teams from 16 nations:
Beijing launched a three-day sports event for humanoid robots, featuring 280 teams from 16 countries competing in football, track, table tennis, and specialized tasks like sorting medicines and cleaning.
The event, backed by the Beijing municipal government, is part of China’s $20 billion push into robotics and AI, with plans for a $137 billion fund to support startups in the sector.
While past robot events have faced technical glitches, experts say such competitions help advance real-world applications and boost public interest in humanoid technology.
Microsoft targets Meta’s top AI talent with multi-million-dollar offers:
Microsoft is reportedly compiling a list of Meta’s leading AI engineers and researchers, offering multi-million-dollar packages and on-hire bonuses to lure them away.
The company’s strategy involves designating certain candidates as “critical AI talent” to fast-track competitive offers, even beyond its usual pay limits, amid large-scale job cuts elsewhere in the firm.
Targets include staff from Meta’s Reality Labs, GenAI Infrastructure, and AI Research divisions, as the AI talent war intensifies between Microsoft, Meta, and OpenAI.
Google unveils Gemma 3 270M for hyper-efficient AI fine-tuning:
Gemma 3 270M is a 270-million parameter model optimized for task-specific fine-tuning, offering strong instruction-following and text structuring while consuming minimal power.
It supports on-device deployment, rapid fine-tuning, and cost-efficient inference, making it ideal for high-volume, well-defined tasks like sentiment analysis, data extraction, and compliance checks.
Developers can download pretrained and instruction-tuned versions from platforms like Hugging Face and Ollama, with tools available for easy fine-tuning and deployment.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕Other news
Meta AI guidelines allowed bots to flirt with kids, spread false medical info:
A leaked 200-page internal Meta document approved by legal, policy, and engineering teams allowed chatbots to engage in “romantic or sensual” chats with children, generate false medical content, and create racially demeaning statements.
Meta confirmed the document’s authenticity, removed the child roleplay examples after Reuters’ inquiry, and admitted enforcement inconsistencies despite policies prohibiting sexualizing minors.
The standards also permitted certain violent imagery and non-factual claims with disclaimers, raising ethical questions about AI-generated content and Meta’s responsibility.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
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Associate - OMERSE Venture | USA - Apply Here
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Investment Manager - SGInnovate | Singapore - Apply Here
Associate- Portfolio Management - Stepstone Group | USA - Apply Here
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Capital Formation Associate - B Capital Group | USA - Apply Here
Investment Principal - Cota Capital | USA - Apply Here
Investment Fellow - Indian Fund | India - Apply Here
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