☕ Meta freezes AI hiring after rapid expansion & Microsoft failed to disclose Chinese engineers on Pentagon work.
Thousands of Grok chats are now searchable on Google & White House confirms talks for 10% Intel stake.
Tradwife,” “delulu,” and “skibidi” just made it into the Cambridge Dictionary.
Congrats everyone, internet brainrot is now academically certified.
Shakespeare gave us “eyeball” and “lonely.” Gen Z gave us… skibidi toilet.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Founder marketing, VC Q2, vibe code, LLMs, EU VC db, UK update, Tunguz distribution, legal docs, AI apps, LLM lessons.
Meta freezes AI hiring after rapid expansion.
Anthropic bundles Claude Code into enterprise plans.
Google doubles down on AI with Pixel 10 launch.
Microsoft failed to disclose Chinese engineers on Pentagon work.
White House confirms talks for 10% Intel stake.
Thousands of Grok chats are now searchable on Google.
95% of corporate AI projects show no impact.
NASA and IBM built an AI to predict solar storms.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
Marketing for founders - the only guide you need.
Global VC First Look - Q2 2025.
What is the vibe code for success? By CBInsights.
6000+ European VC Firms Contact Database (LinkedIn Links).
UK Innovation Update – Q2 2025
An explosive new distribution channel by Tomasz Tunguz.
Startup legal document pack – essential legal docs for founders.
A CEO of AI applications marks a new era of AI competition.
Working with LLMs: A Few Lessons.
Jack Dorsey’s advice to founders raising venture capital.
How to craft your moat.
350+ Indian Angel Investors & Venture Capital Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link).
US Venture Capital Outlook: Midyear Update.
All-In-One Guide To Venture Capital Interview Questions (And How to Answer Them)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
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.
Lambda, a San Francisco, CA-based Superintelligence Cloud company, closed a $275M syndicated senior secured credit facility. The facility was led and arranged by J.P. Morgan, with Citi, MUFG, and Crédit Agricole, among others, as lenders in the syndicate.
TinyFish, a Palo Alto, CA-based web agent infrastructure company, raised $47M in funding. The round was led by ICONIQ, with participation from USVP, Mango Capital, MongoDB Ventures, ASG, and Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners.
Cointel, an Abu Dhabi, UAE-based provider of an AI-native platform for crypto education, intelligence, and real-time trading support, raised $7.4M in funding. The round was led by Avalanche, Sugafam Inc. and others.
Garage, a NYC-based marketplace for buying and selling specialized equipment, raised $13.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Infinity Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, Initialized Capital, Benchstrength, Wayfinder Ventures, and FJ Labs.
Zed Industries, the Boulder, CO-based creator of the open-source code editor Zed, raised $32M in Series B funding. The round was led by Sequoia Capital.
Overhaul, an Austin, TX-based in-transit supply chain risk management company, raised $105M in Series C equity funding. The round was led by Springcoast Partners with participation from Edison Partners.
Upstage, a San Jose, CA-based AI company specializing in enterprise-grade generative AI solutions, raised $45M in Series B bridge funding. Backers included Korea Development Bank (KDB), Amazon, and AMD.
Bluefish, a NYC-based provider of an AI marketing platform for the Fortune 500, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by NEA, with participation from Salesforce Ventures. Additional investors included Crane Venture Partners, Swift Ventures, and Bloomberg Beta, bringing total Bluefish funding to $24M within 12 months of launch.
Seemplicity, a Palo Alto, CA-based provider of an exposure action platform that delivers fixes and security, raised $50M in Series B funding. The round was led by Sienna Venture Capital, with participation from Essentia Venture Capital and existing investors Glilot Capital Partners, NTTVC and S Capital.
Seemplicity, a Palo Alto, CA-based provider of an exposure action platform that delivers fixes and security, raised $50M in Series B funding. The round was led by Sienna Venture Capital, with participation from Essentia Venture Capital and existing investors Glilot Capital Partners, NTTVC and S Capital.
Meshed, a London, UK-based end-to-end AI-native broking platform provider, raised £950K in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Haatch with participation from Aviva via Founders Factory, Exponential Science Foundation and angels.
Innerworks, a London, UK-based cybersecurity startup, raised $4m in seed funding. The round was led by AlbionVC, with participation from Digital Currency Group, Founders Capital, Firestreak Ventures, NVTBL Ventures, Metaversal Ventures, and executives from Checkout.com, Apple, Coinbase, Citi, UBS, and Crypto.com.
Convoke, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-native operating system for biopharma, raised $8.6M in funding. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins and Dimension Capital, with participation from ACME, Comma Capital, Liquid2, Not Boring Capital, Audacious, Lux Capital, and angels including Qasar Younis, Erik Torenberg, and other.
Cascala Health, a Boston, MA-based healthcare technology company, raised $8.6 m in seed financing. The round was co‑led by Flare Capital Partners and Eniac Ventures, with participation from Omega Healthcare Investors (NYSE: OHI), Ziegler Link-age Fund, Tau Ventures, and Digital Health Venture Partners, bringing Cascala’s total funding to $11.23 m since its launch in mid 2024.
Iantrek, Inc., a White Plans, NY-based bio-interventional ophthalmic surgery (BIOS) company closed a $42m Series C financing. The round was led by U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), joined by aMoon Fund, along with existing investors Visionary Ventures, Sectoral Asset Management, Radius Special Situations Fund, and Civilization Ventures.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Veteran Ventures Capital, a McLean, VA-based venture capital firm investing in dual-use national security technologies, closed Veterans Fund II, at $60m. Fund II received support from institutional investors—including the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation, the State of Tennessee, and university endowments—alongside Hersh Family Investments, prominent family offices, and wealth management firms.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
Meta freezes AI hiring after rapid expansion:
Meta has paused hiring in its artificial intelligence division after bringing on more than 50 researchers and engineers, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The company described the move as part of routine organizational planning, citing the need to establish structure for its new superintelligence efforts and align with annual budgeting.
This hiring freeze comes as Meta faces pressure to balance heavy AI investment with costs, while competing with rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google in the talent race.
Anthropic bundles Claude Code into enterprise plans:
Anthropic is integrating Claude Code into its Claude for Enterprise subscription, giving businesses access to the popular command-line coding tool alongside advanced admin and integration features.
The move addresses scaling issues faced by individual users and lets enterprises set granular spending controls, making it easier to handle intensive usage.
By combining Claude Code with its chatbot, Anthropic enables enterprises to process customer feedback, prototype solutions, and build deeper data integrations, positioning itself against rivals like Google and GitHub.
Google doubles down on AI with Pixel 10 launch:
Google unveiled its Pixel 10 series at the Made by Google event, introducing AI-first features like Magic Cue (proactive suggestions), Camera Coach, Visual Overlays, real-time Voice Translate, and Pixel Journal, powered by its new Tensor G5 chip.
Magic Cue revives the old Google Now concept with contextual suggestions across apps, while Camera Coach and Auto Best Take enhance photography using Gemini models and AI-driven editing.
With Apple’s iPhone 17 expected to bring mostly incremental updates, Google is positioning Pixel 10 as the first true “AI phone,” emphasizing on-device AI experiences and real-time assistance.
Microsoft failed to disclose Chinese engineers on Pentagon work:
Microsoft submitted a "System Security Plan" to the Pentagon describing a vague "Escorted Access" policy, which concealed that the "non-screened personnel" were actually engineers working from inside China.
The practice also extended to a China-based team maintaining the on-premise SharePoint software that was later targeted in the "ToolShell" hacking campaign which compromised over 400 different organizations.
This lack of transparency was enabled by a system where Microsoft hired and paid its own third-party assessment organizations to vet the security plans it submitted to the U.S. government.
White House confirms talks for 10% Intel stake:
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed the White House is talking with Intel about acquiring a 10% stake by converting grants from the CHIPS Act into company equity.
The administration's reasoning is that American taxpayers should get a financial return on the investment instead of just giving grants to a company worth more than $100 billion.
This proposed equity stake would not come with any governance provisions, so Intel’s board of directors would still be in charge of the direction the company is taking.
Thousands of Grok chats are now searchable on Google:
When users click the “share” button on a conversation, xAI’s chatbot Grok creates a unique URL that search engines are indexing, making thousands of chats publicly accessible on Google.
These searchable conversations show users asking for instructions on making fentanyl, bomb construction tips, and even a detailed plan for the assassination of Elon Musk which the chatbot provided.
This leak follows a recent post, quote-tweeted by Musk, where Grok explained it had “no such sharing feature” and was instead designed by xAI to “prioritize privacy.”
95% of corporate AI projects show no impact:
An MIT study found 95 percent of AI pilot programs stall because generic tools do not adapt well to established corporate workflows, delivering little to no measurable impact on profit.
Companies often misdirect spending by focusing on sales and marketing, whereas the research reveals AI works best in back-office automation for repetitive administrative tasks that are typically outsourced.
Projects that partner with specialized AI providers are twice as successful as in-house tools, yet many firms build their own programs to reduce regulatory risk in sensitive fields.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕Other news
NASA and IBM built an AI to predict solar storms:
NASA and IBM released Surya, an open-source AI on Hugging Face, to forecast solar flares and protect Earth's critical infrastructure like satellites and electrical power grids from space weather.
The model was trained on nine years of high-resolution images from the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory, which are about 10 times larger than typical data used for this purpose.
Early tests show a 16% improvement in the accuracy of solar flare classifications, with the goal of providing a two-hour warning before a disruptive event actually takes place.
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)
Ventures Associate - Point 72 Venture | USA - Apply Here
Ventures Associate - Plug and Play Tech Centre | USA - Apply Here
Marketing & Communications Lead - Endiya Partners | India - Apply Here
Associate - Mighty Capital | USA - Apply Here
Associate - Temasek | USA - Apply Here
Associate/manager - Redalpine | UK - Apply Here
Investment Analyst - Beas Capital | India - Apply Here
Investor Relations Analyst - Techstars | USA - Apply Here
Investor Relations Manager - Beco Capital | UK - Apply Here
Head of Platform - Pledge Venture | UK - Apply Here
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