☕ Midjourney is developing a full-body ultrasonic scanner & Tim Cook says higher prices are "unavoidable" because of AI.
Amazon is preparing a direct challenge to Nvidia’s AI chip dominance & Apple may become Intel’s biggest comeback story yet.
Breaking News
Midjourney is expanding beyond AI image generation with the development of a full-body ultrasonic scanner that can create a detailed 3D map of the human body in just 60 seconds. The system uses hundreds of thousands of ultrasonic emitters to capture high-resolution scans, with the company claiming MRI-like results at nearly 100 times the speed and plans to open dedicated scanning facilities in San Francisco next year.
Meta’s $2B acquisition of AI startup Manus is reportedly being reversed after Chinese authorities ordered the deal to be unwound, with early investors including Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund planning to buy the company back. The episode highlights China’s increasing control over strategically important AI assets, while Manus continues to grow rapidly and is now exploring a China-based structure that could eventually lead to a Hong Kong IPO.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
GitHits, a Wilmington-based company enabling coding agents to access open-source code, raised $1.75M in Pre-Seed funding. Backers included Vendep Capital, Trind, and angel investors Peter Sarlin, Zach Shelby, and Jerry Liu.
SEED
Architect Labs, a Palo Alto-based company building AI systems for custom chip and silicon design, raised $24M in Seed funding. The round was led by Kindred Ventures, with participation from TQ Ventures, Race Capital, Together Fund, Srinivas Narayanan, Lukasz Kaiser, Aravind Srinivas, Kunle Olukotun, Trevor Blackwell, Alex Wissner-Gross, Shaad Khan, and executives from NVIDIA, Google, and OpenAI.
Critical Energy Systems, a Hawthorne-based geothermal turbine technology company, raised $19M in Seed funding. The round was co-led by Susa Ventures and Upfront Ventures, with participation from MaC Venture Capital, Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, Humba Ventures, Scribble Ventures, and Underground Ventures.
Channel Robotics, a San Diego-based developer of a handheld endoscopic robotic platform, raised $2.5M in Seed+ funding. The round was led by True Ventures.
Kinomatic, an Arroyo Grande-based orthopedic surgery planning and recovery platform, raised $4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Waterline Ventures.
Ralo, a NYC-based AI-powered mortgage brokerage platform, raised $2.9M in Seed funding. Backers included Y Combinator, Manresa Ventures, Pack Ventures, and angels Charles Ferguson and Ryan Frazier.
Pramaana Labs, a San Francisco-based formal verification platform for mission-critical AI, raised $27M in Seed funding. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Founders Future, Accel, Boldcap, Nexus Venture Partners, Premji Invest, and Unbound.
BoolSi, a Boston-based hardware acceleration platform, raised $6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Fine Structure Ventures, with participation from Pillar VC, Fifth Quarter Ventures, and Coalition Ventures.
Intellectible, an Austin-based AI-native revenue operations platform, raised $3M in Seed funding. The round was led by Bread & Butter Ventures, with participation from Victorum Capital, Gray Ventures, Circadian Ventures, Allied VC, High Street Equity Partners, and angel investor Adam Burgoon.
GROWTH
Gradial, a Seattle-based AI-native content operations and marketing platform, raised $65M in Series C funding. The round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from VMG Partners, Madrona Venture Group, and PruVen Capital.
Verse, a San Francisco-based energy infrastructure platform for the AI economy, raised $54M in Series B funding. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from GV, NVIDIA, Norrsken VC, and others.
Karta, a Miami-based credit card issuance and travel underwriting platform, raised $15M in Series A funding and secured a $125M debt facility. The Series A round was led by Galaxy Ventures, with participation from Illuminate, Canary, and Clocktower Ventures.
June Health, a Toronto-based women’s healthcare platform, raised $2.4M in funding. The round was led by Securian Canada, with participation from AgeTech Capital, Dave Wessinger, Mike Wessinger, and Michael Garrity.
Dream, a Tel Aviv-based sovereign AI and cyber defense company, raised $260M in funding. The round was led by Bicycle Capital and Group 11, with participation from Antler, Bain Capital Ventures, Tru Arrow Partners, and other investors.
Icarus Medical, a Charlottesville-based orthopedic bracing technology company, raised $47.2M in Series A funding. Backers included Riptide Ventures, OSF Ventures, CU Healthcare Innovation Fund, Highpoint Ventures, MedTech Connect, Neovate Capital Partners, and BLU Venture Investors.
Luni, a Bordeaux-based mobile app studio, received $14M in user acquisition financing from PvX Partners.
El Dorado, a Bogotá-based crypto-native cross-border payments and financial infrastructure platform, raised $9M in Series A funding. The round was led by Paradigm, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Verda Ventures.
Odyssey, a Palo Alto-based developer of world simulation models and physical AI platforms, raised $310M in Series B funding at a $1.45B valuation. The round was led by Natural Capital, with participation from Amazon, AMD Ventures, GV, EQT, In-Q-Tel (IQT), Jeff Dean, and Garry Tan.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
PayPal Ventures, the corporate venture arm of PayPal, has paused new investments and is winding down operations as part of the company’s broader restructuring efforts under new CEO Enrique Lores. Founded in 2016, the U.S.-based fund raised $850 million across three funds and backed startups including Plaid, Anchorage Digital, and Talos, while PayPal explores strategic options and potential secondary sales of its venture portfolio.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Jeff Bezos’s $41B AI bet points to a market nobody is building for
Jeff Bezos’s startup Prometheus raised $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation to build AI systems capable of designing complex physical-world products such as jet engines, infrastructure, and drug compounds.
While AI investment has flooded software, massive sectors like construction, pharma manufacturing, and power grid infrastructure remain largely underserved despite representing more than $20 trillion in annual economic activity.
The biggest opportunity may be building the data, workflow, and infrastructure layers these industries need before advanced AI can automate them, creating a new generation of AI-native companies beyond software.
OpenAI strengthens talent and policy bench ahead of IPO
OpenAI has recruited Noam Shazeer, one of the architects of modern AI and Gemini’s co-lead at Google, in a major talent win as competition among leading AI labs intensifies.
The company is also hiring former White House AI policy official Dean Ball to lead a new Strategic Futures team focused on frontier AI governance, catastrophic risks, labor market impacts, and government relations.
The moves come as OpenAI prepares for a potential IPO and seeks to strengthen both its technical leadership and policy influence, particularly as rivals like Anthropic face growing regulatory scrutiny from the U.S. government.
Amazon is preparing a direct challenge to Nvidia’s AI chip dominance
AWS is exploring selling its in-house Trainium AI chips to external companies, a move that could turn Amazon from a cloud customer of AI chips into a direct competitor to Nvidia.
CEO Andy Jassy recently said Amazon’s AI chip business could generate an annual revenue run rate of roughly $50 billion if operated as a standalone business, highlighting strong demand for Trainium chips.
While Nvidia remains far larger, Amazon’s ambitions signal intensifying competition in AI infrastructure as major cloud providers increasingly build and commercialize their own custom silicon rather than relying solely on Nvidia hardware.
Tim Cook says higher prices are "unavoidable" because of AI
Apple CEO Tim Cook told The Wall Street Journal that the company will raise prices because the cost of memory and storage chips has surged, driven by demand from artificial intelligence companies.
Cook would not say when the increases will start, how large they will be, or which products they will hit, but he said the prices for these chips have quadrupled over the past year.
Apple, one of the world’s largest chip buyers, now has to “wait in line” behind AI companies, and Cook called the situation a “hundred-year flood” he has never seen in over 40 years.
Apple may become Intel’s biggest comeback story yet
Apple has reportedly agreed to work with Intel to design and manufacture some of its chips in the United States, a major validation of Intel’s foundry ambitions as it attempts to compete with TSMC.
The partnership would help Apple diversify its supply chain beyond TSMC, whose advanced manufacturing capacity is increasingly constrained by booming demand from AI chipmakers like Nvidia and AMD.
If finalized, the deal would provide Intel with a high-profile customer and steady demand, while advancing broader US efforts to strengthen domestic semiconductor manufacturing and reduce reliance on overseas production.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Top AI CEOs want America to lead the world
At the G7 summit in France, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis pushed for a U.S.-led coalition to set global rules and standards for artificial intelligence, with President Trump and other heads of state present.
Amodei told the group that cooperation should cover structured access to frontier models and trade of chips and critical components that excludes China, plus joint work on risks in cyber, bioterrorism, and intelligence.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who also attended, called for an international forum to set globally accepted testing standards, while Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney agreed the U.S. could lead such an AI coalition.
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