☕ Neuralink targets $1 billion revenue, Amazon shuts down Shanghai AI lab & US nuclear weapons agency breached using Microsoft flaw.
New AI coding challenge sets low bar with 7.5% winning score & More.
The UK has more pubs than McDonald’s has restaurants worldwide.
That’s right, one island out-boozed a global cheeseburger empire.
Love or hate this intro? Hit reply and tell us why!
📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: 2700+ US VC contacts, PageRank in the AI era, legal docs for founders, a16z on AI benchmarks, pitch deck guide, SaaS pricing shift, rise of secondary sales, AI search tipping point, VC starter kit.
Neuralink targets $1 billion revenue by 2031.
New AI coding challenge sets low bar with 7.5% winning score.
US nuclear weapons agency breached using Microsoft flaw.
Google AI Overviews reduce website clicks by almost 50%.
Amazon shuts down Shanghai AI lab amid U.S.-China tensions.
Google is reportedly pursuing AI licensing deals with news publishers.
YouTube Shorts adds AI image-to-video tool and new effects powered by Veo 2.
Apple launches $20 subscription service to protect your gadgets.
Sundar Pichai says he’s “very excited” about OpenAI partnership on Google Cloud.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU
🏰 The Real Estate Model Everyone’s Watching - Why Investors Are Backing KINLUX
KINLUX is building the future of group travel: luxury stays backed by real-world assets and blockchain-powered liquidity.
Imagine staying in a Hobbit Village, Treehouse Resort, or Castle Retreat and owning a piece of it.
They acquire underused commercial properties and transform them into unforgettable vacation destinations, while giving investors access to real estate-backed tokens with built-in perks, profit sharing, and future tradability.
With blockchain-powered liquidity and real-world assets, investors get:
Access to tradable equity tokens
Profit sharing from stays and property growth
Voting rights to shape future projects
Exclusive perks like discounted stays and VIP access
KINLUX isn’t just building vacation spots—it’s building a new class of investable real estate.
🔗 Invest now
For accredited investors → investkinlux-regd.com
For non-accredited investors → investkinlux-cf.com
PARTNERSHIP WITH US
💪 Get your startup in front of over 95,000+ audience
Our newsletter is read by thousands of tech professionals, founders, investors (VCs / Angel Investors) and managers around the world. Get in touch today.
DAILY PICKS
🗞️ What else is brewing
2700+ US Angel Investors & VC Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link)
PageRank in the Age of AI by Tomasz Tunguz.
Startup legal document pack – essential legal docs for founders.
How enterprise AI startups are rewriting the benchmarks - a16z?
All-In-One Guide To Pitch Deck Storytelling - Free Template & Curated Resources'.
AI Is Upending SaaS Pricing.
First-time sellers flock to the secondary market.
The AI Search Tipping Point.
All-In-One resources for aspiring Venture Capitalists.
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Hypernatural, a NYC-based AI video creator, raised $9.2M in funding, across 2 rounds. The rounds were led respectively by AIX Ventures and Underscore VC, with participation from Adverb, Character.vc, and 43 VC.
Volca, a NYC-based provider of an AI-powered marketing platform built specifically for home services businesses, raised $5.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Pathlight Ventures, with participation from MetaProp, GTMFund, Recall Capital, and founders and execs from Ramp, Gusto, Scale AI, Plaid, Branch.io, Figma, Stripe and more.
Modern Baker, an Oxford, UK-based food-as-medicine startup, raised $2.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Adjuvo.
Freename, a Zurich, Switzerland-based domain registrar bridging DNS and Blockchain technologies, raised $6.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Entrée Capital with participation from Polymorphic Capital, with participation from seed investors Sparkle Ventures, Blockchain Founders Fund, and Golden Record Ventures and new angel investors including Mike Lobanov (Co-Founder of Target Global), Rashwan family office, and Aaron Schnarch (former CEO of Coinbase Custody).
Starseer, a Knoxville, TN-based AI exposure management and compliance company, raised $2M in Seed funding. The round was led by Gula Tech Adventures.
Vanta, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI trust management platform, raised $150M in Series D funding, at a $4.15 Billion valuation. The round was led by new investor Wellington Management, and included existing investors, Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Sequoia, J.P. Morgan, Craft Ventures, Y Combinator, Atlassian Ventures and CrowdStrike Ventures.
Olto, a San Francisco, CA-based AI demo engineer supporting how B2B teams demo and sell software, raised $5.1M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Nexus Venture Partners and The General Partnership, with participation from Afore Capital, Recall Capital, Ligature, FirstHand and others.
april, a NYC-based provider of an AI tax platform, raised $38M in Series B funding. The round was led by QED Investors, with participation from Nyca Partners and Team8.
Estes Energy, a San Francisco, CA-based materials and manufacturing company, raised $11M in Seed funding. The round was led by BMW I Ventures and Fortescue, with participation from New System Ventures and early investor DCVC.
Dash Bio, a Newton, MA-based preclinical and clinical bioanalysis company, raised $11M in funding. The round was led by The Aligned Fund, with participation from Freestyle Capital, Cybernetix Ventures, Swift Ventures, LifeX Ventures, Drive Capital, and others.
Scrunch AI, a Salt Lake City, UT-based company helping brands understand and improve how they appear in AI search, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by Decibel, with participation from Mayfield, Homebrew, and other strategic investors.
Buena, Berlin, Germany-based-property management startup, raised $58M in Series A funding. The round was led by GV, with participation from prominent investors 20VC, Stride, and Capnamic.
Gupshup, a Mumbai, India-based conversational AI company, raised over $60M in funding. Combining equity and debt financing, the round saw participation from Globespan Capital Partners and EvolutionX Debt Capital.
TOOL FOR FOUNDERS
📑 40 real decks that raised $350M+ — see what actually works.
The Real Startup Pitch Decks Bundle gives you direct access to 40+ decks used by founders to raise from top VCs across pre-seed to Series A.
What’s inside:
Funded decks from startups like Jimini ($8M), Tulipshare ($10.8M), Vori ($45M)
Across AI, SaaS, fintech, marketplaces, and consumer
Slides that show how teams, traction, market & vision are presented in the real world
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Ex-YC and a16z staff to host $600 media training summit for founders:
Former Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz staff are organizing The To Do List Summit, an invite-only $600 event for 80 early-stage founders on August 9.
The summit will focus on DIY press and social media strategies to avoid expensive PR agency fees, inspired by viral startup successes like Rork and Theseus.
The organizers, laid off from YC in past years, aim to help non-YC founders gain media traction without giving up equity.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
Neuralink targets $1 billion revenue by 2031:
Neuralink plans to launch three implant types—Telepathy, Blindsight, and Deep—across five large clinics, aiming for $1 billion in annual revenue by 2031.
The company expects U.S. regulatory approval for Telepathy by 2029, with Blindsight following in 2030, scaling surgeries from 2,000 to 10,000 per year.
Neuralink has raised $1.3 billion to date and is valued at $9 billion; it began human trials in 2024 and currently has five patients using its device.
New AI coding challenge sets low bar with 7.5% winning score:
The Laude Institute’s K Prize, created by Databricks and Perplexity co-founder Andy Konwinski, awarded $50,000 to Eduardo Rocha de Andrade, who won with only 7.5% correct answers.
The test uses real GitHub issues from after March 12 to avoid training contamination, aiming to be a tougher alternative to SWE-Bench.
Konwinski pledged $1 million for any open-source model scoring above 90%, calling the current low scores a “reality check” for overhyped claims about AI’s coding abilities.
US nuclear weapons agency breached using Microsoft flaw:
Hacking groups affiliated with the Chinese government breached the National Nuclear Security Administration by exploiting a vulnerability in on-premises versions of Microsoft's SharePoint software.
Although the nuclear weapons agency was affected, no sensitive or classified information was stolen because the department largely uses more secure Microsoft 365 cloud systems.
The flaw allowed attackers to remotely access servers and steal data, but Microsoft has now released a patch for all impacted on-premises SharePoint versions.
Google AI Overviews reduce website clicks by almost 50%:
A new Pew Research Center study shows that Google's AI Overviews cause clicks on regular web links to fall from 15 percent down to just 8 percent.
The research also found that only one percent of users click on the source links that appear inside the AI answer, isolating traffic from external websites.
Publishers are fighting back with EU antitrust complaints, copyright lawsuits, and technical defenses like Cloudflare’s new “Pay Per Crawl” system to block AI crawlers.
Amazon shuts down Shanghai AI lab amid U.S.-China tensions:
Amazon is shutting down its Shanghai AI lab, originally launched by AWS in 2018, according to a Financial Times report.
The move follows broader AWS job cuts and comes amid rising geopolitical tensions and regulatory scrutiny between the U.S. and China.
Amazon cited "strategic adjustments," and while some layoffs are linked to AI, the company said AI adoption is not the main reason for the reductions.
Google is reportedly pursuing AI licensing deals with news publishers:
Google is planning a pilot program with ~20 national news outlets to license content for its AI tools, following similar deals by OpenAI and Perplexity.
The move comes amid rising tensions, as publishers report steep traffic losses due to AI tools like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews replacing traditional web clicks.
While some publishers pursue lawsuits over unauthorized content use, others opt into licensing deals — signaling a shift toward formal value-exchange models in AI training.
YouTube Shorts adds AI image-to-video tool and new effects powered by Veo 2:
YouTube is rolling out a new image-to-video AI tool that turns photos into six-second animated Shorts, similar to features in Meta’s Edits and Google Photos.
New generative AI effects let creators transform doodles and selfies into stylized videos, accessible via the “AI” tab in the Shorts camera.
The tools are powered by Google’s Veo 2 and include SynthID watermarks; YouTube also introduced an “AI Playground” hub for exploring generative features.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕Other news
Apple launches $20 subscription service to protect your gadgets:
Apple's new AppleCare One service is a $19.99 monthly subscription protecting three gadgets with unlimited repairs for accidental damage and Theft and Loss coverage.
The plan lets you add products that are up to four years old, a major increase from the normal 60-day window after you buy a new device.
Apple requires older items to be in "good condition" and may run diagnostic checks, while headphones can only be included if less than a year old.
Sundar Pichai says he’s “very excited” about OpenAI partnership on Google Cloud:
Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed a new cloud partnership with OpenAI, despite the AI startup being a direct threat to Google Search.
OpenAI is now listed alongside Microsoft and Oracle as a Google Cloud client, helping offset its compute constraints and tapping into Google’s large Nvidia and TPU chip supply.
Google Cloud revenue jumped to $13.6 billion in Q2 2025, with much of the growth driven by AI lab partnerships, including with Anthropic, SSI, World Labs, and now OpenAI.
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)
Investment Principal - Cota Capital | USA - Apply Here
Investment Fellow - Indian Fund | India - Apply Here
Corporate Development & Strategy - Figma Venture | USA - Apply Here
Value Creation - Cadeumen Capital | Spain - Apply Here
Investment analyst - Beas Capital | India - Apply Here
Chief of Staff - Penny Jar Capital | USA - Apply Here
Associate - OMERSE Venture | USA - Apply Here
Healthcare Analyst - General Investment Management | UK - Apply Here
Investment Analyst - Miras Investment | Dubai - Apply Here
WHEN YOU’RE READY, HERE’S HOW I CAN HELP:
💁 You might need our help!
Reach 95,000+ Founders & Investors: Partner with our newsletter to reach a highly engaged audience.
Build Your Pitch Deck: We write, design and model your pitch deck into a storyteller book within 4-5 days.
Do you have any news to share about your Startup or VC fund? Please email us.
We’ll be back in your inbox on Tomorrow.