Breaking News
Nvidia has reportedly agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, giving the AI chip giant control of one of the world’s most important platforms for open-source models and datasets. The deal would push Nvidia far beyond GPUs into the software and model-distribution layer, just as OpenAI, Anthropic, and other major customers develop chips that could reduce their dependence on Nvidia.
Amazon plans to add another 2 million Nvidia GPUs to AWS data centers in 2027 and 2028 after demand exceeded expectations from its previous 1 million-GPU commitment. The massive order shows that even as Amazon builds its own Trainium chips, customers’ appetite for Nvidia hardware remains strong, reinforcing Nvidia’s dominance at the center of the AI infrastructure boom.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Teragen Energy, a Southborough, MA-based developer of solid oxide fuel cell power systems, raised $6M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was co-led by BEVC and Energy Capital Ventures, with participation from AP Ventures, AIC Ventures, Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), and UntroD Capital Asia.
Repodo, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based provider of an AI-native statutory audit platform, raised €8.2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Hedosophia and Seed Capital.
SEED
Entity, a Dublin, Ireland-based gaming tech startup, raised $5.8M in Seed funding. Backers included ACT Venture Capital, Delta Partners, Elkstone Partners, Enterprise Ireland, and games industry angel investors.
Primero, a Mexico City, Mexico-based enterprise software and AI transformation company, raised $12M in Seed funding. The round was co-led by Kaszek and General Catalyst, with participation from Definition, Conviction, 8VC, and others.
Transfyr Bio, a Cambridge, MA-based physical AI infrastructure platform for laboratory science, raised $25M in Seed funding. The round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Lux Capital, Breakout Ventures, Factory, Neo, SV Angel, MVP Ventures, Underscore VC, Lyda Hill, and angel investors.
Agentrys, a San Jose, CA-based developer of an Agentic Design Automation platform for chipmakers, raised $24.5M in total funding, including a $19.1M Seed round led by Etna Labs and a $5.4M Pre-Seed round led by MediaTek.
Volve, an Oslo, Norway-based provider of an AI platform for construction tendering and preconstruction, raised $3M in Seed funding. The round was led by Skyfall Ventures, with participation from J12, Norrsken Evolve, OBOS Ventures, Antler, StartupLab, and angel investors.
Neno Technology, an Amsterdam, Netherlands-based AI-native financial services and bookkeeping startup, raised €6.6M in Seed funding. The round was led by AlleyCorp, with participation from Motive Partners, Firstminute Capital, and financial technology angel investors.
OmicsBank, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a clinical data infrastructure platform connecting fragmented hospital data for drug development and healthcare AI, raised $2.25M in Seed funding. The investment came from Redesign Health.
GROWTH
Neocrete, an Auckland, New Zealand-based clean tech and sustainable materials startup, raised $3.5M in funding. The round was led by Wavemaker Ventures, with participation from Icehouse Ventures, Temasek Trust’s C3H, Doug Parker, and Steve Melhuish.
Faro AI, a San Diego, CA-based developer of structured data and AI infrastructure for modern clinical development, raised $37.3M in Series B financing. The round was co-led by Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and S32, with participation from General Catalyst, Northpond Ventures, Polaris Partners, PTX Capital, Zetta, and Ankona Capital.
Voya Energy, a Hayward, CA-based clean tech and sustainable energy infrastructure startup, raised $35M in Series A funding. The round was led by Energy Impact Partners, with participation from John Doerr, Mantis VC, StepStone Group, Founders Fund, Overmatch Ventures, and Seven Stars.
Onos Health, a San Francisco, CA-based behavioral health clinical intelligence platform for health plans, raised $17M in Series A funding. The round was led by Costanoa Ventures, with participation from Flare Capital Partners and CVS Health Ventures.
Certain Energy, a London, UK-based provider of long-duration energy storage systems based on manganese flow battery technology, raised £10M in Series A financing. The round was led by British Business Bank, with participation from Centrica, Ceres Power Holdings, and Temasek Trust’s C3H.
Arintra, an Austin, TX-based provider of an enterprise AI platform for healthcare revenue assurance, raised $25M in Series B financing. The round was led by Define Ventures, with participation from Peak XV Partners, Yale New Haven Health, Endeavor Health Ventures, Y Combinator, Counterpart Ventures, Ten13, and Spider Capital.
Gestala, a Shanghai, China-based provider of an ultrasound-based brain-computer interface platform, raised approximately $84M across Angel and Angel+ rounds. Backers included HSG, Lens Technology, Sinovation Ventures, C Capital, Dalton Venture, Seas Capital, Tsing Song Capital, and Gobi Partners.
Unrivaled, a Miami, FL-based professional women’s basketball league, raised over $100M in Series C financing. The round was led by Ten Pillars Sports Fund, with participation from Carmelo Anthony, Geno Auriemma, Bessemer Venture Partners, Jenny Just, Ashton Kutcher, Alex Morgan, Trybe Ventures, Dan Rosensweig, Trae Young, and others.
SiFly Aviation, a Santa Clara, CA-based provider of long-endurance electric aircraft and multi-drone infrastructure systems, raised $20M in Series A financing. The round was led by Shield Capital, with participation from Qudit, BBK Capital, Alumni Ventures, and others.
Runable, a Bengaluru, India-based provider of an AI agent platform helping users build, run, and grow businesses, raised $21M in Series A financing. The round was co-led by Susquehanna Venture Capital and Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from Together Fund and Array VC.
Breedr, an Austin, TX-based provider of a precision livestock platform, raised $27M in Series B funding. The round was led by Partech, with participation from Latitude and Outsiders Fund.
Gatik, a Santa Clara, CA-based provider of an autonomous trucking and commercial freight platform, raised $200M in Series D financing. The round was led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), with participation from Millennium Management, ARK Invest, Intact Private Capital, and others.
DAILY PICKS
🗞️ Must read post
The ARR mistake AI founders keep making: Most founders annualize the latest month’s revenue and call it ARR. But for AI products with usage-based pricing, one customer spike can make growth look stronger than it really is. This piece shows founders how to report revenue more honestly by splitting committed revenue from variable usage, using rolling averages, and preparing the usage-retention data investors will ask for during diligence.
What VCs ask AI founders now: AI investors are no longer just testing the story. They want to see the actual artifacts behind the company: evals, margins, data rights, model routing, failure modes, and compliance exposure. This piece gives founders a clear view of the 21 questions shaping AI startup diligence and the documents they should prepare before the first serious investor meeting.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Capital F, a U.S.-based early-stage venture firm founded by Margaret Coblentz and Dawn Dobras, raised $17 million for its debut fund. The firm invests in startups serving the female economy, with a focus on women’s health, digital commerce, and AI tools, writing checks of $250,000 to $1 million.
MassMutual Ventures (MMV), a Boston, MA-based multistage venture capital firm, launched Climate Technology Fund II (CTF II), a $150m venture capital fund. The vehicle will invest in early-stage companies using climate technology and artificial intelligence to improve real assets, including energy infrastructure, real estate, and natural resources.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Thinking Machines Lab co-founder Barret Zoph joins Google DeepMind
Barret Zoph, co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab, is joining Google DeepMind as Vice President of Research after a brief return to OpenAI earlier this year.
Zoph previously spent six years at Google Brain before it merged with DeepMind in 2023, making this a return to familiar territory as Google reshapes its AI leadership and research organization.
The move adds another high-profile talent shift in the AI industry, coming amid broader changes at DeepMind, including Demis Hassabis stepping back from day-to-day leadership and some teams moving into corporate Google.
Apple is holding its iPhone launch event on September 9
Apple will hold its next major launch event on September 9 at Apple Park, where it is expected to unveil the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max alongside its long-rumored foldable iPhone.
The event will be the first under incoming CEO John Ternus, who is scheduled to replace Tim Cook on September 1. The standard iPhone 18 is reportedly being held back until next year.
Apple could also introduce the Apple Watch Series 12, a new Apple Watch Ultra and smart-home devices, while announcing release dates for iOS 27, iPadOS 27, macOS Golden Gate and other software updates.
Anthropic signs massive $45B compute deal with Nscale
Anthropic has agreed to spend about $45 billion over six years renting AI compute from British infrastructure provider Nscale, using Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin systems from a West Virginia data center.
Capacity is expected to come online in late 2027, adding to Anthropic’s aggressive infrastructure expansion as it races to secure enough computing power to train and serve increasingly capable AI models.
The Nscale agreement follows a $10 billion Volta deal, $5 billion AMD deal, major SpaceX capacity agreement, and expanded Amazon and Google partnerships — highlighting how access to compute is becoming one of the biggest competitive advantages in the AI race.
Z.ai revealed as the lab behind mystery Ox Alpha model
Chinese AI lab Z.ai confirmed it created Ox Alpha, the anonymous open-weight model that recently appeared on OpenRouter and quickly climbed benchmarks and leaderboards against leading models.
Ox Alpha is the newest model in Z.ai’s GLM series, designed for coding, complex reasoning, long-running agentic tasks, and production workflows combining text and visual context. Z.ai plans to release the model weights for developers.
The launch adds to growing competition from cheaper, capable Chinese open models. Z.ai’s recent GLM-5.3 already competes with leading Anthropic models on some benchmarks, increasing pressure on frontier labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
Robot brains are still stuck in their ‘GPT-2 era’
Physical AI is attracting billions in investment, but robot hardware is advancing faster than the intelligence controlling it. The biggest bottleneck is high-quality, diverse training data needed to make robots reliable in unpredictable real-world environments.
Companies are split between building general-purpose robot intelligence and focusing on specific jobs. Task-focused robots are already finding commercial use in construction, solar farms, and industrial settings, while general-purpose humanoids largely remain in labs.
The industry’s breakthrough may come when robots can reliably understand natural-language instructions and perform everyday manipulation tasks without specialized training. But unlike ChatGPT, physical AI adoption will likely be gradual because manufacturing and deploying robots in the real world is much harder than distributing software.
Zuckerberg's plan to replace thousands of Meta workers with AI fell apart
Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to swap thousands of Meta employees for AI, known as Project OT, collapsed after the CEO scrapped a second round of layoffs planned for November, according to documents seen by Reuters.
The scheme aimed to shrink teams by up to 60%, running two waves of cuts in May and November, with small human “talent-dense” groups overseeing virtual AI workers and new “AI systems” helping decide promotions.
The effort backfired as heavier AI coding caused more outages and possible data leaks, spiking to 405 incidents and forcing staff to spend up to 70% of their time fixing problems, though Meta still cut 10% of its workforce.
SpaceX to build $100B Louisiana spaceport
SpaceX plans to build Starbase Louisiana, a $100 billion spaceport spread across 125,000 acres on the Gulf Coast, becoming its fourth and largest launch site with room to support thousands of missions each year.
The self-sustaining facility will hold five launch complexes, each with two pads and a propellant farm, plus power generation, deep-water shipping, and an airport, with construction starting in 2027 and the first launch targeted for 2029.
Officials expect 3,000 direct jobs paying about $92,600 on average, but the marshland site near protected wildlife has alarmed residents and conservation groups worried about noise, traffic, and damage to fisheries, birds, and wetlands.
Meta pays $16.7B in teen addiction case
Meta agreed to a proposed $17 billion settlement with 51 states, ending claims that it built Facebook and Instagram to hook children while hiding the risks those apps posed to young users.
Beyond the payout, spread over 10 years, Meta must set a default two-hour daily limit and a midnight-to-6am block for users under 18, both changeable only by a parent.
The deal also bans “like” counts and cosmetic surgery filters for minors, offers an algorithm-free feed option, and requires an independent auditor with wide access to the company’s information.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Bill Gates proposes ‘Human Reserved’ jobs
Bill Gates has floated the idea of “Human Reserved” jobs, occupations society would deliberately keep for people even when AI could handle them, naming childcare and jury service as roles humans are clearly better suited to.
He says at most 40% of jobs could realistically be protected, either permanently or temporarily for workers who cannot retrain, with education and healthcare kept selectively rather than shielded across the board.
To back this up, Gates wants to tax AI tokens and robots instead of banning automation, calling it a bigger change to the tax system than any in his lifetime while listing objections he cannot answer.
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