☕ Nvidia CEO warns China will win the AI race, Perplexity to power Snapchat search in $400M deal & Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla pay plan wins shareholder approval.
Google unveils its most powerful AI chip yet & Sam Altman says OpenAI hits $20B ARR.
The record for holding breath underwater is 24 minutes and 37 seconds.
That’s not lung power, that’s someone challenging death to a staring contest.
📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: SaaS financial model template, Vercel CEO on networking, startup valuation basics, Elad Gil on spotting markets, Marc Andreessen on funding, Artisan’s $25M deck, Chris Dixon’s classic essay.
Sam Altman says OpenAI hits $20B ARR, eyes $1.4T in data center commitments.
Perplexity to power Snapchat search in $400M deal.
Sora for Android tops 470,000 first-day installs.
Meta reportedly earns 10% of its revenue from scam ads.
Nvidia CEO warns China will win the AI race.
Google unveils its most powerful AI chip yet.
Elon Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla pay plan wins shareholder approval.
More than half of hedge funds now invested in crypto, survey finds.
Amazon launches AI-powered Kindle Translate for KDP authors.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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DAILY PICKS
🗞️ What else is brewing
SaaS startup financial model: All-in-One Excel template. (Link)
Vercel CEO on networking. (Link)
This is what every founder should know about valuation. (Link)
Elad Gil literally shares the secret to identifying emerging markets. (Link)
How much funding should a startup raise? - Marc Andreessen’s framework. (Link)
Artisan’s $25M Series A deck, which they just released. (Link)
Chris Dixon’s 2009 essay, “Climbing the Wrong Hill,” remains highly relevant today. (Link)
40 real startup pitch decks that raised $350M+ (Including leading startups decks) (Link)
Amplitude’s product benchmark report: a must-read. (Link)
Sam Altman: What I wish someone had told me. (Link)
Elad Gil’s list of biotech companies he wishes existed is well worth a read. (Link)
What is the Price of Demand? (Link)
The Math of Hypergrowth: Two Paths to the Same Goal. (Link)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Amae Health, a San Francisco, CA-based Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) and leader in outpatient treatment for SMI, raised $25m in pre-empted Series B financing, bringing total funding to more than $50m. The round was led by Altos Ventures with participation from all existing investors, including Quiet Capital, Bling Capital, Cedars-Sinai Ventures, Healthier Capital, and 8VC.
Evotrex, a Los Angeles, CA-based company improving outdoor adventure through bold innovation, raised $16M in Pre-A funding. The round was led by Xstar Capital, with participation from Unity Ventures, Kylinhall Partners, Vision Plus Capital, and the founders of Anker Innovations.
Kaizen Labs, a NYC-based provider of e-government solutions, raised $21m in Series A funding. The round was led by NEA with participation from 776, Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, and Carpenter Capital. This follows an $11m seed co-led by Accel and Andreessen Horowitz’s American Dynamism practice. To date, Kaizen has raised $35m.
Inception, a Palo Alto, CA-based company developing diffusion large language models (dLLMs), raised $50M in funding. The round was led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Mayfield, Innovation Endeavors, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), M12 (Microsoft’s venture capital fund), Snowflake Ventures, and Databricks Investment.
Truffle Security, a San Francisco, CA-based open-source project for detecting and remediating non-human identities (NHIs) and their secrets, raised $25m in Series B funding. The round was led by Intel Capital and a16z with participation from Abstract, Lytical Ventures, and prominent security leaders Casey Ellis (Founder, BugCrowd), Emilio Escobar (CISO, Datadog), and Haroon Meer (Founder & CEO, Thinkst).
Avallon, a NYC-based company building AI agents that automate repetitive insurance claims tasks, raised $4.6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Frontline Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, 1984, Liquid2, and Booom.
Synchron, a NYC-based which specializes in non-surgical brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, raised $200M in Series D funding. The round was led by Double Point Ventures, alongside existing investors ARCH Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, NTI and METIS. New investors included the Australian National Reconstruction Fund (NRF), T.Rx Capital, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), K5 Global, Protocol Labs, and IQT.
Elephas Biosciences, a Madison, WI-based private company that has developed a live tumor profiling platform for immunotherapy response prediction, raised $40M in Series B-2 funding. Backers included Northpond Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, Tao Capital Partners, Sands Capital, Venture Investors Health Fund, among others.
Appetronix, a London, Ontario, Canada-based robotics company improving foodservice through intelligent automation, raised $10M+ in total Seed funding, including an additional $6M in its recent Seed plus round. The round was led by Jim Grote, the Grote family, and AlleyCorp.
fomo, a NYC-based company that builds a social-first crypto trading app, raised $17M in Series A funding. The round, which brought the total raised to date to $19M, was led by Benchmark, with participation from Luca Netz (CEO, Pudgy Penguins), Brian Jung (CEO, Jung Media), Amit Kukreja (Financial Content Creator), Jacob Horne (CEO, Zora).
Upway, a Paris, France-based global leader in professionally refurbished e-bikes, closed a $60m Series C funding. The round, which brought total funding to over $125m, was led by A.P. Moller with participation from Galvanize and Ora Global, and Sequoia Capital and other global investors.
Fintary, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-powered revenue growth platform that helps insurance organizations streamline commission and financial operations, raised $10M in Series A funding. The round was led by Infinity Ventures, with participation from Sierra Ventures and other existing investors.
AAVantgarde Bio, a Milan, Italy-based clinical-stage, biotechnology company developing therapies for inherited retinal diseases (IRDs), raised $141M in Series B funding. The round was led by Schroders Capital, as well as existing investors Atlas Venture and Forbion.
Giga, a San Francisco, CA-based AI company that focuses on how people interact with customer support, raised $61M in funding. The round was led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator and Nexus Venture Partners.
Reevo, the Santa Clara, CA-based creator of the AI-native technology that turns fragmented go-to-market (GTM) stacks into one platform, raised $80M in funding, raised $80M in funding. The round was co-led by Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Forbion, a Naarden, The Netherlands-based life sciences venture capital firm, closed its Forbion BioEconomy Fund I, at €200m. Launched in 2024 and led by General Partners Alexander Hoffmann, and Joy Faucher, the fund received support from institutional investors across Europe and North America including KfW Capital, Novo Holdings, Rentenbank, Aurae Impact, ABN AMRO Bank and EIFO.
CMT Digital, a Chicago, USA-based global venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments that accelerate the adoption of blockchain technology, closed its fourth venture fund, at $136m. Fund IV will invest in founders building the infrastructure and applications driving the next phase of crypto adoption.
Lowercarbon Capital is raising a second fusion energy fund, according to Chris Sacca at the SOSV Climate Tech Summit. The new fund will follow their $250M fusion-focused fund from 2022, which backed companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Pacific Fusion. While Sacca didn’t disclose the size, sources suggest it will exceed the first fund. Fusion remains expensive to build—Commonwealth raised $863M this year alone—but optimism among climate VCs like Sacca and Vinod Khosla is growing as breakthroughs edge closer.
Ventures Platform, a Lagos-based early-stage venture capital firm, has raised $64 million so far for its second fund, targeting a total of $75 million. The fund includes backing from the Nigerian government (via the iDICE program), marking its first VC investment. Other LPs include IFC, BII, Proparco, Standard Bank, MSMEDA, AfricaGrow, and notable individuals like Michael Seibel.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
Sam Altman says OpenAI hits $20B ARR, eyes $1.4T in data center commitments
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed the company expects to surpass $20 billion in annualized revenue run rate by year-end, with $1.4 trillion in data center commitments planned over the next eight years.
Altman said OpenAI’s future growth will come from new business lines, including enterprise offerings, consumer devices (with Jony Ive’s team), robotics, and scientific discovery initiatives.
He also hinted at OpenAI becoming a cloud computing provider, offering AI-specific compute capacity to companies and individuals — a major shift toward owning and selling AI infrastructure directly.
Perplexity to power Snapchat search in $400M deal
Snap will integrate Perplexity’s AI search into My AI, bringing answers to more than 940 million Snapchat users with rollout slated for early next year.
Perplexity will pay Snap $400 million in cash and equity, with Snap expecting to start recognizing revenue from the deal in 2026.
Announced alongside Q3 results: Snap reported $1.51 billion in revenue (up 10% year over year) and said Snapchat+ now has over 17 million subscribers.
Sora for Android tops 470,000 first-day installs
OpenAI’s Sora hit an estimated 470,000 Android downloads on day one, including about 296,000 in the U.S., per Appfigures.
That’s 327% more than its iOS debut, helped by wider availability (U.S., Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam) and no invite requirement.
Momentum remains strong: the iOS app surpassed 1 million installs in its first week and still ranks high on U.S. charts, even amid competition from Meta AI.
Meta reportedly earns 10% of its revenue from scam ads
Internal documents obtained by Reuters reveal Meta estimated $16 billion — about 10% of its annual revenue — came from fraudulent ads promoting illegal gambling, fake investments, and banned medical products.
Meta only disables advertisers’ accounts if it’s 95% sure of fraud; otherwise, it raises ad prices for suspected scammers, effectively profiting when they continue buying ads.
The company claims progress, saying scam ad reports have fallen 58% in 18 months and 134 million fraudulent ads have been removed.
Nvidia CEO warns China will win the AI race
Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang warns China is set to win the AI race because American export controls on its advanced semiconductors are forcing Chinese companies to build homegrown alternatives instead.
He also points out China’s favorable energy circumstances, which make it simpler for local technology firms to power the massive data centers required for their artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The chief executive claims the West’s prevailing cynicism is a major handicap, saying more optimism is needed for America to maintain its competitive advantage in the expanding global technology competition.
Google unveils its most powerful AI chip yet
Google is launching its Ironwood chips, a tensor processing unit architecture that scales up to 9,216 chips in a single pod for training and running large AI models.
The Ironwood pods connect the chips with an inter-chip interconnect for 9.6 terabits per second of bandwidth and provide access to 1.77 petabytes of shared high-bandwidth memory.
This new architecture offers four times better performance than the previous Trillium generation and includes a software layer with Cluster Director to manage the advanced hardware and memory.
Elon Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla pay plan wins shareholder approval
Tesla shareholders approved Elon Musk’s record-setting pay package worth up to $1 trillion, with over 75% voting in favor at the company’s annual meeting in Austin, Texas.
The package ties Musk’s compensation to ambitious milestones — delivering 20 million vehicles, deploying 1 million robotaxis, and reaching an $8.5 trillion valuation — and was seen as a move to retain him amid concerns about his focus on other ventures.
Musk pledged production of the “Cybercab” robotaxi, a new Roadster, and possibly building a “gigantic chip fab,” signaling Tesla’s shift toward becoming an AI and robotics powerhouse.
More than half of hedge funds now invested in crypto, survey finds
A new AIMA and PwC report shows 55% of hedge funds globally now hold crypto-related assets, up from 47% last year, with average allocations around 7%.
Most funds still maintain limited exposure — over half invest less than 2% of assets — but many plan to expand holdings amid growing U.S. regulatory clarity under President Trump’s administration.
67% of crypto-invested hedge funds trade via derivatives, a strategy that adds leverage risk but highlights increasing institutional engagement as total hedge fund capital nears $5 trillion.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
Amazon launches AI-powered Kindle Translate for KDP authors
Amazon introduced Kindle Translate in beta for Kindle Direct Publishing, initially supporting English–Spanish and German–English, with more languages coming.
Authors can preview, price, and publish translations from the KDP portal; AI-translated titles are labeled “Kindle Translate” and included in programs like KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited.
The service is currently free, but Amazon cautions AI isn’t perfect and recommends review, addressing industry concerns that human translators better capture nuance.
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)
Associate - Venture Capital - Artha Venture Fund | India - Apply Here
Executive Assistant - AN Venture Partner | USA - Apply Here
Analyst - Urban Partners | London - Apply Here
Venture Fellow - Commonweal Venture | NYC - Apply Here
Investor Relations - Samved VC | India - Apply Here
Interim Senior Analyst, Investments - Pivotal Ventures | USA - Apply Here
Trade Operations Lead - Manhattan Venture Partner | USA - Apply Here
AI Builder In Residence - True Venture | USA - Apply Here
VP of Fundraising - Scale Asia Venture | Japan - Apply Here
Investment Team - WEH Venture | India - Apply Here
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