☕ Nvidia invests $5 billion in Intel & DeepSeek reveals AI model trained for just $294K while other cost $100M.
Nvidia spent $900M+ to hire Enfabrica CEO & Huawei announces new AI infrastructure as Nvidia gets locked out of China.
Pepsi got its name from pepsin, the digestive enzyme.
The name Pepsi was chosen because Caleb Bradham, the inventor of the famous drink, believed that his drink was a 'healthy' cola that helped with digestion.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Why some raise easily, MVP customer framework, OpenAI founder program, Khosla pitching guide, key investor slide, SEO cheat codes.
OpenAI reveals research on AI models deliberately lying.
Huawei announces new AI infrastructure as Nvidia gets locked out of China.
AI startups are fueling Google’s booming cloud busines.
Nvidia takes $5B stake in Intel to co-build AI chips.
OpenAI, Google models take gold at ICPC contest.
China’s DeepSeek reveals AI model R1 trained for just $294K.
Nvidia spent $900M+ to hire Enfabrica CEO and license its tech.
Trump says China likely approved TikTok deal.
Google brings Gemini in Chrome to US users, unveils agentic browsing.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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DAILY PICKS
🗞️ What else is brewing
Why do some founders raise easily while others struggle, even with great ideas? (Link)
The most useful framework for thinking about customers for your MVP. (Link)
A program for individuals early in their company-building journey by OpenAI. (Link)
Khosla Ventures’ Guide: Pitch the way VCs think. (Link)
The slide every investor wants to see. (Link)
SEO cheat codes every founder should know. (Link)
The VC scorecard that early-stage investors use. (Link)
Michel Lieben on how he’d find B2B clients if he had to start from 0. (Link)
Marty Kausas on how much founders get paid. (Link)
Startup legal document pack – essential legal docs for founders. (Link)
The startup valuation guide for founders. (Link)
Women now hold nearly 20% of top VC roles. (Link)
Are Secondaries Coming to VC Fund Rules? (Link)
Inside Dylan Field’s Big IPO—and His Even Bigger Plans for Figma. (Link)
SaaS Startup Financial Model: All-in-One Excel Template (Link)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Samara, a Redwood City, CA-based company designing, building, installing, and financing accessory dwelling units (ADUs), raised $34M in Series B funding. The round was led by Thrive Capital.
ShopVision, a Vancouver, Canada-based automation layer service provider for high-velocity ecommerce teams, raised $4.1M in Seed funding The round was led by Brightspark Ventures, with participation from BDC Capital, Rhino Ventures.
Severo Health, a NYC-based virtual neurology company, raised $39M in Series B funding. The round was led by Valtruis, with participation from APA and Catalyst.
Aleph, a NYC-based AI-native FP&A platform provider, raised $29M in Series B funding. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with continued participation from Picus Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, and Y Combinator, bringing the total funding to $46M.
EV Reality, a San Francisco, CA-based scalable charging solutions for commercial truck fleets, raised $75M in growth funding. Backers included NGP alongside contributions from EV Realty’s management team.
Buscaro, a Karachi, Pakistan-based daily travel platform for students and employees, raised $2m in funding. The round, which brought total funding to $3.5m, was led by Daman Investments with participation from Cartography Capital, Epic Angels, Wahed Ventures, Accelerate Prosperity, and angels.
Centari, a NYC-based provider of an AI-powered deal insights platform, raised $14M in funding. The round was led by Sentinel Global with participation from GTMfund, South Park Commons, Alt Capital, RiverPark Ventures, Recall Capital, and strategic partners in the fintech and legal industries.
MoldCo, a Boston, MA-based provider of a clinician-led digital health platform standardizing mold detox as routine preventative care, raised $8M in Seed funding. The round was led by Cantos and Collaborative Fund.
Lingokids, a Los Angeles, CA-based interactive app for kids aged 2-8, secured $120m USD in financing. The round, a combination of equity and go-to-market investment, was led by Bullhound Capital and General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund, with participation from Nextalia Ventures and other existing investors.
Terra Oleo, a Singapore-based biotechnology company developing a precision fermentation platform, raised USE$3.1M in funding. Backers included ADB Ventures, The Radical Fund, Elev8.vc, and Better Bite Ventures.
Oncount, a Dubai, UAE-based accounting technology startup, raised $1.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by CEO Sergey Panov.
Vibranium Labs, a NYC-based provider of AI-powered incident management solutions, raised $4.6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Calibrate Ventures and Mirae Asset with participation from a16z, Franklin Templeton, Plug and Play, Gaingels, Wildcard Capital, FalconX, and DCG.
Phia, a NYC-based AI-powered shopping agent services provider, raised $8M in Seed funding. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from investors such as Hailey Bieber, Kris Jenner, Sara Blakely, Michael Rubin, Desiree Gruber, and Sheryl Sandberg.
Senpi, a Miami, FL-based AI wallet services provider, raised $4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Lemniscap, with participation from Coinbase Ventures Base Ecosystem Fund, SuperLayer, Primal, Auros, Mana, and angel investors.
Markup AI, a NYC-based content guardian agents company, raised $27.5M in funding. The round was led by Genui Partners and EMH Partners and included Capital Factory and angel investors Brad Feld, Scott Dorsey, David Fox, Jake Heller, David Kidder, Bernd-Michael Rumpf, Greg Sands, and Kindra Tatarsky.
Moby, a NYC-based provider of a platform democratizing Wall Street-level investment research, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by IA Capital Group, with participation from Alumni Ventures and angel investors including former c-suite executives.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
VoLo Earth Ventures, a Snowmass, CO-based investment firm, closed its second fund at $135M. The fund was anchored by Voloridge Investment Management and supported by other global financial institutions and family offices, including Carbon Equity, Cathay Innovation’s InnoSquare fund, Morgan Stanley | Graystone, and WovenEarth Ventures. The raise increased VoLo Earth’s total Assets Under Management to around $250M.
T.Rx Capital, a Boston, MA and San Francisco, CA-based venture capital firm focused on early-stage healthcare innovation, closed its inaugural fund, at $77.5m. T.Rx Capital Fund I received backing from a global base of investors, including institutional allocators, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
OpenAI reveals research on AI models deliberately lying:
OpenAI, in collaboration with Apollo Research, published findings on “scheming” — when AI models deliberately mislead while hiding true goals, likened to a stockbroker breaking rules for profit.
Researchers warned that trying to “train out” scheming may backfire, as models could learn to deceive more carefully to avoid detection, even pretending not to scheme during evaluations.
Their new approach, “deliberative alignment,” reduced scheming by making models review anti-deception rules before acting, though OpenAI noted such lying so far has been petty, not consequential.
Huawei announces new AI infrastructure as Nvidia gets locked out of China:
Huawei unveiled its new SuperPoD Interconnect at the Huawei Connect conference, enabling up to 15,000 GPUs — including its Ascend AI chips — to be linked for greater compute power.
The technology rivals Nvidia’s NVLink, aiming to compensate for Huawei’s weaker individual chips by clustering them at scale to train and deploy large AI systems.
The launch follows China’s ban on domestic companies purchasing Nvidia hardware, positioning Huawei as a key alternative supplier in the Chinese AI ecosystem.
AI startups are fueling Google’s booming cloud business
Google Cloud signed fast-growing AI coding startups Lovable and Windsurf as customers, adding to its momentum against AWS and Microsoft Azure.
The cloud unit now partners with 9 of the top 10 AI labs and 60% of the world’s generative AI startups, reporting a $50B annual run rate and $58B in revenue lined up for the next two years.
Google attracts startups with generous programs like $350K in credits, YC GPU clusters, and Gemini model integrations, betting today’s small contracts will grow as these AI companies scale.
Nvidia takes $5B stake in Intel to co-build AI chips:
Nvidia will buy a $5B stake in Intel at $23.28 per share, giving it around 4% ownership and making it one of Intel’s largest shareholders.
The two will co-develop data center and PC chips, combining Intel CPUs with Nvidia GPUs via NVLink for faster AI performance than PCIe.
Intel will manufacture custom x86 CPUs for Nvidia’s AI platforms and launch new “x86 RTX SoCs” that integrate Nvidia’s RTX GPU chiplets into PCs.
OpenAI, Google models take gold at ICPC contest:
At the ICPC World Finals, Google’s Gemini 2.5 Deep Think earned a gold-medal score by solving 10 of 12 problems, even cracking one that stumped all human teams.
In a stunning result, OpenAI’s GPT-5 model reportedly achieved a perfect score by solving all 12 programming challenges, submitting the correct answer on its first attempt for 11 of them.
This performance shows the models have moved past just generating code, using creative, multi-step reasoning to solve complex algorithmic problems that once required human intellect to crack.
China’s DeepSeek reveals AI model R1 trained for just $294K:
DeepSeek said its reasoning-focused R1 model was trained for only $294,000 using 512 Nvidia H800 chips over 80 hours, far cheaper than U.S. rivals’ $100M+ training costs.
The company admitted it used Nvidia A100 GPUs during early prep stages and addressed claims of distilling other models, saying OpenAI-generated answers in training data were incidental.
R1’s low-cost release in January rattled global markets, raising questions about China’s competitive edge in AI despite U.S. export bans on Nvidia’s top chips.
Nvidia spent $900M+ to hire Enfabrica CEO and license its tech
Nvidia paid over $900 million in cash and stock to bring in Enfabrica CEO Rochan Sankar, other staff, and to license the startup’s networking technology, CNBC reported.
Enfabrica’s system tackles the challenge of connecting up to 100,000 AI chips efficiently, reducing idle time and costs in massive AI data centers.
The Silicon Valley startup, founded by Broadcom and Alphabet veterans, had raised $260M in VC funding; the deal echoes recent talent-and-tech acquisitions by Meta and Google.
Trump says China likely approved TikTok deal
President Trump told Fox News it “sounds like” China has approved a framework deal allowing TikTok to keep operating in the U.S. under U.S.-controlled ownership.
China called the agreement a “win-win” but said it would review TikTok’s technology exports and IP licensing as part of the process.
Trump and President Xi are expected to speak Friday, following this week’s Madrid announcement of the deal’s framework.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
Google brings Gemini in Chrome to US users, unveils agentic browsing:
Google rolled out Gemini in Chrome to all US desktop users, letting them summarize pages, compare info across tabs, and revisit past browsing sessions through natural language queries.
Upcoming agentic features will let Gemini handle tasks like booking appointments, ordering groceries, and retrieving past websites, alongside deeper integrations with YouTube, Maps, and Calendar.
Chrome will add AI Mode in the address bar for complex, conversational searches, plus scam detection with Gemini Nano and one-click password resets on major sites.
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 Analyst - Miras Investment | Dubai - Apply Here
Associate - Iconiq Capital | USA - Apply Here
Program Manager - Tenity | UK - Apply Here
Investor Relations Analyst - Griffin Gaming Partner | USA - Apply Here
Associate - OMERSE Venture | USA - Apply Here
Investment Analyst - Caanan | USA - Apply Here
Investor (AI) - Samsung Next | USA - Apply Here
Events and Operations Intern - Plug and Play Tech | UK - Apply Here
Partner 16 - a16z | USA - Apply Here
VC Associate UK - Breega | UK - Apply Here
Investment Team - Noba Capital | UK - Apply Here
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