☕ OpenAI completes its for-profit recapitalization, Apple crossed $4T valuation & OpenAI offers free ChatGPT Go for one year in India.
Tesla eyes internal CEO candidates if Musk steps down over pay vote & More.
Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime and lived in poverty.
Now his work is worth hundreds of millions. Talk about unfortunate timing.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Startup valuation guide, VC Big Book Q3 2025, startup legal docs, 40+ investor databases, Superhuman pricing guide, a16z hiring playbook, Marc Andreessen on productivity.
OpenAI completes its for-profit recapitalization.
Apple and Microsoft are now both worth more than $4T.
Sam Altman says OpenAI will have a ‘legitimate AI researcher’ by 2028.
Nvidia will build AI supercomputers for US Energy Department, wants to get back into China.
Trump Media to enter prediction markets business.
Tesla eyes internal CEO candidates if Musk steps down over pay vote.
OpenAI offers free ChatGPT Go for one year to all users in India.
PayPal partners with OpenAI to let users pay for their shopping within ChatGPT.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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DAILY PICKS
🗞️ What else is brewing
The startup valuation guide for founders. (Link)
The Big Book of Venture Capital — Q3 2025 Edition. (Link)
Startup legal document pack – essential legal docs for founders. (Link)
40+ Investor Databases for Easier VC Outreach (Free Access) (Link)
The right way to choose your pricing model by Gaurav Vohra, founding team at Superhuman. (Link)
a16z guide: How to hire a strong founding team? (Link)
Marc Andreessen’s Guide on Productivity. (Link)
The rise of “Offline Outbound”: How to execute your own Offline Outbound. (Link)
Andrew Chen on showing traction before you have traction (Link)
Peter Walker shares lead investor trends in Seed + Series A rounds (Link)
Vibe coding for beginners - all in one guide. (Link)
The AI dilemma: To compete with China, the U.S. needs Chinese talent. (Link)
Hiring in the Age of AI. (Link)
Designers should look to Demis Hassabis. Not Jony Ive.(Link)
More articles are now created by AI than by humans. (Link)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Fireworks AI, a Redwood City, CA-based AI inference cloud powering production AI applications for tech companies, raised $250m in Series C funding round at a $4 billion valuation. The round, which includes primary and secondary funding, was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Index Ventures, and Evantic, with participation from existing investor Sequoia Capital. This brings Fireworks’ total funding to $327m.
WideField Security, a Sunnyvale, CA-based provider of a platform offering complete visibility and protection for the entire identity lifecycle, raised $11.3m in Series A funding. The round was led by Crosspoint Capital with participation from existing investor Engineering Capital and others.
ConductorOne, a San Francisco, CA-based AI-native identity security platform provider, raised $79M in Series B funding. The round, which brought total capital raised to more than $100m to date, was led by Greycroft with participation from strategic investor CrowdStrike Falcon Fund and existing investors Accel, Felicis Ventures, and others. Marcie Vu, Partner at Greycroft, will be joining the board of ConductorOne.
Flamingo, a Miami, FL-based provider of a platform for IT service providers, launched from stealth with $2.2m in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Focal VC and Array VC.
CoreStory, a San Francisco, CA-based code intelligence company, raised $32m in Series A funding. The round was led by Tribeca Venture Partners, NEA, and SineWave Ventures, with participation from Harrison Metal, Singtel Innov8, Samsung Next, Nimble Partners, and Alumni Ventures.
Syllo, a NYC-based provider of a litigation workspace, raised $30M in growth funding. Backers included Venrock, Two Seas Capital, and strategic individuals.
Uptiq.ai, a McKinney, TX-based developer of AI infrastructure for financial services, raised $12m in funding. The round was led by Silverton Partners with participation from Live Oak Venture Partners, Tau Ventures, First Capital and Green Visor Capital.
Cylerity, a Madison, Wis.-based healthcare fintech company, raised $4m in equity funding. The round was led by HealthX Ventures, with participation from C2 Ventures, Upstream Ventures, Wisconsin Investment Partners, and Tundra Angels.
Sweatpals, an Austin, TX-based community-driven fitness platform enabling people to build meaningful connections through movement, raised $12m in seed funding. The round was led by Patron, a16z speedrun, and Kevin Hart’s HartBeat Ventures, with participation from Max Mullen, WndrCo, Antler, Pear, and Deb Liu.
Wild Moose, a NYC-based AI-powered Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) platform acting as a first responder for production incidents, raised $7m in seed funding. The round was led by iAngels, with participation from Y Combinator, F2 Venture Capital, Maverick Ventures, and Joel Pobar (AI researcher at Meta Superintelligence Labs, formerly Anthropic), Jeremy Edberg (Founding SRE at Reddit & Netflix) and Arash Ferdowski (Co-Founder of Dropbox).
Spacial, a Palo Alto, CA-based creator of an AI-powered platform automating residential engineering and permitting, raised $10m in seed funding. The round was led by TLV Partners, with participation from Mango Capital, Re Angels, and HTV.
Epic, a Dallas, TX-based financial technology company focused on the automotive industry, raised $10m in Series A funding. The round was led by FM Capital, with participation from Automotive Ventures and other strategic investors.
Plastomics, a St. Louis, MO-based based agricultural biotechnology company, announced the initial $5.8m close of its Series B funding. Backers included Fulcrum Global Capital, Lewis & Clark Partners, Skull Diamond and Heart Capital, Missouri Technology Corporation, and BioGenerator Ventures.
Formalize, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based compliance software company, raised €30m in Series B funding. The round was co-led by Acton Capital and BlackFin Capital Partners, with participation from West Hill Capital and CIBC Innovation Banking.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Polaris Partners, a Boston, MA-based venture capital firm, is raising $500m for its eleventh fund. According to a regulatory form filed with the SEC, Polaris Partners XI, L.P., has not raised any amount, yet. The document lists Alexandra Cantley, Brian Chee, Eileen McGuire, and Amy Schulman as people related to the raise.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
OpenAI completes its for-profit recapitalization
OpenAI completed its recapitalization by creating a for-profit corporation named OpenAI Group, which is legally controlled by the non-profit OpenAI Foundation that will appoint the company’s new board.
The new ownership structure gives the OpenAI Foundation a 26% stake, Microsoft will hold a 27% share, and the remaining 47% is reserved for investors and employees.
This deal also extends Microsoft’s IP rights to OpenAI models through 2032 and requires expert verification if the lab ever claims to have achieved artificial general intelligence.
Apple and Microsoft are now both worth more than $4T
Apple and Microsoft have both reached $4 trillion market valuations, marking the first time Apple has crossed that milestone.
Apple’s stock surge follows strong iPhone 17 sales, while Microsoft’s gains come from Azure’s AI-driven growth and its 27% OpenAI stake valued at $135 billion.
Alphabet is also nearing the mark, with a current market cap of $3.25 trillion.
Sam Altman says OpenAI will have a ‘legitimate AI researcher’ by 2028
Sam Altman said OpenAI aims to develop an intern-level research assistant by 2026 and a fully autonomous AI researcher by 2028.
The announcement came as OpenAI completed its transition to a public benefit corporation, allowing it to raise more capital for large-scale infrastructure and research.
Chief scientist Jakub Pachocki added that deep learning systems could reach superintelligence within a decade, with OpenAI dedicating massive compute resources to accelerate scientific breakthroughs.
Nvidia will build AI supercomputers for US Energy Department, wants to get back into China
Nvidia will build seven AI supercomputers for the US Department of Energy to support nuclear arsenal management and alternative energy research, including a major project with Oracle using 100,000 Blackwell chips.
CEO Jensen Huang said the US can lead the AI race only if it also engages China’s massive developer base, warning that cutting off access could harm long-term competitiveness.
Huang also announced partnerships with Nokia, Uber, and Palantir, a $1B investment in Nokia, and new US-based chip manufacturing efforts, as Nvidia shares rose 5% following the announcements.
Trump Media to enter prediction markets business
Trump Media & Technology Group will launch prediction markets on Truth Social in partnership with Crypto.com, allowing users to bet on outcomes across politics, sports, entertainment, and economics.
The feature, called Truth Predict, will begin beta testing soon before a full U.S. rollout, followed by global expansion once regulatory approvals are met.
CEO Devin Nunes said the platform aims to “democratize information,” while Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek called prediction markets a potential “multi-deca-billion dollar industry.”
Tesla eyes internal CEO candidates if Musk steps down over pay vote:
Tesla is reportedly considering internal candidates to replace Elon Musk if shareholders reject his $1 trillion pay package at next week’s annual meeting.
Board chair Robyn Denholm urged investors to approve the plan to keep Musk leading Tesla as it shifts focus to autonomous driving and humanoid robots.
With several senior departures in recent years, CFO Vaibhav Taneja and SVP of Automotive Tom Zhu are viewed as the top internal contenders for the CEO role.
OpenAI offers free ChatGPT Go for one year to all users in India
OpenAI will offer its ChatGPT Go plan free for one year to all users in India who sign up starting November 4, as part of a limited-time promotion.
The plan, normally priced under $5/month, provides 10x more usage than the free version, better memory, and support for image generation and file uploads.
India has become OpenAI’s second-largest market after the U.S., and the company plans to make more India-focused announcements at its DevDay Exchange in Bengaluru on November 4.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
PayPal partners with OpenAI to let users pay for their shopping within ChatGPT
Starting in 2026, PayPal will enable in-chat purchases by adopting OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol alongside “Instant Checkout,” so users can confirm order, shipping, and payment without leaving ChatGPT.
Customers can use PayPal wallets (with buyer/seller protection and dispute resolution) or cards via a separate payments API; beginning next year, PayPal merchants’ products become discoverable in ChatGPT with no new integrations.
PayPal is launching an agentic commerce suite for catalogs and payments across AI apps, and is rolling out enterprise ChatGPT access for employees while boosting engineers’ use of OpenAI coding tools.
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 - Cornell University | USA - Apply 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
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