☕ OpenAI invests $250M in Sam Altman’s startup & US to impose 25% tariff on Nvidia’s H200 AI chips headed to China
Taiwan has agreed to invest $250 billion directly into U.S. semiconductor & More.
Breaking News
OpenAI has made its largest investment in the $250 million seed round of Merge Labs, a brain–computer interface startup co-founded by Sam Altman and valued at $850 million. Merge Labs is developing non-invasive neural interfaces using molecules and ultrasound instead of implanted electrodes, positioning itself as a less invasive alternative to Neuralink, while signaling OpenAI’s growing ambition to bridge AI, hardware, and human cognition through shared scientific foundation models.
Taiwan has agreed to invest $250 billion directly into U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, energy, and AI production, with an additional $250 billion in credit guarantees from Taiwanese companies, under a new trade deal with the U.S. Department of Commerce. The move aligns with Washington’s push to onshore chip production—currently just ~10% domestic—and highlights how geopolitics, AI, and supply-chain security are converging into long-term industrial policy.
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🗞️ What Else Is Brewing
How to write a fundraising email: First email, follow-ups approved by leading VCs? (Link)
How to get warm intros to VCs without a network. (Link)
AI’s trillion-dollar opportunity: Context graphs. (Link)
Troy Kirwin on writing a memo for investors after your first meeting (Link)
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Investor data room superpack: everything you need to build a VC-ready data room (guide/templates) (Link)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
RouteSense, a Salt Lake City, UT-based provider of a data analytics company delivering predictive intelligence for the payments industry, raised ~$2M in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Redbud VC with participation from FOVC, Cultivation Capital, Service Provider Capital, and the University of Missouri AACE Fund.
SEED
Slips, a Los Angeles, CA-based peer-to-peer betting company, raised $3.5M in Series Seed funding. The round was led by Las Olas Capital and Sunset Bay Capital, with participation from investors including Andrew Schwartzberg, Co-Owner of the Charlotte Hornets and Leeds United English Football Club, alongside a group of strategic investors.
Atomic Insights, a San Diego, CA-based provider of money-movement and workflow automation tools for RIAs and family offices, raised $10M in Seed funding. The round was led by Aquiline with participation from Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures and existing investors.
AINA, a Limassol, Cyprus-based provider of an empathetic AI hiring platform, raised $1M in Seed funding. A non-public angel investor made the investment.
OTTO SPORT AI, a Minneapolis, MN-based youth sports platform provider, raised $16.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Mamba Growth Equity and Rally Ventures.
VoiceRun, a Cambridge, MA-based provider of an enterprise platform for Voice AI, raised $5.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Flybridge Capital Partners, with participation from RRE Ventures and Link Ventures.
Ammobia, a San Francisco, California-based developer of low-cost ammonia production technology, raised $7.5 million in seed funding. Backers included Shell Ventures, Air Liquide (ALIAD), MOL Switch, and Chevron Technology Ventures.
Titl, a Miami, FL-based proptech company supporting property title verification using AI and blockchain, raised $2.5M in Seed funding round. The round was led by Cofounders Capital and FIT Ventures.
Axol Biosciences, an Edinburgh, Scotland, UK-based provider of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technologies for drug discovery and disease research, raised $2.8M in funding. The round was led by BroadOak Capital Partners, with participation from Roslin Foundation.
Vivere Oncotherapies, a Berkeley, CA-based company developing cancer therapies that activate the immune system, raised over $10M in funding. Backers included YK Bioventures, Pillar, Berkeley Frontier Fund, Freeflow Ventures and The National Cancer Institute.
Musical AI, an Ottawa, Ontario, Canada-based provider of an attribution and rights management platform for generative AI across the music sector, raised $4.5M in funding. The round was led by Heavybit with participation from BDC and Build Ventures.
GROWTH
Pinch AI, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-powered post-purchase intelligence platform, raised $5M in funding. The round was led by Dynamo Ventures and Infinity Ventures with additional participation from Defined Capital and PayPal Ventures.
Higgsfield, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-native generative video platform provider, raised $80M in Series A extension funding. Backers included Accel, AI Capital Partners (Alpha Intelligence Capital’s US-based fund), and Menlo Ventures and others, bringing total Series A funding to more than $130M and valuing the company at more than $1.3 Billion.
Coxwave, a Seoul, South Korea-based provider of an AI product analytics platform, raised $5m in Pre-Series A funding. The round was led by L&S Venture Capital, with participation from existing investor KB Investment and new investors Hyundai Venture Investment, Hyundai Motor Company’s ZERO1NE Ventures, and KDB Capital.
GovDash, a NYC-based provider of an AI-driven enterprise resource planning platform for government contracting, raised $30M in Series B funding. The round was led by Mucker Capital and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI), with participation from Northzone and Y Combinator.
Olelo Intelligence, a Honolulu, HI-based provider of an AI sales coaching platform, raised $1M in funding. The round was led by Hawaiʻi Angels, which contributed $500k to the financing. Clif Purkiser led the deal for the investor group.
Mytra, a Brisbane, CA-based company building the operating system for supply chains, raised $120M in Series C funding. The round was led by Avenir Growth, with participation from Kivu Ventures, Liquid 2, D. E. Shaw, Offline Ventures, Eclipse, Greenoaks, Abstract Ventures, Promus Ventures, Lineage and RyderVentures.
Emversity, a Bengaluru, India-based provider of an education embedded training and employability platform operated by Beyond Odds Technologies, has raised $30M (₹271 crore) in a Series A funding. The round was led by Premji Invest, with participation from Lightspeed and Z47, bringing total funding raised to $46M.
MARS Bioimaging, a Christchurch, New Zealand-based medical device company, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by Pacific Channel and consisted in two tranches: $7.6M in an initial close, followed by $7.4M in new capital in 2026, for a total of $15M.
Cyb3r Operations, a London, UK-based provider of continuous third-party cyber risk visibility solutions, raised $5.4m in financing. The round was led by Octopus Ventures, with follow-on investment from Pi Labs, bringing total funding to $6.75m.
Quadric, a Burlingame, CA-based company that leverages an inference engine that empowers on-device AI chips, raised $30M in Series C Funding. The round was led by ACCELERATE Fund.
Midnite, a London, UK-based sportsbook and casino operator, raised $35M in a Series C funding. The round was led by Raine Partners IV. Existing investors Play Ventures, Discerning Capital, Makers Fund and Big Bets also participated.
Project Eleven, a NYC-based company which specializes in post-quantum security and migration for digital assets, raised $20M Series A funding. The round was led by Castle Island Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Fin Capital, Variant, Quantonation, Nebular, Formation, Lattice Fund, Satstreet Ventures, Nascent Ventures, and Balaji Srinivasan.
Meld, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a network for accessing digital assets and stablecoins, raised $7M in funding. The round was led by Lightspeed Faction, with participation from F-Prime, Yolo Investments, and Scytale Digital.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates
AppWorks, a Taipei-based startup accelerator, has closed Fund IV at $165 million, less than half its original $360 million target. The fund focuses on AI and Web3 startups across Asia and is backed by Taiwan’s National Development Fund, Malaysia’s Jelawang Capital, and Korea Venture Investment Corporation.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
The US imposes 25% tariff on Nvidia’s H200 AI chips headed to China
The US has announced a 25% tariff on advanced AI semiconductors, including Nvidia’s H200 chips, when they are produced outside the US and routed through the country before being exported to China.
The move formalizes the Trump administration’s earlier approval allowing Nvidia to sell H200 chips to vetted Chinese customers, with the company welcoming the decision despite the added tariff.
Strong demand from Chinese firms is pushing Nvidia to consider ramping up production, even as China weighs new rules on how many foreign chips its companies can import while building domestic alternatives.
OpenAI launches ChatGPT Translate to rival Google Translate
OpenAI has released ChatGPT Translate, a new standalone translation tool that works like Google Translate but adds AI-powered features to help users adjust their translated text for different purposes.
The tool offers one-tap prompt options that let users reshape translations to sound more fluent, formal, simple for children, or suited for academic readers, then opens ChatGPT for deeper changes.
ChatGPT Translate currently lacks key features Google offers, including document uploads, website translation, real-time conversations, and broad language support, with Google backing over 50 more languages total.
Microsoft and Meta pay Wikipedia for AI training data
Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and AI startups Perplexity and Mistral AI are now paying Wikipedia through its enterprise product to access content for training their AI models.
Tech companies scraping Wikipedia’s 65 million articles for free has increased server demand and costs for the non-profit, which relies mainly on small public donations to operate.
The Wikimedia Foundation spent time developing the right features to move companies from free access to a paid commercial platform that handles their large-scale AI training needs.
The AI lab revolving door spins ever faster
Talent churn across top AI labs is accelerating: three senior leaders recently exited Thinking Machines Lab and were quickly hired by OpenAI, with reports suggesting more departures to OpenAI are imminent.
Anthropic continues to attract safety and alignment talent from OpenAI, including senior researcher Andrea Vallone, who will work under former OpenAI alignment lead Jan Leike.
OpenAI is also hiring beyond research, bringing in senior operators like Max Stoiber from Shopify to work on a rumored OpenAI operating system, underscoring how intense competition for elite AI talent has become.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Publishers seek to join lawsuit against Google over AI training
Major publishers, including Hachette Book Group and Cengage Group, asked a California court to join an existing class action lawsuit accusing Google of using copyrighted books and textbooks to train its AI models without permission.
The publishers argue Google engaged in large-scale copyright infringement to build its AI systems, including its Gemini models, and say their involvement would strengthen the case and potentially raise damages.
The case is part of a broader wave of lawsuits against AI companies over training data, following similar actions by authors, artists, and publishers across the industry.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities
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VC Fellowship - 1752 VC | USA - Apply Here
Executive Assistant - RET Venture | USA - Apply Here
Analyst - Griffin Gaming Partner | USA - Apply Here
VC Associate - Proglobal Search | UAE - Apply Here
Intern - Prologis Venture | USA - Apply Here
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