☕ OpenAI partners with Apple supplier Luxshare to build AI device & xAI launches Grok 4 Fast.
Neuralink plans a brain speech trial & Meta CTO explains why the smart glasses demos failed.
If you convince yourself you’re well rested, your brain will actually perform better.
Sleep quality doesn’t matter as much as the delusion does. Fake it till you make it, even in REM.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: 40 decks that raised $350M, AI coding paradox, LP power rise, serial founders dominate, OpenAI’s $1B markets, PMF in vertical SaaS, why VCs chase hype.
OpenAI partners with Apple supplier Luxshare to build AI device.
Meta CTO explains why the smart glasses demos failed.
Neuralink plans a brain speech trial.
Nvidia eyes $500M investment into self-driving startup.
xAI launches Grok 4 Fast.
iPhone 17 may be an unexpected early hit for Apple.
Apple brings AI-powered blood pressure notifications to Watch Series 11.
Nvidia spent $900M+ to hire Enfabrica CEO and license its tech.
Trump says Murdochs, Ellison, Dell likely in TikTok U.S. spinoff deal.
Silicon Valley bets big on RL environments to train AI agents.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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DAILY PICKS
🗞️ What else is brewing
40 real startup pitch decks that raised $350M+ (Including leading startups decks)
The productivity paradox of AI coding assistants.
LPs have more negotiating power than ever before.
Pitchbook Data: Why serial founders dominate VC fundraising in 2025
OpenAI just revealed billion-dollar AI markets: OpenAI’s 1.5M chat study
How to navigate PMF in Vertical SaaS (stage by stage).
Why do VCs pass on profitable startups and chase hype instead?
What are the right metrics to measure generative AI’s success?
Where to post your startup and get first users.
Excel Template: Early Stage Startup Financial Model For Fundraising
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Extend, a NYC-based provider of a spend and expense management platform, raised $20M in additional capital. The round was led by B Capital, with participation from March Capital, Point72 Ventures, FinTech Collective, and new investor, Commerce Ventures.
Alchemy, a Kitchener, Ontario-based advanced materials and nanotechnology company, raised $6M in funding. Backers included NameSilo Technologies, Pathfinder Asset Management, Pembroke Management, and other investors.
Numeral, a San Francisco, CA-based AI-powered sales tax compliance platform, raised $35M in Series B funding. The round was led by Mayfield, with participation from Benchmark, Uncork Capital, Y Combinator, and Mantis.
Lake.com, a Toronto, Canada-based vacation-rental marketplace built for life by the water, raised a $2.6M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), with participation from angel investors.
Catena, a NYC-based provider of an API for telematics and logistics data, today announced a $5M Seed funding. The round was led by Floating Point, with participation from Shaper Capital, Teamworthy, Plug and Play, SpringTime Ventures, Liquid 2, Blue Moon, Blue Impact Supply Chain Ventures, and others.
Kilde, a Singapore-based provider of a licensed private credit investment platform, raised USD 1.5M in funding. The round was led by Purple Ventures with participation from existing investors.
Grvt, a Panama City, Panama-based DEX (decentralized exchange) company for onchain financial privacy, raised $19M in funding. The round was led by ZKsync, Further Ventures and EigenCloud.
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.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
BNVT Capital, a global venture capital firm, launched its debut $150M fund. The vehicle will invest in AI-first and technology-driven companies solving humanity’s most pressing challenges. Founded by Managing Partners Rory Mounsey-Heysham (ex-Gates Foundation), Chris Corbishley (ex-Hedosophia) and General Partner Nasir Alsharif (Executive Chairman of Sackville Capital, ex-Goldman Sachs and Investcorp) and seeded by Sackville Capital, a global investment firm based in London
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
OpenAI partners with Apple supplier Luxshare to build AI device:
OpenAI signed a deal with Apple device assembler Luxshare to manufacture a pocket-sized consumer gadget designed to work natively with its AI models.
The project follows OpenAI’s $6.5B acquisition of io Products, founded by ex-Apple designer Jony Ive, and could challenge smartphones by offering an AI-first interaction experience.
OpenAI has also approached Goertek, another Apple supplier, for speaker components, signaling plans to scale production and enter the consumer electronics market.
Meta CTO explains why the smart glasses demos failed:
Meta's CTO said the Live AI assistant failed because the voice command activated every pair of glasses in the building, creating a DDoS attack against their own development servers.
The second glitch, a failed video call, was blamed on an obscure bug that made the display sleep the instant a notification arrived, preventing the answer tool from ever appearing.
Andrew Bosworth stated he isn't concerned about the incidents, framing them as demo malfunctions instead of product failures, and confirmed the specific bug for the calling issue is now fixed.
Neuralink plans a brain speech trial:
Neuralink plans to begin a new US clinical trial in October using its implant to translate a person's imagined speech directly into text under an FDA investigational device exemption.
The study aims to help people with speech impairments by picking up signals from the patient's speech cortex, which is a more direct method than controlling virtual keyboards with thought.
Company president DJ Seo said that in about three to four years, a healthy person could get a Neuralink implant to speak with LLM models at the speed of thought.
Nvidia eyes $500M investment into self-driving startup:
Nvidia has signed a letter of intent to invest $500 million in U.K.-based self-driving startup Wayve as part of its £2B AI investment pledge in the country.
Wayve, which raised $1.05B in its Series C in May 2024, develops end-to-end self-learning autonomous driving systems that don’t rely on HD maps.
The company unveiled its gen 3 platform this week, built on Nvidia’s Drive AGX Thor, enabling Level 4 driverless features for city streets and highways.
xAI launches Grok 4 Fast:
xAI claims its Grok 4 Fast has the best price-to-intelligence ratio among available models, running nearly 47 times cheaper than the company's prior Grok 4 for comparable results.
The new model features a two-million token context window and a unified architecture that integrates reasoning with non-reasoning modes, helping developers adjust the computational effort for their tasks.
This AI was trained with reinforcement learning to autonomously decide when to use external resources, such as performing code execution or web browsing to synthesize information in real time.
iPhone 17 may be an unexpected early hit for Apple:
A Chinese government subsidy for electronics under $823 is fueling massive pre-orders for the standard iPhone 17, which the company strategically set at the 5,999 yuan price limit.
After seeing forecasts exceeded, Apple reportedly told suppliers like Luxshare to increase output of the $799 phone by up to 40%, a reversal of early Pro model sales trends.
Buyers are more wary of paying over $1,000, so the base iPhone 17 is more compelling with its upgrades to the chip, display, storage, and camera systems.
Apple brings AI-powered blood pressure notifications to Watch Series 11
Apple Watch Series 11 (and Series 9+) can now notify users of potential high blood pressure, using AI models applied to existing heart sensor data instead of a traditional cuff.
The FDA-approved feature was trained on data from 100,000 study participants and validated with a 2,000-person trial, but it only alerts users — it doesn’t directly measure blood pressure.
Rolling out to 150+ countries, the feature aims to improve early detection of hypertension, though experts caution it should complement, not replace, standard medical checks.
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 Murdochs, Ellison, Dell likely in TikTok U.S. spinoff deal
President Trump said Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch are “probably” joining the investor group backing TikTok’s U.S. spinoff, alongside Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Dell’s Michael Dell.
The restructured TikTok would have six of seven board seats held by Americans, with U.S.-controlled algorithms; ByteDance would keep <20% ownership.
New investors include Oracle, Andreessen Horowitz, and Silver Lake, with Oracle overseeing app security; deal signing is expected in the coming days.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
Silicon Valley bets big on RL environments to train AI agents
AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are turning to reinforcement learning (RL) environments — simulated workspaces that mimic real software tasks — to train next-gen AI agents.
Startups such as Mechanize and Prime Intellect are emerging as key players, while incumbents like Scale AI, Mercor, and Surge are racing to adapt their data-labeling businesses to environments.
Investors hope one of these startups will become the “Scale AI for environments,” but challenges like reward hacking, high compute costs, and uncertain scalability remain.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
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VP - Marketing & Communications - Transition VC | India - Apply Here
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