Breaking News
OpenAI is keeping its largest planned frontier reinforcement-learning run on hold while strengthening its safety framework following the Hugging Face security breach. Some Astra and cybersecurity workloads also remain paused, while a new monitoring system will watch AI reasoning and tool actions and alert human safety teams within 30 minutes of suspicious behavior.
Chinese space company LandSpace successfully landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket back on land, marking China’s first ground recovery of an orbital-class booster using landing legs. The milestone brings China closer to SpaceX-style reusable rockets, which could dramatically reduce launch costs if LandSpace proves it can repeatedly refurbish and refly the booster.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Space, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-native distributed filesystem, raised $2.4M in Pre-Seed financing. The round was led by a16z Speedrun, with participation from Golden Ventures, Northside Ventures, and angel investors.
SEED
Hypercubic, a San Francisco, CA-based AI infrastructure startup developing a software-driven mainframe modernization platform, raised $5.3M in Seed funding. The round was led by CIV, with participation from Y Combinator, Afore Capital, Multimodal Ventures, Pioneer Fund, Epsilon Ventures, Unpopular Ventures, and angel investors.
Medly AI, a London, UK-based provider of an AI tutor for exam preparation, raised $8M in Seed funding. The round was led by Felix Capital, with participation from Eka Ventures, Ada Ventures, Andrey Dobrynin, Al Giles, Jean Hammond, and Hector Mason.
GROWTH
Etched, a San Jose, CA-based provider of AI inference cluster solutions, raised $700M in financing at a $21B valuation. The round was led by Jane Street, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, Bain Capital Ventures, Neo, Primary, Stripes, Positive Sum, and Blackstone.
RockRose Risk, a Napa, CA-based insurance brokerage offering property owners discounts for wildfire mitigation, raised $12.5M in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Crosslink Capital and Congruent Ventures, with participation from Nuveen Real Estate.
Ours Privacy, a Houston, TX-based provider of a HIPAA-compliant customer data platform for healthcare marketers, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by Lightbank and Health Velocity Capital, with participation from Rock Health, Lakehouse, TMV, Switch Ventures, Starfire Ventures, GreyMatter, and others.
Flip, a Stuttgart, Germany-based AI-native employee experience platform for frontline workers, raised $25M in new funding. Backers included Notion Capital, HV Capital, L-Bank, and a group of angel and institutional investors.
Network Bio, a Boston, MA-based biotechnology company building disease-specific AI models from human biological data, raised $50M in financing. Backers included Section 32, Thiel Bio, Founders Fund, Breyer Capital, Blue Venture Fund, JSL Health Capital, and other life sciences and AI funds.
Queen One, a New York City-based provider of an AI-governed commerce CRM platform, raised $25M in new funding. Backers included Mercury Fund, Full In, Connecticut Innovations, CP Overture, Charge Ventures, Inspired Capital, and existing investors.
ALSO, a Palo Alto, CA-based technology company building small electric vehicles, raised $150M in Series D financing. The round was led by Prysm Capital, with participation from Eclipse, Greenoaks, and MVP Ventures.
Renata Medical, a Newport Beach, CA-based medical technology company focused on improving care for children with congenital heart disease, raised $25M in Series D financing. The round was led by ARCHIMED, with participation from existing investors.
Singular Photonics, an Edinburgh, UK-based fabless semiconductor company developing SPAD-based image sensors, raised $2.15M in funding. The round was led by ACF Investors, with participation from Wren Capital, Cambridge Angels, Scottish Enterprise, Quantum Exponential, and Old College Capital.
Birdsview, a Bergen, Norway-based startup developing non-destructive concrete scanning and infrastructure analytics technology, raised €3.7M in funding. Backers included Sarsia, Butterfly Ventures, Proptechfonden, Kiilto Ventures, Nordic Makers, Momentum, Eviny Ventures, Farvatn Venture, and other investors.
Boom, an Austin, TX-based provider of an AI-native leasing operating system and fintech platform for real estate, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by S3 Ventures, with participation from Mischief VC, Starting Line VC, Company Ventures, and Gilgamesh Ventures.
Rillet, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-native ERP platform for finance teams, raised $100M in Series C funding at a $1B valuation. The round was led by ICONIQ, with participation from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Global Equities, Bain Capital Ventures, Oak HC/FT, Battery Ventures, FirstMark, Scale Venture Partners, and Creandum.
Velaura AI, a Santa Clara, CA-based provider of an ultra-low-power silicon and software platform, raised $110M in Series A financing. The round was led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from Capricorn Investment Group, Prosperity7 Ventures, Mayfield, Maverick Silicon, MARA, Premji Invest, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and StepStone Group.
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DAILY PICKS
🗞️ Must read post
The term sheet terms founders should actually fight: Most founders negotiate valuation hardest, but the terms that quietly matter more often sit elsewhere in the document. This piece shows founders how to understand what investors can and can’t move, where the real leverage is, and why option pools, protective provisions, board structure, and pro rata rights can shape the company long after the round closes.
Before VCs invest, they’ll call your customers. But what do they really ask?: Before writing a check, serious investors often call your customers to understand usage, renewal intent, defensibility, buying process, and whether your revenue is truly repeatable. This piece shows founders how to manage that process without burning customer trust - from gating intros to choosing the right references and framing the raise as a decision they are making.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Third Mind, a Menlo Park, CA-based newly formed venture capital firm, is raising its first fund. According to a SEC form, Third Mind I, LP, has a target of $25m with $5.7m already raised. The document lists Antoine Nivard (formerly at Blank Ventures) as the person related to the raise.
Reach Capital, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, raised $265 million for its fifth fund. The firm will invest in pre-seed through Series A startups building AI applications across learning, healthcare, and the future of work, with plans to back roughly 50 companies.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Stripe’s $7.5B OpenRouter deal is really a bet on controlling AI spending
Stripe confirmed its acquisition of OpenRouter, reportedly paying $7.5 billion — a huge jump from the AI startup’s $1.3 billion valuation just three months earlier.
OpenRouter gives developers one gateway to hundreds of AI models. For Stripe, that could extend its role from processing incoming payments to managing how companies spend money on AI models and tokens.
The deal could also give Stripe valuable visibility into AI demand and more leverage across frontier labs and cloud providers, positioning it deeper inside the financial infrastructure of the AI economy.
OpenAI challenges Anthropic with new enterprise privacy protections
OpenAI is previewing Private Safety Processing, which monitors enterprise AI usage for potential abuse across multiple conversations while retaining none of the customer’s underlying data.
The system can identify malicious behavior spread across sessions and send OpenAI a narrowly defined safety signal, without requiring human reviewers to inspect customer conversations.
The approach contrasts with Anthropic’s policy for certain advanced models, which can retain customer sessions for 30 days for safety monitoring — turning privacy into another competitive battleground between the AI rivals.
Google adds new AI study tools across Search and Gemini
Google is turning Search and Gemini into more complete learning platforms with AI-generated interactive visuals, 3D simulations, personalized quizzes, flashcards, study notebooks, and a dedicated student hub.
Search can now generate customized quizzes and interactive explanations, while Lens will help students analyze photographed problems, spot mistakes, and understand concepts. Students can also upload notes, PDFs, slides, and other materials to generate study documents.
Gemini adds multi-step research that can run in the background and then be discussed through Gemini Live, alongside interactive 3D simulations. The broader push puts Google in more direct competition with OpenAI and AI education tools like Knowt and Gauth.
Samsung raises chipmaking prices by up to 15% as AI demand tightens supply
Samsung has raised prices for some advanced foundry services by 10%–15%, particularly for U.S. and Chinese customers, as strong AI demand fills capacity across leading chipmakers.
Its 4nm SF4 production line has been running at full capacity, while demand from customers including Qualcomm, Broadcom, Nvidia, Tesla, and Apple is helping strengthen Samsung’s foundry business.
With TSMC capacity constrained, Samsung is gaining pricing power and could return its foundry division to profitability sooner than expected. Google is also reportedly discussing using Samsung’s SF4 process.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Cognition CEO denies report of SpaceX acquisition talks
Bloomberg reported that SpaceX had attempted to acquire AI coding startup Cognition, but CEO Scott Wu publicly denied the claim, saying Cognition “is not for sale” and the companies haven’t held acquisition talks.
SpaceX recently completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor as it expands aggressively into AI coding. Bloomberg also reported that SpaceX and Cognition could still explore a computing partnership.
Cognition remains one of the largest independent AI coding startups, raising $1 billion at a $25 billion valuation in May. It is reportedly discussing another round that could value it at $40 billion.
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