☕ OpenAI plans 30 million phones in two years & Snap ends its $400M partnership with Perplexity.
DeepSeek could reach a $45B valuation in its first funding round & Google tests Remy 24/7 AI agent.
Breaking News
OpenAI is reportedly planning an AI-powered smartphone and could ship up to 30 million units within two years, signaling its ambition to move beyond ChatGPT into owning consumer hardware and AI agents directly. The bigger play is control: OpenAI believes the future AI assistant needs access to real-time personal context — from communication to location and activity — something only a tightly integrated device can provide.
Anthropic has signed a massive infrastructure deal with SpaceX to access over 220,000 Nvidia chips at the Colossus 1 facility, dramatically expanding Claude’s compute power for coding and enterprise AI. The partnership shows how the AI race is no longer just about better models — it’s increasingly about securing enormous amounts of energy, chips, and infrastructure before competitors do.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Jetty, a Montreal-based AI infrastructure startup, raised over $2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by AQC Capital and Hidden Layers Capital.
Davis, a Paris-based AI-native real estate platform, raised $5.5M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Heartcore Capital and Balderton Capital, with participation from Entrepreneurs First and angels from Hugging Face, Supabase, and SpaceMaker.
SEED
SageOx, a Seattle-based AI team infrastructure startup, raised $15M in Seed funding. The round was led by Canaan Partners, with participation from A.Capital, Pioneer Square Labs, and Founders’ Co-op.
District, a Los Angeles-based AI commerce platform, raised $14.7M in Seed funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kindred Ventures, with participation from Greylock, SV Angel, and 20VC.
InstaSwitch, a NYC-based business banking infrastructure startup, raised $4.7M in Seed funding. The round was led by Chicago Ventures, with participation from Better Tomorrow Ventures, Panache Ventures, and executives from Plaid and PayPal.
Altara, a San Francisco-based scientific intelligence platform for manufacturing and R&D, raised $7M in Seed funding. The round was led by Greylock, with participation from Neo, BoxGroup, and Liquid 2 Ventures.
Signadori Bio, a Paris-based biopharma company, raised an undisclosed amount in Seed extension funding. Backers included Taiho Ventures, Sofinnova Partners, and Invivo Partners.
GROWTH
OpenTrade, a London-based stablecoin infrastructure platform, raised $17M in strategic funding. The round was led by Mercury Fund and Notion Capital, with participation from a16z Crypto and others.
Astranis, a San Francisco-based satellite company, raised $455M in equity and debt financing. The round included a $300M Series E co-led by Snowpoint Ventures and Franklin Templeton, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz.
MOSH, a Los Angeles-based brain health nutrition brand, raised $13M in Series A funding. The round was led by Main Street Advisors.
Modicus Prime, an Austin-based AI compliance platform, raised $4.5M in additional funding. The round was led by Frist Cressey Ventures.
Vori, a San Francisco-based grocery operating system startup, raised $22M in Series B funding. The round was led by Cherryrock Capital, with participation from Greylock Partners.
Boost Security, a Montreal-based AI-native SDLC security platform, raised $4M in additional funding. Backers included White Star Capital and others.
Saltbox, an Atlanta-based logistics and operations platform, raised an undisclosed amount in Series C funding. The round was led by Packard Capital.
Nyobolt, a Cambridge-based battery technology company, raised $60M in funding. The round was led by Symbotic, with participation from IQ Capital and others.
Xbow, a Seattle-based autonomous offensive security company, raised $35M in additional Series C funding. Backers included Accenture Ventures, NVentures, Samsung Ventures, and others.
CellCentric, a Cambridge-based biotech company, raised $220M in Series D funding. The round was led by Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners.
Kanvas Biosciences, a Princeton-based spatial biology company, raised $48M in Series A funding. The round was led by DCVC and Lions Capital LLC.
Tessera Labs, a San Jose-based multi-agent AI platform startup, raised $60M in funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
Scout Space, a Virginia-based space awareness technology company, raised up to $18M in Series A funding. The round was led by Washington Harbour Partners.
QuantWare, a Netherlands-based quantum processor company, raised €152M in Series B funding. Backers included Intel Capital and In-Q-Tel.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto-focused arm, a16z crypto, has raised a new $2.2B fund to continue backing blockchain and crypto startups despite the recent slowdown in the crypto market. The U.S.-based firm, led by partners including Chris Dixon and Ali Yahya, has backed companies like Coinbase, Kalshi, and Solana Foundation, and says the new fund will stay fully focused on crypto entrepreneurs.
Haun Ventures, a Menlo Park, CA-based venture capital firm, closed Fund II, at over $1 billion. Institutional investors include sovereign wealth funds, endowments, foundations, pensions, financial institutions, and other global organizations.
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KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
DeepSeek could reach a $45B valuation in its first funding round
DeepSeek is reportedly in talks to raise its first external funding round, with its valuation jumping from $20B to nearly $45B within weeks.
The company gained global attention after building powerful AI models at a fraction of the compute cost of rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic while keeping many models open-weight.
China is now backing DeepSeek as a strategic AI player, with state-linked investors and firms like Alibaba and Tencent reportedly exploring investments to strengthen domestic AI infrastructure and reduce reliance on U.S. chips.
Snap ends its $400M partnership with Perplexity
Snap confirmed it has ended its partnership with Perplexity, cancelling a deal that would have integrated Perplexity’s AI search directly into Snapchat’s chat interface.
The agreement, announced in late 2025, was worth $400M in cash and equity over one year, but Snap said both companies “amicably ended” the relationship after failing to agree on a broader rollout strategy.
Despite the breakup, Snapchat’s user growth remained strong, with daily active users reaching 483 million and monthly users hitting 965 million, while Snap continues investing heavily in AI-powered AR filters and smart eyewear products.
How Elon Musk left OpenAI, according to Greg Brockman
Elon Musk reportedly demanded full control of OpenAI during tense 2017 negotiations about turning the nonprofit into a for-profit structure, but co-founders including Greg Brockman and Sam Altman refused to give him unilateral power.
Brockman testified that Musk became furious during one meeting, grabbed a painting gifted to him by Ilya Sutskever, stormed out of the room, and later stopped funding OpenAI after the founders rejected his vision for the company’s governance and future.
The courtroom testimony revealed how disagreements over control, funding, and AI commercialization eventually fractured OpenAI’s founding team, setting the stage for today’s lawsuit where Musk claims OpenAI betrayed its nonprofit mission while OpenAI argues Musk mainly wanted control of the company.
SpaceX could spend up to $119B on a massive AI chip factory in Texas
SpaceX is considering building a huge semiconductor manufacturing project called “Terafab” in Texas, with an initial estimated investment of $55 billion that could eventually scale to $119 billion across multiple phases.
The factory would reportedly manufacture advanced chips for AI servers, satellites, autonomous vehicles, robots, and future space-based data centers, with Elon Musk saying current chip production is not enough for the growing AI and robotics demand across SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla.
The project would involve collaboration with Intel and is part of Musk’s broader strategy to secure massive AI computing power for Grok and future infrastructure, including the idea of building data centers in space.
Publishers sue Meta over AI book piracy
Five book publishers — Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier, and Cengage — along with author Scott Turow, have filed a class action lawsuit accusing Meta and Mark Zuckerberg of pirating copyrighted books to train the Llama AI platform.
The complaint claims Zuckerberg personally authorized and encouraged the infringement, saying Meta reproduced and distributed millions of copyrighted works without permission or compensation, knowing the conduct violated copyright law.
Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold pointed to past rulings that training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use, echoing a recent Anthropic case where a judge rejected copyright infringement but floated piracy as a separate path to damages.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Google tests Remy 24/7 AI agent
Google is testing an AI agent codenamed Remy that aims to turn the Gemini app into a 24/7 personal assistant for work, school, and daily life by taking actions on a user’s behalf.
According to Business Insider, Remy is built deep into Google’s ecosystem and can monitor things that matter to users, handle complex tasks proactively, and learn preferences over time, positioning it against OpenClaw, which OpenAI acquired.
Remy is currently in a “dogfooding” stage with employees testing it internally, and while no launch date is set, Google’s I/O event on May 19-20 could serve as the debut for the new agent.
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