☕ OpenAI plans to raise $100 Billion, Meta to launch new image, video, and coding focused AI models & Court restores Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package.
Blue Origin sends first wheelchair user to space & China’s ByteDance signs deal to form joint venture
📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: VC outreach email templates, VC career resources, enterprise GenAI report, 40 top pitch decks, Ramp AI adoption index, conviction insights, modern product playbook.
Krafton, the maker of BGMI and PUBG launching a $670M fund.
OpenAI lets users fine-tune ChatGPT’s enthusiasm and tone.
Meta readies new image, video, and coding focused AI models for 2026.
OpenAI reportedly seeks $100B raise at an $830B valuation.
China’s ByteDance signs deal to form joint venture to avoid US TikTok ban.
Google sues SerpApi for scraping search results.
Court restores Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package.
Blue Origin sends first wheelchair user to space.
Cursor acquires Graphite to pair AI code writing with AI code review.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
Investor outreach email sequence pack: 20+ proven templates used & approved by VCs. (Link)
All-in-one resources for aspiring venture capitalists. (Link)
12-page report on the state of generative AI in the enterprise. (Link)
40 real startup pitch decks that raised $350M+ (Including leading startups decks) (Link)
Ramp AI Index: Monthly measurement of AI adoption by American businesses. (Link)
A few thoughts on conviction. (Link)
A blueprint for modern product development. (Link)
The skills and habits aspiring CEOs need to build. (Link)
Pricing lessons from working with 30+ seed and series A B2B startups. (Link)
Private capital predictions for 2026. (Link)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Speed1, Inc., a Dubai, UAE-based builder of Bitcoin and stablecoin payment infrastructure, raised $8m in funding. The round was co-led by Tether and Ego Death Capital.
Peripheral Labs, a Toronto, Canada-based developer of an AI-driven neural rendering platform for immersive sports replays, raised $3.6m in seed funding. The round was led by Khosla Ventures with participation from Daybreak Capital, Entrepreneurs First, Transpose Platform, and various angel investors.
Ciphero, a NYC-based based developer of an AI verification and security platform for enterprise environments, raised $2.5m in pre-seed funding. The round was co-led by Sovereign’s Capital and Chingona Ventures, with participation from Lotus Venture Partners, BlueWing Ventures, Bullpen Capital, Everywhere Ventures, Hustle Fund, Propeller, Viaka, and Fc Centripetal.
Givefront, a San Francisco, CA-based fintech startup focused on advancing spend management tools for nonprofits, raised $2m in seed funding. The round was led by Script Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, C3 Ventures, and Phoenix Fund.
EtherealX, a Bangalore, India-based developer of a reusable medium-lift launch vehicle, raised $21m in Series A funding. The round was co-led by TDK Ventures and BIG Capital, with participation from Accel.
Atavistik Bio, a Cambridge, MA-based developer of selective allosteric small molecule therapeutics, raised $120m in Series B financing. The round was led by Nextech Invest and The Column Group with participation from Lux Capital and new investor Regeneron Ventures.
StretchSense, an Edinburgh, Scotland, UK-based developer of high-tech data capture gloves for extended reality (XR) training, raised $2.3m in funding. The round was led by PXN Ventures, which was supported by Scottish Enterprise.
NovoLINC, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based developer of advanced thermal interface material (TIM) solutions for high-performance computing, raised an undisclosed amount in a new funding round. The round was co-led by Fathom Fund and TDK Ventures, with participation from current investors Foothill Ventures, M Ventures, Carnegie Mellon University, and new investor Hitachi Ventures.
Galbot, a Beijing, China-based developer of embodied AI and general-purpose humanoid robots, raised over $300m in funding. The round attracted investors from China, Singapore, and the Middle East, bringing Galbot’s valuation to $3 billion.
Neurable, a Boston, Massachusetts-based developer of noninvasive brain-computer interface (BCI) technology designed for everyday life, raised $35m in Series A funding. The round was led by Spectrum Moonshot Fund, with participation from existing investors including Pace Ventures.
FINNY, a New York City-based developer of an AI-powered prospecting and marketing platform for financial advisors, raised $17m in Series A funding. Venrock led the round with participation from former Vanguard chairman and CEO William McNabb, Activant, Altruist’s Jason Wenk, and existing investors Y Combinator, Maple VC, and Crossbeam Ventures.
LatentForce, a Bengaluru, India-based developer of an AI-native platform for large-scale enterprise code migrations and software modernization, raised $1.7m in Seed funding. Ideaspring Capital and Yali Capital co-led the round.
Beycome, a Miami, Florida-based developer of a direct-to-consumer real estate platform, raised $2.5 million in Seed funding. InsurTech Fund led the round with participation from Pivot Ventures, the Florida Opportunity Fund, RedShift Capital, Neer Venture Capital, Kima Ventures, Ignite Venture, Founders Future, and several strategic investors and angels.
NextFoods, a Boulder, CO-based food and beverage solutions provider, raised $10M in Series 3 funding. The round was led by ECP Growth.
Enlightra, a Lausanne, Switzerland based deeptech startup building chip-scale multiwavelength lasers for future data transmission, raised a total of $15m in funding. Backers included Y Combinator, Runa Capital, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Protocol Labs, Halo Labs, Asymmetry Ventures and TRAC VC, among others.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
FemHealth Ventures, a Short Hills, NJ-based women’s health-focused venture capital firm, closed FemHealth Ventures Fund II, at $65m. The fund received support from existing limited partners alongside new investors. The raise brought the firm’s assets under management to $100m across two funds. FemHealth Ventures Fund I, launched in 2021, is recognized as a top-decile performer across DPI and IRR according to Carta and Pitchbook databases.
Krafton, the maker of BGMI and PUBG, is launching a $670M fund for Indian startups, in collaboration with Naver and Mirae Asset. Called the Unicorn Growth Fund, it will be managed by Mirae Asset Venture India and focus on tech startups across gaming, fintech, and content. Krafton has already invested $200M+ in India and now plans to double down with this financial (not strategic) vehicle, starting operations in Jan 2026.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
OpenAI lets users fine-tune ChatGPT’s enthusiasm and tone
OpenAI has added new personalization controls that let users directly adjust ChatGPT’s warmth, enthusiasm, emoji usage, and formatting style (headers and lists).
The settings, found in the Personalization menu, can be set to More, Less, or Default, and build on existing tone presets like Professional, Candid, and Quirky.
The update follows ongoing debate over ChatGPT’s personality, after OpenAI rolled back a version seen as overly flattering and later warmed up GPT-5 in response to user feedback and academic criticism around addictive or overly affirming chatbot behavior.
Meta readies new image, video, and coding focused AI models for 2026
Meta is developing a new image and video model codenamed Mango and a text model called Avocado inside its Superintelligence Lab, with plans to release them in the first half of 2026.
The effort is led by Alexandr Wang, with a focus on stronger coding ability and world models that can reason and act using visual understanding.
The roadmap comes as Meta tries to catch up with rivals like OpenAI and Google after internal restructures, leadership exits, and the departure of chief AI scientist Yann LeCun.
OpenAI reportedly seeks $100B raise at an $830B valuation
OpenAI is in talks to raise up to $100B in a new round that could value the company at ~$830B, according to the WSJ, with a target close by the end of Q1 next year.
The raise would help fund massive compute and inference costs as competition intensifies with rivals like Anthropic and Google, and as OpenAI accelerates model releases and developer tooling.
Investor appetite has cooled amid concerns about debt-heavy AI spending by giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle, plus chip supply constraints — raising questions about how sustainable the AI capex boom will be.
China’s ByteDance signs deal to form joint venture to avoid US TikTok ban
ByteDance has signed binding agreements to hand control of TikTok’s US operations to a new joint venture, a key step toward avoiding a nationwide ban after years of national security scrutiny.
The new entity will be majority owned by US and global investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX, which together will hold 80.1%, while ByteDance retains a 19.9% stake.
TikTok says the joint venture will operate independently with authority over US data protection, algorithm security, and content moderation, with Oracle acting as the trusted security partner storing US user data on domestic cloud infrastructure.
Google sues SerpApi for scraping search results
Google is suing SerpApi for allegedly bypassing security protections to scrape search results and sell access to licensed content that the search giant pays third parties to use in features.
The complaint accuses SerpApi of ignoring website directives by disguising crawlers, rotating fake bot identities, and using large bot networks to pull data even when specific site owners explicitly opt out.
The company argues it is acting as a rights holder because the service takes images and real time data that is licensed, then resells that restricted information to others for a fee.
Court restores Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package
The Delaware Supreme Court overturned a Chancery Court ruling to reinstate Elon Musk’s 2018 pay package, stating the cancellation left the CEO uncompensated for his time and efforts over six years.
Adjusted for the current stock price, this compensation is now worth about $140 billion, meaning Tesla will likely revoke a separate $29 billion offer meant as a hedge against the appeal.
This unanimous decision concludes a years-long battle that pushed Musk to move company incorporation to Texas after a shareholder with only nine shares argued the award involved conflicts of interest.
Blue Origin sends first wheelchair user to space
Blue Origin launched a New Shepard rocket today carrying European Space Agency engineer Michaela Benthaus, making her the first wheelchair user to ever fly above the internationally accepted boundary of space.
The company spent years working to improve accessibility at its facilities, which included adding an elevator to the seven-story launch tower with guidance from an internal resource group named New Hawking.
The NS-37 mission took the six-person crew past the 100-kilometer altitude mark for a few minutes of zero-gravity before the capsule descended to a parachute-assisted touchdown in the West Texas desert.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
Cursor acquires Graphite to pair AI code writing with AI code review
Cursor has acquired Graphite, paying well above Graphite’s last reported $290M valuation, as part of its ongoing acquisition push.
The deal strengthens Cursor’s developer workflow by adding Graphite’s AI-powered code review and its “stacked pull request” feature, which helps teams ship dependent code changes faster without waiting on approvals.
The acquisition builds on shared investor ties, including Accel and Andreessen Horowitz, and reflects Cursor’s strategy to own more of the end-to-end coding lifecycle as it scales rapidly
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)
Associate, Secondary Investments - Adam Street Partner | USA - Apply Here
Chief of Staff – DeVC - Z47 | India - Apply Here
Lead, Growth Platform & Communications -Tall Venture | USA - Apply Here
VC Investment Intern - First Momentum Venture | USA - Apply Here
VC Investor - Quamtum Light | UK - Apply Here
Head of Operations - Sagest Capital | USA - Apply Here
Portfolio Management Lead - Yzi Labs | Remote - Apply Here
Office Manager - Seedcamp | USA - Apply Here
Intern, Investor Relations Operations - B Capital Group | Singapore - Apply Here
(Senior) Investment Manager - Finch Capital | USA - Apply Here
Partner - a16z | USA - Apply Here
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