☕ OpenAI’s first-half revenue rises 16% to $4.3 billion, Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Excel and Word & Anthropic launches its best AI model for coding.
Apple made an internal ChatGPT-clone to test Siri & ByteDance will keep 50% of US TikTok profits.
There’s a planet mostly made from diamond. Called 55 Cancri e.
It’s around twice the size of Earth and some 40 light-years away from us within the Cancer constellation.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Financial model, fundraising tips, investor lists, 100T tokens, engineering lessons, legal docs, carbon trends, valuation.
DeepSeek debuts new AI model as ‘intermediate step’ towards next generation.
OpenAI takes on Google, Amazon with agentic shopping system.
California Governor Newsom signs landmark AI safety bill SB 53.
Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.5, its best AI model for coding.
Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Excel and Word.
Nvidia CEO says China is nanoseconds behind US.
US wants Taiwan to make half its chips in America.
OpenAI’s first-half revenue rises 16% to about $4.3 billion.
Caltech builds the world’s largest neutral-atom quantum computer.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
Excel Template: Early Stage Startup Financial Model For Fundraising.
8 fundraising frameworks every founder should know.
100 Trillion Tokens by Tomasz Tunguz.
Mastering the human side of engineering: Lessons from Apple, Palantir and Slack.
Startup legal document pack – essential legal docs for founders.
This is the only startup valuation guide you need as a founder.
The rise of Cursor: The $300M ARR AI tool that engineers can’t stop using.
Excel Template: Early Stage Startup Financial Model For Fundraising.
Lulu Meservey’s launch cheat sheet.
Alex Lieberman on ‘seedstrapping’.
Amanda Zhu on what investors are evaluating at pre-seed and seed.
Leo Polovets on pitch deck minimums.
How Mark Hughes’ Solidroad grew to $1M ARR in 9 months.
Eva Christine Reder on a product marketing flywheel for GTM.
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Lexroom, a Milan, Italy-based startup using generative AI to transform the legal sector, raised $19m in Series A funding. The round was led by Base10 Partners with participation from Acurio Ventures, View Different (founded by Diego Piacentini – who will also take on an advisory role at the company), and Riccardo Zacconi, founder of King (Candy Crush), along with other strategic angel investors, as well as existing investors Entourage, Verve Ventures, and Joe Zadeh.
Paid, a London, UK-based company building critical infrastructure to grow the AI agent economy, raised $21M in Seed funding. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from new investor FUSE and existing investor EQT Ventures.
Leo Cancer Care, a Middleton, WI-based radiotherapy treatment devices company, raised $40M in funding. The round was led by Catalio Capital Management.
Maximor, a NYC-based finance automation platform provider, raised $9M in Seed funding. The round was led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Gaia Ventures (founded by SAP’s former Chief Strategy Officer) and Boldcap. Angels included Aravind Srinivas (CEO of Perplexity), Tien Tzuo (CEO of Zuora), and CFOs/finance leaders from Ramp, Gusto, Opendoor, MongoDB, and the Big Four.
Neura Health, a NYC-based virtual neurology clinic improving access and quality of care for patients with chronic conditions, raised $11.4M in Series A funding. The round was led by the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women Venture Fund. Additional participants included Norwest Venture Partners, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Esplanade Ventures, Pear VC, Correlation Ventures, and E12 Ventures.
Yup, a Jakarta, Indonesia-based digital bank service provider, raised $32M in their latest equity funding through its C-1 round. Backers included Moore Strategic Ventures, Spice Expeditions and Platanus, with participation from other investors and existing shareholders.
Alvys, a Solana Beach, CA-based provider of a transportation management system (TMS) utilizing AI and automation to support freight operations, raised $40M in Series B funding. The round was led by RTP Global, with participation from Alpha Square Group, and others, including existing investors Titanium Ventures, Picus Capital, and Bonfire Ventures.
Chickapea, a Collingwood, Ontario, Canada-based organic and high-protein pasta brand provider, raised CAD$4.25M in funding. The round was led by AGT Foods with participation from FCC Capital and InvestEco.
SINGAUTO, a Singapore-based cold chain logistics technology company, raised USE$50M in funding. Backers included GSR Vision Capital, Delu Capital, Bank of China Asset Management (Singapore) and BBG Global.
RDS, a Strasbourg, France-based medtech company, raised €14M ($16.6M) in Series A funding. The round was led by SPI fund and Bpifrance with participation from Critical Path Ventures.
GoodFit, a London, UK-based provider of an AI-driven data platform, raised $13M in Series A funding. The round was led by Notion Capital, with participation from Salica Investments, Inovia Capital, Robin Capital, Common Magic, and Andrena Ventures.
OXCCU, an Oxford, UK-based company developing a one-step process to convert waste carbon into SAF, raised £20.75M ($28M) in Series B funding. Backers included Orlen VC, Safran Corporate Ventures, IAGi Ventures, Hostplus, TCVC, Clean Energy Ventures, IP Group/Kiko Ventures, Aramco Ventures, Eni Next, Braavos Capital, and the University of Oxford.
Swish, a Detroit, MI-based programmatic product trial company, raised an undisclosed amount in Seed funding. The round was led by BD Ventures.
Anode, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of on-demand power from battery-native, mobile microgrids, raised $9M in Seed funding led by Eclipse. The round was led by Eclipse.
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Incorporation docs & founder agreements
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Notion Capital, a UK-based venture firm, raised $130 million for its Growth Opps III fund to address Europe’s growth-stage capital gap. The fund will invest in both portfolio and external startups, focusing on AI applications, defense, supply chain, and fintech. Early investments include Upvest, Kraken (Octopus Energy spinoff), and Nelly.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
DeepSeek debuts new AI model as ‘intermediate step’ towards next generation:
Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released an experimental model that debuts a technique called Sparse Attention, designed to improve efficiency when handling long sequences of text without losing output quality.
The new method uses a “lightning indexer” to selectively score and rank past tokens, allowing the system to focus only on the most relevant information for each specific query.
This approach results in 2–3 times faster inference for long contexts and cuts memory usage by 30–40 percent, while maintaining nearly identical performance on reasoning and coding benchmarks.
OpenAI takes on Google, Amazon with agentic shopping system
OpenAI launched Instant Checkout in ChatGPT, letting U.S. users buy directly from Etsy sellers, with Shopify merchants coming soon.
Purchases happen inside the chat with Apple Pay, Google Pay, Stripe, or credit cards, cutting out Amazon and Google as retail gatekeepers.
OpenAI also open sourced its Agentic Commerce Protocol with Stripe, aiming to set the standard for AI-driven shopping and positioning itself as a new power broker in e-commerce.
California Governor Newsom signs landmark AI safety bill SB 53
SB 53 is the first U.S. law requiring AI giants like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google DeepMind to disclose safety protocols and protect whistleblowers.
The bill mandates reporting of critical safety incidents — from cyberattacks to deceptive AI behavior — to California’s Office of Emergency Services.
While OpenAI and Meta opposed the bill, Anthropic endorsed it; the law may serve as a model for other states like New York considering similar measures.
Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.5, its best AI model for coding
Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.5, a new frontier model designed for “production-ready” applications with state-of-the-art coding benchmark performance.
Early enterprise trials showed the model autonomously coding for 30 hours, setting up databases, domains, and even running a SOC 2 audit.
Priced the same as Sonnet 4, it comes with a new Claude Agent SDK and a research preview called Imagine with Claude, intensifying competition with OpenAI’s GPT-5 in the coding space.
Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Excel and Word:
Microsoft introduces “vibe working” with an Agent Mode for Excel and Word on the web, letting you generate complex reports or draft articles by working iteratively with Copilot through simple prompts.
A separate Office Agent powered by Anthropic models now works inside Copilot Chat to build full PowerPoint presentations and research papers by asking clarifying questions and conducting web-based searches.
These new tools are currently online for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers, but the Excel feature requires installing a special Excel Labs add-in to function for now.
Nvidia CEO says China is nanoseconds behind US:
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang claims China is just nanoseconds behind the US in chipmaking and argues that America should continue selling its technology there to maintain its geopolitical influence.
Following export restrictions, the company is now shipping a compliant H20 AI GPU to Chinese customers, its second attempt to create a tailored processor after the A100 and H100 bans.
Meanwhile, Huawei is shipping systems with its Ascend 920B silicon and other firms are investing in custom designs to create a CUDA-free ecosystem, directly challenging Nvidia’s previous market dominance.
US wants Taiwan to make half its chips in America:
The Trump administration is pushing Taiwan to relocate its semiconductor production so that 50% of the chips America needs are manufactured domestically to ensure supply-chain security for the country.
To enforce this move, the White House threatened steep tariffs and a “1:1” production rule, securing a purported $165 billion investment pledge from TSMC for new U.S. chip plants.
Transplanting the industry is a major challenge due to its complex global supply chain, with Taiwanese officials arguing that no single country can fully control the entire semiconductor manufacturing process.
OpenAI’s first-half revenue rises 16% to about $4.3 billion
OpenAI generated ~$4.3B in revenue in H1 2025, already surpassing last year’s total by 16%, per The Information.
The company burned $2.5B, with R&D and ChatGPT operations costing $6.7B, though it still held $17.5B in cash and securities by June.
OpenAI is targeting $13B in full-year revenue and $8.5B in cash burn, while ongoing talks for a $500B valuation stock sale and Nvidia’s $100B investment signal sustained investor confidence.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
Caltech builds the world’s largest neutral-atom quantum computer:
Caltech physicists built the largest neutral-atom quantum computer by trapping 6,100 cesium atoms as qubits in a single array, a significant increase over past systems with only hundreds.
The system achieved coherence times of about 13 seconds, nearly 10 times longer than earlier experiments, while performing single-qubit operations on the atoms with an accuracy of 99.98 percent.
Using “optical tweezers,” the team showed it could move individual atoms within the array without breaking their quantum state, a key feature for building future error-corrected quantum machines.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & startup job opportunities
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Senior Analyst - Iconiq Capital | USA - Apply Here
VP - Marketing & Communications - Transition VC | India - Apply Here
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Program Manager - Tenity | UK - Apply Here
Investor Relations Analyst - Griffin Gaming Partner | USA - Apply Here
Associate - OMERSE Venture | USA - Apply Here
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