☕ Peter Thiel sells entire Nvidia stake amid AI bubble fears, Jeff Bezos to join as co-CEO of new AI startup & Perplexity voted most likely to flop at conference.
Google unveils its most accurate AI weather model & More.
The plastic or metal tip on your shoelace has a name: it’s called an aglet.
Completely useless information, but now you know.
📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: 2700+ US VCs, AI UX shift, $1M dorm-room product, 6000+ Euro VCs, IPO watchlist, agent economy, AI hallucinations.
Ramp hits $32B valuation, just 3 months after hitting $22.5B.
Peter Thiel sells entire Nvidia stake amid AI bubble fears.
Perplexity voted most likely to flop at conference.
Google unveils its most accurate AI weather model.
Reporters expose crypto’s criminal financial system.
Google is fighting the defamation battle Meta caved on.
Meta releases a new tool to protect reels creators from having their work stolen.
Jeff Bezos reportedly returns as co-CEO of new AI startup, Project Prometheus.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Gridware, a San Francisco, CA-based grid‑technology company, raised $55M in Growth funding. The round was led by Tiger Global and Generation Investment Management with participation from Sequoia Capital, Convective Capital, Fifty Years, True Ventures, Lowercarbon, and Y Combinator.
No Barrier, a San Francisco, CA-based company which specializes in AI-powered medical translation, raised $2.7M in Seed funding. The round was led by A-Squared Ventures, Esplanade Ventures, Rock Health Capital and Fusion.
PowerLattice, a Vancouver, WA-based company improving power delivery for AI accelerators, raised $25M in Series A funding. Backers included Playground Global and Celesta Capital.
Shipday, a Menlo Park, CA-based global delivery and logistics technology platform provider serving small and medium-sized businesses (“SMBs”), raised $7M in Series A funding. The round was led by ECP Growth and Ibex Investors Mobility VC.
Span, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-native developer intelligence platform, raised $25M in Seed and Series A funding. Backers included Alt Capital, Craft Ventures, SV Angel, BoxGroup, and Bling Capital. The round also included over 100 founders, CTOs, and operators from companies like Slack, Notion, Rippling, and Square.
Artios Pharma Limited, a Cambridge, UK-based biopharmaceutical company, raised $115M in Series D funding. The round was led by SV Health Investors and new investor RA Capital Management, with participation from Andera Partners, Avidity Partners, EQT Life Sciences, Invus, IP Group plc, Janus Henderson Investors, M Ventures, Novartis Venture Fund, Omega Funds, Pfizer Ventures, Piper Heartland, RA Capital Management, Sofinnova Partners, and Schroders Capital.
AlertD, a Walnut Creek, California-based provider of an agentic AI SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) and DevOps platform for cloud operations, raised $3m in pre-seed funding. The round was led by True Ventures.
Mate, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based cybersecurity startup, emerged from stealth with $15.5m in seed funding. Backers included Team8 and Insight Partners.
Skeletalis, a Boston, MA-based drug development company focused on the next generation of therapies for treating musculoskeletal diseases, raised $8m in funding. The round was led by Pillar VC with participation from KdT Ventures, age1, and Slocum Management.
Solve Therapeutics, a San Diego, CA-based clinical-stage biotechnology company developing antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for solid tumor malignancies, raised $120m in an upsized financing. The round was led by Yosemite, with participation from Abingworth, Ally Bridge Group, B Capital, Balyasny Asset Management, Merck & Co., and SymBiosis, and existing investors.
Alembic Technologies, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a Causal AI engine for the enterprise, raised $145m in Series B and growth funding. The round was led by Prysm Capital and Accenture, with participation from Liquid 2 Ventures, NextEquity, Friends & Family Capital, WndrCo and growth funding from SLW.
voize, a Berlin, Germany-based AI solutions for nursing care, raised $50M in Series A funding. The round was led by Balderton Capital, with participation from existing investors HV Capital, Redalpine and Y Combinator.
Tribe Stays, a Pune, India-based managed-hospitality company, raised $2.8M in Seed funding. The round was led by Artha Venture Fund and Riverwalk Holdings with participation from Kunal Khanna (Founder & CEO – Vivaldis), Krishna Jain, and other HNIs/family offices.
1nhaler, an Edinburgh, Scotland, UK-based drug delivery device developer, raised £1.5M in funding. The round was led by Archangels with support from Scottish Enterprise and BBB Investments.
RebuilderAI, a Seoul, South Korea-based startup which specializes in 3D modeling AI technology, raised KRW 4.5 Billion in Pre-Seed funding. Backers included ASICS Ventures, the CVC arm of Japan’s ASICS Corporation, alongside Medici Investment, IBK Capital, and Korea Credit Guarantee Fund.
Muse Software, an Encinitas, CA and Miami, FL-based provider of a unified operations management platform, raised $4.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Roo Capital, with participation from Banter Capital and FJ Labs.
ElectronX, a Chicago, IL-based energy exchange promising to enable precision risk management in U.S. electricity markets, closed a $30m Series A funding. The round was led by DCVC, with participation from XTX Markets, Five Rings, NGP, GTS, and JACS Capital, as well as returning investors Innovation Endeavors, Systemiq Capital, Equinor Ventures, and Shell Ventures.
T-Therapeutics, a Cambridge, UK-based biotechnology company developing new T cell receptor (TCR) therapeutics for cancer and autoimmune disease, raised $32M in Series A extension funding. New investors Tencent and BGF joined the Series A syndicate, alongside Sofinnova Partners, F-Prime, Digitalis Ventures, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Sanofi Ventures and the University of Cambridge Venture Fund.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
nvp capital, a New York-based seed-stage venture capital firm investing globally in enterprise software and vertical AI, closed its second fund, at $80M. Fund II received support from Prudential Financial, Rutgers Endowment, Ford Foundation and Liberty Mutual Investments and corporate partners such as Audible (an Amazon Company) and Horizon Mutual Holdings, Inc., the parent company of New Jersey’s largest health insurer. This close brought total assets under management to $200M.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
Ramp hits $32B valuation, just 3 months after hitting $22.5B
Ramp raised another $300M led by Lightspeed — its fourth major transaction this year — pushing its valuation from $13B in March to $32B today, with $2.3B in total equity raised.
The company surpassed $1B in annualized revenue and now serves over 50,000 customers with its corporate cards, expense management software, and travel tools — positioning itself as fintech’s biggest non-AI breakout.
Investors remain unusually bullish on expense management fintech, as Ramp consistently commands massive rounds and step-ups while the rest of the market remains cautious.
Peter Thiel sells entire Nvidia stake amid AI bubble fears
Peter Thiel’s hedge fund, Thiel Macro LLC, sold its entire holding of 537,000 Nvidia shares during Q3, a move which represented almost 40 percent of the fund’s equity portfolio.
The firm also wiped out its Vistra Energy position and slashed its Tesla holdings, cutting total long equity exposure by nearly 65% from $212 million down to just $74.4 million.
This sale aligns with Thiel’s public warnings about an AI “hype loop,” suggesting he is now acting on his belief that the market is speeding ahead of underlying economics.
Perplexity voted most likely to flop at conference
In an informal survey at a San Francisco conference, over 300 attendees voted Perplexity as the billion dollar AI startup that is most likely to fall, according to a report.
OpenAI was ranked second in the same poll of startups that could flop, even while its ChatGPT chatbot continues to be the leader in the AI market in terms of share.
The vote comes as Perplexity’s valuation has soared from $14 billion to $50 billion in just a few months, amid wider industry fears about a potential AI bubble.
Google unveils its most accurate AI weather model
Google’s WeatherNext 2 model can generate hundreds of possible outcomes from a single starting point, including low-probability catastrophic events, in under a minute using just one TPU.
The AI is trained only on individual weather elements called “marginals,” yet from this it learns to skillfully forecast large, interconnected systems known as “joints” for regional predictions.
This new technology is now integrated into the core forecasting system that powers Google’s consumer apps, bringing more accurate weather results to Search, Gemini, and Pixel Weather.
Reporters expose crypto’s criminal financial system
The ICIJ’s “Coin Laundry” investigation found that criminals use a shadow financial system built on blockchain technology to move illicit funds through major exchanges with speed and anonymity.
Reports link North Korean hackers and the Sinaloa drug cartel to illegal transactions on major platforms like Binance, OKX, and Coinbase for crimes including people trafficking and dealing fentanyl.
Criminal organizations now send money easily using dollar-pegged stablecoins, a method replacing older techniques like hiding cash in cars and creating a system beyond law enforcement’s reach.
Google is fighting the defamation battle Meta caved on
Google has asked a court to dismiss a defamation lawsuit from activist Robby Starbuck, arguing that his claims stem from intentionally prompting AI hallucinations rather than real misuse or real-world harm.
Starbuck, who is seeking $15M in damages, previously sued Meta for similar reasons; Meta settled and hired him as an advisor, but Google says he hasn’t shown the prompts used or anyone actually misled by the outputs.
While Meta opted to settle, Google is choosing to contest the case — a move watched closely as no US court has yet awarded damages for AI chatbot defamation.
Meta releases a new tool to protect reels creators from having their work stolen
Meta launched a new mobile tool called Facebook content protection that detects when a creator’s original reels on Facebook are reposted without permission, allowing them to block visibility, track performance, or add attribution.
The system, which uses the same matching tech as Rights Manager, requires reels to be posted on Facebook (or cross-posted from Instagram) and is being rolled out to creators who meet Meta’s integrity and originality standards.
Creators can manage allow lists, dispute false claims, and control how matches are flagged, while Meta warns that abusing the system could lead to restrictions or loss of access.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
Jeff Bezos reportedly returns as co-CEO of new AI startup, Project Prometheus
Jeff Bezos is stepping back into day-to-day operations as co-CEO of Project Prometheus, a new AI startup he’s backing that has already raised $6.2B, according to the New York Times.
He’ll share the role with Vik Bajaj, former leader of Google’s life sciences division and co-founder of Verily, as the company builds AI for the physical economy — targeting engineering, aerospace, automotive, and more.
The startup has nearly 100 employees, including researchers from Meta, OpenAI, and DeepMind, positioning it as a major new player in AI for scientific and industrial simulation.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
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