☕ SoftBank posts $2.87B profit, OpenAI offers multimillion-dollar bonuses with GPT-5 launch & Tesla shuts down Dojo, the AI supercomputer.
Trump calls for Intel CEO’s resignation over China ties & More.
Japan has more pets than kids.
6.8M dogs. 9M cats. Only 13.7M children under 15.
The population’s shrinking, but furry friends are THRIVING.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Altman fundraising guide, AI UX shift, record M&A, Figma evals, unicorn VC trend, dorm-room millionaires, agent economy, 2025 IPO watchlist.
SoftBank posts $2.87B profit, delays $500B Stargate data center rollout.
OpenAI launches GPT-5, its first unified flagship AI model.
Uber seeks funding from banks, private equity to scale robotaxi business.
US agencies get ChatGPT Enterprise for $1 a year.
Universal adds 'no AI training' warning to movies.
OpenAI offers multimillion-dollar bonuses to key researchers and engineers.
Trump announces 100% semiconductor tariffs.
Tesla shuts down Dojo, the AI supercomputer once touted as key to full self-driving.
Trump calls for Intel CEO’s resignation over China ties.
xAI’s legal chief steps down after whirlwind year.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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DAILY PICKS
🗞️ What else is brewing
Sam Altman's Guide to Startup Fundraising: What Really Works.
A Banner Year for M&A only Five Months In.
The Art of Evals: How Figma Put People at the Center of Its AI Product.
Making a Million-Dollar Product From a Dorm Room.
AI Hallucinations Are Getting Worse.
Building the agent economy: How cloud leaders are shaping AI’s next frontier.
8 venture-backed IPO candidates to watch in 2025.
State of VC-backed SaaS Startups in 2025.
Symptoms vs. problems: the trap every founder must avoid.
All-In-One Guide To Venture Capital Interview Questions (And How to Answer Them)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Bit2Me, a Madrid, Spain-based provider of a digital asset platform, raised $30M in funding. The round was led by Tether Ventures with participation from additional undisclosed investors.
Kustomer, a NYC-based AI-powered customer service company, raised $30M in Series B funding. The round was led by Norwest, with participation from Battery Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, and Boldstart Ventures.
Casap, a NYC-based company which specializes in intelligent automation for dispute and fraud operations, raised $25M in Series A funding. The round was led by Emergence Capital, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Primary Venture Partners, SoFi and others.
Capacity, a St.Louis, MO-based provider of an AI-powered support automation platform for Contact Centers, received a $92M investment. The new investments included $50M from Chicago Atlantic, and a Series D round closed at $42.6M.
Maxwell Biosciences, an Austin, TX-based health technology company providing a new category of immune-inspired small molecules called Claromers, raised $20M in funding.
Subzero Labs, a NYC-based provider of decentralized programmable networks, raised $20M in initial funding. The round was led by Pantera Capital, with participation from other investors including Variant, Coinbase Ventures, Hashed, Susquehanna Crypto, Mysten Labs, Fabric Ventures, Flowdesk, Mirana Ventures, and more.
Decart, a San Francisco, CA-based artificial intelligence company developing real-time video generation, raised $100M in funding, at $3.1 Billion valuation. Backers included Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, and Zeev Ventures, with new backers including Israel’s Aleph VC.
Apreo Health, a Menlo Park, CA-based clinical-stage medical device company developing a novel treatment for severe emphysema, raised $130M in Series B funding. The round was led by Bain Capital Life Sciences and Norwest, with participation from new investors F-Prime and Intuitive Ventures, Lightstone Ventures and Santé Ventures.
Strand Therapeutics, a Boston, MA-based company which specializes in new mRNA-based therapeutics, raised $153M in Series B funding. The round was led by Kinnevik, with new investors Regeneron Ventures, ICONIQ, Amgen Ventures, Alderline Group (the family office of Alex Gorsky), JIC-VGI, LG Technology Ventures, and Gradiant Corporation, with participation from existing investors including FPV Ventures, Playground Global, Eli Lilly and Company, ANRI, and Potentum.
Menos AI, a San José, CA-based AI-native fintech company built for investment professionals, raised $5.2M in Seed funding. Backers included Silicon Valley family offices and venture capital firms.
Tracelight, a London, UK-based AI company developing financial models, raised $3.6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Chalfen Ventures, with participation from Acequia Capital, Inovo and Entrepreneurs First, and angels including Charlie Songhurst (ex Microsoft head of Corporate Strategy) and Suhit Gupta (ex-CIO General Atlantic and Carlyle).
SNIPR BIOME, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based company improving the development of microbial CRISPR-medicine, raised EUR 35M in Series B funding. Backers included Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the German Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation (SPRIN-D) as well as existing investors Lundbeckfonden BioCapital, North-East Family Office and Wellington Partners.
Elion, a NYC-based provider of an AI-powered research and intelligence platform for healthcare technology, raised $9.3M in Seed funding. The round was led by NEA, with participation from new investors Cedars Sinai Health Ventures, TMV, Scrub Capital, and Alumni Ventures, and existing investors Max Ventures, AlleyCorp, and Floating Point.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Airtree Ventures, a Sydney, Australia-based venture capital firm, closed two funds totalling AUS$650m. The vehicles included: Fund V, a $250m Seed fund and a $400m Growth fund. They both back Australia and New Zealand based founders who are building technology companies.
Curql Collective, a Des Moines, Iowa-based collective of 160+ credit unions jointly investing in fintech, closed Curql Fund II, at $360m. This brings Curql’s AUM (assets under management) to over $600 million.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
SoftBank posts $2.87B profit, delays $500B Stargate data center rollout:
SoftBank Group reported a $2.87B Q1 profit, driven by gains in Vision Fund holdings, including Coupang and a $7.5B investment in OpenAI.
The $500B Stargate U.S. data center project faces delays due to prolonged negotiations and site selection, though the company remains committed to the four-year buildout plan.
SoftBank raised $7.8B from T-Mobile share sales and is leading a $40B funding round for OpenAI, but Vision Funds have generated only $5B in cumulative gains from $172.2B invested.
OpenAI launches GPT-5, its first unified flagship AI model:
GPT-5 combines the reasoning power of OpenAI’s o-series with the fast responses of its GPT series, enabling ChatGPT to handle more complex tasks like app generation, scheduling, and research briefs.
The model reduces hallucinations significantly, improves coding and creative abilities, and introduces safer, more transparent responses, while being available for free users, Plus subscribers, and developers via API.
GPT-5 slightly outperforms rivals like Anthropic’s Claude and Google DeepMind’s Gemini on some benchmarks, excels in coding and health-related accuracy, but matches or lags peers in certain agentic tasks.
Uber seeks funding from banks, private equity to scale robotaxi business:
Uber is in talks with banks and private equity firms to finance its robotaxi expansion, while using a modest share of its $7B annual cash flow and potentially selling minority stakes.
CEO Dara Khosrowshahi outlined three models: fixed-rate payments to vehicle owners, revenue-sharing with fleet operators, and Uber owning vehicles while licensing self-driving software.
Partnerships include Waymo, Volkswagen, Lucid, and Nuro, aiming to deploy over 20,000 autonomous taxis despite regulatory scrutiny and long timelines to profitability.
US agencies get ChatGPT Enterprise for $1 a year:
OpenAI reached an agreement with the U.S. General Services Administration to offer ChatGPT Enterprise to federal agencies for only one dollar per agency for the first year of service.
The partnership follows OpenAI’s approval as a federal vendor alongside Google and Anthropic, placing pressure on rivals to offer their own AI tools at a similarly discounted government rate.
Federal employees will also get unlimited use of advanced models for 60 days, plus access to a new government user community and tailored introductory training resources for the tools.
Universal adds 'no AI training' warning to movies:
Universal Pictures now includes a new message in the credits of its movies, like Jurassic World Rebirth, which clearly states the motion picture “may not be used to train AI.”
Outside the US, the company supports its warning by citing a 2019 European Union copyright law that lets creators opt out of having their productions used for scientific research.
This message aims to stop AI models from being fed the films as training data and then being able to reproduce a studio’s unique visual style without getting permission first.
OpenAI offers multimillion-dollar bonuses to key researchers and engineers:
On the eve of GPT-5’s launch, CEO Sam Altman announced a “special one-time award” for about one-third of OpenAI’s workforce, targeting researchers and engineers in applied engineering, scaling, and safety teams.
Bonuses range from hundreds of thousands for engineers to mid–single-digit millions for top researchers, paid quarterly over two years in cash, stock, or both.
The move comes amid intense AI talent wars, with Meta, xAI, and ex-CTO Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines actively poaching OpenAI staff.
Trump announces 100% semiconductor tariffs:
Donald Trump announced a new 100 percent tariff on all imported chips and semiconductors, a measure intended to force companies to bring silicon manufacturing back to the United States.
However, the import tax will not apply to companies building or that have made a commitment to build in the United States, a condition Apple has already met.
It's unclear who this charge would impact since chipmakers like TSMC have US investments, and the administration has previously threatened similar taxes on chips without enacting them.
Tesla shuts down Dojo, the AI supercomputer once touted as key to full self-driving:
Tesla is disbanding its Dojo supercomputer team, ending its in-house chip program for driverless tech, with lead Peter Bannon departing and staff reassigned to other projects.
The move follows the exit of about 20 former Dojo employees who launched DensityAI, a startup focused on AI chips, hardware, and software for robotics, AI agents, and automotive uses.
Tesla will now rely more on Nvidia, AMD, and Samsung for AI compute and chip manufacturing, shifting away from Dojo despite previous claims it could add $500B in value via robotaxi and software revenue.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕Other news
Trump calls for Intel CEO’s resignation over China ties:
President Trump demanded Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan resign, citing $200M in past investments in Chinese chip and manufacturing firms, some linked to the Chinese military.
The rare presidential intervention follows concerns raised by lawmakers; Intel defended Tan, saying the company is committed to U.S. national and economic security.
Intel shares fell 3% amid ongoing struggles in AI and chip manufacturing, with critics warning the move could set a precedent for political interference in corporate leadership.
xAI’s legal chief steps down after whirlwind year:
Robert Keele has resigned as xAI’s head of legal after just over a year, citing a desire to spend more time with his young children and “daylight between worldviews” with Elon Musk.
Keele joined in May 2024 ahead of xAI’s $6B Series B and its $80B-valued acquisition of X, following legal leadership roles at Elroy Air and Airbus’s innovation center.
Lily Lim, a former NASA rocket scientist turned privacy and IP specialist at xAI, will take over the role amid broader executive turnover across Musk-led companies.
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)
Financial Analyst Volta Circle | USA - Apply Here
Investor Relations Analyst TCV | USA - Apply Here
Associate - M Venture Partners | India - Apply Here
Chief of Staff to Founding Partner - One Way Venture | USA - Apply Here
Investment Fellow - Indian Fund | India - Apply Here
NFX TechBio Fellows 2025-2026 - NFX | USA - Apply Here
Corporate Development & Strategy - Figma Venture | USA - Apply Here
Value Creation - Cadeumen Capital | Spain - Apply Here
Associate - Mighty Capital | USA - Apply Here
Investment Analyst - Beas Capital | India - Apply Here
Head of Platform - Pledge Venture | UK - Apply Here
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