☕ SpaceX plans to price its IPO at $135 per share & Microsoft launches an OpenClaw-inspired AI assistant.
Meta captures employee emails for AI training & Apple’s budget MacBook Neo is becoming a surprise.
Breaking News
SpaceX is targeting a record-breaking $75B IPO at a $1.75T valuation despite posting a $4.9B loss last year. The offering would become one of the largest IPOs ever and represents a massive bet on Starlink, AI infrastructure, and Elon Musk’s vision of space-based computing and Mars expansion.
Meta is reportedly capturing employee emails, chats, browsing activity, code changes, and computer usage patterns to train AI systems across the company. The initiative highlights how valuable real-world human workflow data has become in the AI race, while also raising major privacy and workplace surveillance concerns.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
Could AI handle a month-long project without human help by 2027? (Link)
Why is $3 trillion of Venture Capital still waiting to be returned? (Link)
What did 7,200 developers reveal about AI coding?: The State of Web Dev AI 2026 report. (Link)
How fast should founders ship features in the AI era? A framework from a former Facebook executive. (Link)
Why nobody wants to build this boring AI category (Even though it’s worth billions.) (Link)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
ZeroDrift, a NYC-based AI compliance firewall platform, raised $10M in Seed funding. Backers included a16z Speedrun, Reign Ventures, PitchDrive Ventures, and others.
SEED
Kosmos, a Chicago-based AI-native operational intelligence platform, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Norwest.
StratusGrid, a Chattanooga-based AI-driven cloud infrastructure optimization platform, raised $3M in Seed funding. The round was led by Dogwood Ventures.
Plot, a NYC-based agentic social video intelligence and marketing platform, raised $10M in Seed funding. The round was co-led by XYZ Venture Capital and Mischief Ventures.
GROWTH
Board, a NYC-based tabletop gaming console and creator platform, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Union Square Ventures.
Findigs, a NYC-based AI-native residential leasing and underwriting platform, raised $32M in Series C funding. The round was led by RPM Ventures.
Adaptive Innovations, a NYC- and Dallas-based AI-native home healthcare operating system, raised $50M in Series A funding. The round was led by Felicis and Bain Capital Ventures.
Advanced NanoTherapies, a Santa Clara-based vascular treatment company, raised $31M+ in Series B funding. The round was co-led by S3 Ventures.
Tavo Biotherapeutics, a Laguna Beach-based ophthalmology biotech startup, raised $17M in Series A funding. The round was led by Pureos Bioventures.
Subtle Medical, a Menlo Park-based AI-powered medical imaging company, raised $33M in growth capital anchored by a Series C round. The financing was led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.
Ilant Health, a NYC-based AI-supported obesity and cardiometabolic care platform, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by Cornucopian Capital.
Novellia, a NYC-based patient-powered health records and real-world data platform, raised $18M in Series A funding. The round was led by Spark Capital.
Alitheon, a Bellevue-based optical AI and serialization technology company, raised $8M in Series A1 funding. The round was led by Emerald Technology Ventures.
Mach Industries, a defense technology company building unmanned systems and manufacturing infrastructure, raised $300M in Series C funding at a $1.8B valuation. The round was led by Infinite Capital and Ribbit Capital.
Unastella, a Seoul-based space company building satellite launch vehicles and rocket engines, raised $24M in Series B funding. The round was led by Altos Ventures.
Zazume, a Barcelona-based rental lifecycle digitization platform, raised €2.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Nordstar and GTV Capital.
Spiro, a Nairobi-based electric mobility and clean energy company, raised $215M in equity funding. Investors included Impact Fund Denmark and Equitane.
Mecka AI, a NYC-based robotics data and infrastructure company for physical AI, raised $60M comprising a $25M Series A and $35M follow-on investment. The round was led by Framework Ventures.
Endra, a Stockholm-based AI platform automating engineering design work, raised $50M in Series A funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Waypoint Bio, a NYC-based biotech company developing next-generation CAR-T therapies, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Amplify Partners.
DriveNets, an Israel-based networking infrastructure company for telecom and AI workloads, raised $410M in Series D funding. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Atreides Management.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Gigascale Capital, a Palo Alto, CA-based venture capital firm focused on the physical economy, closed its first institutional fund, at $250m. Founded in 2023 by former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer, Victoria Beasley, and Evaline Tsai, Gigascale is focused on such areas as clean energy and grid infrastructure, the supply chains that support them, and AI applied to the design, manufacturing, and deployment of physical systems.
Atomus, a Menlo Park, CA-based newly formed venture capital firm, is reportedly raising a $500m fund. The vehicle will presumably be focused on growth stage investing as its Founder Ethan Choi was at Khosla Ventures and Accel.
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KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Apple’s budget MacBook Neo is becoming a surprise hit
Apple shipped 1.1M MacBook Neo units in its debut quarter, outperforming the launch quarters of the MacBook Air (M5) and MacBook Pro (M5) despite being on sale for only a few weeks.
Starting at $599, the Neo is attracting first-time Mac buyers and gaining traction in price-sensitive markets like India, where demand has exceeded retailer inventory.
Analysts believe the Neo could significantly expand Apple’s presence in the affordable laptop segment, while competitors like Dell are already launching lower-cost premium laptops in response.
Uber caps AI spending after burning through annual budget in 4 months
Uber has introduced a $1,500 monthly spending cap per employee for AI coding tools like Claude Code and Cursor after exhausting its annual AI budget within the first four months of the year.
The company had previously encouraged employees to maximize AI usage and even tracked adoption through internal leaderboards, driving AI costs higher than expected.
The move highlights growing concerns around AI ROI, as companies spend heavily on AI tools but still struggle to clearly measure their impact on productivity and business outcomes.
Microsoft unveils AI-designed quantum chip, targets useful quantum computers by 2029
Microsoft introduced its new Majorana 2 quantum chip, designed with AI-assisted materials discovery, and says it now expects commercially useful quantum computers by 2029.
The chip uses lead-based materials instead of aluminum, delivering up to a 1,000-fold improvement in some performance metrics and helping Microsoft compete with IBM, Google, Amazon, and Chinese quantum efforts.
Some physicists remain skeptical, arguing Microsoft has not released enough public data to verify its claims, while the company says its results have been extensively reviewed by U.S. government researchers.
OpenAI expands Codex beyond coding with new workplace tools
OpenAI launched six new Codex plug-ins for data analytics, sales, product design, creative work, equity investing, and investment banking, aiming to make Codex useful for a broader range of knowledge workers.
Codex now has over 5 million weekly active users, with knowledge workers representing about 20% of users and growing more than three times faster than its developer user base.
OpenAI also introduced Sites for publishing AI-generated work as interactive websites and Annotations for more precise document editing, strengthening its push into enterprise workflows.
Microsoft launches Scout, an OpenClaw-inspired AI assistant
Microsoft introduced Scout, an always-on AI assistant built on the OpenClaw framework that learns user preferences over time and helps automate tasks across email, calendars, and Microsoft 365 apps.
Users can create personalized agents with persistent memory, custom skills, and workflows, allowing Scout to adapt to individual work habits and become more useful over time.
To address concerns around autonomous AI agents, Scout includes security controls, policy compliance monitoring, and audit trails to track how decisions and actions are made.
China's military obtained Nvidia chips despite US curbs
A new report reveals that China’s People’s Liberation Army has spent years acquiring Nvidia AI chips, including models blocked by US export controls, undermining Washington’s effort to keep American hardware out of Beijing’s military programs.
Wirescreen reviewed roughly 3,800 procurement records and found about 500 cases between 2019 and 2025 where Chinese military units sought A100, A800, H100, and H800 chips for nuclear simulations, war games, cyber operations, and weapons research.
A separate Bloomberg review found at least seven Chinese universities tied to the armed forces, including blacklisted Beihang and Northwestern Polytechnical, sought access to Nvidia’s H200, the most powerful AI chip Washington still permits for sale in China.
DeepSeek set to raise $7.4B at up to $59B valuation
DeepSeek is reportedly raising 50 billion yuan ($7.4 billion) in its first funding round, valuing the Chinese AI startup between $52 billion and $59 billion.
Founder Liang Wenfeng is expected to invest 20 billion yuan himself, while Tencent and CATL may become the largest external investors alongside NetEase, JD.com, and China’s national AI fund.
The funding highlights China’s push for AI self-sufficiency, strengthening DeepSeek’s position as a leading domestic AI player competing with Alibaba’s Qwen and Tencent’s Hunyuan models.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Trump signs scaled-back AI oversight executive order
President Trump signed an executive order asking AI companies to voluntarily submit advanced AI models for government review 30 days before public release, a shorter timeline than the previously proposed 90-day window.
The order explicitly states that it does not create any mandatory licensing, approval, or permitting requirements for developing or releasing AI models, following industry concerns about regulation slowing innovation.
It also directs the Justice Department to prioritize enforcement against AI-related crimes such as AI-assisted hacking and unauthorized system access, while continuing efforts to establish a national AI policy framework.
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