☕ SpaceX’s IPO filing is full of surprises & Anthropic will pay xAI $1.25B per month.
Samsung chip workers will get a $340,000 bonus & OpenAI barrels toward IPO that may happen in September.
Breaking News
SpaceX revealed in its IPO filing that it lost nearly $5 billion in 2025 despite generating $18 billion in revenue, while pouring massive amounts of money into Starship and xAI infrastructure. The filing shows Musk is no longer building just a rocket company — he’s betting on a future spanning AI data centers, orbital infrastructure, space manufacturing, and even asteroid mining.
Google unveiled a wave of AI agent products at I/O 2026, but the launches exposed a growing problem across the industry: many consumers still don’t fully understand why they need AI agents in daily life. As companies race toward autonomous assistants and “AI operating systems,” the gap between what AI companies are building and what mainstream users actually want is becoming increasingly visible.
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DAILY PICKS
🗞️ What else is brewing
Are $175M seed valuations the new normal? (Link)
Is faster activation actually hurting saas retention in the AI era? (Link)
OpenAI internal memo to beat the competition, including Anthropic. (Link)
Do analysts actually become partners?: What 12,000 VC careers reveal about making partner. (Link)
Where is the $435b AI market really making money? (Link)
a16z on AI pricing wars: what AI startups get wrong about enterprise pricing? (Link)
The unit economics Excel sheet template every founder should use. (Link)
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Shatterdome Energy, a San Francisco-based AI-driven energy trading and intelligence startup, raised $3.5M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Crucible Capital, with participation from Transpose Platform and Entrepreneurs First.
Overwatch AI, a Newark-based aviation tech management platform, raised $1.5M in Pre-Seed funding. Backers included United Airlines Ventures, Baobab Ventures, and angel investors.
SEED
Sparq, a Ras Al Khaimah-based AI-native game engine and creator platform, raised $8.5M in Seed funding. Backers included Andreessen Horowitz.
Efferon, an Austria-based biotech company developing multimodal hemoadsorption devices, raised $2.9M in Seed funding.
Sorted Wallet, a stablecoin wallet built for low-end smartphones and feature phones, raised $4.4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Tether and Gnosis.
LawX, a Berlin-based AI operating system for law firms and notaries, raised €7.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Motive Partners.
Imperagen, a Manchester-based techbio company using AI and quantum physics for enzyme engineering, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by PXN Ventures.
GROWTH
Hark, a San Jose-based AI lab building personalized intelligence systems, raised over $700M in Series A funding at a $6B valuation. The round was led by Parkway Venture Capital, with participation from NVIDIA, AMD Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, and others.
Quantum Bridge Technologies, a Toronto-based cybersecurity company focused on future-proof internet communications, raised $8M in Series A funding. The round was led by Primo Capital.
Scapia, a Bengaluru-based travel fintech company, raised $63M in funding. The round was led by General Catalyst with participation from Peak XV Partners and Z47.
FundCanna, a San Diego-based fintech lender serving cannabis and hemp businesses, secured a new credit facility of up to $60M.
Dandelion Health, a NYC-based clinical intelligence platform, raised $14M in Series A funding. The round was led by Healthier Capital.
Vêtir, a NYC-based AI-powered luxury wardrobe operating system, raised $5.5M in Series A funding at a $150M valuation.
Cycles, a Toronto-based crypto clearing network company, raised $6.4M in funding. The round was led by Blockchange Ventures with participation from Coinbase Ventures.
Farther, a NYC-based intelligent wealth management company, raised $150M in Series D funding. The round was led by General Atlantic.
Pivot, a Paris and NYC-based AI operating system for procurement, raised $40M in Series B funding. The round was led by Forestay Capital and Notion Capital.
Mercury, a San Francisco-based fintech company building financial operating systems, raised $200M in Series D funding at a $5.2B valuation. The round was led by TCV.
Variational, a Cayman Islands-based on-chain derivatives trading company, raised approximately $50M in Series A funding. The round was led by Dragonfly with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Convective Capital, a California-based venture firm founded by WePay cofounder Bill Clerico, has raised an $85 million second fund to invest in startups building disaster resilience and physical-world risk management solutions. The firm backs companies across wildfire prevention, infrastructure monitoring, insurance, drones, and climate resilience.
Shamrock Capital, a Los Angeles, CA-based investment firm specializing in media, entertainment, communications, and related sectors, closed Shamrock Capital Content Fund IV, L.P., at $813m. Content IV received support from both existing and new limited partners including pension funds, endowments, foundations, family offices, insurance companies, and other institutional investors across the United States, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.
Veriten, a Houston, TX-based research, strategy and investment firm, held the initial close of its second flagship energy venture fund, at over $105m. LPs include Halliburton Company, Phillips 66 Company, and CIBC, among others.
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KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Spotify takes on Google’s NotebookLM with a new AI podcast app
Spotify launched Studio, a new desktop AI app that creates personalized podcasts using emails, calendars, notes, bookings, and web information.
The app includes an AI agent that can generate daily audio briefings, travel podcasts, and topic explainers, positioning Spotify against Google’s NotebookLM and other AI podcast tools.
Spotify says generated podcasts stay private inside a user’s library, while the company expands beyond music into AI-powered audio experiences and productivity tools.
Anthropic will pay xAI $1.25 billion per month for compute
Anthropic has agreed to pay xAI $1.25 billion every month through May 2029 for compute, a deal that could push xAI’s total revenue from the arrangement past $40 billion across its full term.
The agreement, revealed in SpaceX’s S-1 filing with the SEC, covers the full 300 megawatts of output from the Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, with either side able to end the contract on 90 days’ notice.
SpaceX framed the deal as a way to monetize unused compute capacity, which suggests xAI overbuilt its servers as Grok usage fell sharply, and the company plans to sign more similar services contracts ahead of a public offering.
Zuckerberg warns ‘success isn’t a given’ after laying off 10% of Meta
Mark Zuckerberg told staff that “success isn’t a given” in a companywide memo on Wednesday, the same day Meta cut 10% of its workforce and pushed harder into artificial intelligence as the defining technology of the era.
The reorganization involves laying off about 8,000 employees and leaving roughly 6,000 open positions unfilled, while 7,000 workers are being moved into AI roles, with Zuckerberg promising no further cuts in 2026.
Laid-off US employees will get four months of severance pay plus extra weeks for each year worked at Meta, along with help on immigration and healthcare, according to an April memo from people chief Janelle Gale.
Samsung chip workers will get a $340,000 bonus
Samsung Electronics will hand out 40 trillion won ($26.6 billion) in bonuses to its semiconductor staff after striking a last-minute deal with its South Korean workers’ union, narrowly avoiding a strike set for May 21st.
Under the terms, Samsung will pay 10.5% of profits as stock plus 1.5% in cash for 10 years if targets are met, averaging 513 million won ($339,000) per chip employee, with some estimates reaching 600 million won ($396,000).
The union, which originally asked for 15%, will vote on the deal this week, and if approved, workers get the payout in early 2027 and can sell one-third of the shares immediately.
OpenAI barrels toward IPO that may happen in September
OpenAI is reportedly preparing for a blockbuster IPO as early as September, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley helping the company confidentially file paperwork soon.
The IPO push comes immediately after Elon Musk lost his lawsuit against OpenAI, removing a major legal threat tied to the company’s structure and future plans.
The public market battle between OpenAI and SpaceX could soon intensify, as both companies are expected to pursue some of the biggest tech IPOs in history.
AMD ramps up Taiwan production as global CPU demand surges
AMD says global CPU demand has become much tighter than expected, driven by rapid growth in AI inferencing and autonomous AI agents.
CEO Lisa Su said AMD is expanding production capacity in Taiwan with partners like TSMC, while planning significantly larger supply increases through 2027 and beyond.
AMD also announced over $10 billion in Taiwan AI investments focused on advanced packaging, manufacturing, and next-generation AI chips built using TSMC’s 2-nanometer process technology.
Anthropic may use Microsoft’s AI chips amid rising demand
Anthropic is reportedly in early talks to rent servers powered by Microsoft’s in-house AI chips to support growing demand for Claude.
The potential deal would be a major validation for Microsoft’s Maia 200 AI chips, as cloud giants push to reduce dependence on Nvidia’s expensive and supply-constrained GPUs.
Microsoft has been strengthening ties with Anthropic through Copilot integrations, while Anthropic continues expanding partnerships with major compute providers like Amazon and Google.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Trump delays AI security executive order over concerns it could slow U.S. AI leadership
Donald Trump delayed signing a new AI security executive order, saying parts of the language “could have been a blocker” for American AI progress.
The proposed order would require government agencies to evaluate advanced AI models before release, partly due to concerns around powerful systems like Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 Cyber.
One controversial proposal involved AI companies sharing frontier models with the government up to 90 days before launch, raising fears about slowing innovation and weakening the U.S. advantage over China.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
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