☕ The Chainsmokers closed a $100M VC fund, Mira Murati's startup raises $2B & Meta poached two high profile OpenAI researcher.
Mistral debuts its first open source AI audio model & More.
2100 is cancelling their Leap Year.
Even though it fits the “divisible by 4” rule, it gets cut for not being divisible by 400. Because apparently, even calendars have loopholes.
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Today’s Picks: US VC contact list, $1B fundraising tips, pitch deck guide, CAIR metric for AI, data room templates, EU VC list, agent manager trend, legal doc pack, Q2 VC liquidity outlook, SaaS financial model template.
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The Chainsmokers's Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, has closed a $100M third VC fund.
Former OpenAI engineer shares candid view of company culture and chaos.
Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab raises $2B seed round at $12B valuation.
Mistral debuts Voxtral, its first open source AI audio model.
Another high-profile OpenAI researcher departs for Meta’s AI lab.
Amazon launches Kiro, its new AI-powered IDE.
Apple invests $500M in MP Materials to boost U.S. rare-earth supply.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Datavations, a New York City-based intelligence provider for the building materials and home improvement industries, raised $17 million in Series A funding. Forestay Capital led the round and was joined by Morpheus Ventures, existing investors Sage Venture Partners, Nevcaut Ventures, and others.
Unify, a San Francisco, CA-based AI-native platform provider supporting go-to-market and accelerating pipeline growth, raised $40M in Series B funding. The round was led by Battery Ventures with participation from OpenAI Startup Fund, Thrive Capital, Emergence Capital, Abstract Ventures, The Cannon Project and Capital49.
OpenEvidence, a Cambridge, MA-based medical search and AI application provider, raised $210M in Series B funding. Backers included Sequoia Capital, Coatue, Conviction, and Thrive.
Auriga Space, a Garden Grove, CA-based electromagnetic hypersonic launch technology developer, raised $6M in funding. The round was led by OTB Ventures, an European deep tech investor, with participation from existing investors, including Trucks Venture Capital and Seraphim Space.
Heka, a NYC and Tel Aviv, Israel-based company delivering web intelligence to financial services, raised $14M in Series A funding. The round was led by Windare Ventures with participation by Barclays, Cornèr Banca, and others.
Trupeer.ai, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI video creation platform, raised $3M in Seed funding. The round was led by RTP Global, with participation from Salesforce Ventures.
Franzy, a Charlotte, NC-based AI-powered franchise marketplace, raised $2.2M in Seed funding. The round was led by York IE, with participation from Front Porch Capital, Overline, Avalanche VC, and Daren Cotter Investments.
CertifID, a Grand Rapids, MI-based provider of a wire fraud protection platform for the real estate industry, raised $47.5M in Series C funding. The round was led by Centana Growth Partners with continued participation from Arthur Ventures.
Fellow Health, a San Leandro, CA-based company focused on advancing male reproductive health through patient-centric testing solutions, raised $24M in Series B funding. The round was led by 5AM Ventures, with new participation from The Forest Road Company.
Callidus Legal AI, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI platform that automates and accelerates core litigation workflows, raised $10M in funding. The round was led by Cervin Ventures, with participation from AI Fund, Myriad Venture Partners, Tandem Ventures, Active Capital, Capital Factory, Foley & Lardner, and a consortium of partners from a 25 law firm.
XTEND, a Tampa, FL-based provider of AI-powered tactical autonomous robotic systems, raised $30M in Series B funding. The round was led by Aliya Capital Partners and Protego Ventures.
Heron, a NYC-based startup using AI to automate workflows in business lending, equipment finance, and insurance, raised $16M in Series A funding. The round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors Y-Combinator, BoxGroup and Flex Capital.
Covenant, a NYC-based AI law firm built for private market investors, raised $4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Flybridge Capital Partners, with participation from Neil Barsky.
Tavrn, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-driven legal tech platform, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by Lane Capital. Existing investors A*, Hummingbird Ventures, and Box Group also participated.
Dakota, a NYC-based crypto-integrated business banking platform, raised $12.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by CoinFund, with participation from 6th Man Ventures (6MV) and Triton Ventures.
IntuigenceAI, a Berkeley, CA-based provider of the AI-based engineer platform IntuiAI, raised $10M in Seed funding. The round was led by Innovation Endeavors with participation from Recursive Ventures and Think+.
Vultron, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an agentic operating system for federal growth, raised $22M in total funding. Backers included Raycroft (leader) with participation from Craft Ventures, Long Journey, South Park Commons and angel investors.
Amogy, a NYC-based provider of ammonia-to-power solutions, raised additional $23M in funding. The round was led by Korea Development Bank (KDB) and KDB Silicon Valley LLC, with participation from new investors BonAngels Venture Partners, Pathway Investment, and JB Investment.
Linkby, a Boston, MA-based provider of a performance PR platform, raised $15M in Series B funding. The round was led by Volition Capital.
Bifrost Electronics, a Boulder, CO-based quantum startup, raised $2.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Caruso Ventures, with participation from Harlow Capital and others.
Trusty, a Toronto, Canada-based provider of an AI-powered estate platform helping families manage, assign, and protect their wealth across generations, raised $1M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Relay Ventures and Graphite Ventures, with participation from Mistral Venture Partners and strategic angel investors.
Helios, a NYC-based maker of an operating system for public policy professionals, raised $4m in seed funding. The round was led by Unusual Ventures, with participation from Founders Inc. and Alumni Ventures.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Mantis Ventures, the VC firm co-founded by The Chainsmokers’ Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, has closed a $100M third fund, up 25% from its previous fund. The firm focuses on B2B startups like Chainguard and Rogo, bucking the trend of celebrity VCs chasing consumer brands.
Brian Singerman and Lee Linden are reportedly raising $500M, first fund for GPx, a San Francisco, CA-based newly formed venture capital firm. The fund employs will invest approximately 20% of capital into VC funds targeting pre-seed and seed-stage startups, while the remaining 80% will be used to co-lead Series B rounds in the most successful portfolio companies of backed funds.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
Former OpenAI engineer shares candid view of company culture and chaos:
Calvin French-Owen, a former Segment co-founder, described OpenAI as fast-growing and chaotic, with duplicative work, fragile systems, and startup-like speed—despite ballooning from 1,000 to 3,000 employees in a year.
He detailed the sprint to launch Codex in just seven weeks and praised the team’s autonomy, but noted issues like a disorganized codebase and overreliance on Slack.
Contrary to criticism, he emphasized OpenAI’s internal focus on practical safety risks—like abuse, bias, and biohazards—while acknowledging the high-stakes nature of its public and regulatory scrutiny.
Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab raises $2B seed round at $12B valuation:
Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s new AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab, closed a $2B seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, valuing the company at $12B.
Backers include Nvidia, Accel, ServiceNow, Cisco, AMD, and Jane Street; the startup has yet to reveal its product but teased a significant open source release aimed at researchers and startups.
Thinking Machines has hired top former OpenAI talent and is positioning itself as a serious competitor to OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind in building frontier AI systems.
Mistral debuts Voxtral, its first open source AI audio model:
French startup Mistral has released Voxtral, an open-weight audio model designed for businesses, offering transcription, summarization, and real-time voice command capabilities.
Voxtral comes in two variants: Voxtral Small (24B parameters) for production-scale use, and Voxtral Mini (3B parameters) for edge/local deployments, including a low-cost transcription-only version.
The multilingual model competes with ElevenLabs and OpenAI Whisper, and can be tested on Hugging Face or Mistral’s chatbot, with API usage starting at $0.001/minute.
Another high-profile OpenAI researcher departs for Meta’s AI lab:
Jason Wei, a key researcher behind OpenAI’s o3 model and reinforcement learning efforts, is joining Meta’s Superintelligence Lab, along with colleague Hyung Won Chung.
Both researchers previously worked at Google and joined OpenAI together, focusing on deep reasoning, chain-of-thought techniques, and agent research.
Meta continues aggressively poaching top AI talent, offering up to $300M over four years, as it builds its AI leadership team to rival OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind.
Amazon launches Kiro, its new AI-powered IDE:
Amazon launched Kiro, a new AI-powered agentic IDE built on Code OSS that aims to help turn developer prototypes into production-ready software systems.
It introduces Kiro Specs to embed requirement specifications for context and Kiro Hooks that automate AI tasks in the background when developers change files.
The tool automatically generates design documents, data flow diagrams, and database schemas based on the project's existing codebase and its approved specifications.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕Other news
Apple invests $500M in MP Materials to boost U.S. rare-earth supply:
Apple is committing $500 million to MP Materials to produce American-made neodymium magnets for its products and strengthen the domestic rare-earth supply chain.
The partnership includes building manufacturing lines in Texas and launching a recycling facility in California to process rare-earth materials from used electronics.
This move supports Apple’s broader $500B U.S. investment pledge and aligns with its goal to use 100% recycled rare-earth elements across its devices.
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)
Chief of Staff - Grey Line Partner | USA - Apply Here
Corporate Development & Strategy - Figma Venture | USA - Apply Here
Value Creation - Cadeumen Capital | Spain - Apply Here
Associate - OMERSE Venture | USA - Apply Here
Principal - Al Fund | USA - Apply Here
Fund Analyst - Baird Capital | USA - Apply Here
Chief of Staff to Founding Partner - One Way Venture | USA - Apply Here
Associate - Baird Capital | USA - Apply Here
Investor (AI) - Samsung Next | USA - Apply Here
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