☕ Tiger Global raising $2.2 Billion fund & OpenAI says ChatGPT saves workers an hour a day.
Department of Commerce approves Nvidia H200 chip exports to China & X bans European Commission ad account after €120m fine.
Earth is literally slowing down.
Days get about 1.8 seconds longer every century. That means 600 million years ago, a full day was just 21 hours.
Even the Earth is quiet-quitting.
📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Investor data room superpack, investor outreach email templates, AI coding paradox, new AI funding reality, US VC growth, startup naming guide, CAIR metric for AI success.
Tiger Global is raising a new $2.2B fund called Private Investment Partners 17 (PIP 17).
SoftBank and Nvidia reportedly in talks to fund Skild AI at $14B, nearly tripling its value.
Department of Commerce approves Nvidia H200 chip exports to China.
OpenAI boasts enterprise win days after internal ‘code red’ on Google threat.
Google details security measures for Chrome’s agentic features.
OpenAI says ChatGPT saves workers an hour a day.
Warby Parker, Google to launch AI-powered smart glasses in 2026.
X bans European Commission ad account after €120m fine.
US Justice Department accuses two Chinese men of trying to smuggle Nvidia chips.
The world’s first actual smart phone.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
Investor Data Room Superpack: Everything you need to build a VC-ready data room (Guide/Templates).
Investor Outreach Email Sequence Pack: 20+ Proven Templates Used & Approved by VCs.
The productivity paradox of AI coding assistants.
The new reality of AI funding: massive checks, fewer winners, and tougher competition.
The US VC ecosystem still finds plenty of room for growth.
How to actually name your Startup.
The overlooked metric-CAIR, that predicts AI product success.
Framework: How to get warm intros to VCs without a network?
AI tools used by a16z partner Olivia Moore.
The Startup Valuation Guide For Founders.
Annoying questions from VC & how to answer them
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Niobium, a Dayton, OH-based custom silicon provider for fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) platforms, raised $23M+ in funding. Backers included Fusion Fund, Morgan Creek Capital, Rev1 Ventures, and Ohio Innovation Fund. Additional new investors included ADVentures, the new corporate venture arm of Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI), Korea Development Bank (KDB), JobsOhio Ventures, Rev1 Angels, and Silicon Catalyst Ventures.
Resemble AI, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a platform securing enterprise generative AI from creation to distribution, raised $13M in funding. Backers included Berkeley Frontier Fund, Comcast Ventures, Craft Ventures, Gentree Fund, Google’s AI Futures Fund, IAG Capital Partners, Javelin Venture Partners, KDDI Open Innovation Fund, Okta Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, Taiwania Capital, and Ubiquity Ventures.
Scowtt, a Seattle, WA-based provider of an AI-powered advertising optimization platform, raised $12M in Series A funding. The round was led by Inspired Capital, alongside LiveRamp Ventures, Angeles Investors, and Angeles Ventures.
Corma, a Paris, France-based provider of a SaaS management solution for IT teams control software overload, raised €3.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by XTX Ventures with participation from Tuesday Capital, Kima Ventures, 50 Partners, and Olympe Capital.
Convergen, a Suzhou, China-based biotech company developing targeted protein degradation (TPD) therapies for diseases driven by pathological protein aggregates, raised $10M in Seed funding. The round was led by Qiming Venture Partners.
Rotostitch, San Francisco, CA-based manufacturing startup advancing automated textile manufacturing technologies, raised $1M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Boost VC and Nova Threshold.
AllScale, a NYC-based provider of a self-custody financial platform for global microbusinesses, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by YZi Labs (through EASY Residency Season 2), Informed Ventures, and Generative Ventures, with participation from other investors.
Tuhk, a Toronto, Canada-based fintech startup developing a data collaboration platform, raised US$6M in Seed funding. The round was led by FINTOP, with participation from Lloyds Banking Group and Capital One Ventures.
PvX, a Singapore-based provider of a financial services platform focused on cohort financing and market intelligence for consumer applications, raised $4.7M in Seed extension funding. The round was led by Z Venture Capital, followed by Drive by DraftKings, with participation from existing investors General Catalyst, Play Ventures and Storyhouse Ventures.
Airwallex, a San Francisco, CA- and Singapore-based provider of a financial platform for modern businesses, raised $330M in Series G funding, at $8 Billion valuation. The round was led by Addition with participation from T. Rowe Price, Activant, Lingotto, Robinhood Ventures and TIAA Ventures.
Pan Cancer T, a Rotterdam, the Netherlands-based biotech company developing T cell therapies for solid tumours, raised €10M in funding. The round included €5M from existing investors Van Herk Ventures, Thuja Capital, Erasmus MC O&O Holdings, and InnovationQuarter, in addition to a €5M Innovation Credit loan from the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Honeyjar, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI co-pilot service for communications & PR, raised $2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Heather Hartnett, and Kevin Mahaffey.
OTR Therapeutics, a Shanghai, China-based biotechnology company turning early-stage innovations into therapies, raised $100M in Series A financing closed in June 2025. Backers included True Light Capital, LAV, Pfizer Ventures, and Sirona Capital.
Castelion, a Torrance, CA-based defense technology company, raised $350M in Series B funding. The round was led by Altimeter Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Lavrock Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, First In, Space VC, Cantos, BlueYard, Avenir, Champion Hill, and Interlagos.
Tracktile, a Charlottetown, a Canada-based AI software company, raised $1.25M in Seed funding. The round was led by BDC Seed Venture Fund and Island Capital Partners, with participation from Graphite Ventures.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Castle Fund, a Pacifica, CA-based newly formed venture capital firm, is raising $20m for its debut fund. According to a regulatory form filed with the S.E.C., Castle Fund I, L.P., has not raised funds, yet. Managing Partner Daniel Gould is listed as the signer of the document.
Tiger Global is raising a new $2.2B fund called Private Investment Partners 17 (PIP 17), signaling a more cautious return to venture. Led by Chase Coleman, the firm is scaling back from its 2021 “spray and pray” peak when it raised a $12.7B fund and backed 315 startups. PIP 16’s hits—like OpenAI, Waymo, and Databricks—boosted paper gains by 33%, encouraging LP confidence. This time, Tiger warns of inflated AI valuations and says it’s approaching the market with “humility.”
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
SoftBank and Nvidia reportedly in talks to fund Skild AI at $14B, nearly tripling its value
SoftBank and Nvidia may lead a $1B+ round valuing Skild AI at $14B, up from $4.7B in May; the startup builds a robot-agnostic foundation model rather than hardware.
Skild’s model, Skild Brain, aims to power many types of robots and has partnerships with LG CNS and HPE as investor momentum in AI robotics accelerates.
The sector is booming, with Physical Intelligence, Figure, and 1X all raising or pursuing billion-dollar rounds at sky-high valuations.
Department of Commerce approves Nvidia H200 chip exports to China
The U.S. Commerce Department will allow Nvidia to export 18-month-old H200 AI chips to vetted Chinese customers, with the U.S. government taking a 25% cut of revenues.
The decision reverses earlier restrictions and conflicts with a new bipartisan bill (SAFE Chips Act) proposing a 30-month ban on advanced AI chip exports to China.
Nvidia welcomed the move, though China’s recent ban on buying U.S. chips and reliance on Huawei/Alibaba silicon highlights a strained and shifting market.
OpenAI boasts enterprise win days after internal ‘code red’ on Google threat
OpenAI reports massive enterprise adoption: ChatGPT message volume is up 8x YoY, API reasoning-token usage is up 320x, and employees report saving 40–60 minutes a day.
Despite strong enterprise momentum (36% of U.S. businesses use ChatGPT Enterprise), OpenAI faces pressure — Google’s Gemini is accelerating, consumer revenue is at risk, and the company has $1.4T in infrastructure commitments.
Enterprise behavior is shifting: custom GPT usage has surged 19x, but most workers still aren’t using advanced features like reasoning or search — signaling early-stage adoption and significant room for deeper integration.
Google details security measures for Chrome’s agentic features
Google outlined how Chrome will secure agentic features that take actions for users, using a Gemini-powered “User Alignment Critic,” origin restrictions, and URL-checking observer models to prevent unsafe or unintended actions.
Agent Origin Sets restrict what the model can read or modify on a webpage, reducing risks like cross-origin data leaks, while Chrome also blocks navigation to harmful or model-generated URLs.
For sensitive actions — banking, sign-ins, purchases, messaging — Chrome requires explicit user consent, with the agent having no access to passwords; Google has also added a prompt-injection classifier to block malicious instructions.
OpenAI says ChatGPT saves workers an hour a day
OpenAI claims a new survey of 9,000 employees shows that its AI tools save workers between 40 and 60 minutes a day, with the biggest gains in engineering and data science.
These internal findings push back against recent studies from MIT and Harvard, which suggested that most organizations see zero return on their spending or produce shallow content researchers call workslop.
The data shows that employees in research and IT who do not hold technical roles logged a 36% increase in coding‑related messages over the past six months of using the tools.
Warby Parker, Google to launch AI-powered smart glasses in 2026
Warby Parker and Google are collaborating on lightweight, AI-powered smart glasses built on Android XR and Google’s Gemini AI, with the first product slated for a 2026 launch.
The glasses will come in two types: screen-free AI glasses with speakers/mics/cameras for natural interaction, and display AI glasses with in-lens visuals for tasks like navigation or translation.
The partnership marks Google’s renewed push into AR wearables as it competes with Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses and Apple’s Vision Pro, aiming to bring stylish, all-day wearable AI eyewear to consumers.
X bans European Commission ad account after €120m fine
X banned the European Commission’s advertising account after the EC issued a €120 million fine against the platform for violating digital services regulations with its blue checkmark system.
The European Commission’s first Digital Services Act fine called X’s paid verification system deceptive because it makes users vulnerable to impersonation and scams, and criticized the ad repository for lacking transparency.
X’s Head of Product claimed the ad account ban happened because the commission exploited the Ad Composer tool to artificially boost reach, not as retaliation for the fine itself.
US Justice Department accuses two Chinese men of trying to smuggle Nvidia chips
Two Chinese men were arrested for allegedly running a scheme to smuggle Nvidia H100 and H200 chips into China by using straw buyers, fake labels, and falsified export documents.
Prosecutors say the operation, active since at least 2023, attempted to export over $160M worth of restricted chips and involved a broader “sophisticated smuggling network” that threatened U.S. national security.
The arrests came the same day President Trump approved limited H200 exports to China, highlighting rising tensions over AI chip controls and ongoing efforts to block unauthorized transfers.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other news
The world’s first actual smart phone
ZTE showed off an engineering prototype of the Nubia M153 that fuses ByteDance’s Doubao AI agent directly into the Android OS to control the interface and manage multi-step task chains automatically.
The device uses a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip to run a local ZTE Nebula-GUI system that visually navigates screen menus, while the cloud-based Doubao model handles planning and semantics.
You can ask the assistant to book a Baidu Apollo robotaxi, and the software finds your location, opens the app, selects the correct destination, and confirms the ride without any input.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & startup job opportunities
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Investment Analyst - Cornell University | USA - Apply Here
Accountant - AI Fund | USA - Apply Here
Associate - Venture Capital - Artha Venture Fund | India - Apply Here
VP of Fundraising - Scale Asia Venture | Japan - Apply Here
Investment Intern - Nexea | USA - Apply Here
Head of Atlassian Ventures - Atlassian Venture | USA - Apply Here
Program & Events Manager - Plug and Play Tech Centre | USA - Apply Here
Associate - Allocator One | UK - Apply Here
Chief of Staff – DeVC - Z47 | India - Apply Here
VC Investment Intern - First Momentum Venture | USA - Apply Here
Portfolio Management Lead - Yzi Labs | Remote - Apply Here
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