☕ Uber puts a $1,500/month cap on AI coding tools for employees & Meta launches AI business agent to compete in enterprise AI.
Microsoft launches 7 AI models to cut OpenAI reliance & Lovable expands Google Cloud partnership.
Breaking News
Microsoft launched seven new AI models as it works to reduce its dependence on OpenAI, signaling a major shift in one of tech’s most important partnerships. After investing billions into OpenAI, Microsoft now wants greater control over its AI stack, costs, and future products, setting up a future where the two companies could increasingly compete rather than simply collaborate.
Google is reportedly paying Android developers for access to app source code to train its AI coding models, highlighting how valuable high-quality training data has become. The move suggests that public web data is no longer enough for frontier AI development, pushing tech giants toward exclusive data deals as the next battleground in the AI race.
FROM OUR PARTNER - TYKR
💹 Investors are backing Tykr’s mission to simplify stock investing
Tykr is the premier stock screening and education platform designed to take the guesswork out of the stock market. Today, we have over 13,000 customers in over 50 countries.
We stand by our tagline, “clear confident investing,” as we empower retail investors to find high-quality Stocks, ETFs, and Mutual Funds with ease. By simplifying complex financial data into actionable insights, Tykr helps you reduce risk and maximise returns.
Plus, we are seamlessly connected to 30+ brokers, including Schwab, Fidelity, E*TRADE, and Robinhood, allowing your Tykr portfolio tracker to automatically update every day. Tykr is raising capital on Wefunder with the goal of achieving a $1B valuation in the next 5-10 years.
DAILY PICKS
🗞️ What else is brewing
What should founders say when investors ask about valuation? (Link)
The AI industry is quietly moving from growth-at-all-costs to cost-accounting mode. (Link)
He turned cakes into a $120K/month lead generation business. (Link)
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)
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
Radley Health (RadleyCare), a Cincinnati-based peer-supported behavioral healthcare platform, raised $3M in Seed funding. Backers included Aurora Forge, Jackson Healthcare, and CareSource.
Haga Bioscience, a Stockholm-based spatial biology startup, raised approximately $2.3M in Seed funding. Investors included Almi Invest, Life Science Invest, and SU Ventures.
Paypercut, a Sofia-based payments infrastructure platform for Central and Eastern Europe, raised €5M in Seed funding. The round was co-led by Concentric, Passion Capital, and Araya Ventures.
Ingenix, a Warsaw-based AI and biology company, raised $13M in Seed extension funding. The round was led by Sofinnova Partners.
Phosio, a Corvallis-based advanced materials company developing high refractive index metal oxides, raised $4M in Seed funding. The round was led by MESH.
Westmag, a San Francisco-based manufacturer of drone motors and robotic actuators, raised $11M in Seed funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Founders Fund and Lux Capital.
GROWTH
Perk (TravelPerk), a Boston-based AI-native travel and spend management platform, secured a $300M credit facility led by Neuberger Specialty Finance, alongside Blue Owl, Hercules Capital, and Liquidity.
Terra AI, a Palo Alto-based AI platform helping solve subsurface uncertainty for mineral and energy development, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Khosla Ventures with strategic participation from BHP Ventures.
Quobly, a France-based quantum computing startup building silicon-based quantum computers, raised €115M in Series A funding. The round was led by Bpifrance, SEALSQ, and STMicroelectronics.
Uncover, a São Paulo-based marketing measurement platform, raised $16M in Series A funding. The round was led by Cloud9 Capital.
Coralogix, a Boston-based observability and AI platform, raised $200M in Series F funding. The round was co-led by Advent, CPPIB, and Greenfield.
Wordsmith, an Edinburgh-based legal AI startup, raised $70M in Series B funding. Backers included Highland Europe and Index Ventures.
Arpio, a Durham-based AI-native cloud recovery and resilience platform, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was co-led by S3 Ventures and Paladin Capital Group.
Forage, a San Francisco-based financial infrastructure platform, raised $40M in Series B funding. The round was led by Mouro Capital.
Molfar Defence Technologies, a Warsaw-based defense technology company building anti-drone radar systems, closed the first €1.5M tranche of its funding round. Front Ventures led the investment.
Oak Hill Bio, a Cambridge-based rare disease therapeutics company, raised $32.5M in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Balyasny Asset Management, venBio, and Janus Henderson Investors.
ZutaCore, a Foster City-based liquid cooling company for AI and HPC infrastructure, raised $100M in Series C funding. Investors included Mitsubishi Electric, Carrier Ventures, and Samsung Ventures.
NewLimit, a San Francisco-based longevity biotech focused on cell reprogramming, raised $435M in Series C funding. The round was led by Founders Fund.
Impulse Space, a Redondo Beach-based space infrastructure company, raised $500M in Series D funding. The round was co-led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC.
Factorial, a Barcelona-based AI workforce operations platform, raised $150M in Series D funding at a $2.5B valuation. The round was led by General Catalyst.
BibliU, a provider of academic content and campus store solutions, raised $55M in new funding. Investors included BlackRock.
Contraline, a clinical-stage biotech developing male contraceptives, raised $92.5M in Series B funding. The round was led by BVF Partners and RA Capital Management.
Gigaton, a London-based AI control software company for energy-intensive industries, raised $26M in Series A funding. The round was led by Plural.
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.
Benchmark Capital, the Silicon Valley venture firm behind early bets in eBay, Uber, Snap, and Twitter, has raised $2 billion across two new funds, including its first-ever $1.25 billion growth fund for later-stage investments. The firm is expanding beyond its traditional early-stage strategy to back larger AI and growth-stage companies, while its new $750 million early-stage fund gives it more firepower to compete in today’s increasingly expensive startup market.
PARTNERSHIP WITH US
🤝 Get your startup in front of 120,000+ audience.
Our newsletter is read by 120,000+ of tech professionals, founders, investors (VCs / Angel Investors) and managers around the world. Get in touch today.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Alphabet’s $85B AI fundraising signals strong investor demand for AI
Alphabet’s AI-focused stock offering attracted overwhelming demand, allowing Google’s parent company to increase its first fundraising tranche from $40B to $45B, with Berkshire Hathaway investing $10B.
The company plans to raise a total of $85B to help fund its massive AI infrastructure expansion, alongside expected AI-related capital expenditures of $180B–$190B this year.
The successful raise is seen as a positive signal for upcoming AI IPOs from companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX, suggesting public investors remain eager to back large-scale AI opportunities.
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 launches 7 AI models to cut OpenAI reliance
At its Build conference, Microsoft launched seven of its own AI models to lean less on OpenAI, letting it run the technology on its Azure cloud infrastructure and avoid paying third parties for the models behind its products.
The lineup is headlined by MAI-Code-1, a coding model that turns text prompts into source code inside GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code, and MAI-Thinking-1, a medium-sized reasoning model in private preview through Microsoft Foundry.
Cutting reliance on OpenAI matters as Microsoft has put $13 billion into the company and $5 billion into Anthropic, both of which are now moving toward IPOs while charging more for their leading proprietary models.
Android adds fake AI call detection
Android is rolling out fake call detection this month to fight AI deepfake impersonation scams, arriving globally in Phone by Google on Android 12+ devices and starting with Pixel phones, switched on by default.
The feature works as a “digital handshake between devices,” where a contact calling you through Phone by Google sends a silent confirmation signal that verifies the call is actually coming from their phone.
If a scammer spoofs a contact, the missing signal prompts your device to ping the real phone, and if it replies that no call is happening, you get an on-screen warning to hang up.
Meta launches AI business agent to compete in enterprise AI
Meta introduced a new AI Business Agent that can handle customer support, qualify leads, book appointments, process orders, and complete sales across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram.
More than 1 million businesses already use Meta’s chatbot tools, and the company plans to offer paid subscription tiers while expanding support for platforms like Shopify, Zendesk, and Shopee.
The launch marks Meta’s push into enterprise AI, positioning it against OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google by helping businesses automate operations directly within Meta’s ecosystem.
Lovable expands Google Cloud partnership in major AI infrastructure deal
Stockholm-based vibe-coding startup Lovable signed a multiyear agreement with Google Cloud that reportedly increases its cloud and AI usage by 5x.
The deal gives Lovable expanded access to Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini models, supporting its rapid growth after reaching $400M annualized revenue with just 146 employees.
Lovable will also integrate with Google-owned Wiz for real-time security checks and distribute its AI agents through Google Cloud’s enterprise marketplace to accelerate enterprise adoption.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Microsoft unveils AI-first devices and tools at Build 2026
Microsoft introduced Project Solara, a new category of AI-native devices that rely on cloud-connected agents instead of traditional operating systems and apps, signaling a shift toward AI-driven computing.
The company also showcased the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, powered by Nvidia’s new RTX Spark chip, designed to run large AI models locally and compete with high-end Apple devices.
Microsoft launched Scout, an AI agent inside Copilot, added enterprise-safe support for OpenClaw, and revealed new in-house AI models, including MAI Thinking-1, while expanding healthcare AI efforts through a partnership with Mayo Clinic.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & Startup Job Opportunities
Most aspiring VCs struggle with interviews, unclear expectations, no structured prep, and generic advice that doesn’t actually help. So we partnered with a leading investor group to build an all-in-one VC Interview Preparation Guide that gives you real clarity and frameworks. (Access Here)
Investor (Senior Associate/Principal) - Square Peg | USA - Apply Here
Founding Investor - Discipulus Ventures | USA - Apply Here
Senior Analyst - ICONIQUE Capital | USA - Apply Here
Venture AI & Operations Specialist - Blum Venture | Austria - Apply Here
Senior Associate - New York Life Venture | USA - Apply Here
Program Manager - a16z | USA - Apply Here
Associate - Manhattan Venture | USA - Apply Here
VP — Finance & Compliance - Transition VC | India - Apply Here
Senior Associate - ICONIQUE CAPITAL | USA - Apply Here
Venture Capital Analyst - MicroVentures | USA - Apply Here
WHEN YOU’RE READY, HERE’S HOW I CAN HELP:
💁 You might need our help!
Reach 120,000+ Founders & Investors: Partner with our newsletter to reach a highly engaged audience.
Build Your Pitch Deck: We write, design and model your pitch deck into a storyteller book within 4-5 days.
Do you have any news to share about your Startup or VC fund? Please email us.
We’ll be back in your inbox on Tomorrow.