☕ US bans Chinese humanoid robots & Thinking Machines co-founder Lilian Weng rejoins OpenAI.
Former Perplexity engineer launches AI browser for knowledge workers & Google disbands AlphaFold team.
Breaking News
The U.S. has moved to block imports of new Chinese-made humanoid robots and robot dogs over national security concerns, escalating tech restrictions beyond AI chips and models into physical AI. The decision could significantly impact China’s fast-growing robotics industry and intensify the global race for humanoid robots.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicts that billions of people will have personal AI agents within five years, helping manage everything from finances and health to daily tasks and relationships. The vision underscores Meta's strategy to make messaging apps like WhatsApp the primary interface for AI assistants.
DAILY PICKS
🗞️ Must read posts
What VCs are really asking AI founders during due diligence? (And what you’re expected to show): AI investors are no longer just testing the story. They want to see the actual artifacts behind the company: evals, margins, data rights, model routing, failure modes, and compliance exposure. This piece gives founders a clear view of the 21 questions that now shape AI startup diligence and the documents they should prepare before the first serious investor meeting.
What founders should never automate: AI can save founders time, but automating the wrong work can quietly destroy the customer signals they need most. This piece shows founders how to separate low-signal busywork from high-signal customer interactions, so they automate internal repetition first and protect the conversations that reveal product-market fit.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Liquid Interactive, a Toronto, Canada-based interactive visual AI platform, raised CAD $700K in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by AXL.
SEED
Adjuvia Therapeutics, a San Francisco, CA-based biotechnology company developing treatments for mitochondrial dysfunction, raised $8M in Seed funding. The round was led by JLO Ventures, with participation from Portfolia Ventures.
Biota, a Longmont, CO-based environmental diagnostics company focused on PFAS testing, raised $3M in Seed funding. The round was led by Burnt Island Ventures, with participation from DeepWork Capital, Antler, Beyond Utility Water Ventures, and Deming Center Venture Fund.
Curant.ai, a St. George, UT-based AI-powered insurance claims management platform, raised $3.1M in Seed funding. The round was led by Diagram, with participation from Humania Insurance, Element Ventures, Blue Plains Capital, and angel investors.
Birdai Labs, a San Francisco, CA-based digital asset infrastructure company, raised $4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Metalayer Ventures and The Venture Dept.
Vivid Dx, an Oxford, UK-based precision diagnostics company, raised $15M in Seed funding. The round was co-led by Oxford Science Enterprises and Cedars-Sinai Intellectual Property Co., with participation from Jameel Investment Management Company and other investors.
Fish Audio, a San Francisco, CA-based AI voice platform, raised $52M in Seed funding. The round was led by Coreline Ventures and Capital Today, with participation from 359 Capital, Play Time, HF0, 645 Ventures, Parable, Carya Venture Partners, Alphalist Partners, and angel investors.
GROWTH
MASAJ, a London, UK-based bodywork and massage brand, raised £1.5M in funding. The round was co-led by FIGR Ventures and Sorven Capital, with participation from Giles Brook and angel investors.
ChipAgents, a San Jose, CA-based agentic AI platform for semiconductor design, raised $60M in Series A2 funding. Backers included B Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Micron, MediaTek, Ericsson, and ScOp.
groundcover, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based cloud-native observability platform, raised $100M in Series C funding. The round was led by One Peak, with participation from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, Zeev Ventures, Angular Ventures, Heavybit, and Jibe.
Eliyan Corporation, a Santa Clara, CA-based developer of connectivity technologies for AI compute systems, completed a $145M Series C funding round. The round was led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from Cisco Investments, Lumentum, and other new and existing investors.
Centralize, a San Francisco, CA-based relationship intelligence platform for enterprise revenue teams, raised $19M in funding. The round was led by NEA, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, Y Combinator, 20SALES, Ritual Capital, Adverb Ventures, Stewart Butterfield, and Scott Woody.
Pangram, a New York City-based AI research lab, raised $9M in funding. The round was led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Haystack, ScOp Venture Capital, Script Capital, and Cadenza.
Precise Behavioral, a Westlake Village, CA-based behavioral health services and technology company, raised $14.2M in funding. The round was led by A1 Health Ventures, with participation from Ziegler Link-Age Fund, Converge Capital Partners, and Granite Financial Holdings.
InvestiFi, a Dover, DE-based embedded digital investing platform for credit unions and community banks, raised $20M in funding. The round was led by Vibe Credit Union, with participation from BankTech Ventures, Idaho Central Credit Union, Navari, United Financial Credit Union, Coastal Credit Union, Mid Minnesota Credit Union, Truity Credit Union, and Southpoint Credit Union.
ThreatLocker, an Orlando, FL-based Zero Trust cybersecurity platform, raised $190M in Series F funding. The round was led by Elephant, with participation from D. E. Shaw Ventures, Arthur Ventures, and Koch Disruptive Technologies.
Terminal, a Toronto, Canada-based telematics integration platform, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Battery Ventures, with participation from Intact Private Capital, Penske, Y Combinator, and Wayfinder Ventures.
PEX, a New York City-based corporate card and spend management platform, raised $160M in debt and equity financing. The round was led by Bluff Point Associates, with participation from Clear Haven Capital Management.
Way Security, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based AI-powered identity and access management platform, raised $20M in funding. The round was co-led by Insight Partners and Glilot Capital Partners.
Throne Science, an Austin, TX-based toilet sensor platform, raised $10M in Series A funding. The round was led by Will Ventures, with participation from Emerson Collective, Workshop, LEAD VC, Salt VC, Accomplice, Moxxie, Ventures Together, Symphony, Felix Capital, Cosmic Venture Partners, Offscript, V1.VC, and Morrison Seger.
Weave, a San Francisco, CA-based engineering intelligence platform, raised $13.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Standard Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Moonfire, Burst Capital, IrregEx, and The Agent Fund.
Procode Inc., a Los Angeles, CA-based AI-powered medical billing and revenue cycle management platform, raised $10M in Series A funding. The round was led by Health Velocity Capital.
Healia, a Columbus, OH-based healthcare benefits platform, raised $14M in Series A funding. The round was led by 111° West Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, First Round Capital, Pioneer Fund, GoAhead Ventures, and North Coast Ventures.
Mirae, a London, UK-based AI-driven continuous care platform for autoimmune disease and other chronic conditions, raised $5.4M in funding. The round was led by Oxford Science Enterprises.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Align Ventures, a NYC-based venture capital firm investing in consumer brands and technologies, closed its Early-Stage Fund II, at $125m. With Fund II, Align will invest $2m to $10m initial checks into 15-20 brands that are working to transform everyday consumer experiences across categories including beauty, personal care, health, wellness, pet, and home.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Microsoft ramps up competition with OpenAI and Anthropic
Microsoft is increasingly positioning itself as an alternative to OpenAI and Anthropic by promoting its own AI models, chips, security tools, and enterprise infrastructure while encouraging customers to avoid relying on a single AI provider.
CEO Satya Nadella argued that businesses should keep AI infrastructure independent from any one model so they can switch providers, protect sensitive data, and reduce vendor lock-in.
Alongside offering access to leading third-party models, Microsoft is expanding its own MAI model family and AI chips, claiming stronger performance, lower costs, and better efficiency for enterprise AI workloads.
Thinking Machines co-founder Lilian Weng rejoins OpenAI
Lilian Weng has stepped down as co-founder of Thinking Machines, citing health concerns and the demands of startup life, before announcing her return to OpenAI.
At OpenAI, Weng will lead a new research team focused on accelerating internal AI research, including work on recursive self-improvement for advanced AI systems.
The move highlights the intense competition for top AI talent, with Weng returning to OpenAI after previously serving as the company’s VP of AI Safety Research.
Microsoft’s Anthropic investment outperformed OpenAI this quarter
Microsoft reported a $3.2 billion gain from its investment in Anthropic during the quarter, while marking down the value of its OpenAI stake by about $600 million.
Despite the quarterly decline, Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI still generated a $5 billion gain over the full fiscal year, reflecting the long-term growth of the company.
The results highlight Microsoft’s unique position as a major investor in both Anthropic and OpenAI, with the two AI labs contributing differently to its financial performance.
Former Perplexity engineer launches AI browser for knowledge workers
Polar, an AI-first browser founded by a former Perplexity engineer who worked on Comet, has raised $5.7 million in seed funding to build AI-powered workflows for knowledge workers.
Instead of targeting general web browsing, Polar focuses on automating tasks such as research, recruiting, sales, marketing, and operations by assigning AI agents to work across open browser tabs.
The browser is free with limited daily AI usage, while paid plans start at $20 per month, reflecting a broader shift from AI-powered search toward AI-driven workplace automation.
Claude AI cracks post-quantum encryption
Anthropic’s Mythos 5 model can find and exploit previously unknown flaws in every major operating system, including the open-source code behind web infrastructure and encryption, an FBI official said this week.
The Trump administration placed export controls on Mythos 5 in June over national security worries, then lifted them in recent weeks after Anthropic worked with the government to review its safeguards.
Mythos 5 is limited to an approved U.S. government group, but Anthropic offers a globally available model built on the same technology, and even “less capable” models found and exploited flaws the same way.
Google disbands AlphaFold team
Google DeepMind has broken up the team behind AlphaFold, the AI program that predicts protein shapes, reassigning most of its key members and paper authors while a few others have left the company entirely, according to the Financial Times.
AlphaFold predicts three-dimensional protein structures from amino acid sequences in minutes, and its free database gives researchers over 200 million predictions used for drug discovery, vaccines, and studying diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
John Jumper, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Demis Hassabis for the work, left in June to join Anthropic along with some colleagues, while others moved to Gemini projects or the spin-off Isomorphic Labs.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Russia charges Durov with terrorism
Russia’s FSB security agency has charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with aiding terrorism and added him to an international wanted list, with the accusations carrying a possible sentence of life in prison.
The FSB claims Telegram failed to take down channels, chats and bots that Ukrainian intelligence and extremist groups allegedly used to organize sabotage, attacks and cyber fraud inside Russia, according to Interfax.
The charges build on an investigation started in February, after Russia began limiting Telegram and fined the platform over 100 million rubles ($1.25 million) this year for not removing content banned under Russian law.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
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