☕ US to block Nvidia AI chip exports to Chinese firms & SpaceX secured a $4.16B Pentagon contract .
Meta develops AI pendant as wearable ambitions expand & Cognition CEO says AI coding agents should augment, not replace programmers.
Breaking News
United States is moving to block Chinese firms from accessing advanced Nvidia AI chips through overseas subsidiaries, closing a major loophole in export controls. The move shows that the AI race is increasingly becoming a geopolitical battle, with governments now targeting not just chips themselves but the global networks used to access them.
SpaceX secured a $4.16B Pentagon contract for the Golden Dome missile-defense project, adding to several other defense deals tied to the initiative. The win further strengthens SpaceX’s position as one of the most important military and space infrastructure providers in the U.S., extending its influence far beyond rockets and Starlink.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Invertix, a Munich-based startup building an autonomous AI workforce platform for the renewable energy sector, raised €1.7M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Vireo Ventures.
EarSmartAI, an Indianapolis-based consumer diagnostic platform, raised $250K in Pre-Seed funding from Boomerang Ventures.
Stellar Alpina, a Zurich-based aerospace startup developing compact rotating detonation rocket engines, raised CHF 3.5M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Founderful.
SEED
Lokam.ai, a NYC-based voice-first AI platform for automotive dealerships, raised $350K in funding. The round was led by customer World Auto Group.
Kopa.ai, a Lithuania-based startup building an agentic AI operating system for ecommerce teams, raised €2M in Seed funding. The round was co-led by XTX Ventures and Practica Capital.
Crimson, a London-based AI-native litigation and arbitration intelligence platform, raised $2.5M in Seed funding. Investors included Y Combinator.
Pax, a São Paulo-based AI-native public safety intelligence company, raised $40M in Seed funding. The round was co-led by Greenoaks and Benchmark.
GROWTH
LightTable, a Denver-based AI-native pre-construction platform, raised $22M in Series A funding. The round was led by Innovation Endeavors.
MokN, a London-based cybersecurity company focused on credential theft protection, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by GV (Google Ventures).
Reactor, a San Francisco-based developer platform for real-time generative video, raised $59M in funding. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Fonoa, a Dublin-based AI tax operating system for global businesses, raised $110M in Series C funding. The round was led by Headline.
Ôrəbella, a Los Angeles-based fragrance brand founded by Bella Hadid, raised an undisclosed funding round led by Silas Capital.
Corgi, a San Francisco-based insurance platform, raised $161M in Series B1 funding at a $2.6B valuation. The round was led by TCV.
Canals, a Miami-based AI workflow and operating software platform for wholesale distribution and industrial supply chains, raised $35M in funding. The round was led by Base10 Partners.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates.
Ghost Angels, a venture fund launched by a group of 20 former Snap employees and led by ex-Snap partnerships executive Max Rivera, is backing the next generation of AI-powered social and consumer startups. The fund has already invested in five companies and plans to back at least 15 more, focusing on founders building new social experiences, creator tools, gaming, fashion, and media platforms as social networking evolves beyond traditional ad-driven models.
Atomus, a Menlo Park, CA-based newly formed venture capital firm, is reportedly raising a $500m fund. The vehicle will presumably be focused on growth stage investing as its Founder Ethan Choi was at Khosla Ventures and Accel.
Transition Ventures, a London, UK and NYC-based early stage investment firm, closed its second fund, at $150m. Fund II took the firm’s assets under management to over $300m. Transition Ventures invests from inception to Series A in companies advancing energy systems powering AI, robotics for industrial efficiency, and next-generation solutions for critical minerals refining across Europe and the US.
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KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Cognition CEO says AI coding agents should augment, not replace programmers
Cognition CEO Scott Wu says Devin, the company’s AI coding agent, was never designed to replace software engineers. Instead, he views it as a “buddy” that helps developers build more and move faster.
While Cognition promotes a future of “self-driving software development,” Wu argues AI agents are best suited for repetitive maintenance work such as updating legacy code, migrations, and routine engineering tasks, freeing humans to focus on creativity and product building.
Devin now contributes heavily inside Cognition itself, with the company claiming 89% of committed code is generated by Devin. Still, Wu believes humans should remain in control, and expects AI agents across industries to augment workers rather than fully replace them.
SoftBank plans up to €75B investment in French AI data centers
SoftBank says it will invest up to €75 billion ($87 billion) to expand AI data center infrastructure in France, marking its largest AI infrastructure commitment in Europe.
The company aims to develop and operate up to 5 gigawatts of data center capacity. The first phase includes projects in Dunkirk, Bosquel, and Bouchain, targeting 3.1 gigawatts of capacity in northern France by 2031.
The announcement strengthens France’s ambitions to become a leading AI hub. SoftBank, a major OpenAI investor and customer, continues its global AI infrastructure push despite growing environmental and energy-related concerns surrounding large-scale data center expansion.
Meta develops AI pendant as wearable ambitions expand
Meta is reportedly developing an AI-powered pendant that could enter testing next year, building on technology from Limitless, the AI wearable startup it acquired in 2025.
The device is expected to offer always-on AI assistance through a necklace-style form factor, similar to Limitless’ conversation-recording wearable.
Meta is also planning more AI glasses and a new “Wearables for Work” subscription as it looks to revive Reality Labs, which lost $4 billion in Q1.
Microsoft and Nvidia tease "a new era of PC"
Microsoft and Nvidia have posted a teaser on X promising “a new era of PC,” paired with coordinates pointing to Taipei, Taiwan, the host city of Computex, sparking heavy speculation about what’s coming.
The teaser carefully avoided saying gaming PC, workstation, or even AI PC — just “PC” — hinting Nvidia may push into ARM-based desktops or laptops built around local AI workloads, possibly via Windows on ARM.
Earlier signs point this direction, including the DGX Spark project and partnerships focused on AI inference running directly on consumer hardware, which could put Nvidia in direct competition with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips.
OpenAI gives away life sciences AI model
OpenAI has opened its Rosalind Biodefense program, giving picked developers and government partners free access to GPT-Rosalind, a life sciences model from April that reasons about molecules, proteins, genes, and disease biology.
OpenAI pays the access costs for vetted developers working on early warning systems, diagnostics, and vaccine development, with Lawrence Livermore, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, CEPI, Fourth Eon, and SecureDNA among the first partners.
Academic, nonprofit, government-affiliated, and small-to-midsized teams with clear public benefit goals can apply, with OpenAI seeking work on literature synthesis, protocol design, model-building, data harmonization, simulation, or decision support.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Microsoft threatens researcher with criminal probe
Microsoft is threatening legal action and a possible criminal referral against a security researcher known as “Nightmare Eclipse,” who published unpatched bugs in Windows Defender, BitLocker, and other products along with working exploit code.
In a blog post, Microsoft said the researcher skipped reporting the flaws — named BlueHammer, RedSun UnDefend, and YellowKey — and said its Digital Crimes Unit would pursue cases, while CISA confirmed some bugs were used in real attacks.
Nightmare Eclipse claims Microsoft revoked their Microsoft Security Response Center account before the public release, and their GitHub and GitLab accounts have since been banned, drawing sharp criticism from researchers including bug bounty pioneer Katie Moussouris.
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