☕ YouTube will let creators make AI clones & TikTok seals deal for new US joint venture to avoid ban.
OpenAI is gearing up for a major enterprise push in 2026 & Anthropic releases new AI ‘constitution’ for Claude
Breaking News
OpenAI is gearing up for a major enterprise push in 2026, appointing Barret Zoph to lead its business strategy as it looks to regain lost ground in the corporate AI market. Despite launching ChatGPT Enterprise early and claiming over 5 million business users, OpenAI’s enterprise LLM market share has slipped to 27%, trailing Anthropic at 40% and facing mounting pressure from Google’s Gemini—making enterprise adoption one of OpenAI’s top priorities going forward.
TikTok has finalized a majority American-owned joint venture to avoid a U.S. ban, with U.S. and global investors holding 80.1% and ByteDance retaining 19.9%. The new entity, TikTok USDS, will be led by Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX, store U.S. data and algorithms on Oracle’s cloud, and has received approval from both U.S. and Chinese governments—marking a pivotal end to years of regulatory uncertainty around TikTok’s U.S. operations.
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🗞️ What Else Is Brewing
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup Funding Updates
PRE-SEED
Overworld, a Providence, Rhode Island-based developer of local-first diffusion world models, raised $4.5m in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Kindred Ventures, with participation from Amplify.LA, Garage Capital, Northside Ventures, Vital Stage, East Sunshine, and angel investors including Logan Kilpatrick and leaders from Snowflake and Roblox.
Sparkli, a Zurich, Switzerland-based developer of a multimodal AI-native learning engine, raised $5m in pre-seed funding. Backers included Founderful and other investors.
Asymmetric Security, a San Francisco, CA-based AI incident response services company, raised $4.2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Susa Ventures, along with Halcyon Ventures, Overlook Ventures, and angels including Meta’s Charlie Songhurst and Entrepreneur First’s Matt Clifford, and Geoff Ralston, the former president of Y Combinator.
SEED
Nexxa.ai, a Sunnyvale, CA-based builder of specialized AI agents for heavy industries, raised $9m in seed funding. The round was led by Construct Capital with participation from a16z speedrun and existing investors.
Claim Health, a NYC-based company empowering AI-native revenue operations for post-acute care, raised $4.4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Maverick Ventures, with participation from Peak XV, Y Combinator, and DHVP.
Furl, a Los Angeles, CA-based security remediation startup, raised $10M in Seed funding. The round was led by Ten Eleven Ventures, with participation from Rapid7 CEO Corey Thomas and Open Opportunity Fund.
PraxisPro, a Houston, TX-based provider of an AI-powered training platform for life sciences company, raised $6M in Seed funding. The round was led by AlleyCorp with participation from Flybridge, South Loop Ventures, Zeal Capital Partners, True Ventures, Techstars, Alumni Ventures, and Daring Ventures.
GROWTH
LiveKit, a San Francisco, CA-based developer of a platform for voice, video, and physical AI agents, raised $100m in Series C funding at a $1 billion valuation. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Salesforce Ventures and returning investors Altimeter Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and Hanabi Capital.
VentureMed Group, a Minneapolis, MN-based medical device company, raised $28M in Series C funding. The round was led by S3 Ventures, with participation from existing investors including Endeavour Vision.
Klir, a Reno, NV-based operational data hub for water utilities, raised $17.5M in funding. The round consisted of a $10M Series B equity investment alongside a $7.5M credit facility from Innovation Banking at CIBC.
Cambio, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI-native commercial real estate operations platform, raised $18M in Series A funding. The round was led by Maverick Ventures with participation from Y Combinator, Adverb Ventures, Peterson Ventures and angel investors including executives from Procore, OpenAI, Anthropic, Vanta, Vercel, ServiceNow, Notion, and Amplitude.
Artie, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a managed real-time data streaming platform, raised $12M in Series A funding. The round was led by Dalton Caldwell at Standard Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Pathlight Ventures, and angel investors including Arash Ferdowsi, Benn Stancil, Chris Best, Charles Hearn, and Lenny Rachitsky.
Cubby, a NYC-based provider of a property management platform, raised $63M in Series A funding. The round was led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with participation from existing investors.
ZBD, a Hoboken, NJ-based provider of a payments solutions empowering real-money transactions for games and apps, raised $40M in Series C funding. The round was led by Blockstream Capital Partners.
Railway, a San Francisco, CA-based cloud platform for developers, raised $100M in Series B funding. The round was led by TQ Ventures, with participation from FPV Ventures, Redpoint, and Unusual Ventures.
Neurophos, an Austin, TX-based company which specializes in photonic AI chip technology, raised $110M in Series A funding. The round was led by Gates Frontier, with participation from M12, Carbon Direct Capital, Aramco Ventures, Bosch Ventures, and others.
Shield Space, a Lincoln, UK-based defence tech startup, raised £2M in funding. The round was led by the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II through fund manager Mercia Ventures, and included Twin Path Ventures, ROI Ventures and P3A Ventures.
Mews, a NYC-based provider of an operating system for hospitality, raised $300M in Series D funding, at $2.5 Billion valuation. The round was led by EQT Growth, with new investors Atomico and HarbourVest Partners, and participation from existing investors Kinnevik, Battery Ventures and Tiger Global.
One to One Health, a Chattanooga, TN-based provider of employer-sponsored onsite and virtual primary care solutions, raised $12M in funding. The round was led by Frist Cressey Ventures.
Zèya Global, a Miami, FL-based provider of a barter marketplace app, raised $2.45M in funding. The round was led by Storage Innovations LLC.
Optalysys, a Leeds, UK-based developer of photonic computing chips, raised £23m in a Series A extension funding round. The round was led by Northern Gritstone.
Claroty, a NYC-based cyber-physical systems (CPS) protection company, raised $150M in Series F funding. The round was led by Golub Growth, with participation from existing investors.
Upscale AI, Inc., a Santa Clara, California-based developer of AI networking infrastructure, raised $200m in Series A funding. The round was led by Tiger Global, Premji Invest, and Xora Innovation, with participation from Maverick Silicon, StepStone Group, Mayfield, Prosperity7 Ventures, Intel Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures.
Benepass, a NYC-based provider of a benefits capital management platform, raised $40M in Series B funding. The round was led by Centana Growth Partners, with participation from FoW Partners and existing investors Portage Ventures and Threshold Ventures.
AnswersNow, a Richmond, VA-based company which specializes in virtual applied behavioral analysis (ABA) therapy, raised $40M in Series B funding. The round was led by HealthQuest Capital, with participation from existing investors Left Lane Capital, Owl Ventures, and others.
OpenEvidence, a Miami, FL-based provider of an AI platform for doctors, raised $250M in Series D funding, at $12 Billion valuation. The round was led by Thrive Capital and DST Global.
TODAY’S RESOURCE PICK
📬 What investors ask and how to answer (Q&A prep kit for founders)
Most founders don’t lose investors because of their pitch deck. They lose them in the Q&A.
This Investor Q&A Prep Kit helps you answer investor questions clearly, confidently, and without second-guessing yourself.
Inside:
Real questions VCs, angels, and accelerators actually ask
What investors are really testing with each question
Simple answer frameworks that work in real conversations
Sample founder-style answers (no generic fluff)
Common mistakes founders make and how to avoid them
Organised across team, market, product, traction, financials, strategy, risk, and fundraising, so you’re prepared for every meeting.
If you want to walk into investor conversations prepared instead of anxious, this is the doc you’ll keep coming back to.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital Updates
Crush It Ventures, founded by Jenny Liu — former CEO of celebrity-favorite gym Dogpound — has closed a $5 million fund to back early-stage wellness startups. Based in the U.S., the fund will invest in 20–25 companies across fitness, mental health, beauty, and hospitality, writing checks between $100K and $250K. Liu launched the fund to support underrepresented founders in wellness, leveraging her background in finance and brand building. Notable portfolio companies include Elemind and Caliwater.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest In Tech
Google snags team behind AI voice startup Hume AI
Google DeepMind is bringing on Hume AI’s CEO Alan Cowen and around seven engineers under a licensing deal to boost Gemini’s voice capabilities, in an acqui-hire style move.
Hume AI will continue operating independently, supplying its emotion-aware voice tech to other AI firms, and says it’s on track for $100M in revenue this year.
The deal highlights how voice is becoming a key AI battleground, alongside growing investments from rivals like OpenAI and rising demand shown by players such as ElevenLabs.
Blue Origin to launch satellite network to rival Starlink
Blue Origin, founded by Jeff Bezos, announced plans to launch a satellite network called TeraWave with 5,408 satellites to compete against SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Leo service.
The TeraWave network will target enterprise, data center, and government users, offering data speeds up to 6 terabits per second from satellites in low Earth orbit and medium Earth orbit.
Blue Origin expects to begin deploying its constellation in the fourth quarter of 2027, entering a market where Starlink already operates over 9,000 satellites serving roughly 9 million customers.
YouTube will let creators make AI clones
YouTube announced creators will soon be able to make Shorts using their own AI clones, letting them produce videos featuring an AI-generated version of themselves rather than filming real footage of their likeness.
The company has not shared details on when AI clones will launch or how the tool will work, though CEO Neal Mohan said AI will remain a tool for expression, not a replacement.
YouTube rolled out likeness-detection technology last fall to prevent unauthorized use of a creator’s face or voice, giving creators control over how their AI-generated likeness appears in videos.
Meta’s new AI team delivers first key models internally
Meta Platforms’ new Superintelligence Labs has delivered its first major AI models internally this month, according to CTO Andrew Bosworth, just six months after the team was formed.
The models are described as “very good” and mark early progress after criticism of Meta’s Llama 4 performance, though Bosworth said significant post-training work is still needed before consumer or external release.
The milestone comes as Mark Zuckerberg reshapes Meta’s AI strategy through aggressive talent hiring, new infrastructure, and power investments, with 2026–27 seen as critical years for shipping consumer AI products.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕ Other News
Anthropic releases new AI ‘constitution’ for Claude
Anthropic published a revised version of Claude’s Constitution, an 80-page document that explains the ethical principles and values guiding its AI chatbot’s behavior and training.
The new Constitution covers four core values—safety, ethics, helpfulness, and constraints—and includes rules like referring users to emergency services and banning discussions about developing bioweapons.
The document ends by questioning whether Claude might have consciousness, with Anthropic stating that “the moral status of AI models is a serious question worth considering.”
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)
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Intern - Prologis Venture | USA - Apply Here
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