☕ Apple rejected Elon Musk’s satellite offer, now its plans are in jeopardy & Meta loses 78% of original Llama AI team.
Google says quantum may break Bitcoin 20x easier & Anthropic rolls out voice mode for Claude chatbot.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Financial model, winning crowded markets, term sheet tips, PMF signs, 2700+ US & 6000+ Euro VCs, B2C validation, Zillow AI miss, Valuation guide, AI energy cost, market traps, OpenAI views, data room guide.
Meta splits AI team into two units to speed up development.
Apple rejected Elon Musk’s satellite offer, now its plans are in jeopardy.
WhatsApp for iPad arrives after 15 years.
Google says quantum may break Bitcoin 20x easier.
Meta loses 78% of original Llama AI team.
Anthropic rolls out voice mode for Claude chatbot.
Apple says App Store blocked $2B in fraud in 2024 ahead of WWDC.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
⏱️ Read Time: 3 minutes
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The Hidden Cost of AI: The Energy and Water Challenge.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Alba Health, a Stockholm, Sweden-based gut health startup, raised $2.5m in seed funding. The round was led by Unconventional Ventures, with participation from Exceptional Ventures, Voima Ventures, Noaber, Bust, and Petteri Lahtela (co-founder of Oura).
Neuron Factory founding team Neuron Factory, a Redwood City, CA-based AI software startup focused on the construction industry, raised $6m in seed funding. Backers included Activant Capital, Colle Capital, Karman Ventures, Punch Capital and strategic investors including Filip Cordeel, Chairman of Cordeel Group.
SCI Semiconductor, a Sheffield, UK-based dragging memory safe computing company, raised £2.5M in funding. The round was led by Mercia Ventures.
Frinks AI, a Bangalore, India-based provider of a vision AI platform for manufacturing, raised $5.4M in Pre-Series A funding. The round was led by Prime Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to $6.25M. Other investors included Chiratae Ventures, along with Navam Capital and Ashok Atluri, Founder of Zen Technologies.
Superblocks, a NYC-based secure enterprise app development company, raised $23M in Series A funding. Backers included Kleiner Perkins, Spark Capital, Greenoaks, Meritech Capital, and Box CEO Aaron Levie and Workday Founder Aneel Bhusri.
Pallet, a San Francisco, CA-based company behind CoPallet, the AI workforce for logistics, raised $27M in Series B funding. The round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Activant Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Dan Lewis (CPO at Microsoft, co-founder at Convoy), Amit Agarwal (former President at Datadog), Girish Rishi (former CEO at BlueYonder), Michael Capellas (former CEO at Compaq), Matt McKinney (CEO at Loop), and Aatish Nayak.
Traceloop, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based company that monitors LLM app in production, raised $6.1M in Seed funding. The round was led by Sorenson Capital and Ibex Investors, with participation from Y-Combinator, Samsung NEXT, and Grand Ventures.
Infinity Constellation, a NYC-based AI-native Holdco, raised $17M in funding. The round was led by Freestyle along with Backed VC, Deepwater, BY Venture Partners, and angels.
Bito, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI development platform, raised $5.7M in Seed funding. The round was led by Vela Partners, with participation from NextView Ventures, Maxitech Ventures, Eniac Ventures and others.
EnduroSat, a Sofia, Bulgaria-based provider of satellite constellations-as-a-service, raised €43M in funding. The round was led by Founders Fund, with participation from CEECAT Capital, Morphosis Capital, and others.
Volare, a Pori, Finland-based biotechnology food company, raised €26M in funding. Backers included Maki.vc, Firstminute Capital, Springvest, The Finnish Climate Fund (to be merged with Finnish Industry Investment), Finnvera, Norion Bank, and other financial investors.
Wayl, a Baghdad, Iraq-based provider of a payments platform for online sellers, raised $150K in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by EQIQ Ventures.
Auditstage, a Brussels, Belgium-based AuditTech startup, raised €750K in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Smartfin.
SpAItial, a Munich-based AI startup building text-to-3D foundation models, raised $13M in seed funding. The round was led by Earlybird Venture Capital with participation from Speedinvest and several prominent angel investors.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
NYC-based VC firm Work-Bench has closed a $160M Fund IV to invest in seed-stage enterprise software companies. The firm will write $2M–$4M checks in AI, cybersecurity, dev tools, and enterprise apps, aiming to back 23–25 startups.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
Meta splits AI team into two units to speed up development:
Meta has reorganized its AI team into two groups: one focused on consumer products and another on foundational AGI research.
The AI products team will work on features for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Meta’s standalone AI app.
The AGI Foundations unit will focus on advancing Meta’s Llama models as it competes with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. for OpenAI, a potential iPhone replacement that some Apple executives already view as a threat.
Apple rejected Elon Musk’s satellite offer, now its plans are in jeopardy:
Apple declined Elon Musk's 2022 demand for $5 billion upfront for exclusive SpaceX satellite connectivity on iPhones, leading Musk to partner with T-Mobile.
Following the rejection, Apple reportedly fears expanding satellite features, concerned Musk might prompt U.S. government regulation, potentially classifying Apple as a telecommunications carrier.
These concerns contribute to Apple not yet charging for existing satellite features and internal discussions about discontinuing them to avoid complex regulatory oversight.
WhatsApp for iPad arrives after 15 years:
Meta has now launched a dedicated WhatsApp app for the iPad, arriving over 15 years after the messaging service and Apple's tablet first appeared.
The iPad app supports audio and video calls for up to 32 people and integrates with iPadOS features like Stage Manager and Split View for multitasking.
Previously, using WhatsApp on a larger screen required running the web version in an iPad’s browser or using desktop apps for Mac or PC.
Google says quantum may break Bitcoin 20x easier:
Google's quantum team found that breaking RSA encryption, which protects Bitcoin wallets, could need twenty times fewer quantum resources than previously thought.
Because Bitcoin’s own elliptic curve cryptography shares mathematical principles with RSA, this finding compresses the timeline for its potential quantum vulnerability.
Google estimates factoring a 2048 bit RSA integer now needs under one million noisy qubits, down from an earlier twenty million noisy qubits estimate.
Meta loses 78% of original Llama AI team:
Eleven of the fourteen authors from Meta's foundational Llama paper have now left the company, raising questions about its AI talent retention and momentum.
Many of these researchers joined or founded competing AI ventures, with five original Llama paper authors now at Paris-based Mistral AI, co-founded by ex-Meta Llama architects.
Joëlle Pineau, who led Meta’s Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) group and was pivotal in Llama’s development, also announced her departure from the company in April.
Anthropic rolls out voice mode for Claude chatbot:
Claude’s new voice mode (in beta) enables full spoken conversations and will roll out in English to mobile app users over the coming weeks.
The feature offers five voice options, displays real-time key points and transcripts, and allows seamless switching between voice and text.
Voice mode counts toward usage limits, with additional features like Google Workspace integration available only to paid subscribers.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕Other news
Apple says App Store blocked $2B in fraud in 2024 ahead of WWDC:
Apple claims to have prevented $2B in fraudulent transactions and blocked nearly 2M risky app submissions in 2024, part of $9B in fraud stopped over the past five years.
The announcement comes just ahead of WWDC 2025 and follows legal changes forcing Apple to allow alternative in-app payment links for U.S. developers.
Apple is positioning its fraud prevention and app security infrastructure as key reasons for developers—especially smaller ones—to stick with the App Store model.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & startup job opportunities
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Associate - Omerse Venture | USA - Apply Here
Managing Director - Generator Accelerator | USA - Apply Here
Investment Analyst - EXEO Fund | USA - Apply Here
Investment Analyst - 12 Flag | India - Apply Here
Associate - Capital One Venture | USA - Apply Here
Corporate Venture Capital Fund - Thomson Venture | USA - Apply Here
Investment Manager - Techstar | USA - Apply Here
Chief of Staff & Head of Administrative Operations - Beyond Alpha Venture | USA - Apply Here
Finance Associate - Good Capital | India - Apply Here
Venture Partner - 007 Venture Partner | USA - Apply Here
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