Microsoft and Amazon debut new AI models & Meta projects $1.4T in AI revenue
Gemini gets upgraded image tools, Fortnite may return to U.S. App Store & More.
VCs: Your startups don’t need hiring delays, they need momentum. Venturous places vetted healthcare execs in days, not months — zero upfront fees.
What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Semantic cultivators in AI, CEO salary avg $161K, fixing VC model, VC vs. regulation, legal docs, AI hedge fund, valuation guide, Sarah Tavel on consumer AI, VC interview guide, financial model, 400+ French VCs, investor data room tips.
Altman’s Worldcoin unveils Orb Mini device to verify humans in an AI-dominated internet.
Microsoft debuts Phi 4 reasoning models to challenge OpenAI and DeepSeek.
Amazon launches Nova Premier AI model on Bedrock to rival Gemini Pro.
Meta projects up to $1.4 trillion in AI revenue by 2035.
DeepSeek upgrades math-focused Prover model with new version V2.
Google’s Gemini chatbot gets upgraded image-creation tools.
Waymo to partner with Toyota on personal robocars.
Fortnite may return to U.S. App Store after court rules Apple violated antitrust order.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
Read Time: 3 minutes
DAILY PICKS
What else is brewing
Semantic Cultivators : The critical future role to enable AI by Tomasz Tunguz.
The average startup CEO salary is up to $161,000.
Founder first, unicorn second: fixing the broken model of Venture Capital.
VC renews push for looser regulation.
Startup legal document pack – essential legal docs for founders.
The only startup valuation guide you need as a founder.
Benchmark’s Sarah Tavel on why the future of consumer AI should tap into our need to share.
All-In-One Guide To Venture Capital Interview Questions (And How to Answer Them)
Excel Template: Early Stage Startup Financial Model For Fundraising.
400+ French angel investors & venture capital firms contact database (Email + LinkedIn Link)
Investor data room guide & templates for founders.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
Startup funding updates
Structify, a NYC-based company that turns data into customized, structured datasets, raised $4.1M in Seed funding. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from 8VC, Integral Ventures and angels.
Manifest, a Westport, CT-based cybersecurity startup, raised $15m in Series A funding. The round, which brought the total raised to $23m, was led by Ensemble VC, with participation from AE Ventures, First Round Capital, Homebrew, Leap435, Overmatch VC, and XYZ Venture Capital.
Nuvo, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a network accelerating modern B2B trade, raised $45M in funding. The round was led by Sequoia Capital, Spark Capital, Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Human Capital, Foundation Capital, Susa Ventures, and angel investors including Gokul Rajaram, Max Mullen (Founder, Instacart), Matt MacInnis (COO, Rippling), Sanjit Biswas and John Bicket (Samsara founders), Varun Anand (Founder, Clay), Eugene Marinelli and Rosco Hill (Blend founders), Ryan Petersen (Founder, Flexport), and Ali Rowghani (Former MD, YCombinator).
Swivel (fka PilotDesk), a NYC-based provider of a no-code AI workflow automation platform for advertising operations and account management, raised $5.8M in Series A funding. The round was led by Tribeca Venture Partners and Ardent Venture Partners with participation from Ardent Venture Partners, Roster Capital, and AperiamVentures.
Faye, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a tech platform connecting households with Family Advisors, raised $2.5M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Unusual Ventures, with participation by Springbank and a strategic group of angel investors from Nextdoor, Roblox, Square, and Doordash.
Field Materials, a Charlotte, NC-based developer of an AI platform for material and equipment procurement in construction, raised $10.5M in Series A funding. The round, which brought total funding to nearly $19M, was led by Navitas Capital with participation from Blumberg Capital, DivcoWest Ventures, S16vc, and Superseed Ventures.
Persona, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a verified identity platform, raised $200M in Series D funding, at $2 Billion valuation. The round was led by Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital, with participation from existing investors including BOND, Coatue, First Round Capital, and Index Ventures.
deepull, a Barcelona, Spain-based medical diagnostics company, raised €50M in Series C funding. The round was led by Columbus Venture Partners, Panakès Partners, and Mérieux Equity Partners with participation from existing investors Asabys Partners, Innvierte-CDTI, We Venture Capital, UI Investissement, Axis-ICO, Aliath Bioventures, and Kurma Partners.
TeamOhana, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of headcount management and compensation planning software uniting Finance, HR, and Talent teams, raised $7.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Lerer Hippeau and Collide Capital with participation from Sierra Ventures and Recall Capital.
Particula, a Munich, Germany-based provider of AI-driven risk intelligence for digital assets, raised $5.5M in funding. The round was led by SixThirty Ventures, Vanagon Ventures, and Futury Capital, with participation from TX Ventures, Blackwood Ventures, Tenity, Blue Bay Ventures, Plug and Play Tech Center, and angel investors.
HealthPlan Data Solutions, a Columbus, OH-based pharmacy payment integrity and benefit optimization company, raised $15M in funding. The round was led by MK Capital, with participation from existing investors Tamarind Hill, JobsOhio, and Rev1 Ventures.
VOC.AI, a San Jose, CA-based artificial intelligence agent solutions company, raised $15M in funding. The round was led by Shanda Grab Ventures, in partnership with Northern Light Venture Capital and Starting Gate Fund.
Canopy, a Salt Lake City, UT-based provider of a firm-wide operating system for accounting, raised $70M in Series C funding. The round was led by Viking Global Investors with participation from existing investors Ten Coves Capital, Ankona Capital, Pelion Venture Partners, and Tenaya Capital.
IXI, an Espoo, Finland based developer of autofocus eyewear, raised $36.5m in Series A funding. The round was led by Plural with participaiton from Tesi, Heartcore, FOV Ventures, byFounders, Eurazeo, Tiny Supercomputer, Amazon Alexa Fund, Maki.vc, First Fellow, and firstminute capital.
Glacier, a San Francisco, CA-based maker of recycling robots, raised $16m in Series A funding. The round was led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund with participation from by AlleyCorp, Alumni Ventures, Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, Cox Exponential, Elysium, New Enterprise Associates, One Small Planet, Overlap Holdings, Overture, VSC Ventures, and Working Capital Fund.
Sprive, a London, UK-based AI powered mortgage overpayment platform provider, raised $7.3m in seed funding. The round was led by Ascension, with participation from Channel 4 Ventures, Velocity Capital, and Two Magnolias.
True Anomaly, a Centennial, CO-based space security company, raised $260M in Series C funding. The round was led by Accel, with participation from Meritech Capital and existing investors Eclipse, Riot Ventures, Menlo Ventures, 645 Ventures, ACME Capital, Space VC, Champion Hill Ventures, and Narya.
Spark Biomedical, a Dallas, TX-based health tech company which specializes in wearable neurostimulation technology, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by WAVE Ventures with participation from Pathway to Cures.
Pallie AI, a San Francisco, CA-based technology company developing an AI-powered companion supporting health and wellbeing, raised $2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by True Ventures, with participation from Palta.
Plenful, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI workflow automation platform modernizing healthcare operations, raised $50M in Series B funding. The round was led by Mitchell Rales and Arena Holdings, with participation from Notable Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, TQ Ventures, Susa/Kivu Ventures, and other investors.
Queens Carbon, a Pine Brook, NJ-based developer of new cement technology, raised $10M in Seed funding. The round was led by Clean Energy Ventures with participation from Plug and Play and Clean Energy Venture Group and Buzzi Unicem USA.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
Venture Capital updates
Sarah Tavel, a general partner at Benchmark since 2017, has transitioned to a venture partner role. She will continue investing and serving on boards while exploring “AI tools at the edge” and reflecting on AI’s broader direction. Tavel joined Benchmark after roles at Greylock, Pinterest, and Bessemer, and has led investments in Hipcamp, Chainalysis, and Supergreat.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
Latest in tech
Altman’s Worldcoin unveils Orb Mini device to verify humans in an AI-dominated internet:
Tools for Humanity, the startup behind Worldcoin, debuted the Orb Mini — a smartphone-shaped device with eye-scanning sensors to verify if someone is human and not an AI agent.
The Orb Mini supports Worldcoin’s mission to issue blockchain-based human IDs; 26 million people have signed up, with 12 million verified globally, mostly outside the U.S.
The device may eventually evolve into a mobile point-of-sale system, with potential plans to license its sensor tech; World is expanding U.S. presence with storefronts in six major cities.
Microsoft debuts Phi 4 reasoning models to challenge OpenAI and DeepSeek:
Microsoft released three new open-source reasoning models — Phi 4 mini reasoning, Phi 4 reasoning, and Phi 4 reasoning plus — focused on tasks like math, science, and coding.
Phi 4 reasoning plus matches OpenAI’s o3-mini on the OmniMath benchmark and approaches the performance of DeepSeek’s 671B-parameter R1 model despite being much smaller.
The models are optimized for efficiency and deployment on lightweight devices, and are available on Hugging Face with technical documentation.
Amazon launches Nova Premier AI model on Bedrock to rival Gemini Pro:
Amazon released Nova Premier, its most powerful Nova AI model yet, capable of processing text, images, and video with a context window of 1 million tokens.
While it lags behind Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro on math and coding benchmarks, Premier performs well on knowledge retrieval (SimpleQA) and visual understanding (MMMU), per Amazon’s internal tests.
Priced similarly to Gemini 2.5 Pro, Nova Premier is not a reasoning model and is positioned to distill its capabilities into smaller, faster models for specific tasks.
Meta projects up to $1.4 trillion in AI revenue by 2035:
Unsealed court documents show Meta forecasted $2–3 billion in AI revenue in 2025 and up to $1.4 trillion by 2035 from its generative AI products, including Llama models and Meta AI.
Meta’s 2024 generative AI budget exceeded $900 million and could top $1 billion this year, excluding infrastructure; it plans to spend $60–80 billion on data centers in 2025.
Plaintiffs allege Meta opted to scrape copyrighted books instead of paying up to $100 million for licenses, prompting a lawsuit; Meta claims fair use and vows to defend itself.
DeepSeek upgrades math-focused Prover model with new version V2:
DeepSeek has released Prover V2, a new version of its math reasoning model built on its 671B-parameter V3 architecture using a mixture-of-experts (MoE) design.
The model, designed for solving formal theorems and mathematical proofs, is now available on Hugging Face alongside a smaller distilled variant.
This release follows DeepSeek’s recent V3 model update and comes amid reports that the company is considering raising outside funding for the first time.
Google’s Gemini chatbot gets upgraded image-creation tools:
Google is rolling out native image editing for Gemini, allowing users to modify both AI-generated images and personal uploads with features like background changes and object replacements.
The multi-step editing flow integrates text and visuals for more contextual edits, supporting over 45 languages and launching globally in phases.
To address deepfake concerns, Gemini’s edited images include invisible watermarks, and Google is testing visible watermarking as well.
Waymo to partner with Toyota on personal robocars:
Waymo and the world's top automaker, Toyota, announced a joint effort to develop autonomous driving systems intended for integration into vehicles owned by individuals, also involving Toyota's Woven division.
Although Waymo has prioritized its thriving robotaxi service operating in multiple cities, creating self-driving technology for consumer vehicles is more complex due to broader operational area demands.
This alliance could potentially lead to Toyota producing cars featuring Waymo's technology, possibly replacing Toyota's internal autonomous projects and initially focusing driver assistance features onto major roads.
LAST COFFEE SIP
Other news
Fortnite may return to U.S. App Store after court rules Apple violated antitrust order:
A federal judge ruled that Apple willfully violated a 2021 injunction prohibiting anticompetitive practices by restricting app developers from directing users to external purchase methods.
The decision could bring Epic Games’ Fortnite back to the U.S. iOS App Store as soon as next week, with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney signaling a broader return if Apple complies globally.
The ruling, which may trigger criminal contempt proceedings, was celebrated by developers like Spotify, which announced plans to submit a U.S. app update in response.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
Today’s VC & startup job opportunities
Executive Assistant - Enkadon Capital | UK - Apply Here
Investment Analyst - Endiya Parrtnes | India - Apply Here
Investment Intern - Signature Venture | Germany - Apply Here
Analyst Artha Group | India - Apply Here
Investment Analyst - Endiya Partners | USA - Apply Here
Events and Operations Intern - Plug and Play Tech Center | UK - Apply Here
Analysts - Artha Group | India - Apply Here
Summer Intern, Talent Team - a16z | USA - Apply Here
Pre-Seed Deep Tech Investor - MFV Partner | USA - Apply Here
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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