☕ Musk’s SpaceX may invest $2 billion in xAI, OpenAI delays release of open model indefinitely & Goldman Sachs is testing viral AI agent Devin.
Windsurf CEO joins Google in $2.4 billion deal & More.
Lobsters talk by peeing on each other. Not a metaphor. They literally shoot urine out of their faces to say “hey.”
Nature: Somehow more unhinged than the internet.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: YC pitch deck guide, financial model template, market leadership myths, tranche-based fundraising, fund metrics cheat sheet, AI agent map, investor Q&A kit, legal docs.
Sarah Smith, a solo GP closed a $16M Fund I.
OpenAI delays release of open model indefinitely for safety review.
Meta acquires voice AI startup Play AI to boost audio efforts.
Goldman Sachs is testing viral AI agent Devin as a ‘new employee’.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX may invest $2 billion in xAI.
Windsurf CEO joins Google with $2.4 billion as OpenAI acquisition collapses.
AI coding tools may not boost productivity for experienced devs, study finds.
Kimi-K2 is the next open-weight AI milestone from China after Deepseek.
Japan sets new internet speed record at 1.02 Pbps.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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🗞️ What else is brewing
Y-Combinator guide: How to build your seed round pitch deck with better design?
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This 23-year-old’s AI app makes $200K/month by helping you flirt better.
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Circle Games, a Istanbul, Turkey-based mobile gaming startup, raised $7.25m in seed funding. The round was led by BITKRAFT Ventures, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z Speedrun), Play Ventures, APY Ventures, and e2vc.
Blok, a San Francisco, CA-based startup that builds AI agents to improve product experimentation, raised $5m in seed funding. The round, which brought total funding raised to date to $7.5m, was led by MaC Venture Capital, with participation from angels from such companies as Discord, Google, Meta, Apple, Snapchat, and Pinterest.
Bastazo, a Bentonville, Arkansas-based provider of machine learning solutions that empower organizations to identify and address vulnerabilities across operational technology, raised, reportedly raised $5.3m in seed funding. The round was led by Cortado Ventures, which confirmed their involvement.
Plantvoice, a Bolzano, Italy-based agritech company, closed a €500k funding round. Gemma Venture, Creazione Impresa, and the Salvi Family Holding participated in the round.
Virtru, a Washington, DC-based leader in data-centric security and the inventor of the open standard Trusted Data Format (TDF), raised $50m in funding. The round was led by ICONIQ, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Foundry, and The Chertoff Group. The round doubles Virtru’s valuation to $500m.
RealSense, a Santa Clara, CA-based company which specializes in AI-powered computer vision, raised $50M Series A funding. Backers included Intel Capital and MediaTek Innovation Fund.
Cariqa, a Berlin, Germany-based payments and pricing platform for electric vehicle (EV) charging, raised €4M in Seed funding. The round was led by Anthemis and Contrarian Ventures, with participation from Earth, Anthemis Female Innovators Lab, Golden Egg Check and Techstars.
Two, an Oslo, Norway-based B2B payments platform provider, raised €13M in Funding. The round was led by Idékapital and Shine Capital, with participation from new investor Investinor and existing backers Antler, Sequoia Capital, Alliance Ventures, Arkwright, and Local Globe.
Hololight, an Innsbruck, Austria-based developer of AR/VR (“XR”) pixel-streaming technology, raised €10M in funding. The round was led by Cipio Partners, with participation from Bayern Kapital, Direttissima Growth Partners, EnBW New Ventures, and Future Energy Ventures.
Live Story, a Milan, Italy-based provider of a visual CMS platform, raised €2.7M in Seed funding. The round was led by Vertis.
QuiX Quantum, an Enschede, the Netherlands-based photonic quantum computing company, raised over$17M in funding. The round was led by Invest-NL and EIC Fund, with participation from existing investors PhotonVentures, Oost NL, and FORWARD.one.
AirGarage, a San Francisco, CA-based parking management startup, raised $23m in Series B funding. The round was led by Headline, with additional participation from previous investors Founders Fund and Fourthline Capital Management.
Augmentus, a Singapore-based developer of an intelligent no-code robotics solution, raised $11M in Series A+ funding. The round was led by Woori VP, with participation from new investor EDBI, alongside returning backers Sierra Ventures and Cocoon Capital.
Creal, a Lausanne, Switzerland-based light field display technology company, raised $8.9M in funding. The round was led by ZEISS, with participation from new and existing investors, including members of the UBS private investor network.
Spacelift, a Redwood City, CA-based provider of an infrastructure orchestration platform, raised $51M in Series C funding. The round was led by Five Elms Capital, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst and Inovo VC.
Vixor, a Victoria, Seychelles-based automated liquidity platform provider, raised $2M in Seed funding. Backers were not disclosed.
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5-step framework to value your early-stage startup
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Propel Venture Partners, a San Francisco, CA-based seed-stage venture capital firm investing in the infrastructure, enablers and adjacencies that power tomorrow’s economy, closed its Fund V, at $100m. LPs include long-term investor BBVA. The new fund brought the firm’s total commitments to over $436m.
Multiball Capital, a Los Angeles, CA-based venture capital firm, is raising $25m for its maiden fund. According to an SEC filing, Multiball Capital Fund I, L.P., has not raised funds, yet. The new firm is led Matt Kozlov, a former Managing Director of Techstars LA, Healthcare, and Space, investing in seed and pre-seed startups.
Sarah Smith Fund, a solo GP firm founded by ex-Bain Capital Ventures investor Sarah Smith, has closed a $16M Fund I to back early-stage startups. The fund, which follows her $3M rolling fund, will invest in 50 companies with an average check size of $250K, and has already backed 17 startups. Smith uses AI to streamline her solo operations and scale value delivery, calling her firm an "AI-native" VC. LPs include Pear VC, Ulu Ventures, and Verdis Investment Management, with a strong focus on the Stanford startup ecosystem.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
OpenAI delays release of open model indefinitely for safety review:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced an indefinite delay of its open model release, citing the need for further safety testing and risk reviews.
The model was expected to be freely downloadable and run locally, marking OpenAI’s first open model in years and aiming to outperform other open offerings.
The delay comes as competition heats up, with China’s Moonshot AI launching Kimi K2, a trillion-parameter model that reportedly outperforms GPT-4.1 on key benchmarks.
Meta acquires voice AI startup Play AI to boost audio efforts:
Meta has acquired Play AI, a startup focused on generating human-like voices using AI, with the entire team set to join Meta next week.
The acquisition supports Meta’s roadmap across AI Characters, Meta AI, wearables, and audio content creation, aligning with its broader AI expansion strategy.
Financial details weren’t disclosed, but the move follows Meta’s recent AI investments, including talent poaching from OpenAI and a deal with Scale AI.
Goldman Sachs is testing viral AI agent Devin as a ‘new employee’:
Goldman Sachs is piloting Cognition’s AI coding agent Devin to augment its 12,000-person developer workforce, potentially deploying thousands of instances.
CIO Marco Argenti describes Devin as a “new employee” under a supervised hybrid model aimed at boosting productivity without replacing human developers.
Devin, now on version 2.1, gained viral attention at launch but struggled with complex tasks; Cognition says it now performs best on large, context-rich codebases.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX may invest $2 billion in xAI:
SpaceX is reportedly set to invest $2 billion in Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI as part of a $5 billion equity raise led by Morgan Stanley.
This would mark SpaceX’s first and largest investment in another Musk-led company, following its use of xAI’s chatbot Grok for Starlink support.
Despite controversies around Grok, Musk continues integrating xAI across his ventures, including X and Tesla, deepening inter-company ties.
Windsurf CEO joins Google with $2.4 billion as OpenAI acquisition collapses:
OpenAI’s $3 billion deal to acquire AI coding startup Windsurf has fallen through; instead, Google DeepMind is hiring Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen, and top researchers.
Google will pay $2.4 billion to license Windsurf’s technology, without taking equity or control — marking another “reverse-acquihire” in the AI talent race.
Windsurf’s interim CEO Jeff Wang will lead the remaining 250-person team, but the startup’s future is uncertain following the leadership exit and broken OpenAI deal.
AI coding tools may not boost productivity for experienced devs, study finds:
A METR study found that experienced open-source developers completed tasks 19% slower when using AI tools like Cursor Pro, despite expecting a 24% time savings.
The slowdown was attributed to time spent prompting the AI, waiting for responses, and challenges in applying AI to complex codebases.
While the study cautions against broad conclusions, it highlights the need for skepticism around “vibe coders” and the assumption of universal productivity gains.
Kimi-K2 is the next open-weight AI milestone from China after Deepseek:
Moonshot AI released Kimi K2, an open-source model with a mixture-of-experts architecture that outperforms proprietary systems like GPT-4.1 on key coding and math benchmarks.
Its development introduced the MuonClip optimizer, a new technique that solves training instability and can lower the high computational costs of creating large language models.
The company is pairing the open release with a low-cost API, a dual strategy designed to pressure rivals' pricing while building a wide enterprise user base.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕Other news
Japan sets new internet speed record at 1.02 Pbps:
Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology has set a new world record by achieving an internet data rate of 1.02 petabits per second.
This speed was reached by sending data 1,808 kilometers through a special optical fibre cable that contains 19 separate cores for transmitting signals.
The experimental 0.125 mm optical fibre cable has the same thickness as standard ones, showing these speeds are possible without replacing current cable infrastructure.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & startup job opportunities
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Corporate Development & Strategy - Figma Venture | USA - Apply Here
Associate - OMERSE Venture | USA - Apply Here
Principal - Al Fund | USA - Apply Here
Chief of Staff to Founding Partner - One Way Venture | USA - Apply Here
Investor (AI) - Samsung Next | USA - Apply Here
Operations Associate - Techstars | USA - Apply Here
Investment Trainee (US) - Hashkey Capital | USA - Apply Here
Associate - Episode 1 Venture | UK - Apply Here
Fund Operations Manager - Teja Venture | Singapore - Apply Here
Chief of Staff - 11x Capital | India - Apply Here
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