☕ Nvidia CEO calls US China chip ban a failure & iPhone designer Jony Ive joins OpenAI with $6.5 Billion equity deal.
Google is bringing ads to AI Mode & Mistral has launched a new open-source coding-AI model.
Octopuses can ditch their own arms when stressed.
If a limb gets trapped or damaged, some species self-destruct, literally digesting or dropping the arm to escape.
Panic response? More like rage quit: biological edition. Kinda cathartic if you ask me.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: VCs pre-traction, top investor lists, Braze PMF, Microsoft AI vision, valuation, runway alert, financial model, YC discovery, AI agent boom, Series A tariffs, Wiz GTM, Mark Leonard, VC tips, data room guide.
Scribble Ventures, a San Francisco-based VC firm closed $80M for Fund III.
OpenAI’s next big bet won’t be a wearable.
Mistral has launched a new open-source coding-focused AI model.
Google is bringing ads to AI Mode.
Nvidia CEO calls US China chip ban a failure.
Google unveils Android XR glasses with Gemini AI.
Jony Ive to lead OpenAI’s design work following $6.5B acquisition of his company.
Apple plans to open its AI for developers.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
⏱️ Read Time: 3 minutes
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After 41% gross profit growth last year, Pacaso’s ready for what’s next. They even reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO. But no need to wait.
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*This is a paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving a ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals. Under Regulation A+, a company has the ability to change its share price by up to 20%, without requalifying the offering with the SEC.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Clair, a NYC-based fintech company offering earned wage access (“EWA”) originated by national bank, Pathward, N.A., raised over $23M in Series B funding. The round was led by Upfront Ventures, with participation from existing investors including Thrive Capital.
Airwallex, an Australian provider of a global payments and financial platform for modern businesses, raised US$300M in Series F funding, at US$6.2 Billion valuation. The round included US$150M in secondary share transfers. The new investment, which brought its total funding to more than US$1.2 Billion, saw participation from Square Peg, DST Global, Lone Pine Capital, Blackbird, Airtree, Salesforce Ventures, and pension funds in Australia. Visa Ventures also joined as a strategic investor.
Reperio Health, a Portland, OR-based provider of at-home and onsite comprehensive health screenings, raised $14M in funding. The round wad led by Caduceus Capital Partners.
Flo Recruit, an Austin, TX-based company offering a connected suite of legal talent software, raised an undisclosed amount in Series A. The round was led by LiveOak Ventures and Moneta Ventures with participation from The LegalTech Fund, Y Combinator, and Teamworthy Ventures.
Greenlite AI, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI agent platform for financial services, raised $15M in Series A funding. The round was led by Greylock, with participation from Thomson Reuters Ventures, Canvas Prime, Y Combinator, and Tim Mayopoulos, former CEO of Fannie Mae.
Pay-i, a Seattle, WA-based value-intelligence platform for GenAI, raised $4.9m in seed funding. The round was co-led by Fuse Partners and Tola Capital, with participation from Firestreak, Pear VC, Gaia Capital, and angel investors from Fortune 100 companies.
ReproNovo, a Lausanne, Switzerland-based company dedicated to developing treatments for reproductive medicine and women’s health, raised $65M in Series A funding. The round was led by Jeito Capital, co-led by AXA IM Alts and founding investor M Ventures, with participation from Ysios Capital and ALSA Ventures.
DataHub, a Palo Alto, CA based provider of an open source metadata platform, raised $35M in Series B funding. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, bringing the total funding to $65M.
CloudSEK, a Bangalore, India-based company which specializes in AI-powered cyber threat prediction and intelligence, has raised $19M across its Series A2 and B1 funding. The rounds included participation from a mix of India- and US-based investors, such as MassMutual Ventures, Inflexor Ventures, Prana Ventures, Tenacity Ventures, and select strategic investors, including Commvault.
SparkCharge, a Somerville, MA-based provider of an off-grid electric vehicle fleet charging network and creator of a mobile, off-grid EV charger, raised a $30.5M in Series A-1 funding. The round consisted of a $15.5M led by Monte’s Fam and $15M venture loan facility provided by Horizon Technology Finance Corporation.
Zoca, a Phoenix, AZ-based provider of an AI-first growth platform supporting local service businesses, raised $6M in funding. The round was led by Accel with participation from GTMfund, Elevation Capital and Better Capital.
Rhizome, a Washington, DC-based provider of a climate resilience planning platform for the power grid, raised $6.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Base10 Partners. Other investors included MCJ, CLAI, Convective Capital, El Cap, Streetlife Ventures, Stepchange, and Everywhere.
Filed, a Stockholm, Sweden-based provider of an AI-powered tax preparation platform, raised $17.2M in Pre-Seed and Seed funding. The round was led by Northzone, Day One Ventures, J Ventures, Neo, Raine, and Greens Ventures.
Legora, a London, UK-based provider of a collaborative AI platform for lawyers, raised $80M in Series B funding, at $675M valuation. The round was led by ICONIQ and General Catalyst, with participation from existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Benchmark, and Y Combinator.
Rivan, a London, UK-based carbon utilization company, raised £10M in funding. The round was led by Plural, with participation from 20VC, NFDG (Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross), and angel investors Patrick and John Collison (Stripe).
Acrisure, a Grand Rapids, MI-based fintech company providing insurance and business solutions, raised $2.1 Billion in funding. The round was led by Bain Capital. Other investors included Fidelity Management and Research Company, Apollo Funds, Gallatin Point Capital, BDT and MSD Partners.
Ravical, a Ghent, Belgium-based AI agentic software company, raised €7.3M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Lakestar.
Biostate AI, a Houston, TX-based artificial intelligence and RNA sequencing company, raised $12M in Series A funding. The round was led by Accel with participation from Gaingels, Mana Ventures, InfoEdge Ventures, Matter Venture Partners, Vision Plus Capital, Catapult Ventures and angels included Dario Amodei (CEO, Anthropic), Mike Schnall-Levin (CTO, 10x Genomics), and Emily Leproust (CEO, Twist Bioscience).
Siro, a San Francisco-based AI-powered sales coaching platform, raised $50M in Series B funding led by SignalFire, with participation from 01 Advisors, Saumil Mehta (Square), founders of Squire, and others.
LM Arena, a UC Berkeley-affiliated organization behind widely used AI model leaderboards, raised $100M in seed funding at a $600M valuation. The round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and UC Investments, with participation from Lightspeed, Felicis, and Kleiner Perkins.
NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Scribble Ventures, a San Francisco-based early-stage VC firm led by Elizabeth Weil, closed $80M for Fund III, its largest to date. The fundraise, exceeding its $75M hard cap, highlights the strength of Scribble’s network, which includes leaders from OpenAI, Meta, and Figma. Scribble backs early-stage startups with checks between $750K–$1.5M and counts Whatnot, Poolside.ai, and SpaceX among its portfolio. The firm now manages $216M in AUM.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
OpenAI’s next big bet won’t be a wearable:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees the company’s next major device won’t be a wearable, but a compact, screenless “AI companion” aware of its surroundings — designed to complement the iPhone and MacBook.
The announcement follows OpenAI’s $6.5B acquisition of io, the Jony Ive-led startup, with Ive set to lead design efforts for this new class of AI hardware.
Altman believes the product could unlock $1 trillion in value and stressed the importance of secrecy — though ironically, a recording of his comments already leaked to the press.
Mistral has launched a new open-source coding-focused AI model:
Mistral has launched Devstral, a new open-source coding-focused AI model developed with All Hands AI, licensed under Apache 2.0 for unrestricted commercial use and optimized to run locally, even on high-end consumer hardware.
The 24B parameter model reportedly outperforms other open coding models like Gemma 3 and DeepSeek V3 on benchmarks, and is designed for use with code agents and tools such as SWE-Agent and OpenHands.
Devstral’s release follows Mistral’s previous coding model, Codestral, which had commercial restrictions; it’s available via API and Hugging Face, with plans for a larger “agentic coding” model in the coming weeks.
Google is bringing ads to AI Mode:
Google will begin testing ads in AI Mode, its generative AI-powered Search experience, placing relevant ads within and below AI-generated answers; existing Search, Shopping, and Performance Max advertisers are eligible.
The move follows user wariness, with a CivicScience poll showing 36% of U.S. adults are less likely to buy from brands using AI in ads — but with $66.89B in Q1 ad revenue, Google is integrating ads into all AI search experiences.
Google also plans to expand Search and Shopping ads in AI Overviews (its automated query summary tool) to desktop and mobile in more regions, despite concerns from publishers about declining traffic and ad revenue.
Nvidia CEO calls US China chip ban a failure:
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang bluntly called US export controls on AI chips a failure, arguing they actually accelerated China's AI development instead of hindering it.
Huang explained these restrictions handed Chinese rivals the incentive and state backing to innovate, leading to billions in lost Nvidia sales and reduced market presence.
As a result, Nvidia’s once-dominant 95% market share in China has halved, with local chipmakers like Huawei now pushing their own Ascend chips for AI.
Google unveils Android XR glasses with Gemini AI:
Google unveiled its "Android XR glasses" at the I/O keynote, which have an augmented reality UI in the lenses and are powered by Gemini AI.
Unlike Meta's camera-only specs, these glasses provide a full AR UI for information search or Maps navigation, though Google called this display "optional."
With built-in cameras and microphones, the glasses support Gemini AI features like conversational language translation, though the live demo for this tool failed.
Jony Ive to lead OpenAI’s design work following $6.5B acquisition of his company:
OpenAI has acquired io, the AI device startup founded by Jony Ive, in a $6.5 billion all-equity deal; Ive and his firm LoveFrom will now lead OpenAI’s design efforts.
The deal brings Apple’s legendary product designer into the AI era, where he’ll help develop a new class of screenless, AI-powered consumer devices expected to launch in 2026.
With Ive’s former Apple team joining OpenAI and Altman hinting at devices more integrated into daily life than phones or laptops, the move sets the stage for direct competition with Apple in consumer hardware.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕Other news
Apple plans to open its AI for developers:
Apple reportedly plans to let third-party developers build applications using its large language models, with an announcement expected at its upcoming WWDC conference for developers.
Initially, developers will access Apple Intelligence Foundation Models that run on-device, through a new software development kit and related frameworks for app creation.
Apple could integrate its large language models with the existing Core ML framework, possibly making it easier for software teams to adopt them into applications.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & startup job opportunities
Investment Analyst - In Q Tel | Singapore - Apply Here
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Head of Investor Relations - Continous Venture | UAE - Apply Here
Portfolio Growth - Point 72 Venture | USA - Apply Here
Associate - SpeedInvest | UK - Apply Here
Corporate Development & Strategy - Figma Venture | USA - Apply Here
Investor - Founders Factory | UK - Apply Here
Investor Relationship Manager - Startport Capital | USA - Apply Here
Portfolio Growth - Point 72Venture | USA - Apply Here
Internship - Octopus Venture | UK - Apply Here
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