☕ OpenAI launches ChatGPT agent, Anthropic targets $100B+ valuation, Lovable becomes a unicorn & Meta settles $8B privacy lawsuit.
OpenAI seeks Piece of ChatGPT-Driven eCommerce Sales & Meta hires Apple AI talent.
A rainbow over Taiwan lasted nearly 9 hours. Longest one ever recorded.
It didn’t fade. It hovered. Like nature forgot to hit “off.”
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: Top 3 M&A targets revealed, hidden AI technical debt, pitch deck & data room guides, building V1 customer success, path to PMF, viral loop myth, US/EU VC lists, legal docs for founders.
Lovable becomes a unicorn with $200M Series A just 8 months after launch.
Anthropic targets $100B+ valuation with new funding round.
Mistral adds deep research and enterprise data tools to Le Chat.
Perplexity’s India play: Free Airtel deal, 600% growth, and a bet against OpenAI.
OpenAI launches ChatGPT agent to tackle real-world tasks.
Google's AI can now make phone calls for you.
OpenAI Seeks Piece of ChatGPT-Driven eCommerce Sales.
Meta settles $8B privacy lawsuit tied to Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Meta hires Apple AI talent for Superintelligence Labs.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Lovable, a Stockholm, Sweden based AI platform that lets anyone build end-to-end software by chatting with AI, closed a $200M Series A funding round. The round, which valued Lovable at $1.8B, was led by Accel with participation from existing investors including QuantumLight Capital, European Tech Collective, 20VC, byFounders, Creandum, Hummingbird, and Visionaries Club, as well as Canva’s Melissa Tan, Clay’s Varun Anand, CrowdStrike’s George Kurtz, Datadog’s Olivier Pomel, ElevenLab’s Mati Staniszewski, HubSpot’s Dharmesh Shah and other angel investors.
Anthropic, a San Francisco-based AI startup and maker of Claude, is in early talks for a new funding round at a valuation of over $100 billion, Bloomberg reports. The company, founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, was last valued at $61.5 billion after raising $3.5 billion in a Lightspeed-led round. Investors like Amazon, Alphabet, Menlo Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures have already backed Anthropic.
Occupi, a Birmingham, Ala.-based fintech company providing payment solutions for property management, raised $3.105m in seed funding. The round was led by Fenway Summer and Assurant Ventures, with participation from Halcyon Venture Partners and Sorenson Impact Foundation.
Kun, a Hong Kong-based stablecoin-based payment and embedded finance platform, completed its Series A funding round. Backers included existing investors BAI Capital and GSR Ventures and new investors Eternium Global an unnamed Hong Kong-listed conglomerate.
Blockskye, a Boston, MA-based global travel infrastructure company, closed a $15.8m funding round. The round was led by Blockchange with participation from United Airlines Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, Lasagna, Litquidity Ventures, Longbrook Ventures, KSV Global, and TFJ Capital.
Receive, a NYC-based fintech startup democratizing financial access for small businesses, emerged from stealth mode, with $4M in Seed funding. The round, which brought their total funding to $7.1m, was led by NGVP. Receive is supported by additional debt financing and is backed by Blank Ventures, Verissimo Ventures, Insight Partners, Corner Ventures, Clocktower Technology Ventures, and others.
Boulevard, a Los Angeles, CA-based provider of a client experience platform purpose-built for appointment-based, self-care businesses, raised $80M in Series D funding. The round was led by JMI Equity, with participation from Index Ventures and VMG Partners.
Geological AI, a Calgary, Alberta, Canada-based company which specializes in applying advanced artificial intelligence and high-resolution decision engineering, raised USD44M in Series B funding. The round was led by Blue Earth Capital, with participation from BHP Ventures and Rio Tinto.
GigaIO, a Carlsbad, CA-based provider of scalable infrastructure designed for AI inferencing, raised $21M in the First Tranche of its Series B funding. The round was led by Impact Venture Capital, with participation from CerraCap Ventures, G Vision Capital, Mark IV Capital, and SourceCode Cerberus.
AWAKE Chocolate, a Mississauga, Ontario, Canada-based maker of caffeinated chocolate bites and bars, closed its $8M CAD investment round. The round consisted of $5M CAD from Btomorrow Ventures (BTV), the corporate venturing arm of British American Tobacco (BAT), and an additional $3M CAD from the BDC Capital (BDC).
Empirical Security, a Chicago, IL-based cybersecurity company enabling organizations with Custom AI models, raised $12M in Seed funding. The round was led by Costanoa Ventures with participation from DNX Ventures, Sixty Degree Capital & HPA.
BQP, a NYC-based dual-use quantum-accelerated simulation software company, raised $5M in funding. The round was led by Monta Vista Capital, with participation from Empire State Development’s New York Ventures, New York State’sventure capital arm, Arc Ventures, Armory Square Ventures, Emergent Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Arka Venture Labs, Transpose Platform, Gainangels, and Pranatech Venture Capital.
Oh Norman!, a NYC-based pet wellness brand, raised $2.08M in its latest round of funding, bringing the brand’s total funding to over $5M. Backers included Brown University, Mars Petcare’s Leap Venture Studio, Incuvate/NQV8, Golden Seeds, and 1731 MGMT.
Bonsai, a Chicago, IL-based provider of a first-party marketing intelligence platform that automates profitable growth, received an investment of $1.8M. The investment was made by Mairs and Power Venture Capital, TAWANI Ventures, Bridge Venture Fund, Chicago Early, and Service Provider Capital alongside individual investors Daren Cotter and Sheetal Jain.
Fiber Elements, a Leoben, Austria-based startup specializing in automated basalt fiber manufacturing for the construction industry, raised €2.6M in Seed funding. The round was led by LEA Partners, alongside the Amadeus APEX Technology Fund.
TRIFFT Loyalty, a London, UK-based startup helping brands cultivate connections with customers, raised $550K in a pre-seed funding The round was led by Lighthouse Ventures, with participation from BD Partners, Gi21 Capital and Koopeo.
Spiko, a Paris, France-based fintech company democratising access to money markets, raised $22M in Series A funding. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from White Star Capital, Frst, Rerail, Bpifrance and Blockwall and angel investors including Revolut co-founder Nikolay Storonsky, Kyriba founder Jean-Luc Robert, Bridge co-founder Zach Abrams, Wise CTO Harsh Sinha, Blackstone co-CIO Lionel Assant and Pennylane’s founding team.
One Biosciences, a Paris, France-based precision oncology techbio company, raised €15M in Series A funding. The round was led by Redmile Group and Blast, with participation from Galion.exe, Invus, Adamed Technology, Sofinnova Partners, Polytechnique Ventures, and Kima Ventures.
Kilsar, a Virginia Beach, VA-based dual-use AI software company specializing in tribal knowledge capture and maintenance training, raised $3.7M in Seed funding. The round was led by Lightbank and Cotulla Capital, with participation from Techstars and Scalewolf.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Mantis VC, a Los Angeles, CA-based venture capital firm, closed its third fund, at $100m. Limited Partners in the new fund include Summit Peak, TriplePoint Capital and Allocate, as well as entrepreneurs Mark Cuban, David Blitzer and Michael Rubin. Fund III will invest $500,000 – $2 million in early-stage startups across cybersecurity, AI, frontier tech, data and cloud infrastructure, and healthtech.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
Mistral adds deep research and enterprise data tools to Le Chat:
French AI lab Mistral has upgraded its chatbot Le Chat with a “deep research” mode, multilingual reasoning, and advanced image editing.
The update enables enterprise users to analyze on-premise data without relying on cloud storage—key for sectors like banking and defense.
Le Chat now supports Projects for organizing work, and adds features like code-switching across languages and native productivity suite integrations.
Perplexity’s India play: Free Airtel deal, 600% growth, and a bet against OpenAI:
Perplexity is scaling aggressively in India via a deal with Airtel, offering 360M subscribers free access to its $200/year Pro plan—part of its strategy to leapfrog OpenAI’s dominance in Western markets.
Downloads and MAUs in India surged over 600% year-over-year in Q2, positioning India as Perplexity’s largest market by user base.
Despite strong growth, monetization lags; Perplexity earned $8M globally in Q2 vs ChatGPT’s $773M, with no notable revenue yet from India.
OpenAI launches ChatGPT agent to tackle real-world tasks:
OpenAI’s new ChatGPT agent can now plan, browse, code, create slide decks, and interact with apps like Gmail and GitHub — a major shift toward AI that acts, not just chats.
Available to Pro, Plus, and Team users, the tool combines capabilities from Operator and Deep Research, and can now handle complex, multistep tasks via “agent mode.”
Safety measures include real-time prompt monitoring and disabled memory to avoid misuse, as OpenAI flags the agent model as “high capability” in domains like biosecurity.
Google's AI can now make phone calls for you:
Google Search can now call local businesses on your behalf to check prices, availability, and even make appointments or book reservations for you.
The free AI calling feature is available in 45 US states, but subscribers to Google AI Pro and AI Ultra plans will get higher usage limits.
For quality control, the automated calls will be monitored and recorded by Google, and local businesses are given an option to opt out of receiving them.
OpenAI Seeks Piece of ChatGPT-Driven eCommerce Sales:
OpenAI reportedly plans to take a commission from sellers for sales made through ChatGPT, creating a new way to earn money from shopping features.
The company is looking to integrate a checkout system directly into its platform, letting people complete transactions without navigating to an online retailer.
Getting a slice of these eCommerce sales allows the AI startup to make money from its free users, not just from its premium subscriptions.
Meta settles $8B privacy lawsuit tied to Cambridge Analytica scandal:
Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta leaders have settled an $8B shareholder lawsuit over privacy violations stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The lawsuit claimed Meta executives violated a Federal Trade Commission agreement by sharing user data without consent.
Trial would have included testimonies from Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Reed Hastings — but terms of the settlement remain undisclosed.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕Other news
Meta hires Apple AI talent for Superintelligence Labs:
Meta has hired Apple AI researchers Mark Lee and Tom Gunter to join its Superintelligence Labs team, following the earlier defection of Ruoming Pang, former head of Apple’s Foundation Models group.
The hires are part of Zuckerberg’s aggressive push to attract top AI talent and build machines that could surpass human intelligence.
Meta plans to spend hundreds of billions on massive AI data centers and has made Superintelligence Labs a top strategic priority.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & startup job opportunities
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Principal - Al Fund | USA - Apply Here
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Associate - Baird Capital | USA - Apply Here
Investor (AI) - Samsung Next | USA - Apply Here
Vice President - Baird Capital | USA - Apply Here
Operations Associate - Techstars | USA - Apply Here
Manager - Capital One Venture | USA - Apply Here
Investment Trainee (US) - Hashkey Capital | USA - Apply Here
Associate - Episode 1 Venture | UK - Apply HereAssociate - Entrepreneur First | USA - Apply Here
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