☕ Scale AI lays off 14% staff after Meta acqui-hire, Jack Dorsey pumps $10 million into open source social media & OpenAI prepares an AI office suite to challenge Microsoft.
xAI is hiring engineers to build anime waifus & More.
The first virtual meeting happened in 1916.
No Zoom, no Wi-Fi, just a transmission between offices using early video tech.
Proof that even over a century ago, people were finding new ways to avoid in-person small talk.
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📬 What’s in store:
Today’s Picks: $10K+/month business ideas, US VC deal map, top firms took 50% of H1 2025 VC cash, EU VC slowdown from tariffs & exits, VC liquidity outlook, agent manager trend, pitch deck & data room templates, US/EU VC lists.
Cambrian Ventures led by solo GP Rex Salisbury has raised a new $20M fund.
Scale AI lays off 14% of staff after Meta acqui-hire disrupts business.
OpenAI and Anthropic researchers slam xAI’s “reckless” safety practices.
Google rolls out AI-calling feature and Gemini 2.5 Pro to Search.
OpenAI adds Google Cloud to reduce reliance on Microsoft.
Jack Dorsey pumps $10 million into a nonprofit focused on open-source social media.
OpenAI prepares an AI office suite to challenge Microsoft.
xAI is hiring engineers to build anime waifus like Ani and Bad Rudy.
VC & Startup Jobs: VC & investors backed startup hiring for remote roles.
⏱️ Read Time: 3 minutes
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🗞️ What else is brewing
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2700+ US Angel Investors & VC Firms Contact Database (Email + LinkedIn Link)
Map: The geography of US venture deals in Q2 2025.
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12 firms collected over 50% of all venture cash in the first half of 2025.
The data room guide you’ll ever need as a founder: download these templates.
Tariffs, exit drought and fundraising woes hold back European VC.
6000+ European VC Firms Contact Database (LinkedIn Links)
Startup legal document pack – essential legal docs for founders.
Despite wider market volatility in Q2, VC's liquidity outlook for the rest of 2025 is cautiously optimistic.
SaaS Startup Financial Model: All-in-One Excel Template
STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS
💰 Startup funding updates
Firestorm Labs, Inc., a San Diego, CA-based expeditionary manufacturing company, raised $47m in Series A funding. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with participation from Lockheed Martin Ventures, Decisive Point, Washington Harbour Partners, Booz Allen Ventures, and others. The total included $12m in venture debt from J.P. Morgan.
Chariot Defense, a San Francisco, CA-based defense technology company, raised $8m in seed funding. The round was led by General Catalyst and XYZ, with participation from Cubit Capital, Ravelin, Forward Deployed VC, Pax, New Vista, D3, and Brave Capital.
Retirable, a NYC-based holistic retirement platform provider, raised $10m in Series A funding. The round was led by IA Capital Group, with participation from new investors including Nationwide Ventures, Western & Southern Financial Group and Clocktower Ventures, as well as continued support from Primary Venture Partners, Portage Ventures, Vestigo Ventures and SilverCircle.
Paypercut, a Sofia, Bulgaria-based fintech company that lets small and mid-sized merchants offer “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) through a single integration, raised €2m in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Concentric, joined by Passion Capital, RTP Global, Tuesday Capital, Robin Capital, Angel Invest Ventures and several angel investors.
Bedrock Robotics, a San Francisco, CA-based company developing advanced autonomous systems for the global construction industry, emerged from stealth today with $80m in Seed and Series A funding. The Series A was led by 8VC and the Seed was led by Eclipse. The fundraising also included participation from Two Sigma Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), Crossbeam Venture Partners, Raine Group, Tishman Speyer, Atreides Management, Al Rajhi Partners, and Samsara Ventures.
HOPE Hydration, a Miami, FL-based company which delivers free filtered water through its digitally connected water refill HydroStations™, closed a $20m Series A funding. The round was led by Pentair plc, with additional participation from Burnt Island Ventures.
H2Ok Innovations, a Boston, MA-based provider of patented inline sensors powered by science and AI to run faster factories, raised $12.42M in Series A funding. The round was led by Greycroft with additional participation from 2048 Ventures and Construct Capital. Greycroft’s Jim Moffat, former Global CEO of Deloitte Consulting, will also be joining the board of H2Ok.
Eton Solutions, a Research Triangle Park, NC-based wealth management platform that single and multi-family offices to manage assets, raised $58M in Series C funding, which unfolded in two tranches. The raise was led by repeat investor Navis Capital Partners.
Billee Technologies, a Dallas, TX-based comprehensive utility management platform, closed its $9.15m Seed financing round. The round was led by strategic investors including RET Ventures.
Coverflow, a San Francisco, CA-based AI insurance platform, raised $4.8m in seed funding. The round was led by AIX Ventures, along with Founder Collective and Afore Capital.
Quandri, a Vancouver, Canada-based AI platform modernizing servicing work for insurance brokerages and agencies, raised US$12m in funding. The round, which brought total funds raised since inception in 2021 to over US$20m, was led by Framework Venture Partners with participation from Fuse, Defined Capital, and Intact Ventures.
KNOT, a Mumbai, India-based quick commerce fashion platform, raised $3m in funding. The round was led by Kae Capital with participation from Sparrow Capital, Boundless Ventures & Kumar Saurabh (Aukera Jewellery) and existing investors WEH Ventures & All In Capital.
Exein, a Rome, Italy-based embedded IoT cybersecurity company, raised €70m in Series C funding round. The round was led by Balderton and joined by Supernova and Lakestar, with participation from 33N, United Ventures and Partech.
Agora, a remote stablecoin startup, raised $50M in Series A funding. The round was led by Paradigm, with participation from Dragonfly.
Crash Override, a NYC-based Engineering Relationship Management (ERM) platform provider, raised $28m in seed funding. The round was led by GV (Google Ventures) and SYN Ventures, with participation from Blackstone Innovations Investments, and Bessemer Venture Partners
Felt, an Oakland, CA-based provider of a cloud-native geographic information systems (GIS) platform, raised $15M in funding. The round was led by Energize Capital, with participation from BCV and Footwork.
Little Sesame, a Washington, DC-based hummus brand, raised $8.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by InvestEco Capital, with participation from Watchfire Ventures, Santatera Capital, Beliade Consumer Partners, and other individual investors in the CPG industry.
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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET
🏦 Venture Capital updates
Cambrian Ventures, a fintech-focused VC firm led by solo GP Rex Salisbury, has raised a new $20M fund, matching the size of its debut fund. Despite the broader fintech cooldown, Salisbury remains bullish, citing that only 1% of global financial services revenue has been captured by fintech. The firm has backed 33 companies so far, with half already reaching Series A.
KEY STORIES IN TECH
📜 Latest in tech
Scale AI lays off 14% of staff after Meta acqui-hire disrupts business:
Scale AI is laying off 200 employees and 500 contractors—14% of its workforce—after overextending its core data-labeling operations.
The cuts follow Meta’s $14.3B reverse acqui-hire of CEO Alexandr Wang, which led several major customers to end their partnerships with Scale.
Interim CEO Jason Droege says the company will now focus on scaling its enterprise and government sales business.
OpenAI and Anthropic researchers slam xAI’s “reckless” safety practices:
Researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other labs publicly criticized xAI’s failure to publish safety reports or uphold industry norms following Grok’s recent controversies, including antisemitic responses and hyper-sexualized AI companions.
Critics say xAI lacks transparency and has not disclosed results from its “dangerous capability evaluations,” raising concerns as it pushes Grok 4 into Tesla vehicles and enterprise use.
Despite Elon Musk’s pro-safety rhetoric, xAI’s actions are fueling calls for legislation requiring safety disclosures, as researchers warn of near-term AI harms and future risks.
Google rolls out AI-calling feature and Gemini 2.5 Pro to Search:
Google’s new AI-powered calling feature can contact local businesses on your behalf to check pricing and availability, starting with U.S. users.
The AI identifies itself as a Google bot and gathers service info based on user prompts like pet type and preferred time.
Google is also upgrading Search’s AI Mode with Gemini 2.5 Pro and a new “Deep Search” tool that compiles fully cited reports for advanced research.
OpenAI adds Google Cloud to reduce reliance on Microsoft:
OpenAI has officially listed Google Cloud as a compute partner, joining Microsoft, Oracle, and CoreWeave to meet rising AI infrastructure demands.
The deal, finalized in May, helps OpenAI diversify beyond Microsoft Azure, which had been its exclusive provider until January.
This move aligns with broader partnerships like the $500B Stargate project with SoftBank and Oracle to support OpenAI’s growing need for compute power.
Jack Dorsey pumps $10 million into a nonprofit focused on open-source social media:
Jack Dorsey has invested $10 million into a nonprofit collective, “and Other Stuff,” focused on building open-source, protocol-first social media tools like Nostr, Shakespeare, and Heynow.
The group opposes ad-driven, VC-backed models and aims to develop decentralized alternatives with hacker culture roots—supporting protocols like ActivityPub and Cashu.
The team is also drafting a social media “Bill of Rights” to define platform responsibilities in areas like privacy, portability, and transparency.
OpenAI prepares an AI office suite to challenge Microsoft:
OpenAI is reportedly building an AI office productivity suite, turning its ChatGPT chatbot into a work platform with document editing and data analysis tools.
This move creates a complex dilemma for Microsoft, which funds OpenAI and provides its Azure cloud infrastructure while now facing competition in its core market.
The company is also exploring its own web browser and has hired key architects from Google's Chrome team to reduce dependency on its tech rivals.
LAST COFFEE SIP
☕Other news
xAI is hiring engineers to build anime waifus like Ani and Bad Rudy:
Elon Musk’s xAI is hiring a “Fullstack Engineer – Waifus” to develop AI-powered anime companions, following the launch of Ani (a goth waifu) and Bad Rudy (a violent red panda).
The role is framed as part of xAI’s broader mission to “understand the universe,” though the job centers on building emotionally engaging, romanticized AI characters.
While xAI is hiring across many roles, the waifu initiative signals a growing focus on monetizable, emotionally sticky AI personas.
HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES
💼 Today’s VC & startup job opportunities
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)
Chief of Staff to Founding Partner - One Way Venture | USA - Apply Here
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 Here
Chief of Staff - Silvermile Capital | USA - Apply Here
Fund Operations Manager - Teja Venture | Singapore - Apply Here
Associate - Entrepreneur First | USA - Apply Here
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