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As we know, crypto is evolving daily - right alongside AI. We wanted to get to the bottom of where these two fast-moving sectors are truly intersecting, so we sat down with Ali Yahya, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). With a background as an engineer at Google Brain before his move into venture capital, Ali has a front-row seat to this ‘relentless exponential’ growth and a unique perspective on how these two worlds are merging.

In this episode, we explore: Why the definition of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has shifted from a sci-fi benchmark to a tangible economic goal; how a16z’s massive “platform” team of experts is rewriting the rules of venture capital; and why privacy is becoming the ultimate defensive “moat” for the next generation of crypto startups.

We also dive into the ‘agentic economy’ - a future where your AI agent evolves from a simple assistant into a sophisticated tool that can automate workflows and interact with the digital world. We challenge the popular narrative around agents holding their own crypto wallets and discuss why the reality of agentic commerce will likely look quite different. Plus, Ali shares why, if he were starting his career today, he would bet everything on the next great frontier: ‘physical intelligence’ in robotics.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Chapters in this episode

(0:00) How far we have come
(4:10) What does AGI actually mean?
(5:30) Inside Andreessen’s crypto fund
(9:00) The impact of platform teams inside venture firms
(12:00) Should we still be excited about crypto?
(14:30) Why did NFTs not work?
(19:00) Is privacy the new moat?
(23:45) Where do startups go wrong within privacy?
(26:30) Will AI agents ever transact on our behalf?
(31:35) How long until AGI is fully adopted?
(34:00) Is moving too quickly a distraction?
(35:00) How has fundraising changed for founders?
(37:20) The types of roles that are changing
(41:25) Prediction markets
(44:45) Startup ideas!

Stay ahead of the latest trends: Watch all previous episodes

Watch all previous episodes now on your favorite podcast apps. Episodes include:

• Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on the company’s turnaround story.

• Dan Shipper on why traditional coding workflows are breaking.

• Colin Angle on the $1.7B founder failure story.

• David Haber (a16z) on the future of venture capital.

• Emad Mostaque on AI systems replacing personal productivity.

• Anatoly Yakovenko on how Solana survived early collapse.

• Anish Acharya on the realities of building in the AI era.

and more…

Watch and subscribe now!

Thanks for listening, see you in the next episode 👋

P.S. When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free - for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now!

Hey Readers!

Welcome back to your weekly digest - a quick, curated snapshot of the most important startup and tech signals from the past week.

This edition breaks things down into:

• 🗝️ Key trends

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding highlights

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

Subscribe now

🗝️ Key trends

We’re entering the Clipping Economy.

In a world where attention is fragmented, long-form content (podcasts, interviews, webinars) is just raw material. Distribution is driven by moments, not episodes.

The highest-leverage marketer in 2027 won’t be the one who creates the most content - but the one who identifies the 47-second clip inside a 2-hour podcast that generates 10M views.

That skill isn’t editing - it’s pattern recognition:

• emotional spikes

• contrarian soundbites

• algorithm-friendly pacing

We’ll likely see a new role emerge: Chief Clipping Officer.

Because in the new media landscape, discovery doesn’t come from publishing - it comes from precision extraction.

🔍 Top tech news

• Anthropic launches Claude Design, a new product for creating quick visuals.

• Months-old startup Recursive Superintelligence raised $500M for self-teaching AI - the round was led by GV.

• Slash, a Ramp competitor founded by teenagers, raised $100M at $1.4B valuation.

• Canva debuts a new suite of agentic tools, as the design app quietly becomes one of the world’s most used AI services. Read more here.

• OpenAI and Anthropic are both doubling down on their London offices. Anthropic plans to grow headcount from 200 to 800 alone in London.

• UK startups raised 41% of all European VC in Q1.

Share

💰 Startup funding highlights

• Slate Auto raised $650M to build affordable modular electric pickup trucks.

• Plata raised $405M, reaching a $5B valuation, becoming a leading digital bank in its region.

• Mintlify raised $45M Series B (a16z, Salesforce Ventures) to build AI-era knowledge infrastructure.

• Loop raised $95M Series C to scale logistics payments infrastructure.

• Resolve AI raised $40M Series A extension to automate software operations and incident management.

• Auctor raised $20M Series A to unify pre-sales and software implementation workflows.

• Spektr raised $20M Series A for regulatory onboarding and compliance automation.

• Solidroad raised $25M Series A to modernize enterprise hiring and onboarding with AI.

• Atlas raised $40M Series C at a $420M valuation for its invite-only charge card platform.

• Zenskar raised $15M Series A for AI-native revenue automation.

• Joyful Health raised $17M Series A to improve healthcare revenue recovery systems.

• Alloy Therapeutics raised $40M Series E to expand its biologics drug discovery platform.

• Hightouch hit $100M ARR, driven by AI-powered marketing infrastructure.

👀 New VC funds

• Sequoia Capital raised $7B expansion fund to back AI startups.

• Accel raised $5B to back late-stage bets.

• Sovereign AI, the UK Government’s new £500m ($675M) venture fund has officially launched.

🤝 Acquisitions

• OpenAI acquired personal AI finance startup Hiro.

• Monarch Tractor’s collapse ends with an acquisition by Caterpillar.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

Our latest podcast episode: Imagine walking into a classroom where there are no traditional teachers - just tablets, robots, and human instructors guiding every lesson. That future isn’t hypothetical. It’s already here. Discover the latest trends shaping the education system here.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

• Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on the company’s turnaround story.

• Dan Shipper on why traditional coding workflows are breaking.

• Colin Angle on the $1.7B founder failure story.

• David Haber (a16z) on the future of venture capital.

• Emad Mostaque on AI systems replacing personal productivity.

• Anatoly Yakovenko on how Solana survived early collapse.

• Anish Acharya on the realities of building in the AI era.

Watch and subscribe now!

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Hey listeners,

Imagine walking into a classroom where there are no traditional teachers - just tablets, robots, and human instructors guiding every lesson.

That future isn’t hypothetical. It’s already here.

Today’s guest on the podcast is Joleen Liang, co-founder of Squirrel AI, an education startup from China that’s already teaching thousands of students without any form of traditional teachers present. With over 20 billion data points informing its system, the company is pushing the boundaries of personalized learning. They’re building toward a future with teacher robots, preparing for a public listing, and already generating hundreds of millions in revenue.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Takeaways from this episode

• The Autonomous Engine: Joleen explains why Squirrel AI isn’t just a chatbot, but a “virtual super-teacher” capable of handling 100% of knowledge transfer, moving toward a future of fully self-directed, teacher-less instruction.

• The “LAM vs. LLM” Edge: Why generic AI models are insufficient for education; Joleen breaks down their proprietary Learning Analysis Model (LAM) that analyzes 20 billion data points to diagnose why a student is stuck rather than just giving them the answer.

• The “Double Reduction” Resurrection: A raw look at the 2021 Chinese regulatory shift that sent revenue to zero overnight from hundreds of millions of dollars, and how Squirrel AI pivoted from software-only to a hardware-integrated “Smart Tablet” powerhouse to survive.

• The “Data Analyst” Instructor: How the role of the teacher is being permanently re-coded - shifting from a lecturer to a “psychologist and data scientist” who only intervenes when the AI triggers an alarm on a student’s frustration levels.

• The “Equity for Debt” Gambit: The incredible story of how 80% of their franchisees, facing a total market collapse, chose to convert their debt into company stock because they believed in the AI’s results more than the immediate cash.

• The “Multimodal” Mirror: A deep dive into the use of eye-gazing, facial expression tracking, and “mistake reasoning” to create a learning profile so specific it can predict a student’s mastery better than a human tutor ever could.

• The “Modern Discipline” Divide: Joleen discusses the cultural friction of expanding into the US, comparing the disciplined learning habits of Asian markets with the need for high-engagement, hyper-interesting content to keep Western students focused.

In this episode, we cover:

(0:00) AI is replacing school teachers
(1:45) Why is edTech having its moment?
(4:20) What do parents actually think about AI?
(7:00) Do we REALLY need to spend 20+ years in school today?
(9:50) How do students actually use AI inside the classroom?
(12:45) Can Squirrel be globally adopted outside of China?
(20:00) How China tracked students’ performance
(25:45) The terrifying moment in 2021
(35:30) How to disagree with your team
(39:50) Why IPO vs. private?
(41:20) Where to expand next?
(42:15) Our next five years
(45:00) One lesson you teach other founders

Thanks for listening, see you in the next episode 👋

P.S. When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free - for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now!

Hey Readers!

Welcome back to your weekly digest - a quick roundup of the latest tech news to keep you updated.

To help you make sense of it all, we’ve rounded up the most talked-about startup stories from the past week - organized into the following categories:

• 🗝️ Read of the week

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding news

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

📊 Read of the week: The Dawn of NEW MEDIA

TBPN, the popular daily tech news show, was recently acquired by OpenAI for over $100M. What does this signal about where the media industry is heading? Are we on the brink of a wave of similar acquisitions this year? And if so, who might be next?

Was this a meaningful acquisition for OpenAI, and how might the show change now that it sits under one of the most powerful AI companies in the world? A few thoughts:

• The acquisition is a relatively small line item for OpenAI, given its scale and revenue. From a balance sheet perspective, it’s unlikely to make any difference.

• But strategically, it’s far more interesting. OpenAI’s brand and scrutiny will only intensify. Owning a trusted media platform within Silicon Valley’s most influential tech circles could help shape the narrative, clarify messaging, and build goodwill.

• There’s an open question about editorial independence. It’s likely that direct competitors to OpenAI will be less inclined to appear as guests. That said, the show’s live format, where guests speak candidly without heavy editing, remains a strong advantage and could continue to attract high-quality voices.

• TBPN was reportedly on track to generate ~$30M in revenue this year, supported by a consistent roster of sponsors featured prominently in its ticker. Those sponsors have now been removed, signaling a shift in monetization strategy and, for the founders, a very solid exit.

Zooming out, this deal points to a broader trend: distribution is a moat. If you own attention, you shape the conversation and increasingly, that may be just as valuable as the technology itself.

NEW ECONOMIES recently published two pieces on this growing trend: directing attention through new media - specifically the rising influence of technology podcasts and the surge in popularity of Substack newsletters. You can discover hundreds of new media creators here.

🔍 Top tech news

• OpenAI acquired the new media channel TBPN for $100M+.

• Oracle is cutting up to 30,000 employees - 18% of their workforce, to pay for AI data centers.

• NASA Artemis II splashes down in the Pacific Ocean in a ‘perfect’ landing for Moon mission.

💰 Startup funding news

• SiFive, a semiconductor company that delivers scalable processor core IP solutions, raised $400M Series G led by Atreides Management.

• Avec, a Tinder-style email app that allows you to swipe through your inbox, raised $8.4M from Lightspeed and Haystack.

• Chapter, which offers a Medicare navigation platform that provides advisory services for seniors seeking health coverage, raised $100M Series E led by Generation Investment Management.

• Conductor, which enables you to run a team of coding agents on your Mac, raised $22M Series A led by Matrix.

• Haast, provides an AI-powered platform that automates marketing and content compliance workflows, raised $12M Series A led by Peak XV Partners.

• Crosby, an AI-powered legal services company that accelerates contract review and negotiation processes, raised $60M Series B led by Index Ventures and Lux Capital.

• Manna Air Delivery, which provides drone delivery as a service stack to restaurant chains, dark kitchens, and online food delivery platforms, raised $50M Series B led by ARK Investment Management, Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, and Schooner Capital.

• Luminai, which automates workflows by taking any multi-click process and making it one click, raised $38M Series B led by Peak XV Partners.

• Patlytics, provides AI-driven patent intelligence solutions to enhance research and efficiency, raised $40M Series B led by Signalfire.

• Insight Health, a clinical AI agent platform that automates patient communication and clinical documentation for medical practices, raised $11M Series A led by Standard Capital.

• Nas.io, helps anyone go from idea to revenue in 1 minute with AI, raised $27M Series A led by Khosla Ventures.

• Linx Security, provides an AI-powered platform for identity security, governance, and administration, raised $50M Series B led by Insight Partners.

• Juno, offers automation for modern tax firms, focusing on research, preparation, review, and advisory services, raised $12M Seed led by Bonfire Ventures.

👀 New VC funds

• Collide Capital raised $95M fund II to back fintech, future-of-work startups.

• Eclipse raised a $1.3B new fund.

• Gateway Capital announced first close of $25M Fund II.

• Eka Ventures raised $107M Fund II.

🤝 Acquisitions

• Anthropic acquired AI startup Coefficient Bio for $400M.

• Canva acquired Simtheory and Ortto.

• Savvy Games acquired Mobile Legends developer Moonton for $6B.

• Unilever acquired vitamin gummies brand Grüns in wellness push.

• HubSpot acquired Futurepedia.

• SAP acquired Reltio.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

Subscribe to our podcast to hear from founders, investors, and operators behind some of the most enduring companies. Previous episodes include:

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

• Yahoo CEO Takes Us Inside The Comeback | Jim Lanzone.

• Why Hand-Typing Code Will End Your Career in 2026 | Dan Shipper.

• The $1.7B Mistake That Ended a Founder’s Dream | Colin Angle.

• Andreessen Horowitz General Partner: Venture Capital’s Future | David Haber.

• He Built A $1.8B AI Company With No Experience | Max Junestrand.

• Forget AI: Inside the Meltdown That Made Airalo #1 eSIM Unicorn | Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir.

• The Hidden Skill Behind Every Successful Founder | Lindsay Kaplan.

• The Harsh Truth About Building a Startup in the AI Era | Anish Acharya.

• The AI Version of You Will Outperform You | Emad Mostaque.

• How Solana Survived When Most Other Coins Fell | Anatoly Yakovenko.

Watch and subscribe now!

When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free - for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now!

Hey listeners!

Do you remember when you set up your first email address? Well it might have been on Yahoo! - remember them?

They have been pretty quiet over the years, having gone through a complete turnaround from a public company to a private one, selling off a bunch of assets, but they are now back, and we just interviewed their CEO Jim Lanzone, and SVP Head of Yahoo Research Group Eric Feng for a great podcast episode.

In this episode, we cover a range of topics including: Why Yahoo is striking back and the steps it has taken to achieve this. You might not realize this, but Yahoo actually has 700 million users, so it’s still a mighty powerful platform - we discuss what new products they are currently building and how they plan to have multiple touchpoints with the consumer over the coming years. We also learn about the future of search, whether Yahoo would ever launch their own AI models, how they think about launching new products with smaller team sizes in the wake of AI, plus the launch of their latest product - MyScout, the first personalized homepage for AI answers.

Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify

Takeaways from this episode

• The “Modern Vintage” Pivot: How Yahoo is rebranding itself as the “New Balance” of tech, a legacy name finding massive new relevance with Gen Z and Millennials who make up 50% of their 700 million user base.

• The “Ironman Suit” Philosophy: Jim explains why he isn’t using AI to replace humans, but rather as a power-suit that allows a “thousands-person” company to compete with the output of a “millions-person” organization.

• The “Toys” of a Titan: Why Yahoo has an unfair advantage in the AI race by sitting on 30 years of proprietary “toys” - including a massive interest graph and search history that generic LLMs simply cannot replicate.

• The Social Contract of AI: A candid look at why Yahoo prioritizes citing sources and sending traffic back to publishers, arguing that a “closed” AI ecosystem is a death sentence for the quality of the internet.

• The Private Equity “Blank Slate”: How spinning out of Verizon and returning to a private structure under Apollo allowed Jim to “deconstruct the cake,” shutting down unprofitable divisions to focus on winning the “F1 race” of consumer internet.

• Domain Expertise Over Syntax: Eric’s provocative take on why “being a geek” about finance or sports is now more valuable than being a world-class coder, as AI makes technical execution a commodity.

Chapters in this episode

(0:00) Yahoo’s Founding Story
(3:38) How Yahoo’s CEO Turned Around The Internet Darling
(9:00) Is Yahoo The Trusted Guide To The Internet?
(11:50) Building New Products At Scale
(13:40) AI Models & Their Possibilities?
(20:30) What Does The Future Of Search Actually Look Like?
(22:15) Are We Surprised How Fast AI Has Advanced?
(29:10) How Yahoo Thinks About Hiring Headcount With AI
(32:20) Upskilling Teams On AI
(39:25) Why Develop Multiple User Touchpoints
(44:30) Bursting With Opportunities: What Can Be Achieved
(50:00) Lightning Round

Thanks for listening, see you in the next episode 👋

P.S. When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free - for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now!!

Launch your startup on Framer - free for your first year. Join hundreds of YC-backed startups that launched here and never looked back. As a NEW ECONOMIES subscriber, you can get one year for free if you’re an early-stage startup - saving you $360.

The next trillion-dollar companies won’t just help us work faster - they’ll help us live longer.

Longevity is shifting from something that happens in hospitals to something that lives in products we use every day. Instead of seeing a doctor once a year, we’re starting to engage with our health daily - through wearables, diagnostics, and software that quietly tracks and nudges us on insights in the background.

Healthcare has historically been reactive, complex, and hard to access - and in some countries, incredibly expensive. Consumer products are the opposite: simple, habitual, and designed for daily use. The companies that win in longevity won’t just have the best science - they’ll be the ones that turn health into something people actually stick with.

Over the past few months, I’ve started paying more attention to my own health such as tracking sleep, nutrition, and training.

I’m not doing this in an extreme way, or trying to become the next Bryan Johnson, but enough to notice something: more and more people are starting to think this way.

Some of this will be new to you, while other parts may feel familiar. Health is increasingly something we actively manage, rather than something we only think about when problems arise, as more of us take a proactive interest in our long-term wellbeing and longevity.

This shift is beginning to show up in the startup space, with many startups building products and tools aimed at helping us live longer - something we’ll explore in this edition.

Where are we with longevity: The latest trends

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been exploring some of the most recent breakthroughs, science, and trends shaping what’s actually happening in longevity. Here are a few examples:

Healthcare is becoming proactive, not reactive: In some countries, getting a full private medical examination can mean long waiting lists and high costs. That’s why companies like Neko Health are worth watching. You can get a thorough, full-body check like nothing most people have experienced before, receive results instantly, and spend un-rushed time with a doctor, all for around $300.

AI is quietly becoming your first doctor: One of the most impressive advancements to come out of AI is that no matter where you are in the world, as long as you have an internet connection, you can now speak to an AI doctor. Platforms like Doctronic have already been used nearly 25M times.

Longevity is moving to the cellular level: Cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, cancer, and even aging at the cellular level are all areas we want to get ahead of, not just treat after the fact. Companies like Corsera Health are focused on predicting and preventing cardiovascular issues before they begin. R1 Therapeutics is developing first-in-class therapies for patients with kidney disease. Radical Health provides personalized reports to help people better understand their cancer and treatment options. Cellular rejuvenation is the idea of making your body’s cells act younger again, with companies like Life Sciences and Altos Labs working toward making that a reality.

Gut health: Around 40% of Americans experience bloating at least a few times a month, with about 5% dealing with it daily. That’s why I find companies like Throne Science interesting. It’s essentially a device you clip onto your toilet that analyzes your health every time you go.

Your body is becoming measurable in real time: Brands like Oura, Garmin, and Whoop have seen huge growth in recent years. People want a deeper understanding of their activity levels and sleep patterns. There’s also a new product called Fort, a wearable focused specifically on tracking strength training.

Health is becoming social: Some of us just need an extra push to stay active. Platforms like Strava have helped with that for years, but there are also newer players worth watching. Hyrox is building a global fitness racing community, while Sweatpals focuses on social fitness experiences and recently raised $12M from investors including a16z Speedrun, HartBeat Ventures, and Patron.

Sleep: When was the last time you had a great night’s sleep? For founders and busy people, it’s not always easy. That said, new startups are helping unlock better sleep performance. Companies like Eight Sleep and Orion are building products around personalized sleep.

Supplements: Science-backed supplements are becoming more mainstream, helping people feel their best across brain, body, and gut. Brands like Heights are leading the way here.

Why this trend is inevitable?

Here’s the simplest way to think about it

The most valuable asset in the world isn’t money. It’s good health. And for the first time in history, we might be able to meaningfully extend it. That’s why some of the most iconic founders of our generation are now focused here - not on social networks or marketplaces, but on human longevity itself. When people who’ve already “won” the game choose to spend their next decade on a problem, it’s worth paying attention.

Some of the most compelling examples of iconic founders now building in the longevity space include:

• John Mackey, formerly co-founder of Whole Foods is building Love.life - a holistic wellness and health club.

• Miguel McKelvey, formerly co-founder of WeWork is building Unbound - modern health checks around you.

• Daniel Ek, co-founder and former CEO at Spotify is building Neko - which gives you a full thorough health check - receive all your results instantly and have un-rushed time with a doctor.

• Bryan Johnson, co-founder of Braintree which sold to PayPal is building Blueprint - longevity supplements.

• Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI has poured $180M into Retro Biosciences which develops therapies for diseases driven by the biology of aging.

• Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon is quietly supporting Altos Labs whose mission is to restore cell health and resilience through cell rejuvenation to reverse disease, injury and the disabilities that can occur throughout life.

If all these tech titans are focused on reversing aging, then this is probably a category worth paying attention to, right?

Meet the startups tackling longevity

With this trend set to rise, we wanted to share the latest startups building in this category. We’ve mainly focused on consumer-facing startups in this market map, the kind of platforms many of us may use in the future. Categories include:

Helping us live longer: Longevity clinics and senior care.

Improving health: Supplements, Preventive Illness, Sleep, Fitness, Gut Health and AI Doctors.

Health for women: Menopause, Fertility, Bladder Health, Personal Health, and Tracking.

Health for men: Hair loss, Sexual Health, and Weight Loss

Connecting with health: Communities & Physical Health.

Preventive Diseases: Cardiovascular, Kidney Care, Cancer and Cellular Rejuvenation.

Access the startups immediately and in full once you become a paid subscriber

Subscribe now

Where does longevity go from here? Startups to watch

Read more

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Hey Readers!

Welcome back to your weekly digest - a quick roundup of the latest tech news to keep you updated.

To help you make sense of it all, we’ve rounded up the most talked-about startup stories from the past week - broken down into the following categories:

• 🗝️ Read of the week

• 📊 Charts of the week

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding news

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

• 🧷 Startups to watch (paid subscribers)

A big win for this community: Build on Framer

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🗝️ Read of the week: Y Combinator’s Demo Day

YC’s W26 Demo Day took place earlier last week and this is what we know about the batch:

• ~90% of the batch is AI.

• 14 companies are already at $1M+ ARR.

• 23,000 applications were received, with <1% accepted.

• ~70% of the batch applied with zero revenue.

This is probably the strongest batch to date. Discover the startups in full here.

You can also see the full breakdown on which YC Partners coached which startups here.

📊 Charts of the week

Revolut’s 2025 Annual Report

Revolut just published its annual report and this is what we know:

• $6B Revenue (+46% YoY)

• $2.3B Profit Before Tax (38% margin)

• 68M users in 30+ markets.

• $75B valuation.

You can read the report in full here.

VC benchmarks: IRR, TVPI, DPI.

Data: 2,905 U.S. venture funds performance benchmarks - data as of Q4 2025. Source: Carta.

Deep Tech now captures nearly one-third of all VC funding in Europe

Read the report in full here by Dealroom on the European Deep Tech ecosystem.

🔍 Top tech news

• Venture firm Kleiner Perkins raised $3.5B in fresh capital.

• LegalTech startup Harvey raised $200M reaching an $11B valuation. This round included investors such as Singapore’s GIC and Sequoia. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Conviction Partners, Elad Gil, Evantic, and Kleiner Perkins also participated.

• Physical Intelligence, the two-year-old S.F robotics startup, is in discussions to raise $1B in new funding at a valuation exceeding $11B, according to Bloomberg.

• Mistral raised $830M in debt financing to support the development of its first large-scale data centre near Paris.

💰 Startup funding news

• Granola raised $125M Series C from Index Ventures as it expands from meeting note-taker to enterprise AI app.

• Conntour raised $7.4M Seed from General Catalyst and Y Combinator to build an AI search engine for security video systems.

• Deccan raised $25M Series A from A91 Partners to help frontier AI labs and enterprises like Google, Snowflake, and more improve model performance.

• VITL raised $7.5M Seed from Signalfire to provide e-prescribing infrastructure for cash-pay medical practices.

• Glimpse raised $35M Series A from A16Z to help retailers automate financial deduction processes.

• Arinna raised $4M Seed from Spacecadet Ventures to solve the space power problem.

• Lucid Bots raised $20M Series B from Cubit Capital and Idea Fund Partners to keep up with demand for its window-washing drones.

• Interloom raised $16.5M Seed from DN Capital to accelerate back office workflows with AI.

• Onit Security raised $11M Seed from Brightmind Partners and Hetz Ventures for its AI-powered security operations platform.

• Dash0 raised $110M Series B from Balderton Capital to collect, transmit, and analyze distributed system data.

• PointOne raised $16M Series A from 8VC to handle bill review for law firms.

• Notch raised $30M Series A from Headline to automate AI customer support agents.

• Highlight raised $40M Series A from Khosla Ventures to provide AI-powered productivity tools designed to integrate across desktop applications and workflows.

👀 New VC funds

• The European Investment Fund (EIF) is launching a new €15B fund of funds to back growth-stage investors across the continent

• VitaminºC hits first close of its $20.7M debut climate fund.

• BKR Capital raised $14.5M (so far) to invest in Black founders.

• Early Kalshi employees raising up to $35M for a prediction market VC fund called 5c (C) Capital.

• Overmatch Ventures raised $250M Fund II.

🤝 Acquisitions

• Amazon acquired ‘approachable’ humanoid maker Fauna Robotics.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

Subscribe to our podcast to hear from founders, investors, and operators behind some of the most enduring companies. Previous episodes include:

• Why Hand-Typing Code Will End Your Career in 2026 | Dan Shipper.

• The $1.7B Mistake That Ended a Founder’s Dream | Colin Angle.

• Andreessen Horowitz General Partner: Venture Capital’s Future | David Haber.

• He Built A $1.8B AI Company With No Experience | Max Junestrand.

• Forget AI: Inside the Meltdown That Made Airalo #1 eSIM Unicorn | Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir.

• The Hidden Skill Behind Every Successful Founder | Lindsay Kaplan.

• The Harsh Truth About Building a Startup in the AI Era | Anish Acharya.

• The AI Version of You Will Outperform You | Emad Mostaque.

• How Solana Survived When Most Other Coins Fell | Anatoly Yakovenko.

Watch and subscribe now!

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🧷 Startups to watch (paid subscribers)

Some of the latest and most promising startups that we have come across in the past week include

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Hey Readers!

Welcome back to your weekly digest - a quick roundup of the latest tech news to keep you informed and up to speed.

Just in the past week, we saw prediction markets hit new heights with Kalshi’s $1B raise while consumer health product Huel reached a €1B exit to Danone - marking a massive week for both decentralized finance and consumer health.

From Amazon’s acquisition of Rivr to shore up its robotics fleet to a wave of fresh capital hitting European and AI-focused VC funds, the ecosystem is moving faster than ever.

Plus, we’ve just updated the Startup AI Tech Stack to help you navigate a landscape where being “AI-first” is no longer a choice, but a requirement. Discover the latest tools before it’s too late!

To help you make sense of it all, we’ve rounded up the most talked-about startup stories from the past week - broken down into these categories:

• 🗝️ Read of the week

• 📊 Chart of the week

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding news

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

• 🧷 Startups to watch (paid subscribers)

Let’s explore what you missed - subscribe to avoid missing future editions!

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🗝️ Read of the week: The Startup AI Tech Stack

When we published our first Startup Tech Stack edition almost two years ago, I think few of us anticipated just how quickly things would change. Back then, only a handful of platforms were AI-first, and even fewer had fully embraced it. Fast forward to today, and almost every platform is AI-first, all racing to dominate their market.

Given how fast things are changing, and the number of tools we rely on daily to run and grow our startups, we thought it was time for an updated version of the Startup Tech Stack, focused on the latest and most popular tools.

To help you navigate the market landscape, we’ve grouped the latest tools into the following categories:

Scaling with AI - everything to become AI-first: Build with AI, Agents & AI Employees, Dev Tools, Research, and Cloud.

GTM tools - everything to help you land customers: GTM/Sales, Design and Marketing.

Operations - everything to help keep the business running: Banking, KYC/Security, Payments, CX, Hiring, Legal, and Automations.

Saving time - everything to help you save time and get back a few hours: Productivity, Docs, and Fundraising.

Let’s explore the latest tools.

📊 Chart of the week: The 2026 unicorns tracker

2025 produced 190 unicorns. 2026 has already added 49 more. Here are the latest startups crossing the $1B mark - what they’re building and why investors are backing them.

This tracker will be updated monthly as your go-to source for the newest unicorns and the trends behind them.

Discover the latest unicorns of 2026.

🔍 Top tech news

• Bluesky, the social network raised $100M Series B led by Bain Capital Crypto.

• Prediction markets startup Kalshi raised $1B led by Coatue.

• Air Street Capital raised Fund III, $232M, making the firm the largest European solo GP fund.

💰 Startup funding news

• Swish - An Indian-based food delivery startup raised $38M Series B led by Hara Global and Bain Capital Ventures.

• Consumer-focused privacy company Cloaked raised $375M Series B led by General Catalyst and Liberty City Ventures.

• Real-time personalization technology and ranking infrastructure platform Sequen raised $16M Series A led by White Star Capital and Threshold Ventures.

• U.S. autonomous drone delivery and logistics startup Zipline raised $200M.

• AI-native fund administration platform Hanover Park raised $27M Series A led by Emergence Capital.

• Software platform Hosted.AI that increases the efficiency of GPU infrastructure, raised $19M Seed led by Creandum.

• Deeptune - training gyms for AI agents raised $43M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz.

• Cybersecurity startup Oasis raised $120M Series B led by Craft Ventures.

• AI infrastructure Gimlet Labs raised $80M Series A led by Menlo Ventures.

👀 New VC funds

• French-Italian 360 Capital raised $98M for a DeepTech fund.

• Google-backed Gradient VC raised $220M for its latest AI seed fund.

• Central and Eastern European fund Credo Ventures raised $88M for their latest fund.

🤝 Acquisitions

• Huel was bought by Danone for €1B.

• Grab has acquired Foodpanda Taiwan from Delivery Hero for $600M.

• Amazon acquires Rivr, maker of a stair-climbing delivery robot.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

Subscribe to our podcast to hear from founders, investors, and operators behind some of the most enduring companies. Previous episodes include:

• Why Hand-Typing Code Will End Your Career in 2026 | Dan Shipper.

• The $1.7B Mistake That Ended a Founder’s Dream | Colin Angle.

• Andreessen Horowitz General Partner: Venture Capital’s Future | David Haber.

• He Built A $1.8B AI Company With No Experience | Max Junestrand.

• Forget AI: Inside the Meltdown That Made Airalo #1 eSIM Unicorn | Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir.

• The Hidden Skill Behind Every Successful Founder | Lindsay Kaplan.

• The Harsh Truth About Building a Startup in the AI Era | Anish Acharya.

• The AI Version of You Will Outperform You | Emad Mostaque.

• How Solana Survived When Most Other Coins Fell | Anatoly Yakovenko.

Watch and subscribe now!

🧷 Startups to watch

Some of the latest and most promising startups that I have come across in the past week include

Read more

Hey Readers!

How much of your startup tech stack has changed in the last year?

When we published our first Startup Tech Stack edition almost two years ago, I think few of us anticipated just how quickly things would change. Back then, only a handful of platforms were AI-first, and even fewer had fully embraced it. Fast forward to today, and almost every platform is AI-first, all racing to dominate their market.

Given how fast things are changing, and the number of tools we rely on daily to run and grow our startups, we thought it was time for an updated version of the Startup Tech Stack, focused on the latest and most popular tools.

To help you navigate the market landscape, we’ve grouped the latest tools into the following categories:

Scaling with AI - everything to become AI first: Build with AI, Agents & AI Employees, Dev Tools, Research, and Cloud.

GTM tools - everything to help you land customers: GTM/Sales, Design and Marketing.

Operations - everything to help keep the business running: Banking, KYC/Security, Payments, CX, Hiring, Legal, and Automations.

Saving time - everything to help you save time and get back a few hours: Productivity, Docs, and Fundraising.

Let’s explore the latest tools.

The Startup AI Tech Stack

Since publishing previous editions of the Startup Tech Stack, one trend has become clear: tools that weren’t AI-first now are.

Two other trends stand out:

1) Building with AI is now end-to-end
New tools now let builders create everything with AI, from code to websites to fully functional apps. In 2024, these tools helped speed things up - today, they can generate high-quality apps and websites in minutes.

2) New tools are concentrated around Marketing & Productivity
Outside of developer tools, most new products are focused on marketing and productivity. You can now generate full ad campaigns from a few prompts, or even influence how your company appears in AI-generated answers. For example, tools like The Prompting Company help startups get cited when users ask AI models for recommendations.

Looking ahead, the next wave of startups to watch will include those replacing incumbents like Salesforce and Slack. These markets are massive, and still wide open for disruption.

As we mapped the latest tools, a few new additions stood out based on how likely startups are to adopt them over the next year:

• Marketing: The Prompting Company - Be cited in AI models - this will likely be useful for so many startups over the coming years, especially as they find new ways to find new customers. Every serious startup should be spending time trying to get cited in these AI models.

• KYC: Didit - Stop losing users to slow identity checks. For any startup that requires KYC on customers, the likes of Didit are needed!

• Bugs in products: Lucent - See every bug your users experience. Useful for all product teams who are building and growing.

• Hire at speed: Jack & Jill - Your perfect hire, introduced within minutes.

• Marketing AI Agents: MarkeTeam - The world’s first fully autonomous AI marketing workforce.

Explore 120+ tools this weekend and upgrade your tech stack.

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Discover the latest tools in full below and what they do. Don’t see your tool listed? Add it here or leave it in the comments below for subscribers to see!

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Just in the past week, we unveiled Y Combinator’s latest batch ahead of Demo Day while Google made a $32B move to acquire Wiz — capping off a week packed with major funding rounds, rising AI startups, and fresh venture capital bets. Plus, Uber founder Travis Kalanick is back with his latest robotics-focused startup, Atoms.

To help you make sense of it all, we’ve rounded up the most talked-about startup stories from the past week — broken down into these categories:

• 🗝️ Read of the week

• 📊 Charts of the week

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding news

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

Massive win for this community

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🗝️ Read of the week

Y Combinator’s latest Demo Day takes place next week. If you missed the startups in this batch, here they are.

Trends from this batch:

• 64% of the batch are B2B startups, with many building products across productivity, the stack for engineers and infrastructure tools.

• The consumer category is barely represented in this batch, with only about 5% of startups building within the category.

• Healthcare is gaining momentum, making up nearly 10% of the batch. Notable areas include wearable technologies and drug discovery.

• The legal tech category is also heating up. This may be driven by the rapid success of platforms like Legora (a YC company) and Harvey, both of which reached unicorn status shortly after founding. It’s therefore not surprising that around 4% of this batch is building in the legal category.

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📊 Charts of the week

The 2026 Unicorns (so far)

2025 produced 190 unicorns. 2026 has already added 49 more. Here are the latest startups crossing the $1B mark — what they’re building and why investors are backing them.

Top 50 Gen AI Web Products by Unique Monthly Views

(SOURCE: A16Z)

🔍 Top tech news

• Uber founder, Travis Kalanick is back with his new robotics company, Atoms.

• OpenAI is in advanced discussions to form a joint venture with private equity firms that would focus on bolstering adoption of its AI software across their portfolio companies. Read more here.

• Cybersecurity startup Wiz has officially been acquired by Google for $32B in cash.

• Replit raised $400M to expand AI coding platform, valuing the AI tool at $9B. The Series D round was led by Georgian.

• Legal tech startup Legora raised $500M led by Accel. A few months ago, we had Legora’s co-founder Max Junestrand on the podcast show. Watch it here.

💰 Startup funding news

• Intelligence AI layer for agents: Nyne which gives AI agents the human context they’re missing founded by father and son duo raised $5.3M Seed led by Wischoff Ventures and South Park Commons.

• Robotics: Rivian spin-out Mind Robotics raised $500M for industrial AI-powered robots. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel.

• Healthcare: Translucent, an AI-native healthcare finance startup, raised $27M Series A led by Google Ventures.

• Deploy AI Agents: Wonderful raised $150M Series B at $2B valuation. The new round was led by Insight Partners.

• Email inboxes for AI agents: AgentMail which provides an API-first email platform that enables AI agents to send, receive, and manage emails with automation and analytics raised $6M Seed led by General Catalyst.

• Robotics: Sunday raised $165M Series B led by Coatue Management. The robotics company is on a mission to build a household humanoid robot called Memo that helps with tasks like laundry and clearing the table.

• Mobility: Oxa which develops autonomous vehicle software and hardware raised $103M Series D led by National Wealth Fund.

• Mobility: Kenyan startup Zeno raised $25M to meet high demand for affordable electric motorcycles. The Series A round was led by Congruent Ventures.

• GPUs: Standard Kernel is unlocking more performance from modern GPUs. They have just raised $20M Seed led by Jump Capital.

• FinTech: Fuse raised $25M to disrupt aging loan origination systems used by US credit unions. The Series A round was led by Footwork, Primary Venture Partners, NextView Ventures, and Commerce Ventures.

Additional funding rounds include:

👀 New VC funds

• Breakout Ventures announced Fund III at $114M to back AI science startups.

• Pax VC announced Fund I at $50M.

• Empyrean Sky Partners announced $90M for global tech fund.

• Coefficient Capital raised $530M for consumer growth investing.

🤝 Acquisitions

• Unacademy to be acquired by upGrad in share-swap deal as India’s edtech sector consolidates.

• Ramp acquires Billhop and plans expansion across Europe and the UK.

• Seenit is joining The Unseen Group.

• Apple acquires video editing software company MotionVFX.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

Subscribe to our podcast to hear from founders, investors, and operators behind some of the most enduring companies. Previous episodes include:

• Why Hand-Typing Code Will End Your Career in 2026 | Dan Shipper.

• The $1.7B Mistake That Ended a Founder’s Dream | Colin Angle.

• Andreessen Horowitz General Partner: Venture Capital’s Future | David Haber.

• He Built A $1.8B AI Company With No Experience | Max Junestrand.

• Forget AI: Inside the Meltdown That Made Airalo #1 eSIM Unicorn | Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir.

• The Hidden Skill Behind Every Successful Founder | Lindsay Kaplan.

• The Harsh Truth About Building a Startup in the AI Era | Anish Acharya.

• The AI Version of You Will Outperform You | Emad Mostaque.

• How Solana Survived When Most Other Coins Fell | Anatoly Yakovenko.

Watch and subscribe now!

If you enjoyed this edition, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

This tracker will be updated monthly as your go-to source for the newest unicorns and the trends behind them. Subscribe to avoid missing future editions!

Subscribe now

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Let’s meet the latest unicorns and what they do

In January, the following companies reached unicorn status:

Aalyria

This company enables commercial and government customers to operate advanced communications networks. To date, they have raised $100M from the likes of Battery Ventures and J2 Ventures.

Aikido Security

This company secures your code, cloud, and runtime in one central system. To date, they have raised $85M from the likes of DST Global, Singular, Connect Venture, and Notion Capital.

Alpaca

This company allows you to trade with algorithms, connect with apps, and build financial apps. To date, they have raised $328M from the likes of 850 Management, SBI Group, Spark Capital, Y Combinator, and others.

Arena

This company provides an online platform for evaluating and comparing AI models using real-world prompts and human feedback. To date, they have raised $250M from the likes of Felicis, UC Investments, and Andreessen Horowitz.

Cast AI

This company is the leading open-source automation platform that cuts AWS, Azure, and GCP customers’ cloud costs by over 50%. To date, they have raised $180M from the likes of Pacific Alliance Ventures, SoftBank, Creandum, and others.

Deepgram

This AI company provides speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and voice applications. To date, they have raised $229M from the likes of AVP, Tiger Global, and Y Combinator.

Faculty

This company is one of Europe’s leading AI companies which helps public and private sector clients to deploy AI solutions. The startup was recently acquired by Accenture in a billion-dollar deal.

Gecko

This company provides robotics and inspection services for industrial applications. To date, they have raised $347M from the likes of Founders Fund and Y Combinator.

GlossGenius

This company is a vertical SaaS platform for small business owners across the salon and studio space. To date, they have raised $115M from the likes of Bessemer Venture Partners and Imaginary Ventures.

Harmattan AI

This company develops AI-powered autonomous systems and software for military and defense applications. To date, they have raised $242M from the likes of Dassault Aviation and FirstMark.

Higgsfield

This AI company is committed to democratizing social media content creation for everyone. To date, they have raised $138M from the likes of Menlo Ventures.

humans&

This AI company focuses on human-centered AI systems and interaction models. To date, they have raised $480M from the likes of SV Angel.

Justpay

This FinTech company helps merchants and banks streamline their payment processes globally. To date, they have raised $197M from the likes of WestBridge Capital, SoftBank, Accel, and others.

Mesh

This crypto company enables easy payments across hundreds of exchanges, wallets, and providers. To date, they have raised $199M from the likes of Dragonfly and Paradigm.

Osapiens

This company provides digital systems and software solutions to automate and optimize operational workflows. To date, they have raised $247M from the likes of Decarbonization Partners and Goldman Sachs Alternatives.

PaleBlueDot AI

This company provides cloud-based GPU infrastructure through a marketplace and dedicated computing clusters. To date, they have raised $160M from the likes of B Capital.

Pomelo Care

This healthcare company develops evidence-based healthcare solutions for women and children. To date, they have raised $179M from the likes of Stripes, Andreessen Horowitz, and First Round Capital.

Preply

This EdTech company helps students learn foreign languages confidently. To date, they have raised $320M from the likes of WestCap, Horizon Ventures, Owl Ventures, Hoxton Ventures, Point Nine, and others.

We recently had Preply’s Co-Founder and CEO Kirill Bigai on our podcast show. Watch the episode here.

Rain

This company builds stablecoin-powered payment infrastructure, allowing businesses and individuals to use tokenized money. To date, they have raised $332M from the likes of ICONIQ Capital, Sapphire Ventures, and Norwest.

Recursive Intelligence

This company uses AI and computing to shorten semiconductor timelines. To date, they have raised $335M from the likes of Lightspeed Ventures and Sequoia.

Tandem

This healthcare company uses AI to handle prior authorizations, affordability, and pharmacy coordination for every prescription. The company has raised $130M+ to date from the likes of General Catalyst, Accel, and Thrive.

Tulip

This company is a frontline operations platform designed to empower companies with AI-enabled, connected applications. To date, they have raised $272M from the likes of Mitsubishi Electric, Insight Partners, and New Enterprise Associates.

Upscale AI

This company redefines networking with purpose-built solutions for high-performance compute. To date, they have raised $300M from the likes of Premji Invest, Tiger Global Management, and Xora Innovation.

Varda

This space company creates products in microgravity and retrieves them for terrestrial use. To date, they have raised $328M from the likes of Natural Capital, Shrug Capital, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, and Lux Capital.

webAI

This company builds, deploys, and operates custom AI on your local infrastructure with low latency, full ownership, and predictable costs. They recently raised an oversubscribed round led by Forerunner and OXCART Ventures.

February

Allica Bank

This FinTech company delivers digital banking for small and medium-sized businesses. To date, they have raised $523M from the likes of GLG, Sona Asset Management, and Ventura Capital.

Basis

This AI company automates accounting workflows for professionals. To date, they have raised $137M from the likes of Accel, Google Ventures, and Khosla Ventures.

Bedrock Robotics

This company develops robotics to modernize construction and increase building productivity. To date, they have raised $350M from the likes of CapitalG, Valor Equity Partners, and 8VC.

Code Metal

This company is an AI-enabled platform providing verifiable code translation and optimization for edge development and code modernization. To date, they have raised $184M from the likes of Salesforce Ventures and Accel.

Erebor Bank

This company is building a nationally chartered bank for the innovation economy, founded by Palmer Luckey, backed by the likes of Peter Thiel. This will be one unique startup to watch.

Flapping Airplanes

This AI lab focuses on advancing foundational AI technologies. To date, they have raised $180M from the likes of Google Ventures, Index Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.

Fundamental

This AI research company focuses on overcoming the fundamental challenges of machine learning. To date, they have raised $255M from the likes of Oak HC/FT, Battery Ventures, Headline, Hetz Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures.

Garner

This healthcare company connects employers and employees with high-performing medical providers. To date, they have raised $219M from the likes of Kleiner Perkins, Redpoint, and Founders Fund.

Goodfire

This AI research company is using interpretability to turn AI into something that can be understood, debugged, and shaped like software. To date, they have raised $207M from the likes of B Capital, Menlo Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Iterative Health

This healthcare company develops technology that can benefit patients anywhere, regardless of socioeconomic or geographic barriers. To date, they have raised more than $270M from the likes of Insight Partners and Obvious Ventures.

Midi Health

This healthcare company provides virtual care for women in midlife, offering clinician support for menopause, hormonal health, and related conditions. To date, they have raised $252M from the likes of Goodwater Capital and Google Ventures.

Oxide

This company is a maker of server racks for on-premises compute infrastructure. To date, they have raised $394M from the likes of U.S. Innovative Technology Fund and Eclipse Ventures.

Positron

This AI infrastructure company designs and supplies purpose-built hardware and software systems for transformer-based models. To date, they have raised $305M from the likes of ARENA Private Wealth, Jump Trading, and Unless.

Profound

This AI company optimizes content that helps brands increase their visibility in generative AI search. To date, they have raised $154M from the likes of Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia, and Kleiner Perkins.

Render

This company provides a unified cloud for developers and teams to host all their applications, databases, and websites. To date, they have raised $256M from the likes of Georgia, Bessemer Ventures, and General Catalyst.

Skyryse

This manufacturing company offers aerospace hardware and software operating systems. To date, they have raised $530M from the likes of Autopilot Ventures and Fidelity.

Solace

This healthcare company connects patients with professional healthcare advocates that support them through complex medical journeys. To date, they have raised $204M from the likes of IVP and Menlo Ventures.

Talkiatry

This healthcare company provides virtual mental healthcare services covered by insurance, connecting patients with licensed psychiatrists. To date, they have raised $452M from the likes of Perceptive Advisors, Andreessen Horowitz, and Left Lane Capital.

TRM Labs

This software company offers blockchain, transaction monitoring, and analytics to help financial institutions and governments. To date, they have raised $219M from the likes of Blockchain Capital and Thoma Bravo.

ZaiNar

This company develops real-time 3D location and positioning solutions using patented signal processing and network timing techniques. To date, they have raised $116M from the likes of SoftBank, Happiness Ventures, and Samsung NEXT.

March

Entrepreneurs First

This venture firm runs programs that identify individuals pursuing technology startups and supports them during early company formation. To date, they have raised $380M from the likes of Greylock and a host of industry titans.

Auterion

This company provides a platform that unifies a diverse fleet of autonomous robots, catering to a wide range of applications and use cases. To date, they have raised $181M from the likes of Bessemer Venture Partners and Lakestar.

AMI Labs (Advanced Machine Intelligence)

The AI company develops artificial intelligence systems that model real-world environments using sensor data. To date, they have raised $1B from the likes of Bezos Expeditions, Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, and HV Capital.

PixVerse

This AI company creates amazing AI generated videos from text & photos. They recently raised a $300M Series C round from investors including: CDH, Antler, EnvisionX Capital, iGlobe Partners, Lion X Ventures, and UOB Venture Management.

and more…

Discover the unicorns in full -->

Missed 2025’s Unicorns?

Discover the 190+ companies that reached unicorn status in 2025, where they are based, and who their investors are.

If you enjoyed this edition, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe now

Just in the last few days, OpenAI unveiled GPT-5.4 while Science Corp secured a massive $230M round to bring its brain implant to market — capping off a week already packed with major startup funding, acquisitions, and new venture funds.

To help you make sense of it all, we’ve rounded up the most talked-about startup stories from the past week — broken down into these categories:

• 🗝️ Read of the week

• 📊 Chart of the week

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding news

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

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🗝️ Read & trend of the week: YC startups are going all in on B2B software

Y Combinator’s Winter ‘26 Demo Day is two weeks away. We’re back with a full overview of the latest startups in the batch — what they’re building, which categories they’re focused on, and which Partners coached them. We’ll also highlight the most exciting startups to watch and take a closer look at the teams behind them. Read in full 👉

📊 Chart of the week

Which jobs is AI seeing the most action in? Anthropic’s latest research reveals the ten occupations with the highest “observed exposure” to AI automation — meaning tasks that are not just theoretically possible for AI, but actually being performed by it today.

Computer programmers top the list at 74.5%, with AI most commonly writing, updating, and maintaining software. Close behind are customer service representatives (70.1%) and data entry keyers (67.1%), where AI is handling customer interactions and document processing respectively.

What’s striking about this list is its breadth — it spans white-collar knowledge work (financial analysts, market researchers), technical roles (software QA testers, information security analysts), and administrative functions (medical record specialists). Observed exposure ranges from just under 47% for computer user support specialists at the bottom of the top ten, all the way up to 74.5% at the top.

The common thread? These are roles built around processing, analyzing, and communicating information — precisely the kind of work where AI has made its fastest inroads. You can read the report in full here.

🔍 Top tech news

• Google just gave Sundar Pichai a $692M pay package!

• MyFitnessPal acquired Cal AI, the viral calorie app built by teens!

• Indonesia outlines plan to limit under-16s’ access to social media following in the footsteps of Australia and its neighbor Malaysia!

• OpenAI launched GPT-5.4.

• Nscale raised a $2B Series C round — the largest in European history.

💰 Startup funding news

• Eight Sleep raised $50M at a $1.5B valuation. The Series D extension round was led by Tether Investments.

• Pronto raised $25M which is an on-demand home services platform that connects users with professionals for household tasks and other domestic help. The Series B round was led by Epiq Capital.

• Zeno raised $25M to speed up production of its battery-swap motorbikes. The Series A round was led by Congruent Ventures.

• Lio raised $30M to automate enterprise procurement. The Series A round was led by Andreessen Horowitz.

• Nominal is the faster, more reliable way to validate mission-critical systems. Their $80M Series B extension round was led by Founders Fund.

• Science Corp raised $230M as it races to bring its brain implant to market. The Series C round was led by Khosla Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

• Fig Security emerges from stealth with $38M to help security teams deal with change. The Series A deal was led by Team8, and Ten Eleven Ventures.

• Validio raised $30M to enhance enterprise AI data quality. The Series A round was led by Plural.

• Silverflow raised $40M to expand its cloud payment platform. The Series B round was led by Picus Capital.

• City Detect which uses AI to help cities stay safe and clean. The $13M Series A round was led by Prudence Venture Capital.

• ZyG develops software that supports entrepreneurs and direct-to-consumer brands in launching and scaling e-commerce products raised $58M. The Seed round was led by Bessemer Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Viola Ventures.

• Sierra Space which builds and delivers mission-proven technologies that safeguard our nation raised $550M Series C at a $8B valuation. The round was led by LuminArx Capital Management.

• Ayar Labs interconnects replacing copper wiring in AI data centers for faster, lower-power data transfer. The $500M Series E round was led by Neuberger Berman.

• Isembard accelerates manufacturing for the companies defining the future. Rockets, drones, satellites, nuclear energy and beyond. The company has raised $50M in Series A funding led by Union Square Ventures.

• KAST, the global money app raised $80M Series A led by QED Investors and Left Lane.

👀 New VC funds

• Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City to establish $191M VC fund.

• The Pentagon is committing $150M to a maritime-tech VC fund and appears to be ramping up venture deals.

• Japan Airlines launched $50M second VC fund under new in-house ventures unit.

• FIRSTPICK, a Vilnius-based first-check venture capital fund, has launched a new €25M fund to invest in early-stage Baltic startups.

• Bregal Sagemount announced their latest $3.5B fund.

• Seven Hills Capital closes Sophomore fund, at $235M.

• Sovereign AI UK launched a new £500M venture fund specifically focussed on artificial intelligence.

🤝 Acquisitions

• Netflix acquired Ben Affleck-Founded AI Firm, InterPositive.

• Oura acquired Doublepoint, a startup that specializes in gesture recognition technology.

• ServiceNow acquired Traceloop in a $60-$80M deal.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

Subscribe to our podcast to hear from founders, investors, and operators behind some of the most enduring companies. Previous episodes include:

• Why Hand-Typing Code Will End Your Career in 2026 | Dan Shipper.

• The $1.7B Mistake That Ended a Founder’s Dream | Colin Angle.

• Andreessen Horowitz General Partner: Venture Capital’s Future | David Haber.

• He Built A $1.8B AI Company With No Experience | Max Junestrand.

• Forget AI: Inside the Meltdown That Made Airalo #1 eSIM Unicorn | Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir.

• The Hidden Skill Behind Every Successful Founder | Lindsay Kaplan.

• The Harsh Truth About Building a Startup in the AI Era | Anish Acharya.

• The AI Version of You Will Outperform You | Emad Mostaque.

• How Solana Survived When Most Other Coins Fell | Anatoly Yakovenko.

Watch and subscribe now!

If you enjoyed this edition, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe now

Y Combinator’s Winter ‘26 Demo Day is under three weeks away. We’re back with a full overview of the latest startups in the batch — what they’re building, which categories they’re focused on, and which partners coached them. We’ll also highlight the most exciting startups to watch and take a closer look at the teams behind them.

So what have we learned about this batch so far?

• 64% of the batch are B2B startups, with many building products across productivity, the stack for engineers and infrastructure tools.

• The consumer category is barely represented in this batch, with only about 5% of startups building within the category.

• Healthcare is gaining momentum, making up nearly 10% of the batch. Notable areas include wearable technologies and drug discovery.

• The legal tech category is also heating up. This may be driven by the rapid success of platforms like Legora (a YC company) and Harvey, both of which reached unicorn status shortly after founding. It’s therefore not surprising that around 4% of this batch is building in the legal category.

Let’s explore the latest trends shaping this batch in full.

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The History of YC

In under three weeks, over 180 startups from the latest Y Combinator batch will present to investors at the Winter ‘26 Demo Day, and this may be the strongest batch yet. After meeting several founders in recent weeks, one trend is very clear: the founders are doubling down on AI, focusing on B2B.

Ask any founder or investor, and they have undoubtedly heard of Y Combinator — one of the world’s most renowned startup accelerators, with a mighty track record. Founders who raise from them are 45% more likely to raise a Series A and the accelerator turned 20 years old last year. Throughout that time, they have achieved some incredible stats, including:

• $800B+ in combined market value has been created.

• 6.5% of YC startups become unicorns.

• A quarter of all YC-backed unicorns achieve a valuation of over $10 billion.

All within just 20 years. So with the latest batch wrapping up, many of these startups are poised to rise — let’s meet them!

Meet the W26 Batch

With a lot of eyes on YC companies, we wanted to showcase them through a wider infographic to help you navigate the areas that most interest you.

So, let’s dive in!

Meet the 180+ startups from YC’s latest batch who are building across the following categories:

B2B

General B2B Software, Engineering, Infrastructure, Retail, Security, Sales, Supply Chain & Logistics, Legal, Productivity, HR, Operations, Marketing, Analytics, and Finance/Accounting.

FinTech

General FinTech, Payments, Credit & Lending, Insurance, and Banking/Exchange.

Consumer

General Consumer, Gaming, Electronics, and Finance.

Healthcare

A number of categories that founders are building across.

Industrials

General Industrials, Aviation & Space, Climate, Drones, Manufacturing, Energy, Real Estate, Defense, and Agriculture.

Discover the latest startups ahead of YC’s W26 Demo Day.

Comment “YC” to access the full database of all companies in the latest batch for free.

Leave a comment

Meet the YC Partners

Much of the attention goes on the startups throughout YC batches but let’s not forget the coaches (Partners) who are supporting each startup as well. We’ve outlined below each YC Partner, and which startups they have coached throughout this batch.

Throughout this batch, the YC Partners include:

Garry Tan, Harj Taggar, Aaron Epstein, Harshita Arora, Jon Xu, Tyler Bosmeny, Ankit Gupta, Diana Hu, Brad Flora, Jared Friedman, and Gustaf Alstromer.

Garry Tan

Co-founder of Posterous (acquired by Twitter) and Initialized Capital. Early engineer at Palantir, designed company logo.

Harj Taggar

Co-founder and CEO of Triplebyte (acquired by Karat) and Auctomatic (acquired by Live Current Media). Graduated from Oxford.

Aaron Epstein

Co-founder of Creative Market, generating over $100M in sales for independent creators worldwide.

Harshita Arora

Visiting Partner at YC. Co-founder of AtoB.

Jon Xu

Co-founder and CTO of FutureAdvisor (acquired by BlackRock). Built robo-advisor platform for financial institutions. MIT EECS grad.

Tyler Bosmeny

Co-founder and CEO of Clever (acquired for $500M). Used by 60% of US students.

Ankit Gupta

Co-founder and CTO of Reverie Labs (acquired by Ginkgo Bioworks). Deep learning researcher in language, vision, and biology.

Diana Hu

Co-founder and CTO of Escher Reality (acquired by Niantic). Shipped AR tech for Pokémon GO to 100M+ users and grew up in Chile.

Brad Flora

Co-founder and CEO of Perfect Audience (acquired by Marin Software). Active angel investor and Slate contributor.

Jared Friedman

Co-founder of Scribd, one of the top 100 sites on the web. Harvard CS dropout.

Gustaf Alstromer

Led Growth at Airbnb for 4.5 years. Co-founder of Heysan. Previously Head of Growth at Voxer.

Comment “YC” to access all the data on the companies and see which YC Partners are coaching them — for free.

Leave a comment

Meet The Hottest YC W26 Startups To Watch

Fort

What they do: Wearables are becoming increasingly popular to track sleep, gut health, and overall health. This new startup called Fort tracks ‘Strength.’

Why they are worth watching: Given the popularity of the likes of Garmin, Oura, Whoop, and others — this will be an interesting company to watch.

Lucent

What they do: See every bug your users experience. AI that automatically watches your session replays to detect bugs and UX issues.

Why they are worth watching: Every engineer, developer and product lead is likely to use these types of tools now and for sure going forward.

Pax Historia

What they do: Pax Historia is the first AI-powered sandbox game. Players create worlds, publish them to the community, and play to answer all of their ‘what would have happened if…?’ questions.

Garry Tan also recently said ‘‘This is one of the highest usage, highest retaining LLM games ever made so far.’’

Captain

What they do: the API-first unified data layer to ship enterprise RAG pipelines in minutes.

Why they are worth watching: It’s a small note but they were the only team to be coached by YC CEO Garry Tan so there might be something there.

Cardboard

What they do: Agentic video editor.

Why they are worth watching: They got the highest upvoted Hacker News launch in YC W26! (131 upvotes and 83 comments).

Dan Shipper is the co-founder of Every — the only subscription you need to stay at the edge of AI which is trusted by 100,000 builders. Before founding Every, Dan was the founder of Firefly, a co-browsing technology that was used by over 5,000 SMBs, and 7,000 financial advisors.

The latest trend: The $0 to multi-product AI empire

In this episode, we sit down with Dan Shipper, co-founder and CEO of Every, for a deep dive into his journey from a curious writer to leading a powerhouse at the intersection of media and software. In a candid conversation, Dan reflects on the building of Every — from its roots as a Substack-era bundle of newsletters to its current status as a high-velocity incubator for AI-native products.

Throughout the episode, we discuss:

• The “Vibe Coding” Reality: Why Dan no longer “writes” code in the traditional sense, using AI to build functional apps like Proof in just two weeks between meetings.

• Media as R&D: How Every treats failed software as “content.” In a traditional SaaS company, a failed pivot is a total loss; at Every, it’s a viral blog post that builds more distribution.

• The “Two-Slice Team”: A riff on Bezos’s “Two-Pizza” rule. Dan explains how AI allows a single person to run an entire product line, keeping Every lean at just 20 people while managing 4+ active software products.

• The Sociology of Agents: A look at the “OpenClaw” project and a future where your AI agent doesn’t just work for you — it negotiates with other agents in Slack to get things done.

• The “Founders-Only” Room: Dan’s candid take on why he identifies as a “Founder” over a “Creator” to gain the legitimacy needed to access the world’s most powerful rooms (including early backing from LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman).

• The 4-Year “Flatline”: A raw look at the period between 2020 and 2024 where growth stalled, and the mental resilience required to “stick it out” until the AI wave provided the ultimate tailwind.

Chapters

• (0:00) Intro

• (1:45) Dan's Hottest Trends

• (6:00) How Dan Decides Which Tools To Use

• (8:35) How Every Started & The Earliest Seeds

• (12:30) Is The Creator Economy Still A Thing?

• (14:05) Why Distribution Is The New MOAT

• (20:20) How To Launch New Products With Distribution

• (24:00) Lessons From Launching New Products

• (25:00) Is It OK To Fail?

• (27:15) Why Is Media SO Big Right Now?

• (31:40) Are You A Founder or Creator?

• (33:10) The Greatest Lesson From Reid Hoffman

• (34:15) How To Become AI Native

• (39:05) What Keeps Dan Up At Night

• (42:50) How Dan Takes Time Off

• (46:50) AI In The Next 1,000 Days

Thanks for listening — see you in the next episode 👋

P.S. When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free — for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now!!

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Just in the last few hours, OpenAI announced a staggering $110B raise from Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank — capping off a week already packed with massive venture updates.

To help you make sense of it all, we’ve rounded up the most talked-about startup stories from the past week — broken down into these categories:

• 🗝️ Read of the week

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding news

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

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🗝️ Read of the week

Jack Dorsey just cut nearly half of Block’s workforce — and says more companies could follow.

Since the announcement, Block’s stock has jumped more than 15%.

On Thursday, the billionaire CEO revealed on X that he is reducing Block’s headcount from over 10,000 employees to just under 6,000. The decision comes even as the company reports strong performance and growing profits.

The move offers an early look at what large-scale layoffs could look like in the AI era — and it’s stark.

In his statement, Dorsey explains why he believes dramatically leaner teams are the future. While many tech companies have made smaller workforce reductions in recent years, Block’s cuts stand out for their scale.

The decision raises a bigger question: as AI reshapes how companies operate, will other firms follow suit?

Read the statement in full here.

🔍 Top tech news

• UK autonomous driving startup Wayve raised $1.2B in Series D funding at an $8.6B valuation. The round was led by Balderton Capital, Eclipse Ventures, and SoftBank Vision Fund.

• After Zomato, former CEO Deepinder Goyal returns with a $54M brain-monitoring bet called Temple, which is described as "A new generation of wearables for a complete picture of your health." It’s part of a broader wave of next-gen health wearables we highlighted in our last edition.

• Nvidia challenger AI chip startup MatX raised $500M. The Series B round was led by Jane Street and Situational Awareness.

• Plaid valued at $8B has allowed employees to sell some of their shares. The valuation represents a 31% increase from the $6.1B valuation the 13-year-old company achieved in April of last year, when it raised $575M.

• Dutch-based AI chip startup Axelera AI raised $250M to take on Nvidia.

• Stripe is now valued at $159B following a tender offer for employees.

💰 Startup funding news

• London-based Allica Bank raised $155M to expand SMB lending with the round being led by Ventura Capital. The additional funding now values the FinTech at $1.2B.

• Y Combinator grad and AI insurance brokerage Harper raised $47M. The Series A round was led by Emergence Capital.

• Defence-tech startup Constelli raised $20M led by General Catalyst.

• Nimble raised $47M to give AI agents access to real-time web data. The Series B round was led by Norwest.

• AI sales startup Letter AI raised $40M Series B four months after its last raise. The round was led by Battery Ventures.

• As AI threatens search, Profound raised $96M to help brands stay visible. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

• Basis raised $100M at a $1.15B valuation to scale AI accounting agents. The Series B round was led by Accel, Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Lloyd Blankfein.

• Lettings & property management AI-first platform Dwelly raised $93M led by General Catalyst.

• UK-based firm BeyondMath raised $10M to expand AI physics simulation platform. The round was led by Cambridge Innovation Capital.

• Flux, backed by 8VC, raised $37M to vibe code electronics.

• Aalyria raised $100M in Series B funding to help grow laser-powered wireless space network. The round was led by Battery Ventures and J2 Ventures.

👀 New VC funds

• Thrive Capital raised $10B for new fund, its largest yet!

• Co-founders Chris Hollod and Patrick Finnegan of Second Sight Ventures, just closed a $75M fund.

🤝 Acquisitions

• HubSpot acquired YouTube-based media brand Starter Story.

• Canva acquired Cavalry, which works on animation, and MangoAI, which works on improving ad performance.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

Subscribe to our podcast to hear from founders, investors, and operators behind some of the most enduring companies.

Previous episodes include:

• The $1.7B Mistake That Ended a Founder’s Dream | Colin Angle

• Andreessen Horowitz General Partner: Venture Capital’s Future | David Haber.

• He Built A $1.8B AI Company With No Experience | Max Junestrand.

• Forget AI: Inside the Meltdown That Made Airalo #1 eSIM Unicorn | Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir.

• The Hidden Skill Behind Every Successful Founder | Lindsay Kaplan.

• The Harsh Truth About Building a Startup in the AI Era | Anish Acharya.

• The AI Version of You Will Outperform You — Emad Mostaque.

• How Solana Survived When Most Other Coins Fell | Anatoly Yakovenko.

Watch and subscribe now!

If you enjoyed this edition, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post.

Subscribe now

This week’s ecosystem activity proved that the “Agentic” shift is no longer a roadmap — it’s a reality. From Temporal’s $300M Series D anchoring the infrastructure for AI agents to Hims & Hers’ massive acquisition of Eucalyptus, the market is aggressively consolidating around personalized health and automated intelligence.

The capital floodgates also remain wide open as Battery Ventures and Peak XV raised nearly $5B combined in new dry powder, while Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs reached a $5B valuation to pioneer spatial intelligence and finally, Palmer Luckey’s jump into fintech with the launch of Erebor.

To help you make sense of it all, we’ve rounded up the most talked-about startup stories from the past week — broken down into these categories:

• 🔔 The latest trend

• 🗝️ Read of the week

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding news

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

Let’s dive in 🚀

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• No-code, no delays: Launch a polished site in hours, not weeks, without hiring developers.

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🔔 The latest trend: Healthcare

We’re watching the consumerization of preventative medicine in real time. People no longer want to wait for symptoms; they want dashboards. They want continuous insight into their gut, sleep, glucose, hormones, recovery, and longevity. What fintech did for money visibility, healthtech is now doing for the body.

Here are a few startups worth watching:

• Throne Science: See how foods hurt or heal your gut health.

• Miora: Health agent that does healthy things for you so you can focus on being your fab self.

• Fort Wearable: A wearable that automatically tracks strength training, for people who care about longevity.

• TRIP Drinks: UK’s #1 CBD Drinks.

• Neko Health: Stay ahead of your health with the Neko body scan.

Watch this space!

🗝️ Read of the week

We recently had Colin Angle, co-founder of iRobot on the podcast, which you can watch in full here. We covered everything from finding your magical early collaborators to why storytelling matters and why a deal isn’t done until it’s done.

A few notes from Colin on building a billion dollar company:

🔍 Top tech news

• AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs raised $1 billion in funding.

• Twilio co-founder’s fusion power startup Inertia raised $450M led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

• Finland’s IQM to become one of Europe’s first listed quantum companies at a $1.8 billion valuation.

• Palmer Luckey launches a new bank, Erebor.

💰 Startup funding news

• InScope raised $14.5M Series A to solve the pain of financial reporting. The round was led by Norwest.

• Freeform raised $67M Series B to scale up laser AI manufacturing.

• Heron Power raised $140M Series B to ramp production of grid-altering tech. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz.

• AI-driven vulnerability remediation company Cogent Security raised $42M Series A. The round was led by Bain Capital.

• Temporal raised $300M Series D to make agentic AI real for companies. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz.

• Meridian, the AI-powered modeling layer for Excel, raised $17M Seed led by Andreessen Horowitz and The General Partnership.

• Code Metal raised $125M Series B to rewrite the defense industry’s code with AI. The round was led by Salesforce Ventures.

Access the full list of 450+ Pre-Seed to Series A deals announced over the past week below.

👀 New VC funds

• Peak XV raised $1.3B, doubles down on AI as global VC rivalry in India heats up.

• French VC Quantonation raised €220M for flagship quantum and deep-physics fund.

• Battery Ventures raised $3.25 Billion for Fund XV to back AI and software innovation.

• Crypto venture capital firm Dragonfly raised $650M.

🤝 Acquisitions

• Hims & Hers announces agreement to acquire Eucalyptus, accelerating its vision to become the leading global consumer health platform.

• Polymarket acquires prediction market API startup Dome.

• Palo Alto Networks acquires one-year-old Israeli startup Koi for $400M.

• Mistral acquires French startup Koyeb for cloud offensive.

• Superhuman to acquire Rows to strengthen its all-in-one AI workspace.

• Nvidia acquires Israeli AI startup Illumex for $60M.

• Uber to acquire parking app SpotHero.

• eBay acquires Depop from Etsy.

• HubSpot acquires YouTube-based media brand Starter Story.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

In our latest episode, we sit down with Kirill Bigai, founder of Preply, for a deep dive into his journey from a scrappy entrepreneur to leading a global education powerhouse. In a candid conversation, Kirill reflects on the meteoric rise of the world’s leading language-learning marketplace and the hard-won lessons from a decade of pivots and a recent move to unicorn status.

For some context: You might remember Preply — it quickly became one of the most talked-about EdTech startups in the ecosystem, raising hundreds of millions of dollars and promising to connect every learner in the world with the perfect human tutor. But beyond the headline-grabbing $150 million Series D, the company has navigated intense challenges, from the manual “concierge” grind of the early 2010s to the profound responsibility of protecting its team during the invasion of Ukraine. In this episode, we unpack what it really takes to build a legendary brand in the age of AI.

Previous episodes include:

• The $1.7B Mistake That Ended a Founder’s Dream | Colin Angle

• Andreessen Horowitz General Partner: Venture Capital’s Future | David Haber.

• He Built A $1.8B AI Company With No Experience | Max Junestrand.

• Forget AI: Inside the Meltdown That Made Airalo #1 eSIM Unicorn | Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir.

• The Hidden Skill Behind Every Successful Founder | Lindsay Kaplan.

• The Harsh Truth About Building a Startup in the AI Era | Anish Acharya.

• The AI Version of You Will Outperform You — Emad Mostaque.

• How Solana Survived When Most Other Coins Fell | Anatoly Yakovenko.

Watch and subscribe now!

Download all 450+ Pre-Seed, Seed & Series A deals announced in the past week below!

Read more

Watch on YouTube —>

In this episode, we sit down with Kirill Bigai, founder of Preply, for a deep dive into his journey from a scrappy entrepreneur to leading a global education powerhouse. In a candid conversation, Kirill reflects on the meteoric rise of the world’s leading language-learning marketplace and the hard-won lessons from a decade of pivots and a recent move to unicorn status.

For some context: You might remember Preply — it quickly became one of the most talked-about EdTech startups in the ecosystem, raising hundreds of millions of dollars and promising to connect every learner in the world with the perfect human tutor. But beyond the headline-grabbing $150 million Series D, the company has navigated intense challenges, from the manual “concierge” grind of the early 2010s to the profound responsibility of protecting its team during the invasion of Ukraine. In this episode, we unpack what it really takes to build a legendary brand in the age of AI.

Throughout the episode, we explore:

• The “Concierge” MVP: How Kirill launched with a single landing page and manually called users to find them tutors on Skype before a single line of marketplace code was written.

• The Discipline Story: Why Kirill views Preply’s $1.2 billion valuation not as a “success story” but as a “discipline story” rooted in lean operations and unit economics.

• Human-First, AI-Enabled: A look at the future of education where AI doesn’t replace the teacher but acts as a “co-pilot” to automate homework and predict student progress.

• The 12-Year Grind: The reality of the 2012 “year of exploration” in Boston, where the team lived and worked in the same house to survive while pivoting through different business models.

• The “Professional Athlete” Mindset: Kirill’s personal health hacks — from sports to 8-hour sleep cycles, designed to sustain a founder through high-stress growth cycles.

• Leadership Under Fire: The harrowing experience of building a 24/7 support team to evacuate employees from Kyiv and the moral choice of taking full responsibility for team safety during a war.

• Winning the Global Market: How mastering SEO and focusing on “serious learners” allowed Preply to scale to 100,000 tutors across 180 countries.

• The Next Chapter — A Legendary Brand: Why reaching unicorn status was never the end goal, and how Kirill is now focused on fundamentally shaping how people learn in the future.

If you’re interested in the raw reality of building a global marketplace from scratch , the intersection of human connection and AI-enabled education , or how to lead with profound responsibility during a time of national crisis — this episode is for you!

Chapters:

• (0:00) Intro

• (8:00) Coming from Ukraine To The U.S. To Build

• (13:10) Acquiring The First Thousand Users

• (15:10) Preply's First Few Years

• (18:40) Preply Becomes A Unicorn

• (21:00) Why Don't We See More EdTech Companies?

• (23:10) Keeping Customers Happy At Scale

• (26:00) The Impact Of AI For Language Learning

• (35:30) Why You Should Find Time To Rest

• (37:50) Greatest Lesson From The Past Year

Thanks for listening — see you in the next episode 👋

P.S. When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free — for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now!!

In this episode, we sit down with Sachin Dev Duggal, founder of Builder AI and Second Brain, for his first public interview since his departure from Builder. In a candid conversation, Sachin reflects on the meteoric rise of one of AI’s most talked-about companies and the hard-won lessons from a turbulent 2025.

For some context: You might remember Builder AI — it quickly became one of the most talked-about AI startups in the ecosystem, raising hundreds of millions of dollars and promising to make software as simple as snapping together Lego blocks. But in 2025, the company faced intense scrutiny, critical media coverage, and leadership changes that reshaped its trajectory. In this episode, we unpack what really happened.

Throughout the episode, we explore:

• The "Lego" Thesis of Software: Why Sachin believed that 80% of software could be built using reusable "atomic units" long before generative AI became a household name.

• Growing Too Fast: The challenges of scaling to 900 employees and the reality of what happens when organizational governance can't keep pace with revenue velocity.

• Navigating "The Cloud": Sachin’s direct response to media narratives surrounding "fake AI" and the complexities of revenue recognition in a new category of software.

• The Psychology of Trust: How childhood experiences shaped Sachin's leadership style and the difficult realization that "wanting to be liked" can be a founder's greatest liability.

• The Captain and the Engine Room: A look at "Founder Mode" and the importance of removing layers between a CEO and their investors to maintain a single version of the truth.

• Winning the Inner Game: How the principles of professional tennis — controlling inputs over outcomes — helped Sachin survive a year of public scrutiny and personal betrayal.

• The Next Chapter — Second Brain: Why the next wave of AI isn't about reasoning, but about "meaning," and how Sachin is building a cognitive operating system to give people back three hours of their day.

If you’re interested in the raw reality of high-stakes entrepreneurship, the future of personal intelligence, or how to engineer a comeback with humility and accountability — this conversation is for you!

Chapters:

(0:00) Intro
(2:40) 2025 Was...
(8:15) Trust Is A Very Big Word
(10:50) Sachin Shares His Early Days
(14:13) The DNA Of Solving A Problem
(19:17) Launching Builder AI
(25:25) Builder’s First Year
(29:55) Builder’s First Few Customers
(34:55) Sachin’s Trillion-Dollar Outlook
(39:45) The Dreaded Wall Street Journal Article
(47:00) 2025: The Rocky Year
(59:50) Employees In India
(1:02:45) Forecasting & Revenues
(1:09:40) Raising $450M
(1:13:50) Stepping Down As CEO
(1:15:45) Reflecting On The Past 12 Months

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This week alone, startups secured billions in new capital, with Anthropic reaching a staggering $380B valuation in a landmark Series G. Meanwhile, OpenAI solidified its roadmap for autonomous agents by acquiring the creator of OpenClaw.

Not to be outdone, the fintech world saw a massive shift as Nuveen acquired the 200-year-old Schroders in a $13.5B mega-deal, while the AI.com domain officially became the most expensive in history, selling for $70M to launch a new agentic AI platform.

To help you make sense of it all, we’ve rounded up the most talked-about startup stories from the past week — broken down into these categories:

• 🔔 The latest trend

• 🗝️ Read of the week

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding news

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

Let’s dive in 🚀

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🗝️ The latest trend & read of the week

OpenAI is on an acquisition and hiring spree, with its latest being:

Peter Steinberger, the creator behind OpenClaw has joined OpenAI. Read the news in full here.

In a statement from Sam Altman, he said:

Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents. He is a genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other to do very useful things for people. We expect this will quickly become core to our product offerings.

OpenClaw will live in a foundation as an open source project that OpenAI will continue to support. The future is going to be extremely multi-agent and it's important to us to support open source as part of that.

🔍 Top tech news

• Anthropic raised $30 billion in Series G funding at a $380B valuation.

• Nuveen acquires Schroders in $13.5 Billion mega deal.

• Scottish craft beer brand Brewdog put up for sale.

💰 Startup funding news

• Sapiom raised $16M Seed to help AI agents buy their own tech tools. The round was led by Accel.

• Global payments FinTech Waffo raised $30M Series A led by Gaorong Capital and Illuminate Financial.

• AI procurement agent Didero raised $30M Series A led by Chemistry and Headline.

• Vega raised $120M Series B to rethink how enterprises detect cyber threats. The round was led by Accel.

• Security startup Reco that specializes in monitoring and securing cloud applications raised $30M Series B led by Zeev Ventures.

• Bretton AI, an AI platform for financial crime operations, raised $75M in a Series B round led by Sapphire Ventures.

• AI-powered real estate platform Smart Bricks raised $5M Pre-Seed led by A16Z.

• Adora, a productivity tool for product teams, raised $7 million Seed led by Blackbird Ventures.

• Tem Energy raised $75M Series B to remake electricity markets using AI. The round was led by Lightspeed Ventures.

• Complyance raised $20M Series A led by Google Ventures to modernize enterprise GRC with Agentic AI.

Access the full list of 450+ Pre-Seed to Series A deals announced over the past week below.

👀 New VC funds

• Primary Ventures raises healthy $625M Fund V to focus on seed investing.

• French VC Elaia reaches €120 million first close for new multi-stage B2B technology fund.

• Lightspeed Partner Behind Navan, Netskope to launch new firm.

• India has cleared a $1.1 billion state-backed venture capital program that will channel government money into startups.

🤝 Acquisitions

• AI.com bought by Crypto.com founder for $70M in biggest-ever website name deal.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

• The $1.7B Mistake That Ended a Founder’s Dream | Colin Angle

• Andreessen Horowitz General Partner: Venture Capital’s Future | David Haber.

• He Built A $1.8B AI Company With No Experience | Max Junestrand.

• Forget AI: Inside the Meltdown That Made Airalo #1 eSIM Unicorn | Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir.

• The Hidden Skill Behind Every Successful Founder | Lindsay Kaplan.

• The Harsh Truth About Building a Startup in the AI Era | Anish Acharya.

• The AI Version of You Will Outperform You — Emad Mostaque.

• How Solana Survived When Most Other Coins Fell | Anatoly Yakovenko.

Watch now!

Download all 450+ Pre-Seed, Seed & Series A deals announced in the past week below!

Read more

This week alone, startups secured billions in new capital, voice AI reached a staggering $11B valuation, and Elon Musk unified his empire in a $1.25 trillion mega-merger. Meanwhile, the world’s biggest creator officially entered the fintech race by acquiring his own bank.

To help you make sense of it all, we’ve rounded up the most talked-about startup stories from the past week — broken down into these categories:

• 🔔 The latest trend

• 🗝️ Read of the week

• 🔍 Top tech news

• 💰 Startup funding news

• 👀 New VC funds

• 🤝 Acquisitions

• 🎤 Must-watch interviews

Let’s dive in 🚀

Brought to you by Framer

Launch fast. Design beautifully. Build your startup on Framer — free for your first year.

First impressions matter. With Framer, early-stage founders can launch a beautiful, production-ready site in hours. No dev team, no hassle. Join hundreds of YC-backed startups that launched here and never looked back.

Pre-seed and seed-stage startups new to Framer can enjoy:

• One year free: Save $360 with a full year of Framer Pro, free for early-stage startups.

• No-code, no delays: Launch a polished site in hours, not weeks, without hiring developers.

• Built to grow: Scale your site from MVP to full product with CMS, analytics, and AI localization.

Apply to claim your free year -->

🔔 The latest trend

I recently got back from Dubai where I spoke at the 1 Billion Followers Summit — easily one of the best creator events globally right now.

Last year, I talked about how far the creator economy had come from a startup perspective. This year, I went deeper on a single question: Is Vibe Coding the Breakthrough for Creators?

I’ve been tracking this trend for months, and 2026 is officially the year the technical barrier didn’t just lower — it vanished.

Why this is a land grab right now:

1. Zero-Barrier Entry: Launching a custom app used to be a $50k investment. Now? It’s cheaper than a monthly gym membership.

2. The “Vibe” Stack: Tools like Lovable, Bolt.new, and Replit Agent let you build full-scale software just by describing it.

3. Global from Day One: AI dubbing and voice-cloning mean you can reach every market in your own voice, instantly.

4. Distribution as Leverage: If you own the attention, you own the demand. Creators are now refining that attention into software IP rather than just selling ads.

Read the latest trends reshaping the creator economy.

🗝️ Read of the week

As Deel went from zero to $1B ARR, countless well-wishers asked us to ‘grow-up’ and build an HQ and an office. We grew fast not despite being remote but because of it.

Storytime: This is a picture of me and my friend Sami in 2014 taking a 2-hour nap during a hackathon in London. This photo encapsulates the ‘hacker-bedroom energy’ that was characteristic of early Deel (though this was taken much before).

Continue reading - - >

🔍 Top tech news

• ElevenLabs raises $500M from Sequoia at an $11 billion valuation.

• Elon Musk’s SpaceX acquiring AI startup xAI ahead of potential IPO.

• MrBeast’s company buys Gen Z-focused fintech app Step.

💰 Startup funding news

• Fundamental with a new take on big data analysis raised $255M Series A led by Oak HC/FT, Valor Equity Partners, Battery Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures.

• Duna founded by Stripe alumni raised €30M Series A led by Alphabet’s growth fund CapitalG.

• Lunar Energy raised $102M Series D to deploy home batteries that prop up the grid. The round was led by B Capital and Prelude Ventures.

• India’s Varaha raised $20M Series B to scale carbon removal from the Global South led by WestBridge Capital.

• Former Cohere exec Sara Hooker has raised $50 million for her AI startup Adaption Labs — a bet on smaller, smarter models. The round was led by Emergence Capital Partners.

• Dating app Ditto raised $9.2M Seed led by Peak XV Partners.

• Gather AI, a startup that offers an AI platform for warehouse cameras and drones, raised $40 million Series B led by Smith Point Capital.

• Resolve AI, a startup automating the work of system reliability engineering raised $125 million Series A at a $1 billion valuation led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

• Indonesian mobile coffee startup Jago raised $12M Series B led by Beenext.

• Positron raised $230M Series B to take on Nvidia’s AI chips. The round was led by Arena Private Wealth, Jump Trading, and Unless.

• Cybersecurity startup Lema has come out of stealth and raised $24 million Series A led by Team 8.

👀 New VC funds

• Mundi Ventures closes on €750M for Kembara, its largest deep tech and climate fund.

• French climate investor SlateVC raised €132 million first close for inaugural growth fund.

• Pritzker Group veterans raise $50M venture capital fund.

• Golden Sparrow Ventures raised $20M in first close of Fund II.

🤝 Acquisitions

• Uber to buy delivery arm of Turkey’s Getir.

• MrBeast enters banking by acquiring Step.

🎤 Must-watch interviews

• The $1.7B Mistake That Ended a Founder’s Dream | Colin Angle

• Andreessen Horowitz General Partner: Venture Capital’s Future | David Haber.

• He Built A $1.8B AI Company With No Experience | Max Junestrand.

• Forget AI: Inside the Meltdown That Made Airalo #1 eSIM Unicorn | Ahmet Bahadir Ozdemir.

• The Hidden Skill Behind Every Successful Founder | Lindsay Kaplan.

• The Harsh Truth About Building a Startup in the AI Era | Anish Acharya.

• The AI Version of You Will Outperform You — Emad Mostaque.

• How Solana Survived When Most Other Coins Fell | Anatoly Yakovenko.

Watch now!

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