Weekly Digest: Anthropic Hits $380B, OpenAI Nabs OpenClaw, and the $70M Domain Flip
Massive moves this week — from Anthropic’s staggering Series G valuation to OpenAI’s aggressive “Agent Era” expansion and a record-breaking $70 million domain sale.
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!
