NEWSLETTER | PODCAST | NEW MEDIA
Hey readers
Welcome back to your regular tech digest, a quick snapshot of the most recent tech news worth paying attention to.
This week, NVIDIA agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.9B, bringing together the infrastructure powering AI with one of the largest open-source model ecosystems. At the same time, Anthropic introduced a hardware standard designed to let AI agents interact directly with physical lab and factory equipment.
Fundraising for startups is following the same direction. AI accounted for 86% of venture capital dollars in Q2, while a16z launched a $1.1B fund specifically aimed at accelerating the physical buildout of AI.
The pattern is becoming hard to miss: AI is shifting from something that lives inside a browser or app into infrastructure that runs businesses, controls machines, and increasingly touches the physical world. Perhaps the next phase of the AI race may not be about who builds the smartest chatbot, it may well be determined by who owns the infrastructure around the intelligence.
This edition covers:
🗝️ Trend of the week: Inside The Current State of AI
💰 Top startup news & funding rounds (sourced using Harmonic)
🤝 Acquisitions
👀 New VC funds launched
🎤 Must-watch interviews from our podcast show
and much more.
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Inside the current state of AI
OpenAI loses exec, Chris Malone, former Head of Data Centers who has left the company alongside Kevin Weil (Former Chief Product Officer), Kate Rouch (Former Head of Marketing), Fidji Simo (Former CEO of Applications), Brad Lightcap (Former COO) & Denise Dresser (Former Chief Revenue Officer) who have all left the company in the last few moths.
Anthropic and Salesforce partner to launch ClaudeForce.
Nvidia acquired open source model repository Hugging Face for $12.9B.
a16z launched a $1.1B ‘Machine Age’ fund to ‘accelerate the physical buildout of AI.’
Anthropic launched Model Hardware Standard, a new protocol that lets AI agents directly control physical lab and factory hardware, a foundational move toward agents operating in the real world, not just software.
AI accounted for 86% of all venture dollars in Q2 2026, with three firms (a16z, Thrive Capital, Founders Fund) capturing ~48% of all capital raised by VC funds. First-time fund formation is on pace for its lowest year since 2016.
Top startup news & funding rounds
Stability AI, the generative AI studio building creative tools for music, gaming, and entertainment, raised $76M in a Series B backed by EA, Sony Music, Universal, Warner, Coatue, and Eric Schmidt.
Repodo, the world’s first AI-native audit firm raised $9.5M led by Hedosophia - one of the largest pre-seed rounds in Nordic history.
Instinct, a proactive AI assistant that texts, calls, and handles everyday tasks, raised $250M in a Series B co-led by Index Ventures and Benchmark at a $2.5B valuation, reaching unicorn status four months after incorporation.
Pennylane, the Paris-based accounting and financial management platform for European SMEs, raised $205M led by TCV and Blackstone Growth at a $4.25B valuation, one of Europe’s largest fintech rounds of the year.
Airbound, a Bangalore-based drone logistics company building blended-wing tailsitter aircraft for last-mile delivery, raised $37M in a Series A led by Greenoaks with Lightspeed, DoorDash, and Lachy Groom participating.
Wrtn technologies, a Seoul-based generative AI platform for everyday productivity and entertainment used across South Korea, raised $72M in a Series C backed by Goodwater Capital, Korea Development Bank, and Antler.
Pearl, an AI diagnostic tool that analyzes dental X-rays and CBCT imagery to detect pathologies and automate clinical documentation, raised $58M in a Series B led by Left Lane Capital.
Adaptyv, a Swiss protein engineering platform that automates expression, binding, and thermostability analysis to validate AI-designed proteins, raised $40M in a Series A led by Highland Europe with Y Combinator.
Transfyr, an API layer that makes scientific lab experiments observable and reproducible for scale-up, raised $25M in a Seed led by General Catalyst with Lux Capital and SV Angel.
Keenable, building a web-scale knowledge index purpose-built for AI model retrieval, raised $26M in a Seed led by Accel with Google, Amazon, Databricks, Snowflake, and ClickHouse.
Metriport, a healthcare data exchange platform that converts messy medical records into clean FHIR-native data for care teams, raised $26M in a Series A led by Matrix with Y Combinator.
Ringg AI, a Bangalore-based AI voice and chat agent platform for enterprise customer interactions, raised $15M in a Series A led by Peak XV Partners.
TerraBlaster, using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy to give farmers real-time soil nutrient readings in the field, raised $13M in a Seed led by Ulu Ventures with Khosla Ventures.
Primero, building enterprise AI systems for finance, HR, and operations across Latin America, raised $12M in a Seed co-led by General Catalyst and KASZEK with 8VC, Conviction, FEMSA, Grupo Bimbo, and Aeromexico.
Arga Labs, a sandbox that lets teams test AI agents against realistic digital twins of third-party services before going live, raised $10M in a Seed led by General Catalyst with Emergence Capital.
Atorie, connecting luxury factories directly to consumers using AI for trend prediction and demand testing, raised $9.5M in a Seed co-led by a16z speedrun and Lightspeed.
Neno, a full-stack AI financial services company embedding payroll, accounting, and tax for entrepreneurs in Amsterdam, raised $8M in a Seed led by AlleyCorp with Coinbase, Deel, PayPal, Mollie, and Hugging Face.
Mara, building autonomous counter-drone systems that detect and neutralize FPV threats in GPS-denied environments, raised $7M in a Pre-Seed led by Khosla Ventures with a16z Speedrun.
Willow, an AI dictation app that converts speech to text in any text field across platforms, raised $4M in a Seed led by BoxGroup with Goodwater Capital.
🤝 Acquisitions
NVIDIA’s Hugging Face deal is the headline of the week, and arguably the month. At $12.9B, NVIDIA is buying the distribution layer for open-source AI models, giving it control over both the hardware (GPUs) and the software ecosystem where developers discover, share, and deploy models.
Vanguard + Altruist signals wealthtech consolidation, the $12T asset manager is paying a significant premium to embed itself in the daily workflow of independent advisors, moving from investment product manufacturer to infrastructure owner.
👀 New VC funds launched
OpenAI launched a $400M second venture fund, this time funded entirely from its own balance sheet, more than double its $175M 2021 debut that was backed by outside investors including Microsoft.
Navisalma, the new deep tech firm from Einride co-founders Robert Falck and Linnéa Kornehed Falck, launched targeting €450M for European deep tech with an operator-led, hands-on model.
MassMutual Ventures launched a $150M Climate Tech Fund II, doubling down and pushing its total climate commitment to $300M.
Capital F raised a $17M debut fund with goal to back the future of the ‘female economy’
Fiat Ventures raised $35M for Fund II.
African venture fund, Ventures Platform raised an oversubscribed $84M for Fund II.
Wave Ventures, run entirely by investors under 25, closed a €10M Fund III (5x its last) to lead Nordic pre-seed rounds and launched a €240K founder grant.
🎤 Must-watch interviews from our podcast: Superhuman CEO: The Strategy to Turn Standalone Apps Into a $13 Billion Suite
Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Superhuman, joins NEW ECONOMIES to explain why he renamed a 16-year-old company mid-flight instead of just adding a new label on top, why he built his own board by ranking every past boss he’s ever had instead of chasing famous names, and why the real threat to a legacy SaaS category isn’t a faster competitor but the coordination problem AI agents are about to make bigger, not smaller.
Previous episodes include
$2 Billion Founder: The Secret to Building a High-Growth Startup in 24 Months | Tanay Kothari.
Canva Co-Founder: AI Is Useless Without This 1 Skill | Cam Adams.
Hollywood is Secretly Replacing Films With AI | Justine Moore.
Why most people are underusing AI and why the winners won’t just be OpenAI and Anthropic | Reid Hoffman.
Base44 Founder: The Strategy Behind Building a Million Dollar Company Solo | Maor Shlomo (Base44) & Mark Tluszcz (Wix).
Watch and subscribe now!
See all previous episodes here 👉
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