NEWSLETTER | PODCAST | NEW MEDIA
Hey readers,
Welcome back to your weekly tech digest, a quick look at the biggest stories shaping the tech world this week.
This past week in tech: the debate over AI’s pace moved to center stage. Dario Amodei published “We Must Pace the Frontier,” calling on labs to slow frontier-model development through independent evaluators, inter-lab coordination, and international cooperation, with Sam Altman and Elon Musk endorsing the post within hours of publishing. Sam Altman also said OpenAI won’t IPO in 2026, calling it “an ill-advised moment to go public.”
This edition covers:
👀 The latest AI news
💰 Top startup news & funding rounds (sourced using Harmonic)
💸 Latest VC funds
🤝 Acquisitions
🎤 Must-watch interviews from our podcast show
and much more.
First, some news:
Media is changing fast, as we’ve covered in previous editions on the new media landscape. With that in mind, we’re hosting a New Media Summit with Yahoo in San Francisco on October 7th, during tech week.
The program will feature Dylan Abruscato, President of TBPN, in conversation with Ollie Forsyth, founder of NEW ECONOMIES, followed by a panel discussion with tech journalist Joanna Stern, Yahoo CCO Sona Iliffe-Moon, and Vox Media VP of Podcast Business Lillian Xu, moderated by Jim Louderback.
In town and want to join us on October 7th? Request an invite - this will be a special one.
The latest AI news
Dario Amodei published “We Must Pace the Frontier,” calling on AI labs to slow frontier-model development with independent evaluators, inter-lab coordination, and international cooperation. Sam Altman and Elon Musk endorsed the post within hours.
Sam Altman said OpenAI won’t IPO in 2026, calling it “an ill-advised moment to go public.” He described even a 10% risk of AI-driven human extinction as unacceptable and hinted at an imminent industry pact on safety.
The Boring Company raised $3B at a $23B valuation, led by the UAE, to fund 150+ km of tunnels across the Emirates plus expansion in Vegas and Nashville.
Top startup news & funding rounds
We take a closer look at some of the hottest startup rounds of the week.
Crusoe, the AI cloud infrastructure platform building GPU data centers for high-performance AI workloads, raised $3.9B Series F at a $30.9B valuation, co-led by Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, and Mubadala Capital.
Temporal Technologies, the durable execution platform for fault-tolerant distributed workflows, raised $550M Series E at a $12.6B valuation, co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Wellington Management, and Tiger Global.
Barq, the Riyadh-based fintech app for payments and money transfers, raised $329.5M Series A at a $1.85B valuation, with Noon Investments, Sohar International, and M20 Capital Group.
Upwind Security, the cloud security platform fusing runtime intelligence with build-time insights, raised $300M Series C at a $3.8B valuation, co-led by TCV and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Exein, the Rome-based runtime security platform for physical AI systems and embedded devices, raised $270M at a $1.7B valuation, led by Headline.
Ridgeline, the cloud-native investment management platform built by Workday founder Dave Duffield, raised $250M Series E at a $1.43B valuation.
EnduroSat, the Sofia-based small satellite and space intelligence company, raised $205M, co-led by Atreides Management and Riot Ventures, with Founders Fund, GV, Lux Capital, and Giant Ventures.
Factory, the AI coding agent platform for autonomous software engineering, raised $200M at a $5.2B valuation, with Sequoia Capital, Blackstone, NEA, Insight Partners, Khosla Ventures, and Clearlake Capital.
Angle Health, the AI-native health insurance platform acting as carrier, TPA, and MGU in one, raised $200M Series C at a $2.7B valuation, led by Vitruvian Partners, with Y Combinator, Portage, Blumberg Capital, and Pruven Capital.
Profound, the AI search analytics platform helping brands optimize visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI engines, raised $180M Series D at a $1.8B valuation, co-led by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, with Lightspeed and Khosla Ventures.
Arcee AI, the open-weight small language model company building enterprise-grade domain-adapted AI, raised $150M Series B at a $1.15B valuation, co-led by Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital, and Emergence Capital.
CADDi, the AI data platform digitizing and analyzing manufacturing supply chain data, raised $114M Series D at a $1.2B valuation, with Toyota, Woven Capital, Atomico, Salesforce Ventures, and Recruit Holdings.
Thatch, the healthcare benefits platform letting employers set budgets while employees pick their own plans, raised $108M Series C at a $1B valuation, co-led by Index Ventures, General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, and The General Partnership.
(sourced using Harmonic)
New VC Funds
Bain Capital Ventures raised $1.6B to invest in founders building for an abundant post-AGI world.
Portage Ventures raised $600M for fund four.
Crane Venture Partners raised $484M to back extraordinary founders globally, from inception through seed.
Activate closed its maiden $105M fund to back AI-native startups out of India.
Acquisitions
OpenAI acquired GLASS Imaging for $300M+, the computational photography startup founded by two ex-Apple Portrait Mode engineers.
Must-watch interviews from our podcast show
Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Partner at venture firm Felicis, joins the podcast at a pivotal moment in tech to unpack what’s happening across venture, whether LPs are concerned, and how to win as a firm in the current environment.
You might not know this about Aydin, but he was actually one of the first employees at Google, working directly alongside Sergey Brin and Larry Page, with a key lesson: “Why the clearest signal from Larry Page wasn’t what he said yes to but the 80% of the time he said no.”
Previous episodes include
Superhuman CEO: The Strategy to Turn Standalone Apps Into a $13 Billion Suite | Shishir Mehrotra.
Europe Is Quietly Building the New Silicon Valley | Saul Klein.
$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.
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).
See all previous episodes here 👉
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