Venture Capital

👰‍♀️ Phia raises $8M using Gen Z playbook to reinvent fashion search Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni have raised $8 million for Phia, a fashion-tech startup that acts like “Google Flights for fashion,” letting users compare prices across online retailers. The seed round, led by Kleiner Perkins with investors like Kris Jenner, Hailey Bieber, and Sara Blakely, closed in just 3.5 weeks. 🖱 Phia launched in April 2025 and already claims ~500,000 users, driven by viral, founder-led marketing and transparent storytelling. 🖱 The founders relied on social-media outreach and community-driven hiring, openly building in public and treating users as collaborators. 🖱 Their podcast “The Burnouts” doubles as a growth funnel, building visibility and credibility among Gen Z audiences. 🖱 The team uses AI tools to ideate and scale content, blending authenticity with automation to sustain momentum.

Phia shows how the next generation of founders is merging influence, transparency, and AI-assisted storytelling to turn social capital into venture-scale traction.

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⚙️ California becomes first state to regulate AI companion chatbots California has enacted SB 243, the first U.S. law specifically regulating “AI companion chatbots,” setting new rules on safety, transparency, and age protection after a series of incidents involving emotionally manipulative AI systems. The law takes effect January 1, 2026. 🖱 SB 243 requires clear disclosure that users are speaking with an AI, along with age verification to protect minors and restrictions on explicit or sexual content in AI chats. 🖱 AI companions are barred from posing as mental-health professionals, and must implement protocols for detecting and reporting self-harm or suicide-related content. 🖱 Developers must provide data to the state health department on flagged interactions and introduce break reminders for underage users. 🖱 Violations, including misuse of deepfake content, can trigger penalties up to $250,000 per offense.

California’s move sets a national precedent: the first legal acknowledgment that emotional AI isn’t just software, it’s a social actor that can harm, manipulate, or comfort millions.

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🚀 International Venture Highlights; Week in Review Venture activity surged across global markets this week, led by AI megadeals, new European funds, and rising investor optimism. 🖱 AI funding boom in Q3 2025 Global VC investment hit $97 billion, up 38% YoY, with nearly 46% of all capital flowing into AI startups. Reuters and Crunchbase both note that growth is being driven by late-stage megarounds and AI infrastructure plays. 🖱 Iceye eyes a $2.5B valuation Finnish satellite imaging firm Iceye is in talks for a new round valuing it around $2.5 billion. The Company backed by BlackRock, is riding the defense-tech wave as governments expand spending on real-time Earth observation. 🖱 Notion Capital launches $130M Growth Fund III London’s Notion Capital raised $130 million to back growth-stage European startups in AI, defense, and logistics. The goal: bridge Europe’s funding gap between Series A and later rounds. 🖱 Concept Ventures unveils Europe’s largest pre-seed fund ($88M) Closed in just three weeks, the new $88 million fund marks Europe’s largest dedicated pre-seed vehicle, signaling a surge of early-stage confidence. 🖱 Investor sentiment rebounds in Europe A new EIF survey shows a sharp uptick in optimism among European VCs in Q3, especially toward deeptech and AI infrastructure plays.

The European ecosystem is heating up, from pre-seed to frontier defense tech, momentum is clearly shifting toward strategic, capital-intensive innovation.

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⚖️ OpenAI risks billions as court weighs privilege in major copyright case OpenAI faces potential multibillion-dollar exposure as a federal court considers whether it waived attorney-client privilege in a key copyright dispute. The outcome could determine whether plaintiffs gain access to internal communications about allegedly infringing datasets used to train its models. 🖱 The case centers on OpenAI’s deletion of a dataset sourced from pirated books, plaintiffs argue this was done to hide evidence of infringement. 🖱 OpenAI claimed privilege over its internal discussions, but the court is now weighing whether those protections were waived by partial disclosure. 🖱 If privilege is lifted, plaintiffs could access Slack logs, emails, and memos revealing how the company handled copyrighted material. 🖱 Legal experts warn that exposure could trigger enhanced damages, up to $150,000 per work, or sanctions for spoliation or bad-faith conduct.

The dispute highlights a growing legal risk for AI developers: the moment transparency in training data collides with the limits of legal privilege.

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🧠 Thinking Machines co-founder Andrew Tulloch departs to rejoin Meta’s AI team Andrew Tulloch, co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab alongside former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, has left the company to return to Meta, marking one of the first major leadership exits from the young frontier-AI startup. 🖱 Tulloch previously spent over a decade at Meta before joining OpenAI and later co-founding Thinking Machines in early 2025. 🖱 Meta reportedly offered a package worth up to $1.5 billion in stock and bonuses as part of its aggressive AI talent push, though the company denied that figure. 🖱 Thinking Machines, launched in February 2025, has raised $2 billion to build open-access frontier models and recently unveiled Tinker, its fine-tuning API. 🖱 The company remains led by Murati, who aims to position it as a transparent, sovereign alternative to closed-model labs like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Meta’s latest high-profile hire shows how the race for frontier-model talent is escalating, even open-AI labs aren’t immune to Big Tech gravity.

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📈 VC funding jumps 38% as AI mega-deals dominate Q3 2025 Global venture funding surged to $97 billion in Q3 2025, up 38% year-over-year, with nearly half of all capital flowing into AI. According to Crunchbase, the quarter marked a sharp rebound in late-stage investing and an unprecedented concentration of money among frontier AI players. 🖱 AI led the charge, attracting around $45 billion, or 46% of total VC funding. 🖱 Anthropic alone captured almost 30% of all AI capital, reinforcing the dominance of a few large model developers. 🖱 Hardware and infrastructure saw $16B in deals, driven by GPU demand and AI data centers. 🖱 Late-stage rounds hit $58B, up 66% YoY, showing investors are doubling down on scale rather than seed. 🖱 The U.S. captured two-thirds of global funding, solidifying its lead in the AI and semiconductor race. Venture money is no longer spreading across the ecosystem, it’s circulating between the same frontier players, fueling a tight capital loop between model labs, chipmakers, and cloud providers.

The new question isn’t who’s innovating fastest, it’s who controls the funding circuit of AI itself.

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🎥 Top 7 YouTube Channels to Get Smarter in AI If you want to truly understand how neural networks, LLMs, and generative AI work, these 7 channels will level up your AI knowledge fast: 🖱 3Blue1Brown — visual math that makes neural networks intuitive, not intimidating. 🖱 Two Minute Papers — cutting-edge research explained in bite-sized videos. 🖱 Yannic Kilcher — deep analysis of AI papers, trends, and model architectures. 🖱 Lex Fridman — long-form interviews with leading AI researchers and founders. 🖱 Sentdex — hands-on tutorials in Python, machine learning, and PyTorch. 🖱 Henry AI Labs — analytical breakdowns of new research and open models. 🖱 DeepLearningAI — Andrew Ng’s official channel for practical AI courses and case studies.

Each of these channels helps you stay sharp and fluent in the language of modern AI, from math to models to mindset.

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💸 The AI money loop: billions circulating inside Silicon Valley’s own ecosystem Bloomberg uncovered how billions in the AI sector now circulate within a tight financial loop where the same players buy, sell, and invest in each other’s technology, reinforcing their dominance. 🖱 OpenAI spends billions on Nvidia GPUs to train its frontier models. 🖱 Nvidia then invests part of its profits back into OpenAI and its ecosystem startups. 🖱 Oracle buys Nvidia chips and simultaneously signs a $300B cloud deal to host OpenAI workloads. 🖱 Smaller startups like Anysphere purchase OpenAI tech while OpenAI itself invests in them. The result is a closed capital circuit where a few companies OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle shape the direction of the entire industry.

Altman’s real edge? Not engineering brilliance, but financial orchestration setting the tone for how AI power moves through money, not code.

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📊 Crypto Venture Weekly: October 6–10, 2025 $2.66B was raised across 25 projects this week, dominated by Polymarket’s $2B strategic round and Kalshi’s $300M Series D. Meanwhile, DDC Enterprise and Amdax allocated a combined $250M to Bitcoin reserves. Here’s what the top 10 are building 👇 🖱 Polymarket ($2B, Intercontinental Exchange) Onchain prediction market enabling real-world event trading across politics, economics, and sports. 🖱 Kalshi ($300M, a16z, Sequoia, Coinbase, Paradigm, CapitalG) CFTC-regulated event market offering compliant access to prediction trading. 🖱 Meanwhile ($82M, Haun, Bain, Pantera, Apollo) Life insurance platform fully denominated in Bitcoin. 🖱 Bee Maps ($32M, Pantera, Borderless, LDA Capital, Ajna) Map data and fleet intelligence network powered by Hivemapper contributors. 🖱 Coinflow ($25M, Pantera, Coinbase, Jump, CMT Digital) Global stablecoin payment infrastructure with AI-driven fraud prevention. 🖱 Anthea ($22M, Yunfeng Financial Group) Crypto fintech group offering onchain life insurance and wealth products. 🖱 CipherOwl ($15M, General Catalyst, Flourish, Coinbase, OKX) Compliance infrastructure platform for digital assets. 🖱 TransCrypts ($15M, Pantera, Techstars, Mark Cuban) Blockchain-based digital document management and verification platform. 🖱 Fanable ($11.5M, Polygon, Borderless, Morningstar, Ripple Ventures) Web3 collectibles marketplace for Pokémon, comics, and fan assets. 🖱 Block Street ($11.5M, Hack VC, Jane Street, Point72) Execution and lending layer for tokenized assets.

Investor focus this week revolved around prediction markets, tokenized finance, compliance rails, and AI-integrated infrastructure — signaling a maturing intersection between crypto, regulation, and traditional capital markets.

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⚙️ Qualcomm acquires Arduino to power the next wave of AI robotics Qualcomm has acquired Italian open-source hardware pioneer Arduino, marking a bold step into the robotics and edge-AI market. The move gives Qualcomm access to Arduino’s 33-million-strong developer base and positions it at the heart of the global maker and embedded-AI community. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 🖱 Arduino will retain its brand and open-source mission, continuing to support chips from multiple vendors, a key reassurance to its loyal developer community. 🖱 Qualcomm and Arduino unveiled the Arduino Uno Q, powered by Qualcomm’s new Dragonwing processor, blending microcontroller precision with on-device AI capability. 🖱 The board runs Linux Debian for high-level tasks and real-time control, and introduces App Lab, an integrated coding environment that bridges C/C++ robotics with AI scripting. 🖱 With a $44 entry price, the Uno Q targets AI hobbyists, robotics startups, and education labs seeking accessible edge-AI prototyping tools.

By merging Arduino’s grassroots innovation with Qualcomm’s chip muscle, the deal signals a new era where AI starts not in the cloud, but on the workbench.

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🤖 Reflection AI raises $2B to build America’s open frontier lab Reflection AI has secured a massive $2 billion round at an $8 billion valuation, aiming to become the U.S. answer to China’s DeepSeek, an open frontier AI lab blending transparency, sovereignty, and scale. Founded by ex-DeepMind researchers, the startup wants to make frontier models publicly accessible while keeping data and safety controls intact. 🖱 Founded in 2024 by DeepMind veterans Misha Laskin and Ioannis Antonoglou, best known for work on AlphaGo and Gemini. 🖱 Plans to train a frontier-level MoE model on tens of trillions of tokens, releasing the model weights to promote open innovation. 🖱 Target customers: enterprises and governments seeking sovereign AI systems they can host and control independently of Big Tech. 🖱 Backers include Nvidia, Sequoia, Lightspeed, DST, and GIC, underscoring deep investor appetite for open, domestic AI infrastructure.

Reflection is positioning itself as America’s open frontier counterweight, betting that the future of AI power lies not in secrecy, but in sovereignty.

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💥 Markets tumble as Trump reignites U.S. China trade war fears The S&P 500 fell over 2% on Friday after Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs on Chinese goods, escalating tensions just as Beijing tightened export controls on rare earth metals, materials critical to global tech and defense supply chains. 🖱 Trump said he sees “no reason” to meet with Xi Jinping and warned of massive new tariffs if China doesn’t reverse its restrictions. 🖱 Beijing’s new rules require export licenses for any goods containing Chinese-origin rare earths, rattling supply chains in EVs, semiconductors, and defense tech. 🖱 Investors fled tech and manufacturing stocks, sending the Nasdaq down 3.6%, its worst drop since April. 🖱 Analysts warn the move could revive 2018-style trade volatility, with rare earths emerging as a key strategic weapon in the U.S. China standoff.

If tariffs rise and supply chains tighten, the next global “chip war” may not be about silicon, but about the metals that power it.

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🛡️ Defence tech funding soars as startups reshape global security Dealroom’s new State of Defence Tech 2025 report shows an explosive rise in private investment across military and dual-use technologies, from autonomous drones to cybersecurity and satellite intelligence. The charts tell one clear story: defence tech is officially a venture category. 🖱 Global defence tech funding has surged 7x since 2019, with over $120B in cumulative private investment. 🖱 The U.S. and Europe dominate, but Israel and South Korea are emerging as major innovation hubs for AI-enabled military systems. 🖱 Startups in autonomous systems, space, and cybersecurity attract the majority of capital driven by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and renewed NATO spending. 🖱 Corporate and sovereign funds are stepping in, with new specialist investors like Shield Capital, Stellar Ventures, and Narya leading rounds once considered too “sensitive” for traditional VC.

Defence tech has gone mainstream and the next frontier isn’t just AI for peace, but AI for deterrence.

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💼 a16z denies reports of opening an India office, calls it “fake news” Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has publicly dismissed claims that it’s setting up operations in India, calling recent media reports “fake news.” The statement follows speculation that the Silicon Valley VC firm was preparing to launch a local office and hire a team on the ground. 🖱 Reports earlier suggested a16z was hiring for investment and operations roles in India as part of an Asia expansion strategy. 🖱 The firm quickly refuted the story, saying it has no immediate plans to establish a physical presence or team in India. 🖱 a16z remains focused on U.S.-based investments but continues to back startups globally through its existing funds. 🖱 The rumor comes as several U.S. venture firms, including Sequoia, Lightspeed, and Accel have deepened operations in India amid a rebound in tech deal flow.

While a16z says there’s “nothing to see here,” the timing of the rumor hints at growing interest from global funds eyeing India’s booming AI and fintech ecosystems.

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🤖 xAI expands funding round to $20B with Nvidia’s backing Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI is doubling its planned fundraising to $20 billion, with Nvidia joining as a key investor, according to Bloomberg. The deal mixes equity and debt through a special-purpose vehicle designed to buy GPUs for xAI’s massive Colossus 2 data center in Memphis. 🖱 Nvidia is contributing up to $2B to the equity portion, helping finance AI infrastructure while deepening ties with Musk. 🖱 The SPV will purchase Nvidia chips and rent them to xAI for five years, letting Wall Street investors recoup returns backed by the hardware rather than company equity. 🖱 The round includes roughly $7.5B in equity and $12.5B in debt, with Apollo Global Management and Diameter Capital among participants. 🖱 Valor Capital is leading the equity component, while Apollo is also investing.

This structure may set a precedent for GPU-backed financing across the AI sector - offering a new model for firms seeking capital-intensive compute without diluting ownership.

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💳 San Francisco’s new hustle: corporate cards now swipe on Saturdays Ramp analyzed transaction data from its corporate cards and spotted an unusual trend, San Francisco companies are increasingly active on Saturdays, signaling a cultural shift toward a 72-hour workweek in the city’s tech scene. 🖱 Spending activity has expanded to a “9 AM to 9 PM, six days a week” rhythm, according to Ramp’s analytics team. 🖱 The uptick in Saturday transactions is small, measured in tenths of a percent, but statistically new and consistent. 🖱 The shift is unique to San Francisco and wasn’t present in previous years. 🖱 The Saturday surge isn’t limited to AI startups, it’s showing up across sectors. 🖱 Ramp notes this could reflect the city’s post-AI boom intensity, where founders and employees are simply working longer.

A subtle but telling signal: San Francisco’s work culture may be evolving again, from “always online” to “always on.”

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🤖 OpenAI snaps up an AI investing app in push toward personalized finance OpenAI has acquired Roi, an AI-powered personal investing app that bundles portfolio oversight and a chatbot for financial advice. 🖱 Roi offers users a unified view of their investment portfolios plus AI-driven guidance and insights. 🖱 The acquisition reinforces a broader OpenAI strategy to deepen personalization and expand into fintech. 🖱 It’s likely Roi’s features will be integrated across OpenAI’s existing products, potentially bringing smart investing tools to ChatGPT or future AI “apps.” 🖱 With this move, OpenAI edges further into finance, signaling that the scope of “AI assistants” is expanding beyond chat, content, and productivity into money management.

A bold step: OpenAI is positioning itself as a central hub for not just conversation, but decisions around our finances too.

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🇺🇸 U.S. plans $100K H-1B visa fee, a major blow to tech talent The Trump administration has proposed raising the H-1B visa application fee to $100,000, a move that could reshape how U.S. tech companies hire international workers. The rule, still in its comment phase, is part of a wider reform to “prioritize high-value applicants.” 🖱 The H-1B program currently caps at 85,000 slots annually and is the main pathway for global engineers, researchers, and startup talent to work in the U.S. 🖱 Officials claim the steep fee will “weed out” weaker applications and ensure only elite candidates apply. 🖱 Tech giants and universities warn this could devastate hiring pipelines, pricing out startups and smaller firms entirely. 🖱 The proposal also tightens wage requirements and changes how “value” is assessed for each applicant. 🖱 Immigration experts note that the plan may face legal challenges and further revisions before taking effect.

A $100K price tag turns a visa into a luxury good and could push the next wave of tech innovation out of the U.S.

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💸 How much the biggest AI startups cost It’s wild: Perplexity, already making big waves with its browsable, real-time AI search tool is valued in the tens of billions. But Ilya Sutskever’s new Safe Superintelligence (SSI), despite not having shipped a product, is reportedly worth almost twice as much. 🖱 Perplexity recently fetched $200M in new funding at a $20B valuation. 🖱 Safe Superintelligence raised ~$2B in its most recent round, placing its valuation around $30-32B. 🖱 Perplexity’s ARR is approaching $200 million. 🖱 SSI, by contrast, has no revenue that’s publicly reported, its value is driven by its founders, mission (safe superintelligence), investor faith, and the promise of future potential.

So yes: even with Perplexity building real things and generating revenue, SSI’s valuation nearly doubles Perplexity’s, a bet on what might be more than what is.

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This represents the number of open job vacancies in the USA against the backdrop of stock prices. "AI will not take your jobs," yeah-yeah-yeah. ✔️Powered by Trade Watcher