Venture Capital

💰Amazon is preparing a major investment in OpenAI Amazon is reportedly in advanced talks to invest $10 billion in OpenAI, a move that could push the startup’s valuation to around $500 billion, signaling another major escalation in the AI infrastructure race. 🖱 According to early negotiation outcomes, the deal would deepen OpenAI’s relationship with AWS, potentially reshaping how the company sources compute outside of Microsoft. 🖱 A core part of the agreement is expected to include Amazon’s Trainium AI chips, along with long-term leasing of additional AWS cloud capacity for OpenAI’s models and products. 🖱 It remains unclear whether the deal will involve a direct equity investment, or whether it will be structured primarily through compute credits, infrastructure commitments, and strategic partnerships.

If finalized, the move would position Amazon as a second major cloud and hardware backer of OpenAI, underscoring how critical access to large-scale compute has become in defining power and leverage in the AI ecosystem.

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🔔 Russia builds AI leverage despite sanctions Western sanctions were meant to slow Russia’s technological progress by cutting access to advanced tools and supply chains. AI Journey 2025 showed a different outcome: instead of fading from the AI landscape, Russia has used the pressure to build a largely self-contained ecosystem that is now actively shaping its own standards. Key takeaways: 🖱 Sber showcased a full AI stack The conference featured large language models, speech recognition, computer vision, robotics, and consumer devices built largely on domestic infrastructure. 🖱 Emphasis on real-world deployment A new Sber ATM powered by GigaChat uses voice interaction, biometrics, and behavioral adaptation, serving as a live testing ground for AI-driven retail finance. 🖱 Foundations laid before 2022 Years of investment in researchers, data centers, and in-house models allowed rapid adaptation once access to Western technology narrowed. 🖱 Core models released open source Sber opened the weights for GigaChat Ultra Preview and Lightning, GigaAM v3, Kandinsky 5.0, and K-VAE 1.0, giving developers usable building blocks rather than demos. 🖱 Influence through open infrastructure Publishing models embeds Russian technology into global developer workflows at a time when many Western models are becoming more closed. 🖱 A broader domestic ecosystem forming Beyond Sber, Russian firms are building chips, industrial robots, security systems, and specialized software, driven by the need for self-sufficiency.

Sanctions did not remove Russia from the AI race. In several areas, they accelerated the creation of an independent AI stack and a quieter path to influence through open infrastructure.

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🔔 Swedish startup Lovable raises $330M to make everyone a coder Sweden-based AI coding platform Lovable has just closed a $330 million Series B round at a $6.6 billion valuation, more than tripling its worth in just five months. 🖱 The round was led by CapitalG (Alphabet’s growth fund) and Menlo Ventures, with participation from Nvidia’s venture arm, Salesforce Ventures, Databricks Ventures, Khosla Ventures and others signaling broad investor confidence in AI-driven software creation. 🖱 Lovable’s platform lets users describe what they want in natural language and have working apps or full-stack code generated for them, a trend often called vibe coding. 🖱 Since its 2024 launch, the company has achieved rapid revenue growth (hitting $100 M ARR in eight months and $200 M a few months later), and its tools are now used to create 100,000+ projects every day.

Lovable says the funding will go toward deeper enterprise integrations, collaboration tooling, and infrastructure that lets builders take projects all the way from prototype to production-ready software not just demos.

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✅ Coursera and Udemy are merging and it signals a reset for online education Coursera and Udemy, two of the largest global online learning platforms, have agreed to merge in an all-stock deal that values the combined company at $2.5 billion, according to Reuters, marking one of the biggest consolidation moves in edtech in years. 🖱 Under the agreement, Udemy shareholders will receive 0.8 Coursera shares for each Udemy share, valuing Udemy at roughly $930 million, with the transaction expected to close in the second half of 2026, pending approvals. 🖱 Strategically, the merger combines Coursera’s university and enterprise partnerships with Udemy’s massive instructor-led marketplace, creating a broader platform focused on AI, data science, and workforce reskilling. 🖱 The deal reflects mounting pressure across edtech, as post-pandemic growth slows and companies seek scale, cost efficiencies, and stronger positioning in corporate AI training and upskilling.

The merger underscores a broader industry shift: standalone online learning platforms are struggling to grow independently, and consolidation may be the clearest path forward in an increasingly competitive, AI-driven education market.

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📈 How much would you have earned by investing $1,000 on January 1, 2023 We’re talking about U.S. companies across space, defense, and IT sectors that benefited from AI hype, geopolitical tension, and government spending over the past two years. But two important caveats upfront. 🖱 First: The Edinorog does not recommend investing on January 1. It’s an arbitrary date, useful for comparison not for strategy. 🖱 Second: this is a thought experiment, not investment advice. The goal is to visualize how capital flowed into certain narratives: AI infrastructure, defense tech, and space commercialization. 🖱 Space: Launch providers, satellite operators, and space infrastructure plays rewarded patience as government contracts and commercialization accelerated. 🖱 Defense: Traditional primes and new-generation defense tech firms benefited from sustained military budgets and rising global instability. 🖱 IT / AI: Semiconductor, cloud, and AI-adjacent companies massively outperformed as “AI picks and shovels” became the market’s favorite trade. 🖱 What’s missing: It would be especially interesting to see the same infographic for Russian public companies not to compare performance directly, but to understand how different capital markets price risk, sanctions, and state influence.

Such comparisons don’t tell you where to invest, they tell you which stories markets decided to believe during a specific period.

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🔔 She inflated revenue by 895×, how ComplYant’s founder allegedly deceived investors ComplYant founder Shiloh Luckey is facing an SEC lawsuit and an FBI investigation after allegedly misleading investors about the startup’s traction and finances, while raising $13 million in venture funding. 🖱 The pitch: Luckey said ComplYant was scaling fast, monthly revenue growing from $2.5K to $221K, with thousands of clients added in under two years. 🖱 The reality (per the SEC): Actual revenue was about $247/month, not $221K, an 895× gap and the company had no more than 131 unique clients. 🖱 The product: Former employees allege most work was manual tax filing, despite claims of a scalable platform; internally, staff were reassured by supposed millions in the bank. 🖱 The money: Regulators say at least $2.2M of investor funds were spent on personal expenses including a home purchase and luxury travel to Aspen, Miami, Lisbon, and a Caribbean wedding. 🖱 The collapse: In September 2023, employees were laid off via a Slack video announcing liquidation. Salaries arrived months later, no severance, and Luckey went silent, deleting social accounts. 🖱 The aftermath: ComplYant had raised $5.5M in a round led by Craft Ventures and participated in Techstars. The SEC is seeking disgorgement and penalties; the FBI probe raises the stakes. 🖱 What’s next: Luckey has since launched HabitLoop, claiming no staff or outside funding, built with ChatGPT even as regulators pursue the ComplYant case.

This isn’t just a failed startup, it’s a reminder that storytelling can outpace substance, and when metrics are fabricated, the reckoning is brutal.

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🚗 Waymo is exploring a multi-billion-dollar raise at a $100B+ valuation Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit, is in discussions to raise billions of dollars in new funding at a valuation of at least $100 billion, signaling a major escalation in the race to commercialize robotaxis. 🖱 The round could exceed $10–15B, more than doubling Waymo’s valuation from its last funding in 2024, when it was valued at roughly $45B. 🖱 Alphabet is expected to lead the financing, while also inviting outside investors, reinforcing Waymo’s strategic importance without fully spinning it out. 🖱 The capital would fund rapid expansion of Waymo One, the only large-scale, paid, fully driverless robotaxi service currently operating in the U.S. 🖱 Waymo’s lead rests on real-world deployment: millions of autonomous rides, dense city operations, and a growing footprint that competitors still struggle to match. 🖱 The raise underscores a shift in autonomy economics from R&D bets to infrastructure-heavy, capital-intensive scaling, where balance sheets matter as much as algorithms.

Waymo isn’t just raising money, it’s positioning autonomous driving as a platform-scale business worthy of Big Tech valuations.

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🔔 Databricks raises a mega round at a $134B valuation Databricks, the data and AI platform company, has raised more than $4 billion in a Series L funding round at a $134 billion valuation, according to multiple news reports. 🖱 Funding led by major institutional investors. The latest round was led by Insight Partners, Fidelity Management, and J.P. Morgan Asset Management, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, BlackRock, Blackstone, and others showing broad confidence among both VC and traditional institutional capital. 🖱 Valuation jumps rapidly. This $134 billion valuation marks a 34% increase from Databricks’ $100 billion valuation just months ago, underscoring accelerating investor appetite for AI and data infrastructure companies. 🖱 Revenue and growth remain strong. Databricks reported an annualized revenue run rate of about $4.8 billion in Q3 2025, with >55% year-over-year growth. Its AI products and data warehousing segments each exceed $1 billion in run-rate revenue, and the company has maintained positive free cash flow over the past year. 🖱 Strategic use of the new capital. Databricks plans to use the fresh funding to accelerate AI-driven product development, support acquisitions, expand AI research, and offer liquidity for employees, as it builds deeper enterprise AI capabilities.

This funding milestone highlights how enterprise AI and data platforms are commanding premium valuations in private markets with investors prioritizing scale, revenue growth, and strategic positioning ahead of public market debuts.

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🧬 OpenAI-backed Chai Discovery becomes a unicorn Chai Discovery, a biotech startup applying AI to drug design, has raised $130 million in a Series B round at a $1.3 billion valuation, officially pushing the company into unicorn territory. 🖱 The round was led by top-tier investors. The Series B was co-led by General Catalyst and Oak HC/FT, with participation from OpenAI, Menlo Ventures, Thrive Capital, Dimension, Neo, SV Angel, and others signaling strong conviction from both AI-native and healthcare-focused funds. 🖱 Chai is building foundation models for drug discovery. The company develops large-scale AI models designed to predict molecular interactions and design drugs from scratch, with a particular focus on de novo antibody design, one of the hardest problems in biotech. 🖱 Speed is the core advantage. Chai’s leadership says tasks that traditionally took years in wet labs can now be completed in weeks, dramatically compressing early-stage drug discovery timelines and lowering cost and failure rates. 🖱 This is part of a bigger AI–biotech wave. Chai’s rapid rise reflects a broader shift where investors are betting that AI-first platforms rather than single-asset biotech companies will define the next generation of pharmaceutical innovation.

Chai Discovery isn’t just another AI-biotech startup, it’s shaping up as a foundational layer for how drugs may be discovered in the AI era.

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💰 Elon Musk becomes the world’s first $600B individual Elon Musk has officially become the first person in history to amass a fortune exceeding $600 billion, with his net worth estimated at $677 billion as of December 15. No one had previously crossed even the $500 billion threshold. 🖱 The biggest driver isn’t Tesla, it’s SpaceX. In early December, SpaceX completed a tender offer valuing the company at $800 billion, double its $400 billion valuation in August. Musk owns about 42% of SpaceX, making his stake worth roughly $336 billion. 🖱 Tesla remains massive, but no longer dominant. Musk’s 12% stake in Tesla is valued at approximately $197 billion. In addition, he holds stock options from the 2018 CEO Performance Award. After a Delaware court ruling questioned their validity, Forbes discounts their value by 50%, estimating them at around $69 billion while an appeal continues. 🖱 xAI is emerging as a third pillar of wealth. xAI Holdings is reportedly in talks to raise capital at a valuation of $230 billion. Based on that estimate, Forbes values Musk’s 53% ownership at roughly $60 billion, reflecting investor confidence in Musk’s AI ambitions beyond Tesla. 🖱 The speed of wealth creation is unprecedented. Musk’s net worth was just $24.6 billion in March 2020. He crossed $100 billion in August 2020, $200 billion in September 2021, and $300 billion two months later. Today, he is closer to $1 trillion than to losing the top spot with second-place Larry Page trailing by about $425 billion.

This milestone underscores a shift in how extreme wealth is built: not just through public equities, but through dominant control of private, capital-intensive platforms spanning space, AI, and infrastructure.

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⚠️ The collapse of OpenAI and a “normal” Siri: what journalists think 2026 will look like December is peak season for tech forecasts, they almost never come true, but they’re useful for understanding where industry anxiety is building. The Verge, together with The Wall Street Journal, just released a podcast laying out their predictions for the tech industry in 2026. 🖱 Apple finally delivers a usable voice assistant: Journalists predict Siri will become a “normal” assistant in 2026, with a focus on empathy and more natural, heartfelt communication. The subtext is harsher: if Apple still hasn’t meaningfully figured out AI by then, its long-term dominance in consumer tech could start to erode. 🖱 OpenAI stops being the dominant AI player: The argument is that ChatGPT alone can’t justify the massive capital OpenAI has raised. Without a broader ecosystem, hardware, platforms, or tightly integrated products, the company risks losing its lead. It’s a controversial claim, but recent internal and strategic tensions suggest the current model needs rethinking. 🖱 A perception turning point for robots and autonomous transport: 2026 is framed as a psychological inflection point: either autonomy becomes quietly accepted (“it works, fine”) or public trust collapses after incidents. Still, mass adoption feels unlikely, more pilots, more demos, not everyday ubiquity. 🖱 The AI slump reaches its bottom: The hype cycle is expected to cool further, with only genuinely new recommendation systems not bigger or more expensive models capable of reviving social platforms. This is arguably the most plausible prediction.

Taken together, these forecasts suggest 2026 won’t be about breakthroughs but about which tech narratives survive contact with reality.

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✅ After 35 years as a category pioneer, Roomba maker iRobot files for bankruptcy iRobot Corp., the U.S. company best known for its Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and agreed to be taken private under a restructuring deal that hands control to its primary manufacturer and lender, Shenzhen PICEA Robotics Co. 🖱 iRobot’s bankruptcy filing in the District of Delaware marks the end of its run as an independent public company after decades of innovation in consumer robotics that helped define the robot vacuum category. 🖱 Under a pre-packaged Chapter 11 plan, Picea will acquire iRobot through a court-supervised process and take the company private. iRobot’s common stock will be cancelled, and existing shareholders are expected to be wiped out. 🖱 The filing comes after prolonged financial strain driven by sliding sales, mounting debt, fierce competition from lower-priced rivals, and rising costs from U.S. tariffs on imports from Vietnam, where most Roombas are manufactured. 🖱 An earlier attempt to sell iRobot to Amazon for about $1.4 billion collapsed in 2024 amid regulatory hurdles, leaving the company to restructure on its own terms. 🖱 Despite the bankruptcy, iRobot says it expects operations, product support, and app functionality to continue without disruption during the restructuring process.

This marks a dramatic pivot for a former robotics pioneer, showing how competitive pressures and shifting global supply chain economics can force even iconic hardware brands to restructure or exit public markets.

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🚗 After years of caution, Mercedes is finally stepping into robotaxis and here’s why Mercedes-Benz is entering the robotaxi market through a partnership with Chinese autonomous driving company Momenta, launching a Level-4 autonomous ride-hailing service in Abu Dhabi. The move marks Mercedes’ first serious push beyond driver-assist tech into fully driverless commercial operations. 🖱 The service will use Mercedes-Benz S-Class vehicles, positioning the offering as a premium robotaxi experience rather than a low-cost mass transit play, with local operations handled by UAE-based Lumo Mobility. 🖱 Momenta will provide the autonomous driving software, enabling hands-off, no-driver operation within geofenced areas, while Mercedes focuses on vehicle engineering, safety, and brand differentiation. 🖱 Abu Dhabi was chosen due to its robotaxi-friendly regulatory framework, which already allows commercial deployment of Level-4 autonomous vehicles making it one of the most permissive markets globally. 🖱 Strategically, the partnership lets Mercedes sidestep the massive cost and risk of building full autonomy in-house, while giving Momenta a high-profile global showcase outside China amid rising geopolitical constraints.

The move signals a broader shift: legacy automakers are no longer just selling cars, they’re testing whether autonomy can unlock new mobility businesses before robotaxis become commoditized.

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📈 After 25 years, Cisco has finally beaten its dot-com bubble peak Cisco’s stock has closed above its March 2000 dot-com bubble high for the first time in more than two decades, marking a symbolic milestone for one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic companies, according to Sherwood News. 🖱 The previous record was set at the height of the internet bubble, when Cisco briefly became the most valuable company in the world, only to see its shares collapse as the bubble burst. 🖱 Unlike many dot-com era firms that never recovered, Cisco spent the last 25 years slowly rebuilding value through dividends, buybacks, and steady enterprise sales, rather than explosive growth. 🖱 The recent breakout reflects renewed investor confidence in legacy tech, driven by demand for networking gear tied to cloud computing, AI data centers, and enterprise infrastructure upgrades. 🖱 Even so, the context matters: Cisco’s return to its old high comes after decades of inflation, missed tech cycles, and far lower growth than newer giants like Nvidia, Apple, or Microsoft.

Cisco’s milestone isn’t a comeback story fueled by hype, it’s a reminder that in tech, survival and patience can sometimes matter more than speed.

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🧑‍💻 Tech layoffs are still piling up in 2025 and the cuts aren’t slowing down The tech industry continues to shed jobs in 2025, extending a multi-year wave of layoffs as companies restructure, cut costs, and refocus around AI and profitability, according to TechCrunch’s ongoing layoff tracker. 🖱 More than 22,000 tech workers have already been laid off in 2025, with February standing out as one of the most severe months, logging over 16,000 cuts in a single wave. 🖱 The layoffs span the entire ecosystem, hitting big tech firms, late-stage startups, and early-stage companies alike, signaling that workforce reductions are no longer limited to overhyped or struggling niches. 🖱 AI is a major underlying factor, as companies automate roles, consolidate teams, and redirect spending toward infrastructure, compute, and model development rather than headcount growth. 🖱 The context remains brutal: in 2024 alone, more than 150,000 tech workers were laid off across hundreds of companies, showing that 2025’s cuts are a continuation not a reset.

Rather than a temporary correction, the data suggests tech is settling into a leaner, AI-first operating model where fewer employees are expected to produce more output than ever before.

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🎬 Netflix is betting big on Warner Bros and here’s why the deal is so risky Netflix has agreed to acquire Warner Bros.’ studio and streaming assets in a blockbuster deal valued at roughly $82.7 billion, a move that would unite Netflix with HBO, Warner Bros. Pictures, and one of Hollywood’s deepest content libraries if it clears a long list of hurdles. 🖱 The transaction is structured to occur after Warner Bros. Discovery spins off its traditional cable networks like CNN and TNT into a separate company, meaning Netflix is buying the premium studios and streaming business, not the declining linear TV assets. 🖱 Strategically, the deal would turn Netflix from a pure streaming platform into a full-scale Hollywood studio owner, giving it control over major franchises, theatrical releases, and decades of IP a significant expansion beyond its original tech-driven model. 🖱 The risks are substantial: regulators are expected to scrutinize the merger closely over competition and market dominance, while investors question whether Netflix is overpaying and taking on too much complexity in a capital-intensive, hit-driven business. 🖱 Critics also warn that combining Netflix and HBO could reduce competition, push up prices, and squeeze creators, while supporters argue the scale is necessary to survive as streaming economics grow tougher and subscriber growth slows.

At its core, the deal isn’t just about size, it’s a high-stakes wager that consolidation, not specialization, is the future of global entertainment.

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📝 A new list highlights 174 venture funds backing women founders A curated list of 174 venture capital funds that explicitly invest in women founders has been published, aiming to make fundraising slightly more navigable in a landscape where capital access remains uneven. 🖱 The list includes 174 funds in total, with geographic focus specified for 108 of them and sector or vertical focus listed for 69. Each entry links to the fund’s website, and unusually the time zone of the fund is also included, which could be helpful for founder outreach. 🖱 While the list does not provide individual partner names or direct contact details, it offers a structured starting point for founders looking to prioritize investors who publicly state an interest in backing women-led companies. 🖱 Given persistent funding disparities, investors on this list may represent a higher-probability audience, even if additional research and warm introductions are still required.

The list was compiled and shared on LinkedIn by influencer Alex Milman-Bloom, adding another resource for women founders building their fundraising pipelines.

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🚀 Airwallex raises $330M at an $8B valuation just six months after its last round Airwallex has closed a $330 million Series G funding round, valuing the global payments company at $8 billion, only six months after its previous financing. 🖱 The round was backed by Addition, T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., Activant, Lingotto, Robinhood Ventures, and TIAA Ventures, reinforcing investor confidence in the company’s cross-border payments and financial infrastructure platform. 🖱 Founded in 2015, Airwallex has navigated repeated near-death moments. In 2016, the company came close to running out of cash after a venture capital firm withdrew a term sheet, leaving the startup scrambling to survive. 🖱 In 2018, Stripe reportedly made a $1.2 billion acquisition offer for Airwallex, which the founders declined, choosing instead to remain independent and continue scaling the business globally. 🖱 The company was hit hard during the COVID-19 pandemic, losing roughly 40% of revenue, before rebounding sharply. Between 2021 and 2025, Airwallex grew annual recurring revenue from $100 million to $1 billion and, in 2025, launched AI-driven payment agents. 🖱 Following the announcement, co-founder and CEO Jack Jiang reflected publicly on his journey, from emigrating to Australia in 2015 and working long shifts in a factory and gas station, to building one of the world’s most valuable private fintech companies.

The latest raise cements Airwallex’s position as a leading global fintech as investors continue to bet on infrastructure players enabling international commerce at scale.

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🎉 OpenAI turned 10 yesterday and here’s how it all began OpenAI was officially announced on December 12, 2015, with an initial $1 billion budget raised from a small group of tech-focused backers. To mark the anniversary, the company has shared its original launch blog post and released a commemorative video. 🖱 Back in 2015, AI systems still struggled with basic image recognition tasks like telling cats from dogs apart, and the idea of machines holding real conversations felt far-fetched. A decade later, AI is embedded in everyday life and work and OpenAI is now valued at around $500 billion. 🖱 ChatGPT didn’t arrive until 2022, but OpenAI spent its early years laying the groundwork with ambitious research projects that shaped modern AI. 🖱 OpenAI Gym (2016): A toolkit for training and evaluating reinforcement-learning agents in simulated environments. It quickly became a research standard. This was later followed by Universe, which let agents interact with real software and games. 🖱 OpenAI Five (2018): A team of AI agents trained using PPO to play Dota 2. After learning from roughly 45,000 years of simulated gameplay over 10 months, they defeated some of the world’s best professional players. 🖱 Robotic Hand (2018): A landmark robotics project where a robotic hand learned to solve a Rubik’s Cube, demonstrating advances in dexterity, simulation, and transfer learning.

If these projects sound familiar, you’re officially an OpenAI old-timer. After that era, progress accelerated quickly: GPT-2 (2019), GPT-3 (2020), DALL·E and Codex (2021), and finally ChatGPT (2022). Ten years on, OpenAI has moved from research experiments to reshaping the global tech landscape, a milestone worth marking.

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🚨 Trump moves to block state AI laws and here’s what’s behind it U.S. President Donald Trump says he will sign an executive order aimed at curbing state-level artificial intelligence laws, a move that could dramatically reshape how AI is regulated across the United States. 🖱 According to Reuters, the order would seek to override or limit state AI regulations by tying compliance to federal funding, arguing that a patchwork of state rules risks slowing innovation and weakening U.S. competitiveness against China. 🖱 The administration says the goal is to push toward a single national AI framework, with federal agencies and Congress working together to establish uniform standards rather than allowing states like California and Colorado to set their own rules. 🖱 The order is expected to empower the Justice Department to challenge state AI laws in court, setting up potential legal battles over federal authority versus states’ rights. 🖱 Tech companies have broadly welcomed the idea of a unified national approach, while state officials and legal experts warn the move could undermine consumer protections, AI safety rules, and privacy safeguards already enacted at the state level.

The announcement signals a major escalation in the AI policy fight, positioning AI regulation as a national security and economic issue and setting the stage for prolonged legal and political conflict over who gets to govern the future of artificial intelligence.

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