Venture Capital

📈 Top 6 fresh venture deals Here’s a snapshot of the week’s biggest venture rounds — and the markets they’re reshaping: 🖱 Blaxel — $7.3M seed Agent-native infra platform without traditional cloud dependencies. Backers: First Round Capital, Y Combinator 🖱 Hadrian — $260M Series C Industrial AI startup automating manufacturing and defense supply chains. 🖱 Bedrock Robotics — $80M Seed + Series A Autonomous systems for heavy construction equipment, backed by NVIDIA, Eclipse, 8VC. 🖱 Groq — $600M in progress ($6B valuation) AI chipmaker nearing close of major raise led by Disruptive ($300M+). 🖱 Ramp — $500M Series E-2 Fintech automation giant hits $22.5B valuation. Backers include ICONIQ, Founders Fund, GIC, Coatue 🖱 Anaconda — $150M+ Series C ($1.5B valuation) AI & data science platform raises from Insight Partners, Mubadala.

AI infra, automation, and deeptech continue to dominate capital flows. From agent-native cloud to autonomous construction and vertical AI platforms — unique edge plays are pulling in the biggest checks.

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📉 Why predictions fail — and how great investors prepare instead

Your job isn’t to predict the future. It’s to be ready for it.

In venture, success doesn’t come from guessing right — it comes from building systems that thrive in uncertainty. The best investors don’t speculate. They prepare. 🖱 Winning comes from readiness, not foresight 🖱 Resilience is built on structured thinking and scenario planning When the future is unclear, smart investors stay grounded: 🖱 They build systems for fast, objective opportunity analysis 🖱 They test assumptions constantly and act with clarity ⚡️ In venture and beyond, discipline beats prediction — every time. ✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

🤖 85% of YC startups are now AI startups Y Combinator’s latest batch is 85% AI — a sharp signal of where early-stage conviction is headed.

The gold rush isn’t over — it’s still accelerating.

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🤖 Microsoft ranks jobs most vulnerable to AI Microsoft analyzed 200,000 user chats with Bing Copilot to calculate an “AI applicability score” — showing how easily AI could assist or replace various professions. 🖱 Most at risk: translators, historians, copywriters, teachers, consultants, and support staff 🖱 Least affected: machine operators, housekeepers, dishwashers, massage therapists, roofers 🖱 Even in “vulnerable” jobs, AI often plays a supporting role — not full replacement 🖱 Microsoft notes the model reflects current usage, not long-term economic impact

The line between automation and augmentation is still blurry — but the direction is clear.

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⚡️ Musk offered $29B Tesla package — but only if he stays Tesla’s board has proposed a new $29 billion stock compensation plan for Elon Musk — on one condition: he must stay in charge for at least two more years and hold the shares for five. 🖱 The plan reflects growing pressure from the AI talent war 🖱 Unlike his 2018 package, this one isn’t tied to market cap targets 🖱 For the first time, Musk is formally required to remain at Tesla 🖱 Shareholder vote scheduled for November 🖱 If Delaware’s Supreme Court upholds the previous $56B package rejection, this deal will be void

Tesla’s betting billions that keeping Musk is more valuable than chasing KPIs.

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🚛 Pitch deck vs. reality Slides promise one thing — execution delivers another. Remember when Elon’s “unbreakable” Cybertruck window shattered on stage? Same thing happens in venture 👇

✅"CAC $1, LTV $1000" ❌"We’re hiring a PM and looking for our first users"

A great pitch is just a hypothesis. What really matters is what happens after the check clears. ✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

💼 Luxury fatigue hits Gucci, Dior, and LV as sales drop in 2025 The owners of Gucci, Dior, and Louis Vuitton reported a 7–15% YoY sales drop in H1 2025. The decline is driven by global economic instability — and a growing sense of “luxury fatigue” among consumers. 🖱 Kering saw Gucci down 25% and YSL down 10% 🖱 LVMH confirmed weak demand in Japan, where tourist spending collapsed 🖱 China luxury demand dropped 18–20% in 2024 🖱 Bain reports online engagement with luxury brands fell 40% vs 2022 🖱 Gen Z demand dropped 7% — more buyers turn to secondhand and even replicas 🖱 LVMH's Loro Piana unit was hit with labor rights violations and placed under external management for a year

The luxury slowdown isn’t just cyclical — it’s cultural. A new generation is redefining what “status” means.

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🖌 Figma IPO: every VC's dream seed round Figma’s IPO glow-up is making early investors look like prophets. Let’s count the returns. 🖱 Index Ventures: $3.8M seed → $7.2B → 1,900× 🖱 Greylock Partners: $14M → $6.7B → 480× 🖱 Kleiner Perkins: $25M → $6B → 240× 🖱 Sequoia Capital: $40M → $1.1B → 27× 🖱 a16z: $50M → ~$1.5B → 30× 🖱 Durable Capital: $200M → ~$1.4B → 7× The craziest stat? Index Ventures only put 1% of its fund into the seed — and now it’s returned 17.5× the entire fund from that single bet.

Sometimes one stroke really does paint the whole picture.

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📊 Crypto Venture Weekly: July 28 – August 1, 2025 $322M raised across 26 projects this week, with capital flowing into stablecoin infra, decentralized compute, and RWA protocols. Here’s what the top 10 are building 👇 🖱 RD Technologies ($40M, Matrixport, Hivemind, Immutable) Stablecoin infrastructure provider behind HKDR, backed 1:1 by the Hong Kong dollar. 🖱 Billions ($30M, Coinbase, Polychain, Polygon) Mobile-first identity network for verifying humans and AI across applications. 🖱 Stable ($28M, Bitfinex, Hack VC, KuCoin) New L1 chain built for stablecoins — USDT used for gas. 🖱 Subzero Labs ($20M, Pantera, Coinbase, Mysten) RISC-V-based blockchain for internet-scale decentralized applications. 🖱 Zodia Markets ($18.25M, Circle, Pharsalus) Digital asset platform enabling institutional trading via stablecoin rails. 🖱 KAIO ($11M, Laser Digital, Brevan Howard) New protocol for tokenizing and managing real-world assets. 🖱 Manifold Labs ($10.5M, OSS Capital, DCG) Decentralized AI compute layer built on Targon and Bittensor networks. 🖱 STON.fi ($9.5M, Ribbit, CoinFund) DEX and DeFi suite built natively on the TON blockchain. 🖱 Due ($7.3M, Speedinvest, Fabric, Semantic) Cross-border payments platform with stablecoin and fiat rails in 80+ markets. 🖱 TACEO ($5.5M, Archetype, a16z CSX) Privacy-preserving compute infra using ZK and MPC for encrypted data handling.

Investor interest continues to converge around programmable money, crypto x AI tooling, and modular infra for scale.

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📈 Meta doubles down on AI, but Reality Labs keeps bleeding Meta will spend up to $72 billion on AI infrastructure this year — a $30B jump from 2024. But while it fuels the compute arms race, its metaverse unit Reality Labs posted a $4.5B loss for Q2, adding to a staggering $70B in cumulative losses since 2020. 🖱 AI infra spend this year will reach $66B–$72B, up from $40B in 2024 🖱 Reality Labs lost $4.5B in Q2 alone — the worst quarterly result in its history 🖱 Since launch, the division has now burned over $70B chasing VR and AR ambitions 🖱 Meta’s total revenue rose, but AI infra costs and metaverse bets remain a drag

One side of Meta is building the future — the other is still paying for Zuck’s past vision.

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🪙 Ramp raises $500M to scale its finance-focused AI agents Ramp has secured $500M in fresh funding at a $22.5B valuation to expand its AI-driven financial automation tools. The round, led by Iconiq, comes as demand surges for agentic systems in corporate finance. 🖱 Ramp's AI agents automate tasks like expense compliance, procurement, and bookkeeping 🖱 Thousands of companies, including Quora, are already using them to replace entry-level accounting work 🖱 CEO: “We’re teaching software to think like people” 🖱 Concerns remain — 80% of high-automation firms cite privacy and security as major hurdles 🖱 Iconiq also leads Anthropic’s massive $170B valuation push

Ramp isn’t just digitizing finance — it’s trying to replace the grunt work entirely.

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🤖 AI agents are now a real business — not just a demo What started as experimental tools is turning into serious revenue. Five AI agent startups have crossed $100M in ARR: Anysphere, Glean, Mercor, Replit, and Lovable. The agent market is exploding — from $5B to $13B in just a year. 🖱 42% of AI agent startups now operate at commercial scale 🖱 Revenue per employee is catching up with Big Tech 🖱 Valuations go as high as 127x revenue 🖱 Nearly half of the top players were founded in the last 3 years 🖱 Winners solve tasks with clear ROI — coding, support, ops

Next up: dominance will go to those with tight workflow integration, unique data, and high switching costs.

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🐦 Who VCs and founders actually follow on Twitter Want to understand how investors think? Follow who they follow. These accounts shape startup culture — not just react to it. Sharp takes, deep experience, and trend-spotting in real time. 🔗 Shl Founder of Shl.vc and Superhuman investor. Writes about founder mindset, product strategy, and early-stage trends. 🔗 Paul Graham YC cofounder and OG of VC wisdom. Threads read like essays on building, scaling, and avoiding founder traps. 🔗 Sam Altman CEO of OpenAI, ex-YC president. Rare but insightful posts that usually hint at bigger shifts. 🔗 NFX Venture fund known for deep dives on network effects, pitch decks, and startup psychology. 🔗 Balaji Srinivasan Ex-CTO of Coinbase, GP at a16z. Writes about crypto, future states, and alt-institutions — bold and contrarian. 🔗 Ben Tossell Founder of Makerpad (acquired by Zapier). Focused on no-code, MVPs, and launching fast with minimal overhead. 🔗 Chris Messina Invented the hashtag. Talks UX, product ecosystems, and remote team design — especially useful for early-stage. 🔗 Ben Horowitz a16z cofounder. Mix of hard-earned wisdom, company case studies, and straight-up operator truth.

These aren’t just popular accounts — they set the tone for the whole early-stage world. Worth a follow if you build or invest.

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🚀 Anthropic set to join world’s top 3 most valuable startups Iconiq Capital is reportedly leading a new $5B round into Anthropic, pushing its valuation to $170B — nearly 3x its March valuation. That would make it the third most valuable private company globally, behind only OpenAI and SpaceX. 🖱 Iconiq manages capital for Zuckerberg, Hoffman, Moskovitz, and other tech billionaires 🖱 Anthropic is now in talks with MGX (UAE) and Amazon 🖱 The company had previously resisted Middle East capital, but CEO Dario Amodei said it’s now a matter of survival 🖱 The AI funding race is intensifying, and top players are reaching megacorp valuations faster than ever

If the deal closes, Anthropic won’t just be an AI lab — it’ll be an economic superpower.

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🚨 OpenAI raises $8.3B at $300B valuation According to the New York Times, OpenAI has raised $8.3 billion at a jaw-dropping $300 billion valuation — months ahead of schedule. The deal is part of its plan to secure $40B in total funding this year. 🖱 First reported by DealBook, this is OpenAI’s largest round to date 🖱 SoftBank has already committed $30B for the year 🖱 The funding underscores the escalating race for AI dominance 🖱 Wall Street attention has shifted from tech giants to frontier labs like OpenAI

The compute arms race is in full swing — and OpenAI just pulled far ahead.

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🌍 Venture Events — August 2025 A curated list of key startup and VC events this month. Follow the trends, build your network, and find your next opportunity. 📍 Vntr Investor Roundtable August 2 – Hanoi, Vietnam Regional roundtable on VC trends across Southeast Asia 📍 Enterprise AI Summit Vancouver 2025 August 10 – Vancouver, Canada AI-focused summit with investment panels, use cases, and workshops 📍 VC Fast Pitch August 14 – Online Startup pitch sessions with live feedback from global investors 📍 TechBBQ 2025 August 27–28 – Copenhagen, Denmark Scandinavia’s largest startup+VC conference: 8,000+ attendees, 1,200 investors, 2,200 startups

🤝 Whether you're raising, investing, or scouting trends — August is packed with high-signal VC gatherings.

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🎨 Figma IPO: $60B for a design app? Markets at all-time highs — perfect moment for IPO frenzy. After Circle mooned from $29 to $298, bankers rushed to repeat the magic. Now it’s Figma’s turn: 🟡 Priced at $33 — $20B valuation 🟡 “Adobe tried to buy us” used as justification 🟡 40× oversubscribed 🟡 Opened at $85, halted at $93 🟡 $60B market cap — for a design tool Retail might squeeze a few % from $85–95, but the real upside was eaten on Day 1. For context: 🟡 Nvidia IPO — $474M 🟡 Starbucks — $207M 🟡 Monster Energy — $8M → now worth $60B (7,500×) Monster took 20 years to reach $60B. Figma started there.

What’s the upside from $60B for Figma? And who’s really being greedy here?

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🪙 Surge AI nears Scale AI with $25B valuation Surge AI is about to land a $1B round at a $25B valuation — putting it neck-and-neck with Scale AI in the race to label the AI world. Profitable from day one, Surge is quietly becoming a heavyweight in one of the most overlooked parts of the AI stack. 🖱 Built a tool that finds human experts to label data better and faster than anyone else 🖱 First-ever fundraise, already playing in the big leagues 🖱 2024 revenue hit $1.2B — with real profits, not just paper growth 🖱 Rival Scale AI raised $14.3B from Meta and sits at $29B 🖱 Surge now looks like the #2 pick for investors betting on AI’s plumbing

Not every AI boom story is about models — some are winning big just by making them smarter.

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🪙 How Tesla Makes Money Tesla has seen better days. Total revenue dropped by 12%, operating income fell by 42%, and free cash flow plunged 89%. ✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

📊 LTV: The Key to Understanding Customer Revenue LTV (Lifetime Value) is the total revenue a customer generates over the entire relationship with your company. It helps you measure not just how fast you're growing, but how well you're retaining and monetizing users.

Formula: LTV = ARPU × LT

ARPU — Average Revenue Per User LT — Customer lifetime (months or years they stay with the product) Why LTV matters: 🖱 Reveals product quality and real user loyalty 🖱 Helps evaluate marketing ROI — if LTV > CAC, your model works 🖱 Critical metric in B2C and SaaS — investors look closely at LTV/CAC 🖱 Prevents over-focusing on growth while ignoring retention In short, LTV shows how well your business turns users into long-term value. ✔️Powered by Trade Watcher