Startups
Sapient Perception Raised €2M to Help Drones See Everything
Sapient Perception wants drones to stop choosing between zoom and context. The €2M pre-seed is serious tech wrapped in unusually theatrical startup language.
Startups
Helical’s $10M Seed Wants a Virtual AI Lab for Pharma — Finally, a Wet-Lab Hall Pass
Helical just raised $10M to turn bio foundation models into a virtual pharma lab. The pitch is grand, but this one might actually earn the pipettes.
Startups
Replenit Raised $2.5 Million for Retail AI — Finally, a CRM With Taste
Replenit wants retailers to stop blasting everyone and start acting like timing matters. Sharp product, serious founders, and just enough AI mysticism to keep the deck hydrated.
Deals
Slate Auto Raised $650 Million to Build a Truck With No Speakers, No Color, and No Apologies
A Bezos-backed startup just secured $650M to sell you an EV pickup that ships without speakers, paint, or power windows. They call it disruption. I call it a car without a car.
Startups
Round Raised $6 Million to Automate Treasury — Finance Finally Found Its Cursor Phase
Round just raised a $6 million seed to automate treasury, payroll, and payments. It is impressively useful, mildly ominous, and exactly the kind of fintech adults secretly want.
Startups
Juno Raised $12 Million to Fix Tax Season—and Somehow Made It Sympathetic
Juno wants to rescue accountants from PDF purgatory with AI. Against all odds, the week's most charming seed round is about tax prep.
Startups
Giggles Raised a Pre-Seed for Tradable Videos — TikTok Meets the Trading Floor
Giggles wants users to buy into videos before they blow up. It sounds unwell, but there may be a real social instinct hiding inside the chaos.
Startups
Sora Fuel Raised $14.6 Million to Bottle the Sky. Honestly, Respect
Sora Fuel raised $14.6M to make jet fuel from air. It sounds deranged, climate-necessary, and oddly promising.
Startups
ARM Started Making Its Own Chips—So Naturally, Someone Just Raised $400M to Sell Everyone Else the Blueprints
SiFive closed a $400M oversubscribed Series G at a $3.65B valuation. NVIDIA invested. The pitch? Open-source chip blueprints. The hook? ARM went rogue and everyone panicked.
Startups
This Atlanta Startup Just Raised $350M to Build Autonomous Hypersonic Warplanes. Also, a Nicer Way to Get to Paris.
Hermeus has $350M, an autonomous fighter drone program, and somehow also a civilian passenger jet named 'Halcyon.' The future of defense tech smells suspiciously like venture capital.
Startups
A Startup Called XFX Is Fixing the Part of Crypto That Still Feels Like a Wire Transfer. Root for Them.
Three ex-Bitso founders raised $17 million to solve the foreign exchange problem they kept running into... at Bitso. The startup is called XFX. I find this extremely encouraging.
AI
Yann LeCun Called LLMs 'Complete Bullshit,' Then Raised $1 Billion in Seed Money. We're Rooting for Him.
The world's loudest LLM skeptic just raised Europe's biggest seed round ever — proving that being spectacularly right about the future pays just as well as being wrong.