Stock futures tanked Thursday evening after a brutal AI-led selloff sent the Nasdaq down more than 10% from its recent high and into correction territory. The Magnificent Seven lost more than $1 trillion in market value, with Nvidia alone shedding more than $440 billion. Investors are now turning to Friday’s jobs report, with economists expecting 59,000 jobs added in October. CNBC has more here.

Major investors planning to buy into Anthropic’s IPO say its expected $1.5 trillion valuation may need to fall sharply after this week’s AI stock rout, with one suggesting a figure closer to $1 trillion and another raising the possibility of delaying the offering. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

OpenAI is promising a more transparent approach to future data centers it owns and operates, including publishing construction plans, soliciting community input, protecting utility ratepayers, and avoiding nondisclosure agreements with public officials after voters overwhelmingly backed restrictions on data center development in this week’s midterms. CNBC has more here.

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By Connie Loizos

Every time venture capitalists write a check, they’re secretly running numbers in their heads about different exit scenarios. It’s their job as fiduciaries. But nearly all will tell you (publicly, anyway) that every portfolio company is headed for an IPO.

Stephen Ward, the co-founder of Brightmind Partners, a two-year-old cybersecurity fund in New York, says otherwise outright. “You have to sell on the way up,” he says.

Ward’s unvarnished pragmatism is one reason he stands out. Another is the size of his firm’s debut fund late last year: a whopping $250 million fund, which he closed with co-founder Gur Talpaz. A third reason is his resume, which includes a stint with the Coast Guard, nine years in the Secret Service, and CISO jobs at TIAA and Home Depot before he ever thought about investing.

One proof point that suggests the combination is working is SGNL, the identity security startup CrowdStrike agreed in January to buy for $740 million, 11 months after Brightmind led its Series A.

Now, Ward is raising a second fund, targeting roughly the same size as the first one. This time, though, he’ll be doing it without Talpaz, who left in April along with another early colleague, leaving Ward as the firm’s sole general partner. He’s betting on himself at a moment when early-stage cybersecurity startups are raising more money than later-stage rivals for the first time in more than a decade.

His unemotional approach to exits traces back to an unlikely career. Ward says he grew up in northwest New Jersey between two farms, in a family that couldn’t afford college for his older brothers. After high school, he joined the Coast Guard, inspired by a commercial of a man jumping out of a helicopter, though he says he barely knew how to swim at the time. He spent four years in search and rescue.

Afterward, he studied criminal justice at Seton Hall in New Jersey and thought half-heartedly about law school. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” Ward told me last week over Zoom, wearing a pale hooded sweatshirt and looking more like a basketball coach than a venture capitalist. “I was kind of lost. I missed the military and the camaraderie and all of that.”

Alethio Therapeutics, a five-year-old startup based in Abingdon, UK, that develops targeted antibody therapies that selectively eliminate disease-driving cells in chronic blood cancers, raised a $90 million Series A round co-led by Sofinnova Partners and RA Capital, with Oxford Science Enterprises, Cancer Research Horizons, and the University of Oxford also digging in. European Biotechnology has more here.

Cyera, a five-year-old New York cybersecurity startup whose software identifies sensitive corporate data and flags security gaps, is reportedly planning to raise around $800 million in a round led by previous investor Cyberstarts at a $20 billion valuation. The Information has more here.

Harbinger, a five-year-old company based in Garden Grove, CA, that builds electric and hybrid vehicle platforms, batteries, power systems, and autonomous-driving technology, raised a $240 million Series D co-led by Tiger Global, Capricorn’s Technology Impact Fund, and Ridgeline, with Fidelity, Squarepoint Capital, Xantium, FedEx, THOR Industries, and BuildGroup as well as previous investors Maniv, Greycroft, Australian Gulf Capital, PanaceaVC, ArcTern Ventures, and Leitmotif also piling on. The company has raised a total of $650+ million. More here.

Humble Robotics, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that develops autonomous electric trucks for commercial freight routes under 250 miles, raised a $51 million Series A round led by Obvious Ventures, with Eclipse and Energy Impact Partners also taking stakes. The company has raised a total of $75 million. Business Insider has more here.

Kalepa, an eight-year-old New York startup that uses AI to automate and coordinate underwriting, pricing, and portfolio-management work for insurers, raised a $75 million Series B at a $470 million post-money valuation led by Updata Partners, with previous investors IA Ventures and Inspired Capital also investing; the company has raised a total of $91 million. Unite.AI has more here.

Ocient, a 10-year-old Chicago company that develops data analytics systems that let AI agents and analysts query petabyte-scale datasets without sampling, raised a $100 million Series C round co-led by BOKA Capital and OCA Ventures, with previous investors Greycroft, In-Q-Tel, Blue Bear Capital, Buoyant Ventures, PSP Growth, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and Eron Wolf also anteing up. The company has raised a total of $260 million. SiliconANGLE has more here.

T-Therapeutics, a four-year-old startup based in Cambridge, UK, that develops bispecific therapies that recruit T cells to attack cancers and disease-causing immune cells, raised a $133 million Series B round co-led by Advent Life Sciences and British Business Bank, with Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Samsara BioCapital, M-Ventures, and Eli Lilly as well as previous investors Sofinnova Partners, F-Prime, Digitalis Ventures, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Sanofi Ventures, Tencent, and BGF also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $224 million. European Biotechnology has more here.

Zipline, a 12-year-old company based in South San Francisco, CA, that operates autonomous drones that deliver food, retail goods, agricultural products, and medical supplies for businesses and governments, raised a $1.5 billion round at a $21.5 billion post-money valuation. The deal was co-led by Paradigm, WCM Investment Management, and Layer Global, with Valor Equity Partners, Fidelity, Uber, Tiger Global, J.P. Morgan, ARK Invest, and Salesforce Ventures also taking part. TechCrunch has more here.

Biograil, a seven-year-old Copenhagen startup developing an oral capsule device that delivers biologic drugs through the stomach wall as an alternative to injections, raised a $22.4 million round. Investors included Verve Ventures, Megatrend Invest, and previous investor HTGF. EU-Startups has more here.

Firmly, a seven-year-old Seattle startup that connects retailers' catalogs, inventory, payments, and checkout systems with AI shopping assistants and other digital sales channels, raised a $15 million Series A round led by Squarepoint Capital, with J.P. Morgan Payments, Mastercard, Samsung NEXT, Alumni Ventures, ARK Invest, Benhamou Global Ventures, Granada Funds, Hike Ventures, The Mercantile Companies, and Versus Ventures also stepping up. The company has raised a total of approximately $20 million. More here.

Journify, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that connects businesses’ customer transaction data with digital advertising platforms to measure and optimize campaigns, raised a $12 million Series A round co-led by Al Mada Ventures and previous investor Silicon Badia, with Oraseya Capital as well as previous investors Shorooq, Bunat Ventures, and Du Ventures also taking part. The SaaS News has more here.

Lazarus AI, a nine-year-old Boston startup that develops AI tools that analyze documents, find software vulnerabilities, and modernize legacy systems for regulated organizations, raised a $43 million round. Investors included QBE, Mucker Capital, Motivate Ventures, State Farm Ventures, Wave Function Ventures, Indelible Solutions, Joyance Partners, AllegisNL Capital, One Way Ventures, AngelList, Techstars, and Plug and Play. More here.

Numica, a one-year-old New York startup that acquires small U.S. accounting practices and uses AI to automate bookkeeping, billing, tax filing, and payroll, raised a $21.4 million round. Investors included Roosh X and Flashpoint Capital. It also secured $21 million in combined equity and debt financing. More here.

Snaplii, a five-year-old fintech based in Toronto, Canada, that lets AI agents spend from capped, pre-funded wallets without accessing users’ primary card details, raised a $15 million round. Investors included Hat-Trick Capital. More here.

Vaeridion, a five-year-old Munich startup that develops battery-electric aircraft for regional passenger and cargo flights, raised a $33.7 million round co-led by SHIFT Invest and Invest-NL. It also secured a $106.9 million EU Innovation Fund grant. Aviation Week has more here.

Avanlee Care, a seven-year-old startup based in Billings, MT, that helps health plans and healthcare organizations identify and engage family caregivers supporting Medicare Advantage members, raised a $3.5 million seed round led by BEA Venture Fund, with Esther Dyson, Chrysalis Ventures, and FairBridge VC also engaging. The company has raised a total of $6 million. Fierce Healthcare has more here.

Circularity Fuels, a two-year-old startup based in Redwood City, CA, that turns dairy biogas into sustainable aviation fuel using modular reactors, raised a $7 million seed round co-led by Trucks Venture Capital and DCVC, with Sum Ventures and Automotive Ventures also investing. The company has received about $17 million in funding and grants, including nearly $7 million in grants. More here.

Cowboy, a one-year-old New York startup building a secure operating system and marketplace for developers to create, deploy, and monetize autonomous AI agents, raised a $5 million seed round. Investors included Nebular, Compound, Semantic Ventures, Anagram, Shine Ventures, and Uncommon Projects. More here.

Finpilot, a three-year-old Seattle startup that uses AI agents to automate investment research, reporting, portfolio monitoring, and due diligence for institutional investors, raised a $10 million Series A round led by Lobby Capital, with previous investor Madrona also pitching in. The company has raised a total of about $14.5 million. More here.

Marble Cognition, a one-year-old Munich startup that uses AI agents to map employee workflows and automate repetitive processes across companies' existing software systems, raised a $3.75 million pre-seed round co-led by Heartcore and Seedcamp. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Mindmax, a two-year-old London startup that develops an AI tutor for professional exam preparation and skills training through interactive audio conversations and visual explanations, raised a $3.4 million pre-seed round led by Concept Ventures, with additional support from Redrice Ventures, Daybreak Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, Maria Raga, and Torsten Reil. Tech Funding News has more here.

RadianX, a one-year-old startup based in Redwood City, CA, that makes perovskite solar modules designed to power devices from indoor and outdoor light, raised a $5 million seed round co-led by SOSV and Twynam, with One Small Planet, Sachsen Ventures, Avila VC, California Innovation Fund, quantumEDGE, Riceberg Ventures, and Alumni Ventures also stepping up. Pacific Union Technology Precision Manufacturing is providing an additional $4 million in non-dilutive funding to build a dedicated production line. TechCrunch has more here.

Shackleton AI, a New York startup founded this year that uses AI agents to automate administrative work for construction firms and developers across project planning, management, finance, and communications, raised a $5 million seed round led by Battery Ventures, with Brick & Mortar Ventures, Trust Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Motivate Partners, Thayer Investment Partners, Act One Ventures, Brainstorm Ventures, and Silence VC also buying in. More here.

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Shield AI, an 11-year-old San Diego defense tech company that makes AI pilot software and autonomous military drones, agreed to acquire Echodyne, a 12-year-old radar company based in Kirkland, WA, and backed by Bill Gates and Madrona, in a deal valued at up to $5.3 billion. Shield AI is raising $2.5 billion to help finance the purchase, including $1 billion in new funding at a $28.8 billion valuation. GeekWire has more here.

Dropbox is buying cloud storage startup Tigris Data for $350 million in what appears to be its largest acquisition to date. It plans to use Tigris’s technology to bolster DBX Agent Cloud, a new storage platform for businesses and developers building AI models and agents. TechCrunch has more here.

Wonder, the eight-year-old food-tech company founded by Marc Lore, has confidentially filed for an IPO after raising more than $650 million in July at a roughly $9 billion valuation. The company operates food hall-style locations and has acquired Blue Apron, Grubhub, Tastemade, and kitchen-robotics startup Spyce. TechCrunch has more here.

Agility Robotics is set to become the first U.S. humanoid-robotics company to trade publicly, following a SPAC merger that values the Oregon company at about $2.5 billion and is expected to provide roughly $465 million in gross capital. Agility generated just $1.8 million in revenue last year while posting a $138.1 million net loss. The company has raised a total of $683 million from investors including Playground Global, DCVC, Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, NVIDIA, and Foxconn. Business Insider has more here.

The New York Times profiles Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, tracing how rationalism, effective altruism, early fears about AI wiping out humanity, and a conviction that the technology must be built “right” shaped both his worldview and the company he co-founded after leaving OpenAI. More here.

Quite an image. On election night, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang hosted what The Wall Street Journal described as “the biggest names in America’s artificial-intelligence boom” at the San Francisco Opera House for a performance of The Marriage of Figaro. The Journal doesn’t identify the other attendees, but says that over wine and hors d’oeuvres, executives in tuxedos watched results roll in showing voters across the country turning against the data-center buildout their industry depends on. More here.

Michael Burry says Anthropic is “betting its entire existence” on continued AI growth, pointing to the company’s $895.4 billion in future compute commitments and warning that take-or-pay contracts could leave it paying for capacity it doesn’t need. The “Big Short” investor says he has no plans to buy Anthropic shares when it goes public. Business Insider has more here.

And just like that, former Anthropic wunderkind Cat Wu has joined OpenAI to lead product management for its Core products. Read her tweet here.

Jason Spinell, who helped launch the Slack Fund in 2016 and led investments in nearly 100 early-stage companies including Lattice, Loom, Glean, Hightouch, 1Password, and Fundamental, has joined Collaborative Fund as a partner after spending the past decade investing across enterprise software and, more recently, AI infrastructure and applications. More here.

Block has begun another round of layoffs just eight months after Jack Dorsey cut more than 4,000 jobs and said repeated rounds of cuts were “destructive to morale.” The latest reductions are hitting teams supporting Cash App and Square, though the company has not disclosed how many employees are affected or whether AI is again the driver. Fast Company has more here.

California’s proposed 5% wealth tax on billionaires appears headed for defeat, with 56% of voters opposing Proposition 40 versus 44% in favor as of Wednesday. Meanwhile, Proposition 42 — a separate measure that would bar new taxes on individually owned assets and retroactive taxes, potentially blocking future versions of a billionaire wealth tax — seems on track to pass. The Los Angeles Times has more here.

Google, Meta, and TikTok are suing California to block a new law barring social platforms from offering children under 16 features such as personalized recommendations and autoplay that the state says can encourage compulsive use. The companies argue the measure violates the First Amendment and improperly overrides parents’ decisions. Reuters has more here.

In a report published today, METR says Anthropic may already have crossed a key safety threshold, with AI nearly doubling the pace of its own AI research. The nonprofit also concluded that Anthropic’s public risk report was too reassuring and that some of METR’s analysis was redacted, though it still judged the immediate catastrophic risk to be low. More here.

Lab-grown meat drew about $3 billion in investment after its 2013 debut, but today it is sold at just one store worldwide as startups struggle with high costs, scaling problems, and weak consumer demand. The Guardian has more here.

Mercedes-Benz has begun rolling out conversational AI from Liquid AI, a three-year-old MIT spinout based in Cambridge, MA, that runs directly in the car rather than the cloud, letting drivers control navigation, climate, seat settings, music, and calls with lower latency and without a constant internet connection. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Thai doctors have long feared that eating KFC during a hospital shift will summon a flood of patients, a superstition so persistent that surgeons ran a randomized trial across 345 shifts to test it. The study found no effect, but its lead researcher still says he believes in the curse “maybe 80% out of 100.” The New York Times has more here.

Could this guy be the next Bond?

A new way to propose with the iPhone Duo.

Porsche’s newest four-seater isn’t a car but a WonderFold stroller wagon. The $1,999 model seats four kids and adds working headlights, an illuminated Porsche logo, and Porsche trim to a $999 wagon, while a $2,599 version throws in electric-assist wheels, electronic braking, and multiple drive modes.

Louis Vuitton has released a $25,200 steel version of its handless Tambour Convergence watch, using a medical-grade alloy hardened to 1,130 Vickers — nearly as hard as ceramic — so its fully mirror-polished case can better withstand everyday scratches.

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