Before heading out on your Thanksgiving cousin walk, grab your seat at StrictlyVC’s last evening event of the year in Palo Alto on December 3, just days after the holiday. We'll have drinks, canapés, and the kind of illuminating conversations that'll genuinely expand your 🧠. We’re excited to see a bunch of you. Big thanks to the teams at Playground Global, Finstrat Management, and BenQ for helping make it happen.

SpaceX’s first upgraded Starship V3 booster exploded during early gas-system pressure testing in South Texas, raising fresh questions about timelines for the company’s 2026 orbital demos and its race with Blue Origin for NASA missions. TechCrunch has more here.

US officials are debating whether to let Nvidia sell its H200 chips to China, a potential reversal that signals rising geopolitical pressure, intensifying lobbying, and a fresh fault line for markets already jittery about an AI-driven spending boom. Bloomberg has more here.

Google confirmed today that hackers used compromised apps from Gainsight to steal Salesforce-hosted data from more than 200 companies. TechCrunch has more here.

Portfolio data is messy because every company reports differently. 

PortfolioIQ is trained on 20,000+ portfolio updates - it standardizes metrics the way analysts do, with context and logic built in. AI-powered extraction, analyst-verified accuracy. Now you can focus on insights. 

Check out PortfolioIQ. 

By Connie Loizos

Thomas Lee Young doesn’t sound like your typical Silicon Valley founder.

The 24-year-old CEO of Interface, a San Francisco startup using AI to prevent industrial accidents, is a white guy with a Caribbean accent and a Chinese last name, a combination he finds amusing enough to mention when he’s first introduced to business contacts. Born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, the site of substantial oil and gas exploration activity, Young grew up around oil rigs and energy infrastructure because his entire family worked as engineers, stretching back generations to his great-grandfather, who immigrated to the island nation from China.

That background has become his calling card in pitch meetings with oil and gas executives today, but it makes for more than a great conversation starter; it underscores a path that has been anything but straightforward and that Young might argue gives Interface an edge.

It was years in the making. From age 11, Young fixated on Caltech with the intensity of someone much older. He watched shows about Silicon Valley online, mesmerized by the idea that people could build “anything and everything” in America. He did everything possible to secure admission, even writing his application essay about hijacking his family’s Roomba to create 3D spatial maps of his house.

The ploy worked – Caltech accepted him in 2020 – but then COVID-19 hit, and so did its ripple effects. For one thing, Young’s visa situation became nearly impossible (visa appointments were cancelled and processing came to a halt). At the same time, his college fund, carefully built over six or seven years to $350,000 to cover his education, “basically got hit entirely” by the abrupt market downturn in March of that year.

Without a lot of time to decide his future, he chose a cheaper three-year engineering program at the University of Bristol in the UK, studying mechanical engineering, but never abandoning his Silicon Valley dreams. “I was devastated,” he says, “but I realized I could still get something done.”

Aspen Neuroscience, an eight-year-old San Diego startup that develops therapies for Parkinson’s disease, raised a $115 million Series C round co-led by OrbiMed, ARCH Venture Partners, Frazier Life Sciences, and Revelation Partners, with Kite, Balyasny Asset Management, Cormorant Asset Management, and Prebys Ventures as well as previous investors Medical Excellence Capital, S32, Axon Ventures, LYFE Capital, and LifeForce Capital also piling on. The company has raised a total of $340+ million. More here.

Flexion, a two-year-old Zürich startup that develops software that lets robots understand instructions, move on their own, and adapt to new situations, raised a $50 million Series A round led by DST Global Partners, with NVentures, Redalpine, Prosus Ventures, and Moonfire Ventures also participating. Crunchbase News has more here.

AI Proteins, a four-year-old Boston startup that designs new therapeutic miniproteins using AI, raised a $41.5 million Series A round co-led by Mission BioCapital and Santé Ventures, with Lightchain Capital and Cobro Ventures also contributing. More here.

Numerai, a ten-year-old San Francisco company that runs a crowdsourced hedge fund using trading ideas submitted by freelance quants, raised a $30 million Series C round at a $500 million post-money valuation. The round was led by three unnamed university endowments, with Union Square Ventures, Shine Capital, and Paul Tudor Jones also participating. Bloomberg has more here.

Sorcero, a seven-year-old startup based in Washington, DC, that develops AI software to help life sciences companies generate medical insights and support physician and patient adoption of new therapies, raised a $42.5 million Series B round led by NewSpring Growth, with Leawood Venture Capital and Blu Ventures also taking part. The company has raised a total of $59 million. More here.

Tidalwave, a two-year-old New York startup that builds AI software to automate mortgage tasks like verification and underwriting, raised a $22 million Series A round led by Permanent Capital, with D.R. Horton and Engineering Capital also investing. HousingWire has more here.

Vyntelligence, a 13-year-old London company that provides software that analyzes short videos recorded by workers on job sites to help companies resolve on-site issues, raised a $30 million Series B round co-led by Blume Equity and Morgan Stanley Investment Management. More here.

Cassidy Bio, a two-year-old Tel Aviv startup that is working on AI software to help researchers design gene-editing therapies, raised an $8 million seed round led by Ahren Innovation Capital, with lool Ventures, 10D VC, AstraZeneca, and Merck KGaA also pitching in. CTech has more here.

Made Card, a two-year-old New York startup whose credit card and app help homeowners manage expenses and earn rewards tied to mortgage payments, raised an $8 million seed round co-led by Jump Capital and Village Global and including Recharge Capital and Soma Capital. More here.

Mirantus Health, a three-year-old Berlin startup that develops software to enable opticians to run eye exams and send results to ophthalmologists for review, raised a $6.3 million seed round led by Revent, with Redstone, Entrepreneur First, Noaber, and Arve Capital also stepping up. Startup Rise EU has more here.

NexDash, a Berlin startup founded this year that builds software to coordinate electric truck fleets and charging operations, raised a $5.7 million seed round led by Extantia Capital, with Clean Energy Ventures also anteing up. Tech Funding News has more here.

Parallax Worlds, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that builds virtual simulations to test industrial robots before deployment, raised a $4 million seed round led by Pear VC, with GS Futures, Kakao Ventures, and Lightscape Partners also opting in. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Voio, a one-year-old Berkeley startup that develops AI software to help radiologists interpret medical scans and draft reports, raised an $8.6 million seed round led by Laude Ventures, with The House Fund also engaging. More here.

Private capital is facing its most complex market in over a decade. IPO windows are unpredictable, M&A selective, and valuations under pressure as LPs demand liquidity and fundraising tightens. According to Affinity’s 2026 Predictions Survey, 54% of investors cite proving fund value as their top challenge, while 67% expect more deals despite exit uncertainty. 

Join Northwestern Mutual, Armira, and Affinity to explore how firms are adapting strategies to thrive in 2026. 

Keen Venture Partners, a nine-year-old Amsterdam-based firm that backs early-stage companies building cybersecurity, autonomous systems, and other strategic technologies, has completed a first close of €150+ million for its European defense and security technology fund, making it Europe’s largest defense-tech fund. Tech Funding News has more here.

According to The Information, Sam Altman told staff that Google’s recent AI gains are creating short-term economic pressure for OpenAI, prompting the company to double down on ambitious research and a new training approach in order to regain ground. The Decoder has more here.

Speaking of Google, Amin Vahdat, Google’s head of AI Infrastructure, told employees earlier this month that the company must double its AI serving capacity every six months in order to meet surging customer demand, signaling a major capex push and intense competition in the AI infrastructure race. CNBC has more here.

Time to buy?

IBM and Cisco set out plans to link quantum computers over long distances by 2030, a bet that hinges on building new hardware to move qubits over fiber and could push the industry closer to a workable quantum network. Reuters has more here.

A federal judge today heard closing arguments on whether Google should be forced to spin off core ad tech assets after an earlier ruling found it maintained illegal monopolies, setting up a potential breakup that could reshape its business and energize the government’s broader fight with Big Tech. The New York Times has more here.

TikTok trend alert: prank or not, young men are calling their male friends just to say, “Goodnight, bro.”

High drama at the Miss Universe contest.

I work for an evil company, but outside of work, I’m actually really a good person.

The hottest AI wearables and gadgets you can buy right now.

A $7,790 Leica that only shoots in black and white.

You can pay $10 a month to use Google's new AI health coach in the Fitbit app, but it just might make you weird.

Please send all of your hot gossip to [email protected] or [email protected].

To book ads directly, contact us at [email protected].