We're thrilled to be bringing StrictlyVC back to Los Angeles on Thursday night, June 18 at Aerospace Corp.'s stunning El Segundo campus — a perfect backdrop for this particular evening. On the agenda: Ethan Thornton, founder and CEO of Mach Industries, on building for the new era of defense tech; a powerhouse physical AI panel featuring Founders Fund partner Delian Asparouhov and Shinkei Systems CEO Saif Khawaja; and venture investor Carter Reum of M13 Ventures. And we're not done programming.

We wanted to make sure this event was as accessible as possible, so we're offering tickets at $99; nab your seat while you can. We’ll have plenty of food, drinks, and networking. More details to come.:)

Anthropic is urging top AI labs to consider a global slowdown or temporary pause in frontier AI development, warning that models may be nearing “recursive self-improvement,” or the ability to improve themselves without human intervention even as critics question whether the $1 trillion startup’s safety push is also a way to slow rivals. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

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By Connie Loizos

Mira Murati isn't a natural creature of the conference stage. As the CTO of OpenAI, she was present but rarely the public face of the company. As CEO of her own company, Thinking Machines Lab, she has been even harder to find. So when she sat down with Bloomberg in San Francisco on Thursday — her first major media appearance in roughly 18 months — it was worth paying attention, even if she was careful not to say too much.

The timing makes sense. Thinking Machines has spent the better part of a year and a half operating largely in the background: raising capital, hiring researchers, and shipping one product, Tinker, an API for fine-tuning open-source AI models.

In the meantime, the companies competing for the same talent, customers, and headlines have only grown more omnipresent. OpenAI, where Murati spent six years as CTO, is constantly in the news cycle. Anthropic's momentum is all that anyone can talk about right now. And xAI, Elon Musk's AI venture, has been folded into SpaceX ahead of what is expected to be its massive public offering, generating its own gravitational pull on attention and investment. In that environment, staying heads down has diminishing returns; at some point, you have to make some noise just to remind the market you exist.

Murati used the Bloomberg appearance to do exactly that and not much more. She previewed what Thinking Machines is calling "interaction models," which she described as a fundamentally different kind of AI interface. Rather than the turn-based, prompt-and-response dynamic that defines most AI products today, she told interviewer Emily Chang, the company's models are designed to process continuous streams of audio, text, and video in 200-millisecond intervals. The idea is that they can pick up on the texture of human communication — the interruptions, the mid-thought corrections, even pauses to think — in something closer to real time. But Murati was careful to frame it as a first step, not a finished product, and she declined to put a specific release date on anything.

She also answered questions about the episode that first put her more squarely in the public eye.

Flourish, a New York startup founded this year that is trying to build brain-inspired AI systems that learn continuously while using far less energy than large language models, has raised $500 million from investors including Jeff Bezos, Lux Capital, and Google Ventures at a reported $2.5 billion post-money valuation. Wired has more here.

Generalist AI, a two-year-old startup based in San Mateo, CA, that develops AI foundation models for robots to learn and perform physical tasks, raised a $400 million round at a $2 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by Radical Ventures, with 8VC, Union Square Ventures, and Hanabi Capital as well as previous investors NVentures and Bezos Expeditions also opting in. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Helion, a 13-year-old company based in Everett, WA, and backed by Sam Altman that develops fusion power plants designed to generate electricity directly from magnetic fields, raised a $465 million Series G round at a $15.5 billion post-money valuation. Thrive Capital was the deal lead, with Alta Park Capital, Anti Fund, BoxGroup, Lux Capital, Peak XV Partners, and Bill Ford as well as previous investors Capricorn Technology Impact Funds, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mithril Capital, Good Ventures Foundation, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and an unnamed university endowment fund also piling on. The company has raised a total of $1.5 billion. TechCrunch has more here.

Lila Sciences, a three-year-old startup based in Cambridge, MA, that develops autonomous AI agents and robotic laboratory systems that run closed-loop experiments and simulate materials to discover new molecular compounds for healthcare, energy, and defense applications, is reportedly in the market to raise $2 billion at an $8.5 billion pre-money valuation. CalPERS and NVentures are the purported co-leads. The company has raised a total of $550 million. Bloomberg has more here.

Ramp, a seven-year-old New York startup that provides corporate cards and manages business expenses, payments, procurement, vendor management, fraud detection, and accounting, and tracks and controls companies’ AI tool spending and usage, raised a $750 million round at a $44 billion valuation, nearly tripling its valuation in just a year. ICONIQ, GIC, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan co-led the deal, with Goldman Sachs Alternatives, D.E. Shaw & Co., Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Generation Investment Management, Insight Partners, and BroadLight Capital also piling on. The company has raised a total of $3+ billion. TechCrunch has more here.

Supabase, a six-year-old San Francisco startup that provides open-source database and back-end tools for building and scaling AI apps, raised a $500 million round at a $10.5 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by GIC, with Accel, Y Combinator, Craft, Felicis, Coatue, and Stripe also stepping up. CNBC has more here.

Tripo AI, a three-year-old Beijing and San Francisco startup formerly known as VAST that develops models and tools that generate, edit, and simulate 3D assets and persistent interactive environments for creators, developers, and researchers across gaming, film, and industrial applications, raised nearly $200 million in capital from an undisclosed set of investors. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Airspeed, a four-year-old London and New York startup that deploys AI agents that act on sales calls, emails, tickets, and CRM data to update records, flag risks, and generate follow-ups for revenue teams, raised a $20 million Series A round led by DN Capital, with Vi Partners, Framework Venture Partners, and Atlassian Ventures also participating. The company has raised a total of $25+ million. Tech Funding News has more here.

Fuse Energy, a four-year-old London startup that supplies electricity to households while operating generation, trading, and retail in-house, using household-level demand modeling to forecast consumption and balance energy purchasing and distribution costs, raised $30 million from 20VC and Collaborative Fund. The company has raised a total of $248.9 million. EU-Startups has more here.

Honeycomb, a seven-year-old Chicago startup that analyzes property location, environmental, and structural data using computer vision and imagery to assess risk, underwrite insurance policies, and price coverage for residential and commercial real estate owners, raised a $40 million round led by Zeev Ventures, with Peakline Alpha Partners, Meitar Partners, and Practical VC as well as previous investor Ibex Investors also taking part. The company has raised a total of approximately $95 million. CTech has more here.

InCharge Energy, an eight-year-old Los Angeles startup that manages EV charging networks and electrical and distributed energy assets for fleets, schools, and municipalities, handling monitoring, diagnostics, maintenance, and field service to keep infrastructure operating and reduce downtime, raised a $46 million round led by S2G Investments, with QIC also contributing. More here.

Innovorder, a 13-year-old Paris company that provides restaurants and contract caterers with order taking, payment, kitchen management, and back-office systems and deploys AI agents to automate daily operations and reporting, raised a $23.3 million round. UL Invest was the deal lead. EU-Startups has more here.

Scotch, a two-year-old Denver startup that provides liquor store owners with point-of-sale hardware, payment processing, and back-office tools to manage inventory, vendors, and state-specific alcohol regulations, using AI to automate administrative tasks, raised a $20 million Series A round led by VMG Partners, with First Round Capital, Lerer Hippeau, and Toba Capital also joining in. Crunchbase News has more here.

Semble, a nine-year-old London startup that provides practice management, patient scheduling, billing, and care coordination tools that help outpatient clinics and hospitals manage patient journeys and clinical and administrative workflows across integrated systems, raised a $40.3 million Series C round led by Revaia, with Partech as well as previous investors Mercia Ventures and Octopus Ventures also chiming in. More here.

Shifters, a three-year-old startup based in Washington, DC, that develops autonomous ground robots that operators deploy to scan terrain, gather intelligence, and navigate hazardous environments for defense and security missions, raised a $10.2 million seed round led by Ace Capital Partners, with Aurelius Capital Management, Corner Ventures, Arkin Capital, STEP World, and Fresh Fund also engaging. The company has raised a total of $15 million. More here.

Uncover, a six-year-old São Paulo startup that measures and forecasts the impact of advertising across channels using marketing mix modeling, raised a $16 million Series A round led by Cloud9 Capital, with ABSeed Ventures and Endeavor also anteing up. LatamList has more here.

Kodesage, a two-year-old London startup that analyzes and converts legacy enterprise codebases into modern applications by extracting business logic, generating documentation, and automating migration, testing, and maintenance within on-premises or restricted environments, raised a $6.6 million seed round led by VentureFriends, with Portfolion also investing. SiliconANGLE has more here.

New Dawn Bio, a three-year-old Dutch startup that grows shaped wood products from tree stem cells in bioreactors, producing timber in final form without cutting for manufacturers seeking to reduce material waste and production costs, raised a $2.4 million pre-seed round led by CapitalT and including Norrsken Evolve and Ontdekkers Group. Tech Funding News has more here.

Offroad, a one-year-old New York and Tel Aviv startup that deploys AI agents to investigate and remediate identity security risks across human users, machine identities, and AI agents by gathering context from enterprise systems, raised a $7 million seed round co-led by Ibex Investors and Skywell Capital Partners. SiliconANGLE has more here.

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Merantix Capital, a 10-year-old Berlin early-stage AI venture firm and venture studio, closed a second fund of approximately $120 million to back roughly 40 European AI startups across logistics, manufacturing, energy, finance, healthcare, life sciences, robotics, enterprise, and physical AI, with half the fund reserved for companies it helps create and half for pre-seed and seed investments. More here.

Cloudflare acquired VoidZero, a roughly two-year-old Palo Alto startup behind Vite, Vitest, Rolldown, Oxc, and Vite+, which together form an open-source JavaScript toolchain used to build, test, bundle, and run modern web applications. The company has raised a total of $17.1 million from Accel, Peak XV Partners, Sunflower Capital, Amplify Partners, Preston-Werner Ventures, and BGZ. Terms were not disclosed. More here.

Liftoff Mobile, a Redwood City, CA-based mobile app advertising software company created in 2021 when Blackstone merged Liftoff and Vungle, rose 9% in its Nasdaq debut, valuing the company at roughly $4.18 billion after raising $437 million in an IPO priced above range. Reuters has more here.

SpaceX publicly set a $135 IPO price a week ahead of its roadshow, a break from Wall Street convention that would let the company raise a record $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation and underscores Elon Musk’s leverage over investors despite concerns about the company’s roughly 90x revenue multiple. Reuters has more here.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, Microsoft AI’s Mustafa Suleyman, and other AI and biosecurity leaders have signed a letter urging Congress to require synthetic DNA and RNA providers to screen customers and orders, warning that AI could erode the knowledge barriers that have historically kept bad actors from developing biological weapons. Wired has more here.

Ted Chiang, the acclaimed science-fiction writer whose story “Story of Your Life” became the movie Arrival, argues that Anthropic and others are dangerously anthropomorphizing AI systems, claiming that large language models like Claude are not conscious or capable of moral reasoning but “sentence-continuation” machines that create the illusion of personhood and risk letting companies and users shift responsibility onto software. The Atlantic has more here.

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is reportedly planning to launch a new AI lab, entering a crowded field of Silicon Valley figures trying to build alternatives to the frontier labs. Chesky will remain CEO of Airbnb, but the new lab is expected to focus on user interaction and design, long a Chesky obsession. TechCrunch has more here.

U.S. tech employers announced 38,242 job cuts in May, bringing the sector’s total to 123,653 so far this year, up 66% from the same period in 2025, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which says AI was the leading reason employers cited for layoffs for the third month in a row. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Founders Fund is launching a YouTube and X game show in which tech figures including Sam Altman, Trae Stephens, Palmer Luckey, Dylan Field, Ryan Petersen, Cyan Banister, and Moxie Marlinspike play Mafia at Tosca Cafe, the San Francisco restaurant where the original PayPal Mafia photo shoot took place. TechCrunch has more here.

Autonomous vehicles are not delivering the traffic relief once promised, with an MIT Transit Lab analysis finding Waymo’s robotaxis drive without passengers for about 44% of their miles, roughly in line with Uber and Lyft’s deadheading rates. Ars Technica has more here.

SemiAnalysis, an influential semiconductor and AI infrastructure research firm, argues that space-based AI data centers are technically plausible but nowhere near cost-competitive today, estimating that orbital compute costs more than 4x terrestrial compute in 2026 and is unlikely to reach cost parity until around 2040 unless Earth-based power and data-center bottlenecks become more severe. More here.

Phoenix has become one of the country’s largest data-center markets, and a proposed 45% electricity-rate increase for data centers and 14.5% hike for households is prompting fights over whether residents will end up subsidizing grid upgrades for AI. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Companies are reportedly using Reddit posts to manipulate how ChatGPT and Google’s AI search products answer user queries, with moderators of the r/biohackers subreddit saying peptide and hormone-replacement-therapy companies have been spamming the forum as part of “AI-engine optimization” campaigns. 404 Media has more here.

Meta is reportedly housing AI chips in six weatherproof “rapid deployment” tents outside New Albany, Ohio, borrowing a page from Tesla’s temporary Model 3 production line as it tries to cut data-center construction time in half and contain a capex bill that could reach $145 billion this year. TechCrunch has more here.

Speaking of Meta, the company has quietly added unreleased face-recognition code for its Ray-Ban and Oakley smart-glasses platform to the Meta AI app, according to Wired, reviving a capability Meta said it had shut down in 2021 after years of privacy backlash. Wired has more here.

Bon Appétit goes inside the Explorer’s Club Annual Dinner, a Manhattan gala for wealthy adventurers, scientists, and financiers where guests in tuxedos and gowns mingled with snakes, sampled caviar, cockroaches, larvae, and roast iguana and traded stories about Antarctic treks, Everest skydives, SpaceX rockets, and war-crimes prosecutions.

A 7-year-old Colorado boy became the youngest person to ascend El Capitan after jugging fixed ropes up the Nose with his father, brother, and a hired support team, but Outside reports that the heavily publicized feat has angered Yosemite climbers who say the family downplayed the role of paid guides and porters and blurred the line between climbing achievement and parental publicity project.

A Chihuahua-dachshund mix named Ronaldo is going viral ahead of the World Cup for his unlikely goalkeeping skills, with millions watching videos of the Pennsylvania dog sprinting, leaping, and sliding to block shots in his backyard.

Sopranos writers Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess listed their 1888 Shelter Island compound for $6.5 million, a four-bedroom, five-bath property on two acres with a barn, artist studio, vegetable garden, 60-foot saltwater pool, cabana, and pool house.

Lego unveiled its largest set ever by piece count, an $800 model of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família that comes complete with 12,060 pieces, 18 towers, and a detailed interior.

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