Top News

Apple is holding exploratory talks with Google about using Gemini to power a revamped Siri, a sign the company may finally outsource some of its AI brainpower after years of delays and high-profile talent losses. Bloomberg has more here.

President Trump confirmed today that the U.S. will take a 9.9% equity stake in Intel, which is burning $1 billion a month, sending shares of the chipmaker up 7% and stoking talk of creeping nationalization. TechCrunch has more here.

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Coinbase CEO Explains Why He Fired Engineers Who Didn’t Try AI Immediately

By Julie Bort

It’s hard to find programmers these days who aren’t using AI coding assistants in some capacity, especially to write the repetitive, mundane bits.

But those who refused to try the tools when Coinbase bought enterprise licenses for GitHub Copilot and Cursor got promptly fired, CEO Brian Armstrong said this week on John Collison’s podcast “Cheeky Pint.” (Collison is the co-founder and president of the payments company Stripe.)

After getting licenses to cover every engineer, some at the cryptocurrency exchange warned Armstrong that adoption would be slow, predicting it would take months to get even half the engineers using AI. 

Armstrong was shocked at the thought. “I went rogue,” he said, and posted a mandate in the company’s main engineering Slack channel. “I said, ‘AI is important. We need you to all learn it and at least onboard. You don’t have to use it every day yet until we do some training, but at least onboard by the end of the week. And if not, I’m hosting a meeting on Saturday with everybody who hasn’t done it and I’d like to meet with you to understand why.’” 

At the meeting, some people had reasonable explanations for not getting their AI assistant accounts set up during the week, like being on vacation, Armstrong said.

“I jumped on this call on Saturday and there were a couple people that had not done it. Some of them had a good reason, because they were just getting back from some trip or something, and some of them didn’t [have a good reason]. And they got fired.”

Massive Fundings

Ontic, a nine-year-old Austin startup that helps organizations track and respond to threats such as executive safety risks, workplace violence, and insider incidents by unifying security data and operations in one system, raised a $230 million Series C round led by KKR, with JMI Equity, Silverton Partners, Ridge Ventures, and Ten Eleven Ventures also participating. Reuters has more here.

Restor3d, an eight-year-old startup based in Durham, NC, that designs and manufactures patient-specific orthopedic implants using 3D printing, AI-based planning, and rapid surgical design tools, raised a $104 million round. Partners Group led the investment. More here.

Stark, a one-year-old German startup that develops and manufactures unmanned aerial vehicles designed for combat, including weaponized drones and swarming systems, raised a $62 million round at a $500 million valuation. The deal lead was Sequoia, with 8VC, Thiel Capital, NATO Innovation Fund, In-Q-Tel, Project A, and Döpfner Capital also investing. Tech.eu has more here.

Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings

Method AI, a five-year-old Boston startup that is developing a surgical navigation system that uses continuous 3D ultrasound and AI guidance to help surgeons see and remove tumors more precisely during oncology procedures, raised a $20 million Series A round led by a private family office with Cleveland Clinic and JobsOhio Growth Capital Fund also taking part. MassDevice has more here.

Wellth, a 12-year-old Los Angeles company whose platform uses behavioral economics and small financial incentives to encourage patients to take daily actions like taking their medicine, checking their blood pressure, and scheduling preventative care visits, raised a $36 million Series C round led by Mercato Partners, with FCA Venture Partners, Comcast Ventures, SignalFire, NY Life, and CD-Venture also contributing. More here.

Wisdom, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that uses AI and human experts to streamline dental revenue cycle management, raised a $21 million Series A round led by Permanent Capital Ventures, with investors including Aquiline and previous investor Juxtapose. The company has raised a total of $28 million. More here.

Smaller Fundings

Irys, a four-year-old London startup that is building blockchain infrastructure that turns stored data into programmable assets with embedded rules for licensing, monetization, and access, raised a $10 million Series A round led by CoinFund, with Hypersphere, Tykhe Ventures, Varrock Ventures, Breed VC, Echo Group, Amber Group, and WAGMI Ventures also piling on. More here.

Oway, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that uses AI and electronic logging data to match shippers with empty truck space, raised a $4 million seed round. Investors included Y Combinator, General Catalyst, Wayfinder Ventures, Phosphor Capital and Soma Capital. TechCrunch has more here. 

Verdata, a six-year-old Atlanta startup that provides verified data on businesses so that lenders, insurers, and other companies can check identity, financial stability, reliability, and compliance before working with them, raised an $8 million Series A round led by Continental Investors, with additional participation from 1st & Main Growth Partners, Front Porch Venture Partners, and Overline Venture Capital. More here.

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Exits

Tecton, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that helps companies manage and deploy machine learning data, is being acquired for an undisclosed amount of stock by Databricks as the data lakehouse giant doubles down on building out its AI agent stack. Tecton’s backers include Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital Ventures, and General Catalyst. Reuters has more here.

Going Public

Netskope, a thirteen-year-old Santa Clara cybersecurity company that uses its platform to monitor cloud activity and protect sensitive data, just filed for a Nasdaq IPO after showing rising revenue and narrowing losses, with big-name backers like Lightspeed, Accel, and Iconiq lined up to benefit from the market’s renewed appetite for tech listings. Bloomberg has more here.

Hong Kong has eclipsed the U.S. as the listing venue of choice for Chinese startups, with 46 IPOs raising $16.5 billion this year versus just $741 million stateside. The South China Morning Post has more here.

People

Joseph Sanberg, the flamboyant co-founder of Aspiration, a fintech backed by Leonardo DiCaprio, Orlando Bloom, and Robert Downey Jr., has agreed to plead guilty to a $248 million fraud that used fake payments and forged documents to inflate revenues. TechCrunch has more here.

Essential Reads

Snap, which has already poured $3 billion into AR glasses, is weighing raising outside money or even spinning off its Specs project to deliver consumer-ready devices in 2026, a possible sign that it is struggling financially as it races to beat Meta and Apple to market. The Information has more here.

Detours

Italy’s sacred August beach escape has turned into a national gripe session, with families balking at €50-plus daily umbrella fees.

From Georgia to Texas to Ohio, towns are dropping $60 million to a whopping $180 million on high school football stadiums with luxury suites and Jumbotrons.

Frisbee, Late Night host Seth Meyers’ frail, 14-year-old Italian greyhound, has passed, and some are suggesting that SNL and Brooklyn Nine-Nine actor Andy Samberg couldn’t be happier.

Luxury resorts, spas, and even cruise lines are pivoting hard into “longevity travel,” selling $10,000 to $20,000 vacations that pair diagnostics, biomarker testing, and biohacking with massages and meditation, signaling that the wellness boom is evolving into a full-blown health-span arms race for affluent travelers.

Brain Rot

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Retail Therapy

In case you ever wondered what a watch would look like if it were designed by Bugatti, here you go. The cost? A mere $880,000.

Billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick just listed their 74-acre Aspen estate, Little Lake Lodge, for $300 million, a record-setting ask that underscores how the mountain town’s luxury market has morphed into an arena where $100 million deals barely raise eyebrows.

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