Truly, we cannot stop thinking about this match.

Apple lost its EU court challenge to the European Union’s decision to treat iOS and the App Store as core platform services under the Digital Markets Act, keeping the company subject to rules meant to curb gatekeeper power in app stores and other digital markets. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

U.S. lawmakers are investigating the growing use of Chinese AI models by companies including Cursor and Airbnb, as cheaper models from Moonshot, DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Z.ai gain traction and raise federal concerns that U.S. startups could become dependent on China-built AI systems. CNBC has more here.

Federal safety regulators are warning autonomous-vehicle companies that emergency scenes are not “rare or extreme ‘edge cases’” after repeated incidents in which driverless cars entered active scenes, blocked first responders, or failed to respond properly to lights, flares, cones, smoke, and fire. TechCrunch has more here.

"When we do our annual meetings with PortCos, we're just collating data. The decks are in some folder, there's an email in a partner’s inbox, there's a financial model somewhere. It's a lot of work to get the full story."  - VP Ops, $200M+ AUM VC 

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By Marina Temkin

Prime Intellect, a startup that provides computing power and specialized software tools that help companies build AI agents, has raised a $130 million Series A at a $1 billion valuation.

The massive round was led by Radical Ventures, with participation from Nvidia Ventures, Intel Capital, Dell Technologies Capital, Iconiq, and a long list of angel investors who are founders of notable companies, including Aravind Srinivas (Perplexity), Aaron Levie (Box), Winston Weinberg (Harvey), Jeff Wang (Cognition), and Brendan Foody (Mercor).

Founded in 2024, Prime Intellect’s goal is to give organizations capabilities to train their own agentic systems without relying on frontier AI labs. While this mission would have been hard to achieve just a few years ago, the rise of reinforcement learning techniques, which iteratively reward successful task completion and penalizes errors, can allow companies to become their “own AI lab” by refining models for specific business tasks.

Although it is now possible to bypass closed AI labs, the underlying infrastructure remains so complex that most companies lack the expertise to assemble these pieces into a production-ready system.

That’s where Prime Intellect comes in.

Kaon AI, a four-year-old Berkeley startup that develops AI entertainment apps that let users create personalized interactive story worlds and characters, raised $60 million from investors including B Capital, Redpoint Ace, Goodwater Capital, and DCM. Variety has more here.

Lovable, a three-year-old Stockholm startup that lets users build software via text commands, is reportedly in talks to raise $300 million at a $13.2 billion valuation, says Sifted. Menlo Ventures is the purported lead. TechCrunch has more here.

Pearl Health, a six-year-old New York startup that helps healthcare providers identify at-risk Medicare patients, manage value-based payment risk, and automate care outreach, raised a $50 million Series C round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Viking Global Investors, AlleyCorp, and Ulysses Capital also stepping up. It also lined up $60 million in debt. More here.

QuantumDiamonds, a four-year-old Munich startup that uses quantum sensing to inspect chips for defects without slowing production lines, raised a $17.1 million round led by World Fund, with Bayern Kapital as well as previous investors Creator Fund, Earlybird, First Momentum, IQ Capital, Onsight Ventures, and UnternehmerTUM also investing. The company also received $86.9 million in non-dilutive funding from Germany’s federal economy ministry and the state of Bavaria. TechCrunch has more here.

SambaNova, a nine-year-old startup based in San Jose, CA, that builds AI chips and inference systems that let banks, governments, and cloud providers run large language models on private infrastructure, raised a $1 billion Series F round at an $11 billion valuation. The deal was led by General Atlantic, with Seligman Ventures, T. Rowe Price Associates, Capital Group, A&E Investment, Assam Ventures, Battery Ventures, Cambium Capital, BlackRock, Kabila Capital, QFO Capital, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Vista Equity Partners, and Volantis as well as previous investor Intel also piling on. TechCrunch has more here.

Venus Aerospace, a six-year-old Houston startup that develops rotating detonation rocket engines for hypersonic weapons and high-speed space vehicles, raised a $90 million Series B round led by Mercury Fund, with Lockheed Martin Ventures, MESH, PEAK6, Draper Associates, Starboard Star Venture Capital, and Green Sands Equity also anteing up. TechCrunch has more here.

Alta, a three-year-old Tel Aviv startup that deploys AI agents to automate prospecting, outreach, and lead qualification for enterprise sales teams using customer and account data, raised a $25 million Series A round led by IN Venture, with Mindset Ventures, Skywell Capital, and Leumi77 as well as previous investors Entrée Capital, Target Global, and Verissimo Ventures also anteing up. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Arkenstone Defense, a one-year-old Menlo Park startup that helps commercial technology companies manage compliance, payroll, personnel security, and accreditation requirements for selling to the U.S. government, raised a $35 million seed round led by J2 Ventures, with Susa Ventures, Granite Hill Capital Partners, and Artis Ventures also buying in. Ventureburn has more here.

EdVisorly, a seven-year-old Los Angeles startup that develops AI software to help colleges automate admissions and enrollment workflows such as transcript processing, transfer-credit mapping, and GPA recalculations, raised a $13.3 million Series A round led by Breachway Capital, with U.S. News & World Report, Lumina Foundation, Strada Education Foundation, Motley Fool Ventures, Juvo Ventures, and Zeal Capital Partners also participating. More here.

Fleek, a five-year-old London startup that uses AI to grade and price secondhand clothing from photos for wholesale suppliers selling to resale buyers, raised a $25 million Series B round led by Burda Principal Investments, with eBay, FJ Labs, and H14 as well as previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, HV Capital, and Y Combinator also digging in. The company has raised a total of $45 million. Tech Funding News has more here.

Hakimo, a six-year-old Menlo Park startup that uses AI to monitor existing security cameras for property owners, helping detect incidents without adding security staff, raised a $12 million round led by Zigg Capital, with Neotribe Ventures, Vertex Ventures, Defy.vc, and Rocketship.vc also engaging. The company has raised a total of $32 million. More here.

Handspring Health, a five-year-old New York startup that provides virtual therapy for children, young adults, and families, matching patients with employed clinicians across acuity levels, raised a $19 million Series B round led by RPS Ventures, with Angelini Ventures as well as prior backers Cobalt Ventures, NextView Ventures, nvp capital, Hyde Park Angels, and Cornucopian Capital also investing. The company has raised a total of $37 million. More here.

Polysense, a four-year-old Ghent startup that uses cameras and AI to inspect food factory lines and adjust production settings before quality problems create waste, raised a $10.7 million seed round led by Felix Capital, with Fortino Ventures, Syndicate One, and 100IN also taking part. Tech Funding News has more here.

Velocity, a one-year-old Tel Aviv startup that develops monetization infrastructure that lets AI apps show context-based advertising and commercial offers based on users' immediate intent, raised a $27 million seed round co-led by NFX and Red Dot Capital Partners, with Stardom Ventures, Corner Ventures, and Transcend also participating. CTech has more here.

Aardaia, a one-year-old startup based in Wageningen, The Netherlands, that breeds protein-rich nitrogen-fixing tuber crops that could give European farmers a local alternative to imported soy, raised a $5.7 million seed round led by Point Nine, with Astanor and Grey Silo Ventures as well as previous investor FoodLabs also participating. Tech Funding News has more here.

Blue Origin, the 25-year-old rocket company based in Kent, WA, and founded by Jeff Bezos, is reportedly raising $10 billion in its first outside financing round at a $130 billion pre-money valuation, with Coatue Management expected to lead and Bezos contributing another $2 billion. The New York Times has more here.

Emesent, an eight-year-old startup based in Brisbane, Australia, that makes drone-mounted sensors that map GPS-denied areas for mining, construction, and defense reconnaissance, raised a $10 million round. Investors included National Reconstruction Fund, NGS Super, Hostplus, Main Sequence, QIC Ventures, and Orion Resource Partners. Forbes Australia has more here.

Kord, a seven-year-old London startup that helps law firms and estate agents onboard clients, run identity and anti-money-laundering checks, and collect client payments in one workflow, raised an $8.5 million Series A round led by Guinness Ventures, with Beringea and SFC Capital also opting in. The company has raised a total of $12 million. Tech Funding News has more here.

One Raven, a one-year-old startup based in Scottsdale, AZ, that builds smart home systems that run household devices locally and keep homeowner data off external cloud services, raised a $5 million seed round led by Fifth Wall. More here.

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Paradigm, the eight-year-old crypto venture firm founded by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former Sequoia partner Matt Huang, raised $1.2 billion for a new fund that will expand beyond crypto into AI, robotics, drones, and space startups. TechCrunch has more here.

OpenAI is buying Northslope, a two-year-old applied-AI firm based in Denver and founded by Palantir veterans, as it pushes into embedding forward-deployed engineers inside customer businesses. Northslope raised a total of $22 million from investors including Friends & Family Capital, Goldcrest Capital, Fifth Down Capital, and Leblon Capital. Axios was the first to report the news. The Next Web has more here.

GM-backed Momenta raised $751 million in a Hong Kong IPO that valued the Suzhou autonomous-driving company at about $9 billion, but its muted debut reflected investor concern that self-driving companies remain far from large-scale commercialization and profitability. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

OpenAI chief futurist Joshua Achiam is leaving after nearly nine years at the company, adding to a string of safety-focused departures as OpenAI reorganizes its safety, policy, and research teams and prepares to go public. Wired has more here.

A Sotheby’s auction of Jensen Huang’s signed Tom Ford leather jacket has already drawn $60,000 in bids, as the Nvidia CEO’s longtime uniform becomes a collectible artifact of the AI boom. Fast Company has more here.

Elon Musk is feuding with Tom Holland – not the actor but the British historian and “Rest Is History” co-host – after Holland praised Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Business Insider has more here.

Nvidia has lost roughly $1 trillion in market value in less than two months, pushing its valuation to pre-AI-boom levels even as analysts keep raising profit estimates. Bloomberg has more here.

According to reporting from the Financial Times, insiders and investors are worried that Palantir’s embrace of Trump-era politics, immigration enforcement, and defense work could threaten its government contracts, corporate sales, and ability to retain skilled engineers. More here.

Microsoft’s Xbox spent nearly $80 billion trying to turn blockbuster games into a Netflix-style subscription business, only to find that many gamers mostly stick with a few favorite titles. Bloomberg has more here.

A Waymo robotaxi in San Mateo reportedly detected two teenagers drinking and firing Orbeez from toy guns out its windows. Not amused, it pulled into a parking lot and alerted police, keeping the teens locked inside all the while. Fast Company has more here.

Hawaii will experience Lahaina Noon this month, a twice-a-year phenomenon found nowhere else in the U.S. in which the sun sits directly overhead and vertical objects briefly cast almost no shadow.

Heartwarming moments from this year’s World Cup.

In praise of cold plunges.

Fiat is bringing the $13,995 Topolino to the U.S., a tiny electric micromobility vehicle with 46 miles of range and a top speed of just 19 mph. Fantastico!

TechCrunch digs into two new apps for the slow tech set: Roost, a “slow-cial” app that makes messages travel at the speed of virtual birds; and WeWard, which can lock distracting apps until users hit a step goal.

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