Our newest StrictlyVC Download is out, featuring Amjad Masad of Replit — recorded at our recent San Francisco evening. It was a great night, and we have two more coming up in quick succession.

First, Athens on May 29, in partnership with global entrepreneurship organization Endeavor. We were there last year and it was truly a highlight — rooftop party included. Then Los Angeles (El Segundo) on Thursday, June 18, in partnership with Aerospace Corp. We'd love to see you at either one. More details on both soon. 🎉

Cerebras Systems priced its IPO at $185 per share, roughly 16% above the top end of its already-raised $150-to-$160 expected range, raising $5.55 billion and reaching a fully diluted valuation of about $56 billion as investor appetite for AI infrastructure companies continues to intensify. CNBC has more here.

Court disclosures made public today revealed that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman holds more than $2 billion worth of stakes in companies that have done business with OpenAI, including Helion Energy, Stripe, Retro Biosciences, and Cerebras Systems, as he faces growing scrutiny over potential conflicts of interest tied to the company’s commercial deals. Reuters has more here.

The average company board deck runs 47 pages.

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By Lucas Ropek

With the tech industry singularly focused on AI models, Anthropic is having an exceptionally good year.

The company may soon pull ahead of its main competitor, as it looks to raise tens of billions of dollars in a funding round that would put its valuation at some $950 billion (OpenAI was valued at $854 billion in its March round), and business customers increasingly express a preference for Claude over ChatGPT. A recent report showed Anthropic recently outpaced OpenAI among business customers, quadrupling its market share since May 2025.

Cat Wu, Anthropic’s head of product for Claude Code and Cowork, has been a key figure in that success. Since joining the company in August 2024, Wu has helped shepherd Claude through a critical phase, leveling it up from a purely informational chatbot to a coding tool and beyond. Wu, who oversees the development of new features, is frequently paired with Boris Cherny, a core member of Anthropic’s technical staff and the creator of Claude Code, leading the pair to be characterized as Anthropic’s “Batman and Robin.”

Wu sat down with me at last week’s second annual Code with Claude conference in San Francisco, where she discussed how she thinks about product strategy, and how she hopes the experience of using Claude will change in the future. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When you’re looking at product strategy, how much of it is reactive to your peers or your competitors? Do you think about that at all?

Anduril, the nine-year-old startup based in Costa Mesa, CA, that builds autonomous weapons systems, drones, submarines, aircraft, and military surveillance technology for defense and national security applications, raised a $5 billion Series H round at a $61 billion post-money valuation, double the valuation of its last round in June of last year. The deal was co-led by previous investors Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, with prior backers Founders Fund and Lux Capital also taking part. The company has raised a total of $6.8 billion. TechCrunch has more here.

Blue Origin, a 26-year-old company founded by Jeff Bezos and based in Kent, WA, that is developing rockets, spacecraft, lunar landers, and satellite infrastructure for commercial spaceflight and government missions, is considering raising its first outside round. The Financial Times has more here.

Fractile, a four-year-old UK startup that develops AI inference chips designed to speed up responses from large language models, raised a $220 million Series B round from Factorial Funds, Accel, and Founders Fund. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Mind Robotics, a six-month-old Palo Alto startup founded by Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe that develops AI-powered industrial robots for manufacturing, raised a $400 million round at a $3.4 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by Kleiner Perkins, with Salesforce Ventures and Incharge Capital also participating. The company has raised a total of $1+ billion. TechCrunch has more here.

Recursive Superintelligence, a six-month-old startup with offices in San Francisco and London that is developing AI systems capable of recursively improving themselves, raised a $650+ million round at a $4+ billion valuation. Investors included Google Ventures, Greycroft, Nvidia, and AMD. The New York Times has more here.

Star Catcher, a two-year-old startup based in Jacksonville, FL, that is building an orbital power grid to beam solar energy via lasers to satellites in space, raised a $65 million Series A round led by B Capital, with Shield Capital and Cerberus Ventures also anteing up. The company has raised a total of $88 million. Space has more here.

9amHealth, a five-year-old startup based in Encinitas, CA, that offers virtual care programs for patients with chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia, raised a $26 million Series B round led by Define Ventures, with SemperVirens, Catalio Capital, and New Health Ventures also participating. More here.

Config, a one-year-old startup based in Seoul and San Jose, CA, that develops training data infrastructure for robotics foundation models, raised a $27 million seed round at a $200+ million valuation. Samsung Venture Investment led the transaction, with ZER01NE Ventures, LG Technology Ventures, SKT America, Mirae Asset Ventures, Korea Development Bank, GS Futures, Kakao Ventures, Z Ventures, and Pieter Abbeel also piling on. The company has raised a total of $35 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Embat, a five-year-old Madrid startup that automates treasury management, accounting workflows, payments, and cash forecasting for mid-market companies, raised a $33 million round led by Cathay Innovation, with previous investors Creandum, Samaipata, 4Founders, and Venture Friends also pitching in. The company has raised a total of $58+ million. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Gaiia, a seven-year-old Quebec City startup that replaces fragmented telecom billing, provisioning, account management, and field service systems with a unified operating platform for communications providers, raised a $40 million Series B round. JMI Equity was the deal lead, with previous investor Inovia Capital also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $66+ million. More here.

Greenboard, a three-year-old New York startup that automates securities compliance workflows such as communications supervision, marketing review, employee compliance, and regulatory recordkeeping for financial institutions, raised a $15.5 million Series A round led by Base10 Partners, with Y Combinator, General Catalyst, Commerce Ventures, Transpose Platform, Liquid2 Ventures, and Kulveer Taggar also engaging. The company has raised a total of $20+ million. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

NVision, an 11-year-old company based in Ulm, Germany, that develops quantum technologies for cancer imaging, drug development, and quantum computing, raised a $38 million Series B round led by Abbott, with previous investors Playground Global, Entrée Capital, Matterwave, and CDP Venture Capital also stepping up. The company also secured a $17 million venture loan from European Investment Bank. NVision has raised a total of $120 million in debt and equity. CTech has more here.

Outmarket, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that automates insurance brokerage workflows such as policy checking, loss run analysis, proposal generation, and matching insurance submissions with carriers likely to underwrite them, raised a $17 million Series A round led by Permanent Capital Ventures and including SignalFire, Fika Ventures, TTV Capital, and Dash Fund. The company has raised a total of $21.7 million. More here.

Reel, a six-year-old Copenhagen startup that helps businesses and renewable energy producers manage electricity price volatility through power purchase agreements, energy trading, and battery storage optimization, raised a $17.6 million Series A round led by Future Energy Ventures, with The Footprint Firm as well as previous investors UVC Partners and Transition also investing. The company has raised a total of $26.1 million. EU-Startups has more here.

DesignVerse, a two-year-old Bucharest startup that modernizes legacy enterprise applications by generating production-ready software from companies’ internal documentation, design systems, and engineering standards, raised a $5.5 million seed round. Investors included Begin Capital, Gapminder VC, and Underline Ventures. EU-Startups has more here.

Hint, a one-year-old startup based in Charlotte, NC, that helps homeowners manage home maintenance, repairs, and property decisions with personalized guidance and real-time home monitoring, raised a $10 million seed round led by Slow Ventures, with Montauk Capital, Tusk Venture Partners, Amplo, Energy Impact Partners, Hannah Grey VC, and Brian Kelly also digging in. Inc.com has more here.

NanoStruct, a five-year-old startup based in Würzburg, Germany, that detects foodborne pathogens such as Listeria and Salmonella in food samples within hours using nanostructured sensor chips, raised a $3 million seed round co-led by High-Tech Gründerfonds, Bayern Kapital, and the AUXXO Female Catalyst Fund. Tech Funding News has more here.

Origin Lab, a recently founded San Francisco startup that turns licensed video game worlds into structured training data for multimodal AI models, raised an $8 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with SV Angel, Eniac, Seven Stars, FPV, Kevin Lin, and Kyle Vogt also participating. TechCrunch has more here.

Ventory, a five-year-old startup based in Kraainem, Belgium, that connects ERP systems with field inventory operations across service vans, depots, consignment stock, and customer sites, raised a $3.1 million round led by KBC Securities, with previous investors Finindus, Matterwave, and Delaware also anteing up. The SaaS News has more here.

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Top Down Ventures, an eight-year-old Vancouver venture firm, closed a $28 million fund focused on startups building software and AI tools for managed service providers, or MSPs, which the firm describes as the “invisible infrastructure” serving small and medium-sized businesses. BetaKit has more here.

Fervo Energy surged 33% in its Nasdaq debut, pushing its valuation past $10 billion after the geothermal startup raised $1.89 billion in an upsized IPO fueled by booming electricity demand from AI data centers. TechCrunch has more here.

OpenAI executive Joshua Achiam testified that Elon Musk called him a “jackass” during a tense 2018 debate over AI safety after Achiam challenged Musk’s push to race aggressively toward AGI, with coworkers later gifting him a gold “jackass” trophy inscribed “Never stop being a jackass for safety.” Business Insider has more here.

Kenneth Auchenberg has joined Innovation Endeavors, an early-stage VC firm co-founded by Eric Schmidt that invests in AI, computing infrastructure, and other frontier technologies, as a partner. He previously led developer platform efforts at Stripe and helped build VS Code at Microsoft. More here.

LinkedIn is planning to lay off about 5% of its workforce, or roughly 875 employees, as the Microsoft-owned company reorganizes teams around growth areas despite posting 12% revenue growth in the most recent quarter. Reuters has more here.

Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate reportedly climbed from $9 billion at the end of 2025 to more than $30 billion in April, and finance startup Ramp said more of its customers now use Anthropic’s models than OpenAI’s, the first time this has happened. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Andreessen Horowitz has become the biggest disclosed donor of the 2026 midterm cycle, funneling more than $115 million into political efforts tied to crypto, AI, and Republican leadership, including $47.5 million to the crypto-focused Fairshake PAC network and $50 million to the pro-AI Leading the Future super PAC. The New York Times has more here.

Members of Reddit’s WallStreetBets community are railing against an SEC proposal that would let public companies replace quarterly earnings reports with semi-annual filings, arguing the move would further advantage institutional investors over retail traders just as companies like SpaceX prepare for highly anticipated IPOs. TechCrunch has more here.

Members of Polymarket are betting heavily on which characters will die in the upcoming season of Euphoria, sparking speculation that people connected to the HBO show could be using insider knowledge to profit from prediction markets. Business Insider has more here.

Members of a growing crypto-trading subculture are packing into live “trading tournaments” that turn leveraged memecoin speculation into an esports-style spectator event, complete with boxing rings, live commentators, prediction-market betting, and traders battling for cash prizes and samurai swords in front of cheering crowds.

Police in the Burgundy region of France are warning drivers to watch out for “drunk” deer and other wild animals that consume fermented fruit or decaying vegetation this time of year after authorities released video of a visibly disoriented deer spinning in circles and repeatedly collapsing in a field.

Orient Express and Guerlain are launching a 14-day “Ocean Rebirth” wellness retreat aboard the 722-foot Orient Express Corinthian – the world’s largest sailing yacht – featuring personalized longevity programs, Michelin-starred dining, and onboard wellness experts during a transatlantic voyage from Lisbon to Barbados. We'd note that responsible journalism requires firsthand experience, and we are available.

This would have been the perfect coat to wear on a Spirit Airlines flight.

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