Hi! We're back from our brief hiatus — hope you've enjoyed one of your own — and feeling fully recharged after spending most of the last two weeks offline with the interns. (These are our teenagers, as some of you know, and though we've jokingly referred to them as interns since they were toddlers, they have actually become helpful humans.)

You might also notice we're using a shiny new email platform. Beehiiv investors, we think you'll be particularly excited about this choice. Tonight is our initial test-drive; if you have any feedback about it, let us know. - CL

Top News

Cloudflare called out Perplexity in a blog post for disguising its bots to scrape sites that explicitly blocked them, reigniting scrutiny over how AI firms vacuum up the open web to feed their models. TechCrunch has more here.

OpenAI says ChatGPT is barreling toward 700 million weekly users, up 4x since last year. TechCrunch has the story here.

Table of Contents

• Top News

• A Top Designer Was Banned from Dribbble. Now He’s …

• Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings

• Smaller Fundings

• Sponsored By ...

• Going Public

• People

• Essential Reads

• Detours

• Brain Rot

• Retail Therapy

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A Top Designer Was Banned from Dribbble. Now He’s Building His Own Competitor.

By Sarah Perez

Dribbble has permanently banned dozens of designers from its platform following a new effort to pivot to a marketplace and chase monetization. This includes one of the platform’s most well-known designers, Gleb Kuznetsov, founder of the San Francisco-based design studio Milkinside.

Dribbble deleted his account with its over 210 million followers because he shared his contact information with prospective clients through the platform in violation of its new rules.

Remarked Kuznetsov in a post on X, “I brought 100,000+ monthly users. 15 years of work. 12,000+ shots. All instantly deleted, because a client asked for my email. One warning. No appeal.”

Fed up with the changes at the company, which helps product, UX, web, and other digital designers showcase their portfolios and find new clients, Kuznetsov says he’s been talking to investors about launching a competitor.

Shortly after his social media post, Dribbble users expressed their shock and anger over the decision, crediting Kuznetsov as being one of their biggest inspirations and lamenting that the platform would make such a misguided move.

Dribbble, meanwhile, says Kuznetsov was actually warned multiple times that he was violating the new rules and the email was the final notice.

Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings

Fundamental Research Labs, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that builds AI agents that perform tasks such as scheduling and data analysis, raised a $33 million Series A round led by Prosus Ventures, with Andreessen Horowitz, Patron, First Spark, Factorial, VamosVentures, and Patrick Collison also piling on. The company has raised a total of $40+ million. TechCrunch has more here.

Jeh Aerospace, a three-year-old Atlanta and Hyderabad startup that manufactures metallic components for commercial aircraft engines and structures, raised an $11 million Series A round led by Elevation Capital, with participation from General Catalyst. The company has raised a total of approximately $15 million. TechCrunch has more here.

OpenMind, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that is building a universal operating system to enable humanoid robots to understand their environment and interact with humans and each other in real-time, raised a $20 million round led by Pantera Capital, with Ribbit, Coinbase Ventures, and Pebblebed also pitching in. TechCrunch has more here.

Pantomath, a three-year-old Cincinnati startup that automates detection and self-resolution of data infrastructure failures by deploying AI agents across enterprise data pipelines in real-time, raised a $30 million Series B round led by General Catalyst, with Sierra Ventures, Bowery Capital, Epic Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Cintrifuse Capital, and Foster Ventures also taking part. More here.

QuamCore, a four-year-old Tel Aviv startup that is designing a superconducting quantum processor architecture that packs one million qubits into a single cryostat by embedding digital control logic directly inside the chamber in order to overcome scaling limits, raised a $25 million Series A round led by Sentinel Global, with Arkin Capital as well as previous investors Viola Ventures, Earth & Beyond Ventures, Surround Ventures, Rhodium, and Qbeat also contributing. The company has raised a total of $35 million. CTech has more here.

Subzero Labs, a crypto startup founded this year that is developing a new blockchain designed to enable developers to build scalable decentralized applications using familiar web2 tools and architecture, raised a $20 million round led by Pantera Capital, with Coinbase Ventures, Fabric Ventures, Mysten Labs, Susquehanna Crypto, and Varient also investing. Fortune has more here.

Tako, a four-year-old São Paulo startup whose AI-powered tools help automate employee onboarding, payroll, and labor compliance for mid-size companies operating in Brazil, raised an $18 million round co-led by Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. LatamList has more here.

Smaller Fundings

Arivihan, a five-year-old Bengaluru startup that provides AI-powered, one-on-one tutoring in local languages to high school students preparing for college entrance exams across India, raised a $4.2 million round co-led by Prosus and Accel and including GSF Investors. Entrepreneur has more here.

Neurogram, a five-year-old São Paulo startup that automates EEG workflow by ingesting exam data, running AI‑powered analyses, and generating certified medical reports, raised a $3 million seed round led by Headline, with additional participation from Romero Rodrigues. LatamList has more here.

Pearl Edison, a two-year-old Detroit startup that designs custom home heating and cooling system upgrades and connects homeowners with contractors via utility-branded programs, raised a $3.3 million seed round co-led by New System Ventures and Commonweal Ventures, with Lightbank and Newlab also stepping up. TechCrunch has more here.

Qbeast, a five-year-old startup based in Barcelona and Bellevue, WA, that uses multidimensional indexing and optimized data layout on open-table/data-lake systems to accelerate analytics and reduce compute costs, raised a $7.6 million seed round led by Peak XV's Surge, with HWK Tech Investment and Elaia Partners also participating. GeekWire has more here.

Raise Robotics, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that builds rugged, mobile robots that automate hazardous and repetitive tasks like layout, drilling, fastening, and inspection on vertical construction sites, raised a $7.8 million seed round led by MaC Ventures, with Undivided Ventures as well as previous investors Cybernetix Ventures, Zacua Ventures, and Union Labs also investing. ENR has more here.

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New Funds

New Era Capital Partners, an eight-year-old Israeli VC firm with offices in Tel Aviv and Boston, has raised $120 million for its third fund to back “post-war” AI-powered cybersecurity, enterprise software, finance, and smart transportation startups. CTech has more here.

Going Public

Bullish, a four-year-old crypto exchange and parent of CoinDesk that is based in the Cayman Islands, disclosed in an SEC filing that it plans to raise up to $629 million in a U.S. IPO that would value it at $4.2 billion. Bloomberg has more here.

Figma’s stock plunged 27% today after its IPO on Thursday in which it briefly tripled its share price. CNBC has more here.

People

Tesla has awarded Elon Musk a $29 billion stock grant in case the Delaware Supreme Court does not reinstate his earlier $56 billion package, aiming to keep him focused on Tesla as xAI and SpaceX increasingly compete for his attention. TechCrunch has more here.

The New York Times goes deep on the rise of twentysomething AI CEOs like Cognition AI's Scott Wu, Cursor's Michael Truell, Cluely's Roy Lee, and Scale AI's Alexandr Wang who either dropped out of college or skipped it entirely. More here.

Essential Reads

Silicon Valley giants like Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Palantir are now building weapons, advising the Army, and dropping AI-for-peace pledges as venture firms like Andreessen Horowitz pile in and the military industrial complex becomes the tech’s newest growth engine. The New York Times has more here.

Electrek digs through the transcripts of Tesla's recent Texas trial and discovers that the company withheld crash data, misled police, and denied the existence of key Autopilot evidence for years, only to admit it after being cornered by forensic proof. More here.

The Wall Street Journal shines a light on Index Ventures, which is cashing in big with over $11 billion in expected returns from Figma, Scale AI, and Wiz. More here.

OpenAI is rolling out pop-up break reminders and retraining its chatbot to sidestep direct answers on high-stakes personal topics like suicide, after reports showed it was cheerfully engaging with users’ darkest thoughts instead of shutting them down. Engadget has more here.

AI obituary generators are creating clickable templates for time-strapped families and funeral directors, but critics warn that reducing a life to machine-written sentiment risks flattening the very memories the deceased’s loved ones are trying to preserve. The Washington Post has more here.

Detours

The U.S. Open is launching a reality dating show during this year’s tournament in a bid to pull Gen Z and pop culture fans into the tennis tent, even if longtime purists are left scratching their heads.

Filmgoers can’t agree whether Superman’s CGI dog is movie gold or cinematic kryptonite.

These days, even ear surgeons are asking for five-star reviews.

Brain Rot

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Retail Therapy

This 5,950-square-foot steel-and-glass home on Mercer Island offering epic views of Lake Washington and Mount Rainier just hit the market for $6.9 million.

Home Depot is now selling an updated version of its popular 12-foot-long Halloween skeleton that boasts live audio, a motion sensor, and customizable ribcage lights and eyes.

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