Happy Friday, all! Quick mention: if you'll be in New York on Thursday night, September 10, we hope you'll consider joining us for a rare StrictlyVC Insider evening in the city. We're especially excited about the night that's coming together, including an appearance by prominent VC Deven Parekh, who has been helping run the powerful New York firm Insight Partners for more than 25 years and has generously agreed to talk about how the firm differentiates itself at a moment when so much money is sloshing around — including from firms that once managed far less.

We're also excited to announce that Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures will be joining us. Rabois just moved to New York (watch out, New York!) and is anything but boring company; we're thrilled to be sitting down with him, too.

And we’re not quite done programming this one. Major thanks to the team at Collaborative Fund for co-hosting this one with us. You can learn more here; note that space is limited.

DeepSeek says its new experimental multimodal V4 Flash model nearly matches Anthropic’s top Opus 4.8 model on multimodal agentic tasks, as Chinese AI developers continue closing the performance gap with U.S. rivals. Bloomberg has more here.

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By Connie Loizos

Michael Polansky is remarkably unassuming for someone operating in a corner of the world known for outsize egos.

Seated at a leafy patio outside a popular bakery in Mill Valley, an affluent town about 15 miles north of San Francisco, Polansky — bespectacled, his fresh face framed by dark hair shot through with gray — has the look and the friendly demeanor of a young professor.

He is, in fact, both the founder of a buzzy AI and biology startup called Outer Biosciences and the creative, business, and romantic partner to Stefani Germanotta — better known as Lady Gaga. It’s an unlikely double life. On the one hand, the couple invariably moves in the world that comes with celebrity; on the other, he’s running an outfit that has spent years figuring out how to keep living human tissue alive outside the body — for over a month, so far — without anyone outside the company knowing.

He didn’t see any of it coming. Polansky grew up in Minnesota and went on to Harvard, where he studied applied mathematics and computer science, graduating in 2006. Afterward, he logged three years at the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates — “a very unique place,” Polansky says over coffee, and one where he had “a really good experience,” even if it wasn’t a place he was going to “wake up and be excited about . . .every day.”

His pilgrimage from Bridgewater to Silicon Valley ran through Minnesota. By coincidence, Sean Parker’s assistant at the time had been Polansky’s neighbor growing up. At a 2007 wedding in their home state, she mentioned that Parker was looking for someone to work with him. Polansky already knew who Parker was and was looking to move west. The two had dinner in New York, “hit it off immediately,” and, as Polansky tells it, he quit Bridgewater the next day and moved to San Francisco.

He first landed a role as a principal at Founders Fund when the firm was run by its four original partners — Peter Thiel, Sean Parker, Luke Nosek and Ken Howery – with Polansky and another young principal at the time, Brian Singerman, sharing an office. “It was a really, really great experience,” Polansky says.

Cityblock, a nine-year-old Brooklyn startup that helps health plans care for high-need Medicaid and Medicare members through primary care, behavioral health, chronic disease management, and social-service support, raised a $116 million Series E round. The deal was led by previous investor General Catalyst. The company has raised a total of $900+ million. Fierce Healthcare has more here.

Math Magic, a two-year-old Beijing startup that helps creators turn photos and designs into 3D models and personalized physical products through automated modeling, print preparation, and fulfillment, raised a round of approximately $50 million co-led by BAI Capital and HyT Capital, with V Fund as well as previous investors HSG, IDG Capital, Long-Z Investments, Crystal Stream, and Jinqiu Capital also investing. More here.

Starcloud, a two-year-old startup based in Redmond, WA, that is developing orbital data centers for AI inference, raised a $250 million Series A extension at a $2.3 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by Manhattan West Ventures, with Nvidia, Cisco, Benchmark, EQT, Soma, NFX, 776, Cedar Capital, Goanna Capital, and Standard Capital also participating. TechCrunch has more here.

Pixelgen Technologies, a six-year-old Stockholm startup that maps how proteins cluster and localize on individual cell surfaces to help researchers study disease mechanisms and treatment responses, raised a $15.5 million Series B round led by Flat Capital, with Industrifonden and Navigare Ventures also stepping up. More here.

Remepy, a four-year-old New York startup that develops hybrid medicines that combine prescription drugs with personalized therapeutic apps for physical, cognitive, and behavioral treatment, raised a $36 million Series A round co-led by O.G. Venture Partners and M Ventures, with NFX, Vine Ventures, TechAviv, 97212 Ventures, Qumra Capital, Fresh Fund, PsyMed Ventures, Tadmor Group, and IT-Farm Corp also taking part. The company has raised a total of $62 million. CTech has more here.

Vessev, a nine-year-old Auckland startup that makes electric hydrofoiling passenger boats for fleet operators running low-emission ferry, tourism, and point-to-point transport services, raised a $19 million Series A round led by Blackbird Ventures, with GD1, Rypples, K1W1, Icehouse Ventures, Shasta Ventures, and NZVC also participating. RNZ has more here.

Artwod, a five-year-old startup based in Beerse, Belgium, that helps artists improve their skills through structured practice, progress tracking, and community feedback, raised a $1.3 million seed round led by Airbridge Equity Partners, with ForsVC also anteing up. Vestbee has more here.

Beldex, an eight-year-old startup based in Victoria, Seychelles, that builds blockchain infrastructure that encrypts transactions, communications, AI agent identities, and cross-chain activity for decentralized applications, raised an $8 million round led by Sigma Capital, with NTC, Nxgen, Digital Consensus Fund, and EAK Ventures as well as previous investors DWF Labs and Block Alpha also buying in. The company has raised a total of $36 million. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Dirac Labs, a three-year-old startup based in Madison, WI, that builds quantum positioning sensors that help aircraft, submarines, and industrial vehicles navigate where GPS signals cannot reach, raised a $1.8 million pre-seed round led by TitletownTech, with Automotive Ventures, Riceberg Ventures, quantumEDGE Ventures, Jude Gomila, and Balaji Srinivasan also chipping in. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Guideless, a one-year-old Vilnius startup that turns captured business software workflows into editable narrated training guides that companies can update, translate, and share, raised a $1.3 million pre-seed round led by Superhero Capital, with FIRSTPICK VC also digging in. EU-Startups has more here.

Mafix, a two-year-old Seattle startup that turns silicate rocks into fertilizer that releases crop nutrients and removes carbon dioxide when applied to farmland, raised a $5.4 million pre-seed round led by Azolla Ventures, with Counteract VC, Astera Institute, Plug & Play Ventures, Impact Science Ventures, and a Dutch family office also engaging. ESG Today has more here.

Oshen, a four-year-old startup based in Plymouth, UK, that builds wind- and solar-powered ocean robots that help navies, weather agencies, and scientists monitor wide areas of open ocean, raised a $5 million round led by Lunar Ventures, with AlbionVC, Twin Track, and Concept Ventures also opting in. UKTN has more here.

Peeko, a one-year-old Bengaluru startup that delivers baby and kids-care essentials such as apparel, diapers, toys, and baby food within 60 minutes, raised a $7 million Series A round led by Chiratae Ventures, with Stellaris Venture Partners also pitching in. Entrackr has more here.

Solinide Photonics, a five-year-old startup based in Partille, Sweden, that develops photonic chips that move large volumes of data between chips with lower power use for AI data centers and telecommunications, raised a $4.7 million seed round co-led by Navigare Ventures and PSV Hafnium, with Chalmers Ventures, Turbine Capital, Norrsken Evolve, and Almi Greentech Fund also taking stakes. More here.

China has a homegrown rival to Samsung and Micron in the memory-chip business, and it's about to go public. CCSH, the parent company of Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) — one of the few Chinese firms that designs and manufactures its own NAND flash memory, the chips that store data in phones, laptops, and servers — is seeking to raise $4.9 billion in an IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market, a Nasdaq-style exchange for tech companies. The offering would value the company at somewhere between $41 billion and $49 billion. Reuters has more here.

Nscale, a London-based AI cloud and data-center company, is seeking to raise as much as $3 billion in a U.S. IPO that could come as soon as September after telling prospective investors it has about $51 billion in contracted revenue. Bloomberg has more here.

Mark Zuckerberg reportedly bought the 19th-century Strancally Castle and its 440-acre estate in Ireland for an estimated $23 million to $35 million, giving the Meta CEO a new residence about two hours from the company’s international headquarters in Dublin. TechCrunch has more here.

Apple is cutting more than 200 jobs across its Siri, Vision Pro, and software teams, including largely shutting down a Vision Pro gaming group and reducing immersive-video production as it reallocates resources toward AI, a rebuilt Siri, and future smart glasses. Bloomberg has more here.

New York has overtaken the San Francisco Bay Area as North America’s largest tech-talent market for the first time in 13 years, with 394,300 tech workers versus 375,730, as finance firms hire more AI talent and Bay Area tech employment contracts. San Francisco still leads in AI-specific jobs. CNBC has more here.

Crypto, AI, and online betting companies are driving record corporate spending on the 2026 midterms, with U.S. companies pouring $517 million into House and Senate races through the first quarter—already surpassing the entire 2024 cycle. Reuters has more here.

Oura is facing a proposed class action accusing it of misleading customers about the accuracy of its sleep tracking, alleging the ring cannot directly measure sleep stages and that its AI-generated estimates may be little better than a coin flip. TechCrunch has more here.

Nvidia researchers have discovered that the software layer surrounding an AI model can matter more than the model itself on complex, long-running tasks: adding better memory management and a supervising agent boosted Claude Opus 5 from 30% to 100% on the ARC-AGI-3 benchmark. TechCrunch has more here.

Tesla has killed its nearly decade-old Solar Roof, scrubbing the product from its website after years of high costs, sluggish adoption, installation problems, and reports of underperformance, while steering customers back toward conventional solar panels. TechCrunch has more here.

Flock Safety says its fastest-growing business is police drones that can fly 60 mph, reach 911 scenes in under 90 seconds on average, and read license plates from up to 2,000 feet away, raising fresh concerns about aerial surveillance. TechSpot has more here.

Silicon Valley’s AI obsession is reshaping how people talk about themselves, with tech workers increasingly describing human behavior in chatbot terms such as “hallucinating,” “training data,” “context rot,” “high temperature,” and “updating their weights.”

Vintage baby clothes are having a moment, as style-conscious parents hunt for tiny Levi’s, Armani, OshKosh, and 1990s tees, with one vintage Eeyore romper recently selling on eBay for more than $3,000.

Competitive boat docking is drawing growing crowds around the Chesapeake Bay, where captains race 30- to 40-foot boats into slips in roughly 20 seconds, sometimes smashing pilings or tiki bars; drone videos have helped the niche sport amass more than 500,000 social-media followers.

Nike’s $95 Mind 001 mule, which uses 22 independently moving foam nodes under each foot to heighten sensory feedback, has become one of the brand’s breakout hits of 2026, repeatedly selling out; a new army-green “Tarp Green” version arrives October 1st.

TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez recommends the $225 Pebble Time 2, a playful smartwatch with a 21-day battery, always-on color e-paper display, physical buttons, and more than 2,100 community-built watch faces and apps, claiming it offers a simpler, more customizable alternative to the Apple Watch.

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