Arizona’s attorney general has sued Kalshi, saying its prediction market illegally allows election betting in the state. The company faces a similar lawsuit in Nevada but continues to argue that it is subject to federal – not state – oversight. TechCrunch has more here.

Harmonic 

 Scout has access to Harmonic’s proprietary data, trusted by 9/10 of the largest VCs. 

 It knows things that your favorite model doesn’t. 

By Anna Heim & Rebecca Bellan

Most enterprise AI projects fail not because companies lack the technology, but because the models they’re using don’t understand their business. The models are often trained on the internet, rather than decades of internal documents, workflows, and institutional knowledge. 

That gap is where Mistral, the French AI startup, sees opportunity. On Tuesday, the company announced Mistral Forge, a platform that lets enterprises build custom models trained on their own data. Mistral announced the platform at Nvidia GTC, Nvidia’s annual technology conference, which this year is focused heavily on AI and agentic models for enterprise.

It’s a pointed move for Mistral, a company that has built its business on corporate clients while rivals OpenAI and Anthropic have soared ahead in terms of consumer adoption. CEO Arthur Mensch says Mistral’s laser focus on the enterprise is working: The company is on track to surpass $1 billion in annual recurring revenue this year.

A big part of doubling down on enterprise is giving companies more control over their data and their AI systems, Mistral says. 

“What Forge does is it lets enterprises and governments customize AI models for their specific needs,” Elisa Salamanca, Mistral’s head of product, told TechCrunch. 

Several companies in the enterprise AI space already claim to offer similar capabilities, but most focus on fine-tuning existing models or layering proprietary data on top through techniques like retrieval augmented generation (RAG). These approaches don’t fundamentally retrain models; instead, they adapt or query them at runtime using company data.

Mistral, by contrast, says it is enabling companies to train models from scratch. In theory, this could address some of the limitations of more common approaches — for example, better handling of non-English or highly domain-specific data, and greater control over model behavior. It could also allow companies to train agentic systems using reinforcement learning and reduce reliance on third-party model providers, avoiding risks like model changes or deprecation. 

R1 Therapeutics, a recently launched startup based in Redwood City, CA, that is developing a drug for high phosphate levels in chronic kidney disease patients on dialysis, raised a $77.5 million Series A round co‑led by ​Abingworth, DaVita Venture Group, and F‑Prime, with Curie.Bio, SymBiosis, and U.S. Renal Care also contributing. Reuters has more here.

ReNew Green Energy Solutions, a 15-year-old company based in Gurgaon, India, that operates renewable energy systems for commercial and industrial customers, raised a $95 million round led by LeapFrog Investments, with Emerging Market Climate Action Fund and Carlyle AlpInvest also participating. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Surf AI, a two-year-old New York startup that has built a platform that ingests data from enterprise systems to prioritize security risks and coordinate remediation workflows, raised a $57 million round led by Accel, with previous investors Cyberstarts and Boldstart Ventures also pitching in. SecurityWeek has more here.

Upvest, a nine-year-old Berlin startup that provides API-based infrastructure for banks, brokers, and wealth managers to manage securities trading, custody, and back-office operations, raised a $90 million round co-led by Sapphire Ventures and Tencent, with previous investors BlackRock and Bessemer Venture Partners also taking part. The Next Web has more here.

Atlys, a five-year-old San Francisco and Indian startup whose online platform lets travelers apply for and manage visas, raised a $36 million Series C round led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, with Elevation Capital, Long Journey Ventures, Peak XV Partners, and MakeMyTrip also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $71+ million. More here.

Chorus Intelligence, a 15-year-old UK company that helps law enforcement analyze and connect data from digital investigations, raised a $20 million round. Maven Capital Partners provided the funding. More here.

️GA Drilling, an 18-year-old company based in Bratislava, Slovakia, that is creating a downhole anchoring and drive system for deep and ultra-deep geothermal and energy drilling, raised a $44 million round led by TomEnterprise and including Underground Ventures. More here.

iDEL Therapeutics, a recently launched German startup that is developing cancer drugs that deliver therapeutic molecules directly into the cytosol of tumor cells, raised a $10.4 million seed round led by BioMedVC, with NRW.Venture, Gründerfonds Ruhr, and KHAN Technology Transfer Fund also anteing up. EU-Startup has more here.

Knox Systems, a one-year-old Austin startup that operates a managed cloud platform that helps software companies meet U.S. government security standards and run compliant applications, raised a $25 million Series A round led by B Capital, with M12, Okta Ventures, MongoDB Ventures, Hearst Ventures, and Benchstrength also engaging. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Native, a two-year-old Seattle startup whose platform sets and enforces security rules across cloud systems, raised a $31 million Series A round led by Ballistic Ventures, with previous investors General Catalyst, YL Ventures, and Merlin Ventures also joining in. The company has raised a total of $42 million. More here.

Standard Template Labs, a one-year-old New York startup that supplies software to automate IT management for large enterprises, raised a $49 million seed round at a $300 million post-money valuation. The deal was co-led by Iconiq and CRV. Bloomberg has more here.

Tracebit, a three-year-old London startup that plants decoy data and systems to detect intruders in cloud environments, raised a $20 million Series A round led by FirstMark, with Accel, MMC Ventures, Tapestry VC, and CCL also digging in. The company has raised a total of $25 million. SecurityWeek has more here.

Turquoise Health, a six-year-old San Diego startup that tracks healthcare prices and manages contracts between providers and insurers, raised a $40 million Series C round led by Oak HC/FT, with previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, Adams Street Partners, and Yosemite also investing. Tech Funding News has more here.

WeSort AI, a four-year-old German startup that uses AI-powered systems to scan and sort waste to recover valuable materials from recycling streams, raised an $11.5 million round. Infinity Recycling, Green Generation Fund, Vent.io, and the SPRIND agency invested in the deal. Recycling Today has more here.

AgZen, a six-year-old startup based in Somerville, MA, that has created a camera-based system that shows farmers how spray droplets land on crops in real-time and adjusts equipment settings to improve coverage, raised a $10 million Series B round led by DCVC Bio, with Material Impact and Astanor also participating. AgFunderNews has more here.

Candex, a 15-year-old New York company that provides a platform for enterprises to pay and manage one-time or irregular vendors, raised a $7+ million Series C extension from HSBC. The company has raised a total of $120+ million. Crunchbase News has more here.

Certiv, a Seattle startup founded this year that is creating a platform to govern and secure autonomous AI agents used inside enterprise systems, raised a $4.2 million pre-seed round. Investors included Aviso Ventures, Founders' Co-op, and Fortson. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Choice, a five-year-old Prague startup that lets restaurants manage orders, reservations, menus, and payments in one system, raised a $7.1 million Series A round led by Alea Capital, with additional support from Reflex Capital, Smartlink, and J&T Ventures. More here.

Grodi, a four-year-old Spanish startup whose autonomous robots move through greenhouses to collect plant-level data using computer vision, raised a $2.9 million round led by Swanlaab Innvierte Agri FoodTech, with Axon Desarrollo Andalucía and Innvierte also investing. More here.

HeartIO, an eight-year-old Pittsburgh startup that aims to build a diagnostic platform that analyzes electrocardiograms to detect coronary artery disease, raised a $4.25 million seed round. Investors included Bessel, VU Venture Partners, Intelligence Ventures, LiveX, and Audacious Capital. Tech Funding News has more here.

Tenkara, an 18-month-old, San Francisco-based startup that builds software agents to handle procurement and supply chain tasks for small and mid-size U.S. manufacturers, has raised $7 million in a funding round led by True Ventures, with participation from HF0, WndrCo, Articulate Capital, Night Capital, SF1, Transpose, early Flexport employees, and others. More here.

V-Glass, an 18-year-old company based in Waukesha, WI, that develops vacuum insulated glass technology for building efficiency, raised a $3 million seed round co-led by the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment and Neglected Climate Opportunities. More here.

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Gradient, a nine-year-old San Francisco VC firm that backs pre-seed and seed AI startups, raised $220 million for its fifth fund, bringing total assets under management to nearly $1.2 billion and expanding its LP base beyond Google. More here.

Mastercard is buying BVNK, a five-year-old London-based payments infrastructure company that bridges fiat and stablecoins, for up to $1.8 billion, including $300 million in contingent payments, as it expands into blockchain-based transfers. Reuters has more here.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told staff he expects AI to drive AWS to about $600 billion in annual revenue by 2036, double his prior estimate. The company plans to spend $200 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone. Reuters has more here.

Benchmark’s Bill Gurley said the AI boom has created a wave of quick wealth but expects a market reset, warning that heavy spending and losses at major AI companies echo past bubble dynamics. CNBC has more here.

In a tweet today, OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman thanked programmers for bringing us to “this point.” “I have so much gratitude to people who wrote extremely complex software character-by-character. It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took,” he wrote.

For more on Garry Tan’s Claude code set-up, click here.

OpenAI plans to cut side projects and shift resources toward coding tools and enterprise products after internal concerns that its broad product push diluted focus and let Anthropic gain ground with developers and business customers. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

The Times of Israel’s military correspondent says Polymarket bettors threatened to kill him if he didn’t change a report about an Iranian missile impact in Israel so a $14 million prediction market bet would resolve in their favor. More here.

Tools for Humanity, the startup behind Sam Altman’s World project, has released a beta tool called AgentKit that lets websites verify a human is behind AI shopping agents using its iris-based World ID and a blockchain payment protocol. TechCrunch has more here.

The trailer for Dune: Part Three just dropped.

Overalls are having a moment (again).

San Francisco designer Ken Fulk and his husband Kurt Wootton have listed their 76-acre Napa Valley ranch in St. Helena for $4.5 million featuring a rebuilt 1,250-square-foot main house, a 4,500-square-foot event barn, a 45-foot pool, guest cabins, and an off-grid setup without Wi-Fi or cell service.

Holographic photo frames.

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