Top News

OpenAI’s push to restructure into a for-profit is drawing fire from California regulators, nonprofits, and labor groups, prompting executives to float the idea of moving the company out of the state if the scrutiny doesn’t die down. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

The plot thickens. A federal judge just rejected Anthropic’s proposed $1.5 billion copyright settlement with authors, blasting it as incomplete and potentially unfair, a setback that could reshape how Big Tech negotiates payouts in the growing wave of AI copyright battles. Bloomberg Law has more here.

Sponsored By …

Learn from this investor’s $100M mistake. A Grammy-winning artist passed on investing $200K in an emerging real estate disruptor. It’d be worth $100M+ today. Now, the investors behind Venmo and Uber are backing another real estate disruptor. This time, you can invest. Founded by a former Zillow exec, Pacaso already made $110M+ in gross profits to date. Invest in Pacaso by 9/18.

This is a paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com.

Y Combinator-Backed Motion Raises Fresh $38M to Build the Microsoft Office of AI agents

By Julie Bort

By the time Harry Qi was 23 years old, he had achieved the kind of financial success that most people will never attain: making about $1 million a year.

He was working as a “quant” in his first job out of college. That’s hedge-fund speak for a stock-trading analyst at a statistical-model-driven quant fund. But like many people who spend their energy pursuing ever more money, he felt empty.

“At some point you just want to make a much bigger impact on this world,” Qi, now 29, tells TechCrunch. 

So in 2019, he and his high school buddy Omid Rooholfada, along with Ethan Yu (Qi’s friend from college — also working at a hedge fund), built an AI calendaring and task management app and applied to Y Combinator. They were accepted into the Winter 2020 batch and promptly quit their jobs to go be founders. Motion has since added a fourth co-founder, early employee Chander Ramesh. 

Over the next six years, they steadily grew Motion’s mostly professional consumer customer base until, in May, they launched an integrated AI agent bundle for small and midsized businesses.

They saw usage of their agent bundle explode.

Massive Fundings

Cognition AI, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that develops AI agents for writing and managing code, raised a $400 million funding round at a $10.2 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by Founders Fund, with previous investors Lux Capital, 8VC, Elad Gil, Definition Capital, and Swish Ventures also engaging. The company raised money earlier this year at a $4 billion valuation. Bloomberg has more here.

Databricks, a twelve-year-old San Francisco company whose software lets companies combine and analyze large amounts of data to build AI applications and manage business databases, raised a $1 billion Series K round at a $100+ billion valuation. Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, MGX, Thrive Capital, and WCM Investment Management were the co-leads. Bloomberg has more here.

ElevenLabs, a three-year-old New York startup whose tech generates realistic AI voices, is letting employees sell up to $100 million worth of stock in a tender offer led by Sequoia and Iconiq at a $6.6 billion valuation, doubling its valuation in less than a year. Bloomberg has more here.

Kin Insurance, a nine-year-old Chicago startup that sells home insurance directly to consumers, focusing on homeowners in states hit hardest by natural disasters, raised a $50 million Series E round at a $2 billion pre-money valuation. The co-leads were QED Investors and Activate Capital, with August Capital, Proof, Commerce Ventures, Sompo, Savano, Gaingels, and Better Tomorrow Ventures also contributing. It also raised $200 million in debt. The company has raised a total of $286 million in equity. Reinsurance News has more here.

Mistral, a two-year-old Paris startup that builds large language models and competes with OpenAI, Anthropic, and others, is receiving $1.5 billion from ASML (a Dutch supplier of advanced chipmaking equipment) as part of a $2 billion Series C round that the company is raising at an $11.7 billion pre-money valuation. Reuters has more here.

X Square Robot, a two-year-old startup based in Shenzhen, China, that is developing humanoid robots and its own AI model to perform complex tasks in homes, businesses, and industrial settings, raised a $140 million Series A+ round led by CAS Investment Management and including HSG, Meituan, and Legend Star. Tech Funding News has more here.

Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings

IntegraTherapeutics, a five-year-old Barcelona startup that is developing a gene writing system called FiCAT to insert large DNA sequences with greater precision and apply it to new gene and cell therapies, raised a $12.6 million round. Investors included EIC Fund and CDTI Innvierte as well as previous investors AdBio Partners, Columbus Venture Partners, Invivo Partners, and Takeda Ventures. Tech Funding News has more here.

Octave Bioscience, an 11-year-old Menlo Park company whose blood-based tests help doctors track and manage multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases, raised a $35.6 million Series C round. Investors included Byers Capital, Blue Venture Fund, Northpond Ventures, S32, Casdin Capital, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Novartis, Valhalla Foundation, Intermountain Ventures, and Hikma Ventures. More here.

Pave Finance, a five-year-old New York startup that is developing an AI-powered platform to help investment advisors build and manage customized client portfolios, raised a $14 million seed round from angels. FinTech Futures has more here.

Rainforest, a three-year-old Atlanta startup that provides software companies with tools to embed and manage digital payments within their platforms, raised a $29 million Series B round co-led by Matrix Partners and Infinity Ventures, with Accel and Tech Square Ventures also stepping up. The company has raised a total of $57.5 million. More here.

ReOrbit, a six-year-old Helsinki startup that builds sovereign satellites for governments, raised a $53 million Series A round led by Springvest, with additional investors including Varma, Elo, Icebreaker.vc, Expansion VC, 10x Founders, and Inventure. TechCrunch has more here.

Smaller Fundings

BoobyBiome, a six-year-old London startup that is developing a storage device and supplements that preserve the beneficial bacteria in breast milk and add key strains to formula-fed infants, raised a $3.4 million seed round. Empirical Ventures was the deal lead, with The Helm, XFactor Ventures, Lavender Ventures, Kayan Ventures, and Evenlode Investment also participating. Tech Funding News has more here.

Cassidy, a two-year-old New York startup that enables non-technical employees to build and run AI-powered workflows to handle tasks like customer support, sales updates, and internal knowledge sharing, raised a $10 million Series A round led by HOF Capital, with additional participation from The General Partnership, Neo, and Alumni Ventures. More here.

Dazl, a Tel Aviv startup founded this year that uses AI to turn early prototypes into fully built applications, aiming to make app creation more accurate and consistent, raised a $10 million seed round led by 40RTY Fund, with Wix also taking part. CTech has more here.

Koah, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that helps developers of AI apps make money by placing ads inside chat interactions, raised a $5 million seed round led by Forerunner, with South Park Commons also investing. TechCrunch has more here.

Orbii, a one-year-old Saudi startup that provides an AI-powered platform that helps banks and fintechs in the MENA region offer small-business loans directly within their existing systems, raised a $3.6 million seed round led by Prosus Ventures, with VentureSouq, DASH Ventures, Taz Investments, and Sanabil 500 also pitching in. More here.

Prefer-Not-to-Say Fundings

Unrivaled, a two-year-old Miami startup that is creating a Miami-based professional women’s 3x3 basketball league where players also hold equity stakes in the league’s growth, raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding at a $340 million valuation. Bessemer Venture Partners was the deal lead, with Serena Ventures (tennis star Serena Williams's firm) as well as previous investors Warner Bros. Discovery and Trybe Ventures (started by soccer star Alex Morgan) also anteing up. The New York Times has more here.

Sponsored By …

Affinity Campfire 2025 is coming!

In private capital, information overload isn’t just noise—it’s a barrier to winning the best deals. At Affinity Campfire 2025, discover how leading firms turn scattered data, endless tools, and complex relationships into a competitive edge. You’ll gain practical insights on streamlining tech stacks, proven AI and automation use cases, and smarter relationship strategies to source stronger, fundraise faster, and manage portfolios with confidence.

📅 October 1, 2025 📍 San Francisco, CA

New Funds

1789 Capital, the venture fund that added Donald Trump Jr. as a partner after his father’s election win, has ballooned from $150 million to more than $1 billion in assets by backing defense firms, AI startups like xAI and Perplexity, and even Juul, cementing itself as the financial engine of a MAGA-aligned “parallel economy.” Reuters has more here.

Going Public

The New York concert ticket site StubHub is finally teeing up its long-delayed IPO, aiming to raise up to $849 million at a valuation north of $9 billion, with co-founder and CEO Eric Baker keeping a commanding 88% of the voting power post-listing. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Infleqtion, an 18-year-old Boulder startup that develops quantum computing systems for use in national defense, secure communications, and advanced sensing, is merging with Michael Klein’s Churchill Capital Corp. X SPAC at a $1.8 billion pre-money valuation. The company just raised $100 million in June from investors including Glynn Capital, Counterpoint Global, S32, and SAIC. Bloomberg has more here.

Netskope, a 13-year-old Santa Clara cybersecurity company that protects cloud apps and data, is aiming for up to a $6.5 billion valuation in its Nasdaq IPO, lower than a private round it closed in 2021. TechCrunch has more here.

People

Attaullah Baig, WhatsApp’s former head of security, is suing Meta for ignoring flaws that allegedly let thousands of employees access sensitive user data and left millions vulnerable to hacks, claims he says were brushed aside and led to his firing. The New York Times has more here.

Sam Altman lamented once again that social media feels overrun by bots and fake posts, a complaint that may also be laying the groundwork for OpenAI’s long-rumored social media push. TechCrunch has more here.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel is breaking the company into “startup squads” of 10 to 15 people to reignite growth as ad revenue stalls and user numbers slip. In his annual company letter, he tells the troops that “weekly demo days, 90-day mission cycles, and a culture of fast failure will keep us moving.” TechCrunch has more here.

Post-Its

Essential Reads

Hackers slipped malware into 18 popular code libraries with 2.6 billion weekly downloads by tricking someone who manages them into giving up their login information, a breach experts call a watershed moment that exposes the fragility of open-source software supply chains. SiliconANGLE has more here.

SpaceX is spending $17 billion in cash and stock to buy EchoStar’s spectrum, a move that kills EchoStar’s own satellite plans and clears the way for Starlink’s direct-to-phone service to scale globally with more control and 5G-ready capacity. TechCrunch has more here.

Meta is facing fresh heat as four current and former employees tell Congress the company muzzled research on kids’ safety in its VR apps, with lawyers shaping what could be collected or shared. The Washington Post has more here.

Detours

The New Yorker asks scientists about UFOs.

Gen Z’s favorite cocktail, according to bartenders and beverage directors in L.A. and New York.

Coworking space or German restaurant?

Brain Rot

Every parent’s worst nightmare …

Retail Therapy

Porsche just unveiled its first hybrid 911 Turbo S, a 701-hp rocket that can hit 60 in 2.4 seconds and shaved 14 seconds off its Nürburgring time.

Cold-weather Crocs.

Tips (the non-pecuniary kind)

Please send all of your industry dirt to [email protected] or [email protected].

Want to advertise on StrictlyVC?

To book ads directly, contact us at [email protected].