More than 150 Polymarket wallets may have traded on inside U.S. military information, earning $8 million collectively with a 97.2% average win rate and drawing copycat bets that researchers warn could signal sensitive military actions to adversaries. Reuters has more here.

Senators Marsha Blackburn and Richard Blumenthal are demanding answers from TikTok after Bloomberg reported the company disabled an algorithmic safety feature for 15 million U.S. users, including a 16-year-old who later died by suicide. TechCrunch has more here.

Former Meta engineering director Arturo Bejar testified that Mark Zuckerberg fostered a culture that put growth and engagement ahead of child safety, as 29 states press claims that Facebook and Instagram harmed young users and improperly collected children’s data. Reuters has more here.

"When we do our annual meetings with PortCos, we're just collating data. The decks are in some folder, there's an email in a partner’s inbox, there's a financial model somewhere. It's a lot of work to get the full story."  - VP Ops, $200M+ AUM VC 

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By Julie Bort

On Wednesday night, Runlayer and Rippling dropped their respective lawsuits against each other. No settlement was made. No money changed hands. Not even lawyers’ fees, according to court documents seen by TechCrunch.

Rippling celebrated by instantly releasing its MCP gateway, the product at the heart of the dueling lawsuits and the one that competes with Runlayer’s offering.

This public fight is a cautionary tale to founders: In the age of AI, when building new software has become almost trivial, you never know who your next competitor will be. It might even be a prospective customer.

To recap the short-lived legal brouhaha: Runlayer is an early-stage startup that launched out of stealth in November 2025 and has raised a total of $42 million from VCs like Khosla Ventures’ Keith Rabois and Felicis. It’s led by third-time founder Andrew Berman (previous companies include baby-monitor maker Nanit and an AI video conferencing tool, Vowel, that sold to Zapier in 2024).

After Rippling tested Runlayer’s MCP gateway for more than a year, with the two engineering teams working closely together, Rippling never signed on to become a customer, according to Runlayer’s lawsuit. Instead, Berman received a text from a Rippling employee that said his employer was building its own MCP gateway and planned to release it as a product. This employee described Rippling’s product as a clone of Runlayer’s.

Runlayer sued, claiming that Rippling violated contractual agreements covering the tests of its products.

Callosum, a one-year-old London startup that matches specific AI workloads with suitable models and chips to help customers lower computing costs and improve performance, raised a $100 million seed round led by Atomico, with the UK's Sovereign AI Fund, Plural, and DCVC also anteing up. Silicon Republic has more here.

Castelion, a four-year-old startup based in Torrance, CA, that manufactures lower-cost hypersonic missile systems, raised a $1 billion Series C round at a $13 billion valuation. The deal was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, Carlyle, and JPMorgan Chase, with previous investors Lightspeed, General Catalyst, and Altimeter also participating. The round included $800 million in equity and a $250 million revolving credit facility. TechCrunch has more here.

Fractile, a four-year-old London startup that designs chips that help AI labs run existing models faster and cheaper after training, is in the market to raise a $600 million round at a $6.5 billion pre-money valuation, according to Bloomberg. The Next Web has more here.

Muon Space, a five-year-old startup based in Mountain View, CA, that designs and operates Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations for climate monitoring, national security, and commercial digital intelligence, raised a $250 million Series C round led by Eclipse Capital, with Galvanize, Google, Salesforce Ventures, Wellington Management, I Squared Capital, Woven Capital, Radical Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Activate Capital, ACME Capital, ArcTern Ventures, and Overlap Holdings also piling on. The company has raised a total of $386+ million in equity financing. Payload has more here.

Poolside AI, a three-year-old Paris startup that builds AI models for software development, has reportedly raised $1 billion from Nvidia at a $12 billion pre-money valuation. It has also struck a $6 billion non-exclusive licensing deal with Nvidia. Newcomer has more here.

Astromech, a one-year-old Austin startup and Colossal Biosciences spinout that uses genomic and evolutionary data to help researchers forecast biological change and identify vulnerabilities in living systems, raised a $20 million round at a $3.8 billion valuation. The deal was led by Bob Nelsen, with Peak 6, NeoGenesis Capital, Builders VC, and CAZ Investments also participating. The company has raised a total of $60 million. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Ours Privacy, a two-year-old Houston startup that helps healthcare marketers measure campaigns and patient journeys while filtering sensitive patient information before it reaches ad and analytics tools, raised a $15 million Series A round co-led by Lightbank and Health Velocity Capital, with Rock Health, Lakehouse, TMV, Switch Ventures, Starfire Ventures, and GreyMatter also digging in. More here.

Renata Medical, a seven-year-old startup based in Newport Beach, CA, that develops expandable stents for children with congenital heart defects that can grow with their arteries and reduce repeat procedures, raised a $25 million Series D round led by Archimed. Medical Device Network has more here.

RockRose Risk, a two-year-old startup based in Napa, CA, that assesses wildfire risk, coordinates property mitigation work, and secures insurance for homeowners and commercial property owners in fire-prone markets, raised a $12.5 million Series A round co-led by Crosslink Capital and Congruent Ventures, with Nuveen Real Estate also opting in. More here.

Apollo Atomics, a one-year-old startup based in Cambridge, MA, that is developing compact nuclear reactors built around smaller, factory-made steam generators, raised a $26 million seed round – including $5 million in debt – led by FCVC, with TeleSoft Partners, Y Combinator, Alumni Ventures, Robinhood Ventures, Nucleation Capital, Pelion VC, Duke Capital Partners, New Era Ventures, Orange Collective, Stanford University, E14 Fund, and Neutron Power Ventures also opting in. TechCrunch has more here.

Idler AI, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that builds evaluation datasets, benchmarks, and training environments that AI labs use to test and improve advanced models, raised a $9 million seed round led by Paradigm, with Y Combinator and Long Journey also chiming in. More here.

Multiplier, a New York startup founded this year that helps hedge funds build AI agents for investment research inside their own cloud environments, raised a $6 million round. Investors include Y Combinator and Lux Capital. Business Insider has more here.

Twin1 AI, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that builds digital AI twins that help professional employees share authorized workplace knowledge and automate communications across enterprise tools, raised a $20 million seed round co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Tribeca Venture Partners, and Aramco Ventures. More here.

Velatir, a one-year-old startup based in Odense, Denmark, that helps companies control employee and AI-agent use of AI tools, trace data flows, and enforce compliance policies, raised a $5.8 million round co-led by Spintop Ventures and previous investor Ugly Duckling Ventures, with previous investor Norrsken Evolve also stepping up. EU-Startups has more here.

Makers Fund, a 10-year-old San Francisco venture firm focused on games and interactive entertainment, closed a $250 million fourth fund, bringing assets under management to $1.5 billion. The firm says its first fund has distributed 3.6x invested capital. More here.

Stripe agreed to acquire OpenRouter, a three-year-old New York startup that helps companies route spending across hundreds of AI models, for $7.5 billion, just three months after investors valued the company at $1.3 billion. The New York Times has more here.

Munich Re agreed to acquire At-Bay, the 10-year-old Israeli-founded cyber insurtech that combines insurance with cybersecurity services for small and midsize U.S. businesses, for $575 million, or less than half its $1.35 billion valuation in 2021. At-Bay’s investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Munich Re Ventures, Acrew Capital, Icon Ventures, M12, Qumra Capital, Glilot Capital Partners, and ION Crossover Partners. CTech has more here.

Anthropic expects its IPO to raise at least $75 billion, matching or topping SpaceX’s record-setting debut, as it prepares to publicly file to go public as soon as the end of this month. Bloomberg has more here.

Wired is reporting that Elon Musk is expected to spend $100 million to $200 million boosting Republicans in November’s midterms, with a focus on voter turnout in key races including Texas, where GOP Senate nominee Ken Paxton has been badly outraised by Democrat James Talarico. Wired has more here.

Adit Singh has joined Mayfield as an infrastructure partner, where the longtime chip investor and early Cerebras backer will focus on hardware, infrastructure software, cybersecurity, and physical AI. He was previously a partner at Foundation Capital and later co-founded Neotribe Ventures before joining Cota Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

According to Pitchbook, California startups have raised a record $366 billion in venture funding this year, more than 3x the other 49 states combined, as OpenAI, Anthropic, and thousands of smaller AI companies keep capital concentrated in Silicon Valley despite regulatory and tax concerns. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

A Pew Research study found that 35% of web pages published since ChatGPT’s November 2022 launch show significant signs of AI authorship or editing, based on an analysis of nearly 500,000 English-language pages using AI-detection technology. TechCrunch has more here.

Meta has become one of Microsoft’s biggest AI customers, spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on AI model access through Azure and further underscoring the circular nature of the AI boom. Bloomberg has more here.

In more circular economic news, China’s humanoid-robot boom is being fueled partly by government-backed training centers that buy robots, collect teleoperation data, and sell it back to robot makers, raising questions about how much demand is real versus policy-driven. The Financial Times has more here.

A jokey Liquid Death campaign featuring Jason Kelce urges people to “pee on computers” to cool AI data centers, but the underlying idea is real: treated wastewater containing urine is already widely used for industrial cooling and could reduce data centers’ reliance on drinking water. TechCrunch has more here.

U.S. college enrollment is projected to fall 13% by 2041 as the population of 18-year-olds shrinks, but admissions may not get easier at top schools as students increasingly concentrate applications on prestigious universities while less-selective colleges struggle for applicants.

Inside the world of high-end matchmaking.

Claw-machine arcades are booming again across the U.S., with an estimated 300 to 400 “clawcades” offering everything from plush toys to Hermès bags, and deliberately loosening the odds so customers win often enough to keep spending.

The latest on Season Four of The White Lotus.

Now there’s an EV for your beer. The LITEFAR B1 is a foldable electric beach wagon with dual 600W motors, oversized balloon tires, a 220-pound carrying capacity, and about two hours of battery life, designed to haul coolers and other gear across sand, mud, and uneven ground.

Genesis unveiled the GV90, a new three-row electric flagship that InsideEVs calls a “luxury lounge on wheels,” with 657 horsepower, a claimed 310-mile range, 350-kW charging, and an ultra-luxury Neolun version whose front seats can swivel rearward to create a four-person lounge.

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