Quick reminder that next Thursday, April 30, we’re hosting our first StrictlyVC night of the year in SoMa with Replit CEO Amjad Masad, former TV anchor-turned-founder Campbell Brown, and Eclipse founder Lior Susan, in a hidden gem of a space on Mission Street, with our colleagues Tim Fernholz and Marina Temkin helping moderate. (Giant thanks to Nicholas Sauvage and TDK Ventures for helping to make it happen.) These evenings are always both cozy and stimulating — doors open at 5!

SpaceX tweeted that it has secured an option to acquire Cursor for $60 billion, deepening a partnership that pairs Cursor’s developer reach with Musk’s xAI-powered “Colossus” supercomputer as SpaceX positions itself for an AI push ahead of a potential IPO. TechCrunch has more here.

New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Coinbase and Gemini, arguing their prediction markets are illegal gambling under state law, escalating a broader clash between state and federal regulators over who controls the fast-growing sector. Reuters has more here.

Florida’s attorney general has opened a criminal probe into OpenAI, alleging its ChatGPT advised a suspect in a 2025 Florida State University shooting on weapons, timing, and location, claims that the company disputes. The Washington Post has more here.

Harmonic 

Market maps, competitive analysis, fundraising and ARR projections. 

All in one conversation. 

That’s the power of AI that knows private markets. 

Learn more about Scout 

By Connie Loizos

Over his 15-year reign as Apple’s top banana, Tim Cook has become instantly recognizable, powerful beyond imagination, and exceedingly wealthy. Most estimates peg Cook’s current net worth at roughly $3 billion, assets that he amassed largely through performance-based equity awards as Apple’s market cap has grown more than 11x on his watch to roughly $4 trillion.

But the job comes with plenty of baggage, too. Cook has also had to navigate two Trump administrations and one Biden administration — each with its own posture toward Big Tech, China, and regulation. Cook also faced down the FBI over encryption, spent years in court defending the App Store against accusations that Apple had turned the iPhone into an illegal monopoly, and made compromises to stay in the Chinese market that attracted a whole lot of unwanted attention from human rights groups. Not last, Cook watched the company’s most ambitious hardware bet — the Vision Pro headset — bomb with consumers. That’s saying nothing of AI, where the outcome is still unknown. Incoming CEO John Ternus inherits all of it.

Here’s a walk through some of Cook’s biggest battles over the years.

Surely we all remember that 2016 FBI encryption fight? After a mass shooting at a holiday gathering in San Bernardino, California, the FBI demanded that Apple help unlock the gunman’s iPhone. Cook refused, arguing that encryption was the only meaningful countermeasure against exposing people’s private data and that being forced to break it would set a dangerous precedent. The standoff eventually ended when the FBI found another way in, but it cemented Apple’s identity as a privacy company and set up years of tension with governments around the world. Ternus will inherit that identity and the obligations that come with it.

Blue Energy, a three-year-old startup based in Chevy Chase, MD, that builds nuclear power plants by manufacturing reactors in shipyards and transporting them to deployment sites, raised a $380 million round. VXI Capital led the transaction, with Engine Ventures, At One Ventures, and Tamarack Global also taking part. TechCrunch has more here.

Reliable Robotics, a nine-year-old company based in Mountain View, CA, that builds automated flight systems that allow cargo planes to fly with minimal human control, raised a $160 million round led by Nimble Partners, with RTX Ventures also stepping up. Bloomberg has more here.

Archil, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that provides a serverless file system that lets AI applications and agents access and operate on large datasets through a unified interface, raised an $11 million Series A round led by Standard Capital, with additional participation from Y-Combinator, Felicis, Peak XV Partners, and Wayfinder Ventures. The company has raised a total of $18 million. More here.

Humble, a recently founded San Francisco startup that makes autonomous electric freight trucks, raised a $24 million seed round led by Eclipse, with Energy Impact Partners also pitching in. More here.

NeoCognition, a one-year-old Palo Alto startup that is building AI agents that can train themselves to perform specific job functions like customer support or software development without manual retraining, raised a $40 million seed round co-led by Cambium Capital and Walden Catalyst Ventures, with Vista Equity Partners and angels including Lip-Bu Tan also participating. TechCrunch has more here.

Planetary, a four-year-old Geneva startup that produces mycoprotein ingredients and licenses fermentation technology to convert agricultural side streams into food products, raised a $20 million Series A round co-led by Radikal Capital and Oetker Ventures, with Royal Cosun, Arc Investors, Green Generation Fund, AgriFoodTech Venture Alliance, Astanor Ventures, and XAnge also contributing. It also secured $7.4 million in debt. AgFunderNews has more here.

Rivan, a three-year-old London startup that produces synthetic fuels for heavy industries like aviation, steel, and chemicals, raised a $34 million round led by IQ Capital, with Plural also investing. EU-Startups has more here.

Syenta, a four-year-old Australian startup that uses a new manufacturing technique to speed up how AI chips are packaged, raised a $26 million round co-led by Playground Global and Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund, with Investible, Salus Ventures, Jelix Ventures, and Wollemi Capital also joining in. Reuters has more here.

Audrey AI, a one-year-old Dublin startup that helps auditors gather evidence and validate financial data during audit engagements, raised a $1.8 million round. Sure Valley Ventures and Delta Partners co-led the deal, with Enterprise Ireland also participating. Silicon Republic has more here.

BuildForever, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that makes an AI-powered email app that organizes inboxes into task-based views, raised a $9.5 million seed round led by Abstract, with A* and Felicis as well as high-profile angels like Elad Gil, Fidji Simo, and Gokul Rajaram also piling on. TechCrunch has more here.

Crewline, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that retrofits construction rollers with autonomous driving systems, raised a $7.1 million seed round co-led by Initialized Capital and Nebular. More here.

Hata, a three-year-old Kuala Lumpur startup that operates a digital asset exchange where users can buy, sell, and store cryptocurrencies, raised an $8 million Series A round. Bybit was the deal lead. More here.

Openlaw, a two-year-old Munich startup that provides a platform for handling notarizations, authentications, and company formation processes online, raised a $3.3 million seed round. Investors included Y Ventures, Moonfire Ventures, Zeno Ventures, Combination VC, and Orange Collective. Munich Startup has more here.

Sleuth Insights, a three-year-old Los Angeles startup that helps biopharma teams analyze clinical, market, and competitive data to make decisions on drug strategy and acquisitions, raised an $8 million seed round. Bison Ventures was the deal lead. More here.

Japanet, a Nagasaki-based home shopping company, is expanding its venture capital fund with Pegasus Tech Ventures to $200 million after early bets on companies like SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI paid off. Bloomberg has more here.

Lockheed Martin is boosting its venture fund from $400 million to $1 billion as it looks to accelerate investments in AI, quantum computing, and autonomous systems and pull emerging technologies into its defense supply chain. Business Chief has more here.

Revolut, an 11-year-old London fintech that offers a mobile app for banking, payments, trading, and other financial services, is targeting a $150 billion to $200 billion valuation in a stock market listing no earlier than 2028, a valuation level that would sharply increase founder Nik Storonsky’s stake. The Financial Times has more here.

Elon Musk increased his control of SpaceX by purchasing an additional $1.4 billion of stock from current and former employees, according to a draft of the company's confidential IPO prospectus. The Information has more here.

President Trump said a deal to allow Anthropic’s models to be used by the Department of Defense is “possible,” signaling a potential thaw after the Pentagon labeled the company a supply chain risk and blocked its technology. CNBC has more here.

OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman criticized Anthropic’s new Mythos model as “fear-based marketing,” escalating tensions between the two companies as they clash over how powerful AI systems should be characterized and distributed. “It is clearly incredible marketing to say, ‘We have built a bomb, we are about to drop it on your head. We will sell you a bomb shelter for $100 million,’” he said on the podcast Core Memory. TechCrunch has more here.

And that’s not all he had to say. On the same podcast, Altman claimed that rhetoric from Anthropic and broader AI “doomerism” may have contributed to a Molotov cocktail attack on his home. Business Insider has more here.

Angelo Martino, a former ransomware negotiator, pleaded guilty to secretly helping the ALPHV/BlackCat gang extort victims, feeding attackers confidential information while posing as an adviser to companies under attack. TechCrunch has more here.

Data centers tied to the AI boom are becoming a political flashpoint across the U.S., as communities push back against projects backed by companies like Meta over concerns about energy use, water strain, and rising utility costs. NPR has more here.

Kalshi is preparing to launch crypto perpetual futures in the U.S., expanding beyond its core prediction markets business and moving into more direct competition with exchanges like Coinbase as the two sectors converge. CoinDesk has more here.

Crypto industry-backed PACs have amassed roughly $180 million ahead of the midterms, rivaling or exceeding major GOP-aligned groups like the Congressional Leadership Fund and the Senate Leadership Fund. Bloomberg has more here.

The co-head of global finance & restructuring at elite law firm Sullivan & Cromwell apologized to a federal judge after his office submitted a court filing that contained AI-generated hallucinations, including fabricated legal citations and quotes. Business Insider has more here.

Jeopardy champion Jamie Ding’s 27-game winning streak marks him as one of the show’s greatest contestants ever, but it’s his humility and deference to the game that are really winning fans over.

Long a status symbol in coffee shops, La Marzocco espresso machines are fueling a hot resale market, with rare models fetching up to $40,000, almost three times the price of a new unit.

The Michael Jackson biopic Michael opening this Friday had to reshoot roughly a third of its footage after the singer’s estate realized it lacked rights to depict a key 1993 lawsuit.

The world of competitive rock, paper, scissors.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Manhattan penthouse in The Wolf of Wall Street is on the market for $5 million after an almost $2 million price cut. The 2,700-square-foot, three-bedroom condo features floor-to-ceiling windows and two terraces with skyline and East River views.

Please send all of your hot gossip to [email protected] or [email protected].

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