SpaceX shares fell back to roughly their $135 IPO price a month after the company’s blockbuster public debut as investors reassess Elon Musk’s ambitions and brace for the first post-IPO Starship test launch, which SpaceX expects to end with both rocket stages exploding in the Gulf of Mexico. TechCrunch has more here.

The NTSB today revealed that the driver in a fatal Texas Tesla crash pressed the accelerator to 100%, overriding Full Self-Driving before his car hit a house at more than 70 mph and killed a 76-year-old resident. TechCrunch has the scoop here.

How much growth does R&D and S&M buy your companies? 

Fast growth looks like something that companies can buy. But across two groups of fast-growing private companies that cleared the Rule of 40, one spent about half as much on sales and marketing, relative to revenue, and was roughly 4x more efficient with R&D. What group do your companies fall into? Read the report. 

By Connie Loizos

Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, released its first in-house AI model Wednesday morning, called Inkling. And unlike the flagship models from OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google, it’s open-weight, meaning outside developers and companies can download it and modify it directly.

Inkling is a mixture-of-experts system with 975 billion total parameters, though it only draws on a fraction of that — about 41 billion — for any given task, a common design that keeps very large models faster and cheaper to run. It was trained on 45 trillion tokens of text, image, audio, and video, and reasons natively across all four, according to the company’s own release materials. For now, though, its outputs are limited to text, including code, styled artifacts, and structured data.

The model is Thinking Machines Labs’ first public proof point after a year and a half spent building AI infrastructure largely out of public view. Some of that work had already surfaced in a May research preview of “interaction models” — AI designed to listen and speak (and even interrupt) instead of stop and wait as with typical chatbots. It’s also a test of the central bet behind the startup, which is that AI that organizations can adapt for themselves will outperform the one-size-fits-all models the biggest labs currently sell.

Inkling is designed to give calibrated answers, including flagging uncertainty rather than guessing, and lets users dial “thinking effort” up or down when they want to trade for speed. On one benchmark, the company says, Inkling uses a third as many tokens as Nvidia’s Nemotron 3 Ultra — its latest generation open-weight model — to hit the same coding performance.

Thinking Machines doesn’t claim Inkling is best-in-class. Its newest blog post states explicitly that Inkling is “not the strongest overall model available today, open or closed.” What it’s evidently going for instead is well-rounded performance.

That raises the question of who, within the enterprise market it’s targeting, this product is really for. Thinking Machines is, for now, marketing Inkling less as a finished product than as a starting point, something for organizations to fine-tune themselves through Tinker, the company’s model-customization platform. This also means customers, not Thinking Machines, are responsible for making sure their customizations are safe, for example. (Fine-tuning requires serious machine-earning talent.)

AdvanCell, a seven-year-old Boston and Australian startup that develops lead-212 targeted radiotherapies designed to deliver alpha radiation to tumors while limiting exposure to healthy tissue, raised a $315 million Series D round co-led by Ally Bridge Group and Alpha Wave, with Bain Capital Life Sciences, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, an unnamed sovereign wealth fund, Eventide Asset Management, and Velosity Capital also chiming in. Fierce Biotech has more here.

American Growth Insurance, a one-year-old Atlanta startup that acquires independent insurance agencies and uses AI to automate their back-office operations, raised a $70 million round co-led by Atomic and Rockbridge Growth. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Auger, a two-year-old startup based in Bellevue, WA, that connects companies’ ERP, warehouse, transportation, and demand-planning systems to automate supply chain decisions and inventory reallocations, raised a $50 million Series B round led by Eclipse, with previous investor Oak HC/FT also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $150 million. GeekWire has more here.

Emergent, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that uses AI coding agents to help entrepreneurs and small businesses build, deploy, test, and run internal business applications, raised a $130 million round at a $1.5 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by Creaegis, with MNI Ventures-Claypond and Sentinel Global as well as previous investors Khosla Ventures, SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed, and Y Combinator also engaging. The company has raised a total of $230 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Hemispheric, a seven-year-old Tel Aviv startup that uses AI to analyze non-invasive brain-activity data and help clinicians diagnose conditions such as PTSD, depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s, raised a $52 million round. Investors included Hanaco Ventures, OneMind Awareness Capital, Protocol Labs, L Catterton, Arkin Capital, OurCrowd, and Artofin. Globes has more here.

Lumin, a 10-year-old company based in San Ramon, CA, that provides digital banking, payments, CRM, and lending tools that help banks and credit unions grow online usage and revenue, raised a $115 million round at a $1.6 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by Light Street Capital, with 15 clients of the company and Affinity Plus also opting in. PYMNTS has more here.

Monumental, a five-year-old Amsterdam startup that builds autonomous bricklaying robots for construction sites, raised a $32 million Series B round led by Khosla Ventures, with previous investors Hummingbird and Plural also digging in. Sifted has more here.

Neo Security, a one-year-old Tel Aviv startup that is developing a security platform to bridge endpoint, network, and identity security, raised a $50+ million round. Investors included Kraft Group as well as previous investors Andreessen Horowitz and Merlin Ventures. The company has raised a total of $75+ million. CTech has more here.

Oak, a one-year-old Tel Aviv startup that manages employee, machine, and AI agent access to company applications by matching permissions with actual usage, raised a $60 million seed round co-led by Accel, CRV, and Greylock Partners, with AlphaDrive Ventures and Hetz Ventures also participating. TechCrunch has more here.

Senra Systems, a three-year-old startup based in Redondo Beach, CA, that manufactures wire harnesses that connect electrical and communications systems in aerospace and defense platforms, raised a $65 million Series B round co-led by Lowercarbon Capital and Interlagos, with General Catalyst, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Dylan Field, CIV, 8VC, The Friedkin Group, Jaws Estates Capital, Sozo Ventures, and Alumni Ventures also anteing up. The company has raised a total of $112+ million. TechCrunch has more here.

Spectro Cloud, a seven-year-old startup based in San Jose, CA, that develops software for managing production AI infrastructure across enterprise, public sector, neocloud, and sovereign cloud environments, raised a $100+ million Series D round led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with AMD Ventures, Ericsson, LG Technology Ventures, and Maximus also participating. The company has raised a total of $260 million. More here.

Walden Robotics, a startup based in Cambridge, MA, that develops general-purpose robots that learn factory and warehouse tasks and take on repetitive physical work alongside employees, raised a $300 million round at a $1.1 billion post-money valuation. The deal was co-led by Toyota and Deviation Capital, with NVIDIA, Boeing, AE Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Prologis Ventures, CoreWeave Ventures, Calibrate Ventures, Colle Capital, Shine Capital, NextView Ventures, Squarepoint Capital, One Madison Group, KAS Venture Partners, and Menlo Ventures also chipping in. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Adapter, a four-year-old Austin startup that connects personal and work data to AI agents and applications while controlling what information outside models can access, raised a $17.8 million round. Investors included GV, Bond Partners, Hillspire (Eric Schmidt’s family office), and Byers Capital. Upstarts Media has more here.

Cyclops, a new Miami startup that helps payments companies add stablecoin settlement and cross-border transaction capabilities without building the infrastructure themselves, raised a $20 million Series A round led by Nava Ventures, with Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Circle, Lasagna Ventures, and GPT Ventures also participating. The company has raised a total of $28 million. Fortune has more here.

Cytronic, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that operates robotic fulfillment centers that store, pick, pack, and ship ecommerce orders for direct-to-consumer brands, raised a $13.5 million seed round led by Slow Ventures, with Geek Ventures, Failup Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Spacecadet Ventures, Weekend Fund, Mana Ventures, Rice Capital, Script Capital, Adam Nash, and Gokul Rajaram also digging in. More here.

Feathery, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that develops AI software to help insurance and wealth management firms automate data collection, document processing, onboarding, and operational workflows, raised $30 million in total funding, including a recently completed Series A. Investors include Portage Ventures, Index Ventures, Allstate Strategic Ventures, Clocktower Ventures, Erie Strategic Ventures, and Bain Capital Ventures. More here.

Meticulous, a five-year-old London and San Francisco startup that analyzes codebases and simulates user flows to find frontend edge cases that could break before developers merge code, raised a $15 million Series A round led by Chemistry, with Menlo Ventures, Lachy Groom, Jason Warner, Arash Ferdowsi, Guillermo Rauch, and Caitlin Colgrove also pitching in. Dealroom has more here.

Rime, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that develops voice models that automate enterprise phone calls and adapt pronunciation for brand and industry terms, raised a $24 million Series A round led by M13 Ventures, with Twilio Ventures, Corazon Capital, and Unusual Ventures also taking stakes. TechCrunch has more here.

Risk Ledger, an eight-year-old London startup that helps organizations map and monitor cyber risks across their supplier networks, raised a $32 million Series B round led by Axiom Equity, with previous investor Mercia Ventures also participating. Forbes has more here.

Skalar, a one-year-old Munich startup that serves as clients’ tax and accounting firm using tax experts and AI agents to manage filings and advisory work, raised a $13.7 million pre-seed round led by Headline, with futurepresent, QED Investors, Repeat, MS&AD, and Foreword also buying in. Tech Funding News has more here.

TytoCare, a 14-year-old New York and Israeli company that combines handheld medical devices and AI software to help clinicians conduct remote physical exams, raised a $25+ million growth round led by Insight Partners, with HOOPP, OliveTree, OrbiMed, Qumra Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures also taking stakes. More here.

NextGo EPI, a one-year-old Berlin startup that produces gallium oxide wafers that form the active layer in high-power chips for EV chargers and energy equipment, raised a $2.3 million pre-seed round led by Vireo Ventures, with Ultratech Capital Partners and IBB Ventures also stepping up. EU-Startups has more here.

Pulse Security AI, a one-year-old startup based in Los Altos, CA, that builds AI software to help CISOs manage cybersecurity programs, automate program-level workflows, and translate technical risk into business risk, raised an $8 million seed round led by Foundation Capital, with Zetta Venture Partners also taking part. Security Boulevard has more here.

Pure, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that provides payments, identity verification, wallet infrastructure, and community tools for peer-to-peer skill-based games, raised an $8 million seed round led by Hidden Capital, with MaC Venture Capital, Ludlow Ventures, Goodwater Capital, SignalFire, Z Fellows, Jake Brooks, and Alex Pall also anteing up. More here.

General Compute is making a $300 million bet against GPUs. 

General Compute raised $15m to build the world’s first ASIC cloud. By removing the GPU bottleneck, it runs frontier LLMs up to 16x faster than standard GPU clouds. ASIC silicon is also far more energy efficient, so it deploys in air-cooled data centers, making growth and expansion dramatically easier. Learn more here. 

AlleyCorp, a 19-year-old New York venture firm founded by Kevin Ryan, raised $335 million for its second outside fund to make early-stage bets across healthcare, deep tech, and general tech. Fortune has more here.

Whatnot, a seven-year-old Los Angeles live-shopping marketplace that lets sellers auction products over livestreams, acquired Shaped, a five-year-old New York company that builds real-time search, feed, and recommendation systems, to improve product discovery and personalization as its live inventory changes by the second. Terms were not disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

Anthropic is reportedly lining up investor meetings ahead of a potential October IPO, with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan involved in the process. CNBC has more here.

Internet pioneer Vint Cerf is advising Innovation Labs on DNSid, a proposed standard for giving AI agents verifiable identities tied to domain names, as companies prepare for agents to operate more autonomously across the open internet. TechCrunch has more here.

The recording artist Lorde didn’t mince words when she talked about AI glasses at a Barcelona concert. “Can I just say, for the record, f— the glasses. Don’t get the glasses. Not sexy.” TechCrunch has more here.

Trillionaire Elon Musk donated $5 million to a super PAC backing billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for Ohio governor, signaling continued support for his former DOGE partner after reports of tensions between the two and despite Musk’s earlier pledge to pull back from political spending. Business Insider has more here.

OpenAI employees have donated more than $215,000 to Guardrails Alliance, a super PAC pushing for stricter AI regulation, putting some rank-and-file staffers directly at odds with Leading the Future, the pro-industry super PAC backed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman. Wired has more here.

Anthropic is pushing states to adopt increasingly tougher AI safety rules, breaking with OpenAI’s “reverse federalism” strategy of encouraging states to align around a common framework, as both companies fight to shape the future of U.S. AI regulation. Politico has more here.

A New York school district is piloting a seated humanoid robot called Sally to assist with STEM classes and 24/7 homework support, raising questions not only about robot tutors replacing human teachers but also whether anyone cares if these kids have nightmares for the rest of their lives. Mashable has more here.

A long-forgotten 2007 charity photo of 20-year-old Lionel Messi bathing six-month-old Lamine Yamal resurfaced after Yamal’s father posted it online, delighting fans now that the baby has become a Barcelona and Spain soccer phenom in his own right. Messi and Yamal will square off in this Sunday’s World Cup final.

A WhatsApp group of 1,000 mostly strangers is trying to collectively drink one million beers, complete with leaderboards, “Key Beer Indicators,” milestone photos, strict eligibility rules, and a projected 2034 finish.

The Washington Post picks the 25 most influential works of American culture, from Common Sense and The Federalist Papers to Levi’s jeans, Mickey Mouse, Thriller, The Matrix, and Beyoncé’s Lemonade.

Netflix and Hasbro are turning Monopoly into a $2 million reality competition, with 12 contestants buying properties, negotiating deals, risking jail, and trying to avoid bankruptcy inside a life-size version of the classic board game’s world.

A Wall Street Journal travel columnist tries PS Miami, a $1,300 private-terminal service for commercial airline passengers that offers dedicated check-in and TSA screening, Champagne-and-caviar service, full lounge dining, and a chauffeured ride across the tarmac to board your plane without ever having to enter the airport.

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