Excited to see those of you coming to the StrictlyVC event in Athens on Wednesday! :)

SpaceX has reportedly sparred with the Pentagon over Starlink pricing during the U.S.-Iran war, with Reuters reporting that the company pushed to raise the monthly connection fee for Starlink-equipped attack drones from roughly $5,000 to $25,000 per terminal, underscoring the growing leverage Elon Musk’s company has as its satellite network becomes increasingly central to U.S. military operations. Reuters has more here.

The Trump administration is moving to let five VC-backed nuclear startups – Oklo, Standard Nuclear, Exodys Energy, SHINE Technologies, and Flibe Energy – negotiate for access to surplus weapons-grade plutonium from dismantled Cold War-era warheads. The New York Times has more here.

Fidelity. Your Pitch Isn’t the Only Thing Investors Are Evaluating.   

Investors don’t just listen to what you say - they look at how your company operates. Is ownership clear? Do your numbers match your story? Can you answer follow-up questions without digging through spreadsheets? The Fundraise-Ready Startup Kit equips founders with the materials investors expect to see, before pressure is on. Because confidence in the room doesn’t come from slides. It comes from preparation. 

By Tim Fernholz

SpaceX’s recent IPO and Starship rocket test flight delivered two big data points that offer a realistic vision for the coming years — and one that may disappoint both the company’s boosters and its critics.

Hidden behind the fantastic expectations for AI enterprise profits and plans for a moon base is a more grounded reality: An expendable Starship could keep SpaceX in business, but doesn’t achieve the cost reductions — or frontier business models — Elon Musk is betting on.

SpaceX is many businesses, but right now only one is producing significant revenue. Starlink, its satellite communications network, is the tent pole of the firm’s public offering. The top line is fairly incredible; SpaceX’s connectivity business generated $11.4 billion in revenue last year, the bulk of the company’s earnings.

But underneath, you can see the capital expenditure treadmill that scared previous entrepreneurs away from this model. SpaceX needs to replace about a fifth of its satellites every year just to maintain its current level of service. It has invested more in its satellite business ($11.4 billion) since the beginning of 2023 than it has building Starship and its launch infrastructure ($8.4 billion).

SpaceX’s S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission predicts costs will continue growing, but expects that improvements to its technology will allow it to reduce them as a percentage of its revenue.

Musk has said that Starship is the key to keeping Starlink’s costs under control, even saying that SpaceX could go bankrupt without the vehicle’s ability to replace those satellites cheaply. In that context, a note that stood out in SpaceX’s S-1 was the first acknowledgment that full reusability of Starship isn’t necessary to launch the new generation of Starlink satellites. But without full reusability, the cost will go up, making the business less attractive.

Fireworks AI, a four-year-old startup based in Redwood City, CA, that develops cloud infrastructure software for deploying and running large language models and other AI models, is reportedly in talks to raise a new funding round at a $15 billion valuation, an almost 4x increase over the valuation of its last round in October. Index Ventures is a purported co-lead. Bloomberg has more here.

OpenRouter, a three-year-old New York startup that routes AI inference requests across proprietary and open-source language models so developers and enterprises can manage model selection, usage, reliability, and spending through a single interface, raised a $113 million round led by CapitalG at a $1.3 billion post-money valuation, with NVentures, ServiceNow Ventures, MongoDB Ventures, Snowflake Ventures, Databricks Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Menlo Ventures also piling on. TechCrunch has more here.

Stord, an 11-year-old Atlanta company that operates a network of warehouses and fulfillment services alongside inventory management tools for e-commerce brands, raised a $250 million Series F round at a $3 billion post-money valuation. Investors included Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Franklin Templeton, Baillie Gifford, G Squared, and Bond. The company has raised a total of approximately $775 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Arc, an 18-month-old San Francisco startup that is working on AI voice-ordering systems for drive-thru restaurants that automate customer orders, menu upselling, and order flow management, raised a $10.8 million seed round. Andreessen Horowitz was the deal lead. Startup Fortune has more here.

Lucis, a two-year-old Paris startup that uses blood biomarker analysis and AI-driven recommendations to help consumers monitor metabolic health, hormone levels, cardiovascular risk, inflammation, and nutrition, raised a $20 million Series A round led by Singular, with General Catalyst and Y Combinator also participating. EU-Startups has more here.

NavigateAI, a newly founded San Francisco startup founded by Opendoor co-founder Eric Wu that develops AI copilots for construction and field workers, raised a $25 million seed round at a $225 million valuation led by Elad Gil, with Khosla Ventures, Lennar, Tishman Speyer, and Helix Electric also stepping up. Forbes has more here.

P2 Science, a 15-year-old company based in Woodbridge, CT, that turns plant-based feedstocks into ingredients and materials used in beauty products, coatings, polymers, home care products, and crop care applications, raised a $23 million round led by Sofinnova Partners, with Lewis & Clark Partners, dsm-firmenich ventures, Connecticut Innovations, Elm Street Ventures, Chanel, BASF, and Safer Made also taking part. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Perceptic, a one-year-old London startup founded by former Palantir execs that uses AI agents to help pharmaceutical companies connect research, clinical, and operational data across drug discovery, trial design, and asset evaluation workflows, raised a $12 million seed round. Investors included Accel, Air Street Capital, and Elder Gull. Fortune has more here.

Avrea, a newly founded Helsinki startup that is developing AI-native CI/CD software for identifying testing bottlenecks, flaky tests, stuck builds, and other software deployment issues, raised a $4.7 million pre-seed round led by Earlybird. Tech Funding News has more here.

Didit, a three-year-old San Francisco and Barcelona startup that provides identity verification and fraud detection services that help businesses authenticate users, identify deepfakes, and automate customer onboarding, raised a $6 million seed round. Investors included Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Orange Collective, Founders Future, Phosphor Capital, SaaSholic, and Rebel Fund. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Human Archive, a San Francisco startup founded this year that pays gig workers to wear camera-equipped caps and other sensor devices to collect first-person video and motion data for training robotics AI models, raised an $8.2 million round from Wing Venture Capital, NVP Capital, and Y Combinator. TechCrunch has more here.

Otomato, a two-year-old Singapore startup that monitors decentralized finance positions across multiple blockchains and sends users real-time alerts about liquidations, rate changes, depegs, and other portfolio risks, raised a $2 million round. Improbable provided the funding. More here.

Quanscient, a four-year-old startup based in Tampere, Finland, that runs cloud-based multiphysics simulations that help engineers model interactions between heat, fluid flow, electromagnetics, and mechanical stress in hardware designs, raised a $10 million Series A round co-led by 55 North and B&C Group and including Maki VC, Crowberry Capital, QAI Ventures, and First Fellow Partners. The company has raised a total of approximately $22 million. Tech Funding News has more here.

Tequipy, a three-year-old London startup that coordinates the sourcing, configuration, delivery, retrieval, and redeployment of employee IT devices for companies operating across multiple countries, raised a $3.5 million round led by Smedvig Ventures, with Manta Ray and Unfold also pitching in. EU-Startups has more here.

The AI Platform Behind The Top Funds Deal Sourcing Engines 

Stop spending weeks building market maps and chasing founders. Raylu's AI agents find companies matching your thesis, score them against your firm's investment criteria, sync bi-directionally with your CRM, and run automated founder outbound that hits 30%+ reply rates. Trusted by 50+ of the world's leading investment funds. 

See Raylu in action

TMV, a 10-year-old New York venture firm, has launched a $200 million logistics fund anchored by Prologis and the American Bureau of Shipping to back U.S. maritime and supply-chain startups, as government and private-sector interest grows around shipbuilding, port logistics, automation, and supply-chain resilience. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

The Dutch government blocked Kyndryl, a U.S.-based IT infrastructure services company that helps large organizations run and secure complex technology systems, from acquiring Solvinity, a local supplier that supports the Netherlands’ DigiD online identification system, citing public-interest risks amid growing European concern over dependence on American tech. Politico has more here.

Quantinuum, a five-year-old Honeywell spinout based in Broomfield, CO, that builds trapped-ion quantum computers and advanced quantum software, is seeking to raise up to $1.05 billion in a Nasdaq IPO that would value the company at as much as $12.7 billion. Bloomberg has more here.

SpaceX’s IPO filing reveals unusually Musk-friendly governance arrangements, including letting Elon Musk vote 1.3 billion restricted shares he has not yet earned, avoiding a majority-independent board, skipping an independent compensation committee, and requiring shareholder securities claims to go through arbitration. The New York Times has more here.

Jony Ive’s latest high-profile design project is proving divisive. Ferrari’s first fully electric car, the $640,000 (!) Luce, was panned by some critics as too generic for the brand, helping send U.S.-listed Ferrari shares down more than 6% in premarket trading after its debut. TechCrunch has more here.

Google Cloud COO Francis deSouza says companies adopting AI need security, governance, and auditability from the start, warning that “shadow AI,” autonomous agents, exposed data repositories, and attack speeds measured in seconds are creating risks that even major platform providers like Google are still learning to manage. TechCrunch has more here.

Startups are increasingly automating millions of collection calls, texts, and emails each month, raising new concerns about legal compliance, pressure tactics, and the lengths to which AI debt collectors will go to pursue people who owe money. Wired has more here.

Britain’s AI Security Institute, a government-backed lab staffed by former OpenAI and Google researchers, weapons experts, epidemiologists, and code breakers, is emerging as a model for AI safety testing after finding major vulnerabilities in leading models, including systems that could be coaxed into giving instructions for bioweapons and cyberattacks. The New York Times has more here.

Spotify is defending its move into AI-generated music after striking a deal with Universal Music that will let subscribers pay extra to create “controlled” AI covers and remixes from participating artists, with co-CEO Alex Norström arguing that licensed tools are a better alternative to the unregulated AI “slop” already spreading online. The Financial Times has more here.

Govee, a smart-home company best known for app-controlled lighting products, apologized and removed a product image from its website after The Verge noticed that a children’s-bedroom lighting photo included two copies of a book in the background with the words “white supremacy” visible on the spine. More here.

A Meta employee reportedly used the company’s own AI tools to create “520 FM,” an internal layoff-themed radio station featuring AI-generated songs about the company’s 8,000 job cuts, giving workers a darkly comic soundtrack as Meta pushes to become an AI-first company.

An off-grid Lake Tahoe compound that is accessible only by boat or – in summer – via an unpaved forest-service road has hit the market for $18 million, offering roughly two acres of waterfront property, a circa 1930s main cabin, boathouse, two cottages, a pier, and two buoys. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Flying on Canine Jets is not exactly for the dogs.

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

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