Sorry to worry some of you wondering why you weren’t receiving the newsletter. As Ross Geller once famously proclaimed, “We were on a break!” (In our case, it was just our annual two-week summer shutdown.) Happy to be back.:)

The Justice Department is investigating Andreessen Horowitz over whether its partners improperly sit on the boards of competing AI companies, including Databricks and Fivetran, raising antitrust questions about the VC giant’s sprawling portfolio and board influence. Bloomberg has more here.

OpenAI signed a 20-year lease for a massive 10-gigawatt Ohio data-center campus expected to use enough power for 7 million homes, with Nvidia backstopping up to $105 billion of the first phase and poised to sell hundreds of billions of dollars in chips for the project. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate surged to $65 billion in July from just $9 billion at the end of 2025, and investors expect it to reach $100 billion to $120 billion by year-end as the company prepares for a potentially record-setting IPO. TechCrunch has more here.

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Data breaches at two shipping companies has put cryptocurrency owners with physical hardware wallets at greater risk of having their funds stolen, highlighting weaknesses in the broader tech ecosystem relied on by the crypto industry.

In recent weeks, makers of hardware crypto wallets Trezor and SafePal reported that collectively thousands of their customers had their personal data and shipping information stolen during separate data breaches at their shipping partners. The crypto wallet makers provided their customers’ names, home addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers to the shipping companies for mailing out their hardware wallets.

The hacks did not affect the security of the wallets, a hardware device that stays offline to make it far more difficult for hackers to compromise from over the internet. Instead, the hackers targeted the broader supply chain of tech companies to obtain personal information about where high-net worth crypto holders live. 

By stealing the names and home addresses of hardware wallet customers, the hacks expose crypto owners to physical attacks that rely on physically obtaining the seed phrase stored on the wallet by force or violence. 

Known as wrench attacks (referring to the use of weapons), these kinds of real-world attacks are on the rise as criminals increasingly seek out crypto belonging to high-net-worth individuals. Blockchain security company CertiK confirmed dozens of reported wrench attacks during 2025, up by 75% on the previous year, with robbers stealing upwards of $40 million. Crypto forensics giant Chainalysis puts this year’s figures at closer to $30 million so far, with gangs using kidnapping and home invasions to demand a person’s crypto seed phrase.

Gallos Technology, a five-year-old London startup that creates and scales early-stage defense startups addressing digital security and national resilience needs for governments and businesses, raised a $50 million round co-led by Ventura Capital and Aberdeen Investments, with Lansdowne Partners also buying in. UKTN has more here.

Gravis Robotics, a four-year-old Zurich startup that retrofits excavators with autonomous control systems that help construction crews move earth with less manual driving, raised a $200 million Series A round led by SoftBank Group. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Groq, a 10-year-old company based in San Jose, CA, that is shifting from AI inference chips to operating data centers for AI model makers, raised a $350 million round at a $3.5 billion valuation. The deal was led by Disruptive, with Nvidia also set to invest. TechCrunch has more here.

Higgsfield, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that uses AI to help creators, brands, agencies, and studios produce professional videos and images and automate multi-scene visual production, raised a $400 million round at a $5.4 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by DST Global, with Tribe Capital, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Smash Capital, Fifth Wall, Valor Capital, Intel Capital, Liberty Global Tech Ventures, Mirae Asset Capital, NTT DOCOMO Ventures, and Natalia Vodianova Arnault as well as previous investors Accel, Menlo Ventures, AI Capital Partners, GFT Ventures, Capra Ventures, BAM Corner Point, and BroadLight Capital also piling on. TechCrunch has more here.

Wispr, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that develops dictation and note-taking tools that turn spoken language into text, summaries, and action items, raised a $280 million Series B round at a $2 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by Menlo Ventures, with Acrew, Forerunner, Goodwater, Peak XV, Together Fund, and PLUS Capital as well as previous investors Notable Capital, NEA, Neo Ventures, 8VC, and MVP Ventures also opting in. The company has raised a total of $361 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Sonic Fire Tech, a seven-year-old Cleveland startup that makes acoustic fire suppression systems that use infrasound to extinguish fires without water or chemicals, raised a $15 million round led by The O.H.I.O. Fund, with Khosla Ventures also participating. TechCrunch has more here.

Terra Industries, a two-year-old startup based in Abuja, Nigeria, that builds autonomous drones, mine-detecting combat vehicles, and other defense infrastructure for governments and critical infrastructure operators across the Global South, raised an $18 million seed extension, bringing the total size of its seed round to $52 million. Investors include 8VC, Silent Ventures, and Nova Global. TechCrunch has more here.

Vals AI, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that evaluates AI models against private professional benchmarks to help enterprises choose which models to use in production, raised a $40 million Series A round at a $400 million valuation. The deal was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with HRT Ventures and Next Ladder Ventures, as well as previous investors 8VC, Pear VC, and Bloomberg Beta also investing. Tech Funding News has more here.

Amber, a five-year-old startup based in Aachen, Germany, that organizes company documents and business-system records so employees can search past work and use AI agents with relevant context, raised an $8.1 million Series A round co-led by Ventech and NRW.Venture. Tech Funding News has more here.

Astute, a one-year-old New York startup that helps B2B companies find relevant newsletter, podcast, and social creators and manage partnerships from outreach through reporting, raised a $1.2 million pre-seed round. Investors included Flyer One Ventures, Silicon Gardens, Marathon Fund, and Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator. Tech Funding News has more here.

Sterling, a one-year-old startup based in Wellington, New Zealand, that automates invoice processing, bank-feed reconciliation, and month-end accounting tasks for finance teams, with human review for ambiguous cases, raised a $2.2 million round led by Blackbird Ventures, with Rowan Simpson, Eliot Crowther, Trade Me, Pushpay, Xero, and Vend also engaging. Capital Brief has more here.

According to Bloomberg, Stripe has reportedly finalized a deal to acquire OpenRouter – an AI gateway that gives users access to more than 400 models through a single interface – for more than $7 billion, roughly 5 times the startup’s $1.3 billion valuation just three months ago. OpenRouter has raised a total of $153 million from CapitalG, Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures, Sequoia Capital, NVentures, ServiceNow Ventures, MongoDB Ventures, Snowflake Ventures, Databricks Ventures, Pace Capital, and others. TechCrunch has more here.

Relay, a five-year-old AI workflow automation startup once aiming to become the next Zapier, is shutting down, with founder and CEO Jacob Bank returning to Google as VP of Product for Chrome and some Relay staff joining him. TechCrunch has more here.

Fast fashion retailer Shein is targeting a valuation of roughly $25 billion in its Hong Kong IPO, barely a quarter of its $98.2 billion 2022 peak, as slowing growth, higher trade costs, regulatory pressure, and intensifying competition weigh on investor appetite. Reuters has more here.

OpenAI President Greg Brockman brushed off concerns about a wave of executive departures – including revenue chief Denise Dresser and longtime executive Brad Lightcap – as the company gears up for an expected blockbuster IPO, arguing its intense scrutiny makes the turnover look more dramatic than it is. CNBC has more here.

Semiconductor giants are pouring record sums into startups as the AI boom swells their profits and valuations, with Nvidia participating in 59 funding rounds this year, AMD in 19, and Samsung in 17; chipmakers have joined financings collectively valued above $250 billion. Crunchbase News has more here.

Big Tech’s AI spending is far larger than headline capex suggests. Nine major companies have roughly $3 trillion(!) in mostly AI-related off-balance-sheet commitments, led by Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle, with Alphabet alone carrying $811 billion in purchase obligations and Meta $347 billion in leases not yet started. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Influential tech commentator John Gruber of Daring Fireball takes issue with Anthropic’s decision to watermark Claude-generated text by subtly biasing word choices, arguing the system compromises writing quality, undermines precision, and could unfairly cast suspicion on human prose touched by AI. More here.

According to reporting from 404 Media, Amazon is buying, scanning, and destroying rare books on a massive scale to create training data for its AI models. The outlet tracked the activity to a dedicated Las Vegas facility where workers cut off book bindings before digitizing them. More here.

Hollywood is rapidly embracing AI filmmaking despite fears of widespread job losses, with new studios such as Promise using generative models to cut production costs by as much as 50%; Netflix says it has already used AI in 300 titles this year. The Guardian has more here.

College students are socializing less than previous generations: the share of seniors spending more than six hours a week partying fell to 21% from 32% in 1994, while frequent feelings of campus isolation have more than doubled among first-year students.

London pubgoers are revolting against proposed licensing rules aimed at curbing “high-volume vertical drinking” in Soho which could force some new venues to seat customers, impose table-to-chair ratios, and restrict alcohol service to people eating substantial meals.

TechCrunch recommends seven desk gadgets to make workdays more productive and enjoyable, including Anker’s $80 Nano Charging Station and a $13 desktop vacuum.

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