Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon for a meeting tomorrow and is threatening to label the company a supply chain risk if the company doesn’t remove restrictions on the use of its technology. TechCrunch has more here.

Speaking of Anthropic, the AI startup accused DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax today of creating more than 24,000 fake accounts and hitting its Claude model 16 million times to siphon data, escalating a public fight over distillation. TechCrunch has more here.

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By Connie Loizos

For nearly three decades, Bill Gurley has been one of the most influential voices in Silicon Valley — a general partner at Benchmark whose early bets on companies like Uber, Zillow, and Stitch Fix helped define what modern venture capital looks like. Now, having moved to Austin and stepped back from active investing, the native Texan is channeling that same pattern-recognition instinct into something different: a book, a foundation, and a policy institute aimed at problems he thinks he can actually help solve.

The book is “Runnin’ Down a Dream” — a nod to Tom Petty and also an argument that following your passion isn’t just romanticized career advice but a true competitive strategy, one that becomes only more urgent as AI rapidly reshapes the workforce. The foundation, which he’s calling the Running Down a Dream Foundation, will award 100 grants of $5,000 a year to people who need a financial cushion to make a leap they’ve been afraid to take.

We caught up with Gurley to talk about all of it — including what he makes of the somewhat surreal reality that several of his former peers in tech now hold enormous sway in Washington, why he thinks the 996 grind culture many young founders have adopted is less alarming than it sounds, and what AI really means for your career. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Our full conversation with Gurley drops tomorrow, Tuesday, on TC’s StrictlyVC Download podcast.

Why write this book?

I went through a phase where I was reading a lot of biographies — people from very different fields, different time windows — and I started noticing patterns the way I would notice patterns in a market evolving. I wrote them down. A couple years later I got invited to speak at the University of Texas, dusted off the notes, built a presentation. They posted it on YouTube, and James Clear — who wrote “Atomic Habits” — noticed and posted about it. That’s what got me thinking about a book. And when I went through my own process of moving away from venture and thinking about what I wanted to do next, it became obvious I didn’t want to write about VC or Uber or any of that. I wanted to do something that could have a bigger mission.

Your research with Wharton found that roughly 60% of people would do things differently if they could start their careers over. That shocked you. Why?

When we first ran it as a SurveyMonkey poll we got seven out of 10. When we did it more rigorously with Wharton, we got six out of 10. One of the things that strikes me is that we have a phrase in the book — life is a use it or lose it proposition — and when you’re young, it’s just hard to have that framing. It’s hard to fast-forward through all of your time and recognize how precious it is. Daniel Pink has done a lot of work on what he calls regrets of inaction — the thing that weighs on people most as they get older is the thing they didn’t try, the stone left unturned. That holds across multiple geographies and cultures. And I think a lot of well-intentioned parents feel more responsibility to create economic stability for their kids than to encourage them to truly explore their passion. Especially with AI out there, that may not have been the right call.

Aalyria, a five-year-old startup based in Livermore, CA, that provides software and laser communication terminals that dynamically route data across satellite, aircraft, ship, and ground networks, raised a $100 million Series B round at a $1.3 billion post-money valuation. The deal was co-led by Battery Ventures and J2 Ventures, with Dyne also participating. SpaceNews has more here.

Humand, a six-year-old San Francisco startup that provides a mobile app for human resources, communications, scheduling, and training for deskless workers, raised a $66 million Series A round co-led by Goodwater Capital and Kaszek Ventures, with Y Combinator and Newtopia VC also opting in. Bloomberg has more here.

Pepper, a seven-year-old New York startup that develops software that automates ordering, sales, accounts receivable, and payments for independent food distributors, raised a $50 million Series C round led by Lead Edge Capital, with previous investors ICONIQ, Index Ventures, Greylock, Harmony Partners, and Interplay also contributing. More here.

Ubicquia, a 12-year-old Fort Lauderdale company that provides AI-enabled hardware and software that monitor and manage streetlights, power grids, and public safety infrastructure, raised a $106 million Series D round co-led by 67 Capital and Marunouchi Innovation Partners, with previous investors Hamilton Lane and ClearSky also stepping up. More here.

Coral Care, a two-year-old New York startup that operates a platform that connects families with licensed therapists for in-home pediatric speech, occupational, and physical therapy, raised a $13 million Series A round led by Haymaker Ventures, with FCA Ventures, Peterson Ventures, Alleycorp, Reach Capital, Jefferson River Capital, Greymatter Capital, Mother Ventures, and Charge Ventures also taking part. More here.

Emerald AI, a two-year-old startup based in Washington, DC, that offers AI software that manages data center energy use in real-time to balance grid demand and compute performance, has reportedly raised a $25 million seed round led by Energy Impact Partners, according to Axios. Data Center Dynamics has more here.

Phoenix Tailings, a seven-year-old startup based in Woburn, MA, that processes rare earth elements from mining waste into finished metals and alloys, raised a $30.2 million Series B round at a $360 million post-money valuation. Investors included Traxys North America, Olive Tree Capital, and Geodesic Alliance Fund. Bloomberg has more here.

Ten63 Therapeutics, a nine-year-old startup based in Durham, NC, whose AI drug discovery platform simulates trillions of potential molecules to design small-molecule therapies for previously undruggable targets, raised a $22 million round. Investors included Chugai Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation. The company has raised a total of $45+ million. More here.

Climatex, a 27-year-old company based in Altendorf, Switzerland, that develops recyclable textiles made from separable components that can be taken apart and recycled at end of life, raised a $4.1 million round. The Collateral Good Textile & Fashion Innovation Fund led the investment. Tech.eu has more here.

Potpie, a two-year-old Bay Area startup that is building a platform to unify code, tickets, logs, and documentation into a knowledge graph to support AI agents in large software systems, raised a $2.2 million pre-seed round led by Emergent Ventures, with All In Capital, DeVC, and Point One Capital also investing. Tech Funding News has more here.

Sift Biosciences, a two-year-old startup based in San Carlos, CA, that is working on peptide immunotherapies designed to activate pre-existing memory T cells to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases, raised a $3.7 million pre-seed round co-led by Lifespan Vision Ventures and Freeflow Ventures and including Valuence Ventures, Eisai Innovation, and SBI US Gateway Fund. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Thema, a three-year-old London startup that is building AI infrastructure to map market structure and expansion paths for private equity investors, raised a $4.5 million pre-seed round led by Stride.vc, with KDX and Capital Allocators also engaging. More here.

Unicity Labs, a Swiss startup founded this year that is creating a peer-to-peer cryptographic infrastructure for autonomous AI agents, raised a $3 million seed round led by Blockchange Ventures, with Tawasal and Outlier Ventures also pitching in. More here.

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PayPal is drawing unsolicited takeover interest after a 46% stock slide cut its market value to about $40.9 billion, with at least one large rival eyeing the whole company and others circling specific assets as a new CEO prepares to step in. Bloomberg has more here.

Uber is acquiring SpotHero, a 15-year-old Chicago-based parking reservation app that lets drivers book spaces at garages, lots, events, and airports, as it folds parking into its core app. Terms were not disclosed. CNBC has more here.

Cerebras, an 11-year-old company based in Sunnyvale, CA, that competes with Nvidia in building AI chips and servers, filed confidentially to go public today after withdrawing a previous IPO filing last year. The company, which could go out as early as this April, has raised over $2.5 billion across eight funding rounds. The Information has the scoop here.

IQM, an eight-year-old Finnish quantum computing company that commercializes full-stack on-premises quantum computers and a cloud platform, plans to go public via a SPAC at a roughly $1.8 billion valuation after reporting $35 million in 2025 revenue and more than $100 million in bookings. The company has raised almost $570 million in venture capital from investors like Ten Eleven Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Generate Biomedicines, an eight-year-old startup based in Somerville, MA, that uses AI to design protein-based therapeutics, is targeting a valuation of up to $2.17 billion in a U.S. IPO that could raise $425 million. The company was incubated by the VC firm Flagship Pioneering. Reuters has more here.

Microsoft has named former AI executive Asha Sharma as CEO of Microsoft Gaming after Phil Spencer resigned and Sarah Bond departed, scrapping Bond’s “Xbox everywhere” push into cloud and mobile that coincided with console hardware revenue declining for 3 straight years. The Verge has more here.

Check out TechCrunch’s take here.

After months of selling pressure, software stocks slid again Monday with AppLovin, CrowdStrike, Datadog, and Expedia each falling at least 7% and a State Street software ETF dropping more than 5% as investors worry AI coding tools could dent long-term pricing power. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Hot AI startups are structuring back-to-back or multitiered funding rounds that let lead investors buy shares at lower valuations while others pay much higher prices days later, helping companies like Serval jump from a valuation of under $400 million to $1 billion in just one week. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

At least a dozen OpenAI investors – including Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, and Insight Partners – also backed Anthropic’s recent $30 billion round, blurring traditional VC lines as AI labs chase ever-larger raises and firms hedge across direct rivals. TechCrunch has more here.

Americans are vandalizing and dismantling Flock’s license plate reader cameras across multiple states amid anger over their use by local police and alleged access by federal immigration authorities, targeting a surveillance network that spans nearly 80,000 cameras nationwide. TechCrunch has more here.

Team Mirai, a political party founded by 35-year-old software engineer Takahiro Anno, won 11 seats in Japan’s 465-seat lower house by campaigning on a platform of government chatbots, self-driving buses, and other AI-driven reforms aimed at tackling labor shortages and bureaucracy. The New York Times has more here.

Hundreds of New Yorkers flooded Washington Square Park for a massive, SideTalk-organized snowball fight after a blizzard dumped about 20 inches on the city, with TikTok clips of the impromptu battle quickly going viral.

The rumors are true — Dunkin’ has confirmed it is testing a 48-ounce iced coffee “bucket” at select stores in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Explora Journeys is launching its first 128-day continuous world cruise from January to May 2029, sending the all-suite EXPLORA I from Dubai to Barcelona across four continents and 63 destinations at the low, low price of $90,250 per passenger.

New apps that purport to let you book a private jet in under 30 seconds.

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