Voters in at least 38 U.S. jurisdictions approved bans or restrictions on data centers Tuesday, while candidates promising tougher limits on the facilities also won key races in states including Texas, Ohio, and Georgia, underscoring a growing political backlash against the AI infrastructure boom. The Washington Post has more here.

Hackers remotely compromised refrigeration systems holding blood products at three French Blood Establishment sites, raising temperature and defrost settings to dangerous levels; alarms caught the changes quickly enough that no blood products or samples were lost. CNBC has more here.

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By Connie Loizos

Sequoia Capital posted a memo to X on Wednesday morning titled “The Sequoia of Tomorrow” that’s full of surprises. The firm has raised roughly $10 billion in new funds, it says. It is also closing its London office, shutting down its Arc accelerator and its Scouts program, merging its early-stage and growth teams into one, flattening its partnership, and killing the Monday partner meeting.

The framing is forward-looking, but the messaging is very much about rewinding to an earlier time when the team was smaller and focused more narrowly on Silicon Valley.

Sequoia says as much itself. The firm describes coming out of a roughly 20-year expansionary phase during which it built multiple businesses in multiple geographies and says an unintended side effect was hierarchy. Nearly everything being undone here was built during that stretch, under a succession of stewards running from Doug Leone to Jim Goetz to Roelof Botha.

One of the most surprising developments is that the firm is killing two programs that put Sequoia closest to young founders. Scouts, which Sequoia launched around 2009 and, anecdotally, half the industry has since copied in some form, gave small checks to founders and operators to invest on the firm’s behalf; it was a way to see deals through people closer to interesting new founders than any partner could be. Jason Calacanis famously pointed Sequoia to Uber through the program. Sam Altman brought Stripe to Sequoia as a scout, too. Other early scouts included Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky and Dropbox founders Arash Ferdowsi and Drew Houston.

Arc, launched in March 2022, was Sequoia’s answer to Y Combinator: a batch accelerator for pre-seed and seed founders, running several cohorts a year for seven weeks, with admitted companies getting $500,000 to $1 million up front.

Both were bets on being early and being everywhere. Now Sequoia says it wants to put more energy behind fewer people and things.

EloElo, a six-year-old Bengaluru startup that streams serialized short-form dramas in six languages through its Story TV mobile app, raised an $80 million Series C round at a $500 million valuation. The deal was co-led by Hornbill Capital and NBCUniversal, with MIT Investment Co as well as previous investors Play Ventures, Kalaari Capital, WaterBridge Ventures, and Griffin Gaming Partners also stepping up. The company has raised a total of $130 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Nooks, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that uses AI agents to automate sales work from prospecting through renewals, secured a $500 million growth financing commitment from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund, a non-equity vehicle that takes a share of the returns generated by the capital it provides. Reuters has more here.

Pliant, a six-year-old Berlin fintech that provides commercial cards, payment accounts, foreign exchange, and spend-management infrastructure for businesses, raised an $80 million Series C co-led by Seaya Nova and Speedinvest, with Illuminate Financial, Motive Partners, and Molten Ventures also buying in. The Next Web has more here.

Revolut, an 11-year-old London company that provides digital banking and money-management services to retail customers, completed a secondary share sale at a $115 billion valuation, up from the $75 billion valuation it secured last November. The deal was co-led by Glade Brook Capital Partners, Coatue, Durable Capital Partners, T. Rowe Price, and Baillie Gifford. TechCrunch has more here.

Sentra, a five-year-old New York startup that identifies sensitive corporate data and governs which employees, systems, and AI agents can access it, raised a $150 million Series C round led by Capital One Ventures, with previous investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Zeev Ventures, Standard Investments, Munich Re Ventures, and Key1 Capital also chipping in. The deal included a small secondary component for employees and brought the company's total funding to $250+ million. CTech has more here.

Traversal, a three-year-old New York startup that uses AI agents to diagnose, fix, and prevent software infrastructure failures for enterprise engineering teams, raised a $120 million round at a $1 billion post-money valuation. The deal was co-led by Redpoint Ventures and Khosla Ventures as well as previous investor Kleiner Perkins, with Battery Ventures and Amex Ventures as well as prior backer Sequoia Capital also buying in. The company has raised a total of $173 million. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Bit.bio, a 10-year-old company based in Cambridge, UK, that produces standardized human cell models for disease research, drug discovery, genetic studies, and toxicity testing, raised a $25 million Series D round. Investors included M&G Investments and Jonathan Milner. More here.

Brava Security, a two-year-old Tel Aviv startup that uses AI agents to generate simulated attack traces and test whether organizations' security systems detect them, raised a $15 million seed round co-led by Pitango and F2. CTech has more here.

FluoRok, a four-year-old startup based in Oxford, UK, that makes fluorochemicals without hydrogen fluoride by extracting fluorine from lower-grade minerals and industrial waste, raised a $30 million Series A led by Orano Ventures Fund/Supernova Invest, with Bidra Innovation Ventures, EverQuest Capital Partners, CPI Enterprises, and WS Investment as well as prior backers Oxford Science Enterprises, BGF, GGF, Volta Energy Technologies, and the University of Oxford also investing. The round also included a $1.3 million grant from Innovate UK. EU-Startups has more here.

Kabilio, a two-year-old startup based in Barcelona, Spain, that automates bookkeeping and reconciliation for accounting firms and their small-business clients, raised an $11.2 million round co-led by previous investors Picus Capital and Visionaries, with CDTI also participating. The company has raised a total of $15.7 million. More here.

Supa, a one-year-old London startup that acquires residential property management firms and integrates AI software that automates their administrative work, raised a $28.2 million seed round co-led by 2150 and OpenOcean, with Kompas VC, Actia Capital Partners, and Heartfelt also participating. It also secured a debt facility from a major UK lender. The SaaS News has more here.

Thryv Therapeutics, a seven-year-old startup based in Montreal, Canada, that develops kinase-inhibiting drugs for inherited heart rhythm disorders, cardiometabolic diseases, and heart muscle diseases, raised a $30 million Series B round led by InClin, with previous investors Fonds de solidarité FTQ, Amplitude Ventures, Investissement Québec, Lumira Ventures, adMare BioInnovations, CTI Life Sciences Fund, and Alexandria Venture Investments also anteing up. More here.

Titan OS, a three-year-old company based in Barcelona, Spain, that licenses a smart TV operating system and monetizes it through advertising and streaming partnerships, raised $46 million in equity and debt, comprising equity from previous investors Highland Europe and Mangrove Capital Partners and a credit facility from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock. The company has raised a total of $110 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Artiso AI, a one-year-old Barcelona startup that develops AI software that connects fashion brands’ creative, product-development, and campaign-imagery workflows using their historical archives, raised a $3.4+ million pre-seed round led by Criteria Venture Tech, with Swanlaab Venture Factory, Bynd Venture Capital, and Lookup Ventures also investing. More here.

Juritas, a Stockholm startup founded this year that uses AI to monitor supplier contracts and flag obligations, discounts, renewals, and deadlines, raised a $1.6 million pre-seed round led by Passion Capital, with Blackwood, Araya Ventures, Baseline, Angel Invest, and byFounders Angel Collective also taking part. ThinkBusiness has more here.

Osstec, a five-year-old London startup that develops 3D-printed joint replacement implants that attach to bone without surgical cement, raised an $8 million round led by Embryo Ventures, with Neovate Capital, New Wave Ventures, Oxford Technology Innovation Finance, and Empirical Ventures also taking stakes. More here.

Phaze, a one-year-old startup based in Park City, UT, that provides remote desktops that let employees and AI agents operate company-managed computers for design, software development, and IT work, raised an $8.75 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with additional participation from Indie, NextView, Makers, and Lerer Hippeau. More here.

Vitroscope, a seven-year-old startup based in Trondheim, Norway, that develops systems that keep living tissue viable under controlled flow for longer drug-discovery experiments, raised a $5 million seed round co-led by Cerberus Ventures and YZR Capital, with Arcas Ventures, Golden Egg Check, and Devico Invest also chiming in. It also secured $2 million in non-dilutive funding from the Research Council of Norway. The company has raised a total of $8.8 million. Tech.eu has more here.

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Valor Equity Partners, the Chicago investment firm led by longtime Elon Musk ally and early SpaceX backer Antonio Gracias, has raised about $3.3 billion for its latest flagship fund, its largest core fund to date and up from $2.35 billion for its previous flagship vehicle in 2024. Traders Union has more here.

Yosemite, the three-year-old cancer-focused venture firm founded by Reed Jobs, has closed a $350 million second fund to back companies and research aimed at making cancer nonlethal, up from an initial close of more than $200 million. LPs include Emerson Collective, John Doerr, MIT, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Amgen, and AbbVie. We talked with Jobs this summer.

OpenAI agreed to acquire Pierre Computer, the company behind the Code Storage code-management system and other open-source developer tools; it plans to integrate Pierre’s technology into its Codex AI coding platform. Terms were not disclosed. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Meta has acquired Conductor, a two-year-old AI coding startup whose software lets developers run and manage multiple coding agents in parallel, as the company races with OpenAI and other AI giants to control more of the software-development stack. Terms were not disclosed. Axios has more here.

OPay halted its roughly $300 million U.S. IPO just hours after pricing the offering after inquiries from a Chinese regulator, even though the Singapore-based payments company has no operations or revenue in China; its main connection to the country is Chinese founder Zhou Yahui. Bloomberg has more here.

Cat Wu, Anthropic’s head of product for Claude Code and one of the key executives behind the AI coding tool’s breakout growth, left the company ahead of its expected IPO later this month. You’ll never guess where she turned up almost immediately afterward. Okay, maybe you will. Business Insider has more here.

Elon Musk appears to have deleted his Election Day post urging Americans to “Vote red today” after Democrats swept the midterms, despite the SpaceX CEO spending more than $440 million backing Republican candidates; he later joked that his “election-interfering space lasers” had failed. Business Insider has more here.

Third-party AI agents arranged just four Uber rides in the third quarter and around 500 Uber Eats orders during Halloween week compared to 320 million total rides and deliveries on the platform, suggesting that fears of AI agents disintermediating platforms like Uber remain largely theoretical for now. The Verge has more here.

OpenAI now generates a majority of its revenue from enterprise customers, President Greg Brockman said Wednesday, as the company ramps up business sales and pushes products including its Codex coding agent. Brockman also said he believes OpenAI will be ready to go public in 2027. Reuters has more here.

Lisa He’s plea to save her mother’s struggling Edinburgh Chinese restaurant drew millions of views and packed the 13-table business almost overnight, helping more than triple summer revenue but also exposing how ill-equipped the nearly 20-year-old restaurant was for sudden internet fame.

Godzilla has spent more than 70 years leveling Tokyo, but the franchise has lately undergone an unlikely prestige makeover: 2023’s Godzilla Minus One became the highest-grossing Japanese-language film in U.S. history and won the series its first Oscar, while its new sequel, Godzilla Minus Zero, premiered at the New York Film Festival before opening this weekend.

BMW has unveiled the M 1000 RS, a limited-run hypernaked motorcycle producing 218 horsepower outside the U.S. while weighing just 432 pounds. The $38,395 bike can hit 62 mph in 3.2 seconds and 176 mph, and just 1,000 will be made worldwide.

Benly Design, a 10-year-old Hong Kong watchmaker, has created a $159 analog watch modeled on a Windows 95 desktop, complete with pixelated folders and icons, a cursor-shaped minute hand, and a pointing-hand hour hand.

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