Top News

xAI just lost its CFO Mike Liberatore after only a few months on the job, the latest in a string of senior exits that highlight turmoil inside Musk’s AI outfit as it juggles fundraising wins, messy chatbot misfires, and a leadership drain. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

OpenAI is letting employees cash out $10.3 billion worth of stock at a $500 billion valuation, a massive secondary sale that puts it in the same club as SpaceX and Stripe for giving insiders liquidity while keeping IPO pressure at bay. CNBC has more here.

Mistral, a two-year-old Paris-based startup that builds open-source language models and European-focused AI tools, is finalizing a €2 billion raise at a €12 billion ($14 billion) valuation, cementing its spot as one of Europe’s priciest tech bets as it races to best its US and Chinese rivals. Bloomberg has the scoop here.

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These 20- and 22-Year-Olds Raised $5M From YC, General Catalyst to Study Online Behavior Using Vision AI

By Tage Kene-Okafor

Amogh Chaturvedi is running on little sleep but plenty of conviction at 6 a.m. He’s groggy, apologetic for rescheduling, and still reeling from a recent scare involving a family member and an electric scooter.

Within minutes, though, the 20-year-old Stanford dropout snaps into focus, walking me through how he and his co-founders sold one startup at 19, landed in Y Combinator, and raised $5 million for their next company, Human Behavior.

Launched just a few months ago, Human Behavior is betting that vision AI can do what analytics tools like Mixpanel and PostHog have struggled with: give companies a real understanding of how people use their products, including why they convert or churn.

Instead of relying on manually tagged events or clickstream data, Human Behavior claims its AI watches real user session replays and generates insights, answering product teams’ most pressing questions without hours of instrumenting code.

The 4-month-old YC startup closed its $5 million seed round in just two days (which is becoming a norm for current YC companies), with backers including General Catalyst, Paul Graham, Vercel Ventures, and Y Combinator.

“We could’ve done the financial engineering game because we got more offers with higher valuations, but we didn’t want that,” said the CEO. 

Massive Fundings

Cato Networks, an 11-year-old Tel Aviv company that provides a cloud-based secure networking platform, raised a $50 million Series G extension round. Acrew Capital led the financing. The company also acquired Aim Security, an Israeli startup that develops tools to monitor and secure employee and enterprise use of AI applications. Cato has raised a total of $409 million. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Charm Therapeutics, a five-year-old London startup that develops next-generation menin inhibitors to treat acute myeloid leukemia and other cancers resistant to current therapies, raised an $80 million Series B round co-led by NEA and SR One, with Nvidia, OrbiMed, F-Prime, and Khosla Ventures also contributing. EU-Startups has more here.

Exa, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that is building a search engine designed for AI systems rather than humans, raised an $85 million Series B round at a $700 million post-money valuation, 10x the valuation of its previous round last year. Benchmark was the deal lead. Bloomberg has more here.

ID.me, a 15-year-old company based in McLean, VA, that provides digital identity verification so people can securely confirm their identity across government, healthcare, and commercial platforms, raised a $65 million Series E round at a $2+ billion valuation. Ribbit Capital was the lead investor, with Positive Sum as well as previous investors Ares Credit funds and Moonshots Capital also taking part. It also raised $275 million in debt. More here.

IQM, a seven-year-old startup based in Espoo, Finland, that builds quantum computers for on-premises use and cloud access, raised a $320 million Series B round led by Ten Eleven Ventures and including Tesi, Elo Mutual Pension Insurance, Varma Mutual Pension Insurance, Schwarz Group, Winbond Electronics, EIC, and Bayern Kapital. TechCrunch has more here.

Shift5, a seven-year-old startup based in Arlington, VA, that develops software to monitor and secure the operational technology inside defense and commercial transportation fleets, raised a $75 million Series C round led by Hedosophia, with Insight Partners, Center 15 Capital, 645 Ventures, Moore Strategic Ventures, Booz Allen Ventures, Squadra Ventures, AE Industrial, Disruptive, CSP Equity Partners, and Savano Capital Partners also taking stakes. More here.

Treasury BV, an Amsterdam startup founded this year that buys and holds bitcoin as a corporate treasury asset and is pursuing a reverse listing on Euronext Amsterdam, raised a $147.1 million round. The Winklevii co-led the deal, with Nakamoto Holdings, UTXO Management, Off the Chain Capital, M1 Capital, and Mythos Venture Partners also opting in. Bloomberg has more here.

You.com, a five-year-old Palo Alto startup that builds APIs to let companies develop AI-powered applications, raised a $150 million Series C round at a $1.5 billion valuation. The deal was led by Cox Enterprises, with previous investors Georgian, Norwest, and Salesforce Ventures also ponying up. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings

Allocate, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that provides wealth advisors and family offices with software to build, manage, and track private market portfolios, raised a $30.5 million Series B round led by Portage Ventures, with additional participation from Andreessen Horowitz, M13, and Fika Ventures. More here.

Cyted Health, a five-year-old startup based in Cambridge, England, that develops minimally invasive cell collection and biomarker-based diagnostic tests to detect esophageal cancers and related conditions, raised a $44 million Series B round co-led by EQT Life Sciences, Advent Life Sciences, and British Business Bank, with Morningside and BGF also stepping up. More here.

Etherealize, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that builds Ethereum-based infrastructure and products for financial institutions, raised a $40 million round co-led by Electric Capital and Paradigm. Fortune has more here.

FirstClub, a one-year-old Bengaluru startup that offers a curated premium alternative to India’s quick-commerce delivery apps, raised a $23 million Series A round (90% equity / 10% debt) at a $120 million post-money valuation. The deal was co-led by Accel and RTP Global, with Blume Founders Fund, 2am VC, Paramark Ventures, and Aditya Birla Ventures also chipping in. TechCrunch has more here.

HappyRobot, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that builds AI agents to automate tasks like rate negotiation, scheduling, and payments for freight operators, raised a $44 million Series B round led by Base10 Partners, with Tokio Marine, WaVe-X, and World Innovation Lab as well as previous investors Andreessen Horowitz and Y Combinator also piling on. Reuters has more here.

Kite, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that builds infrastructure for autonomous agents to use stablecoins for payments, identity, and transactions, raised an $18 million Series A round co-led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst, with 8VC, Samsung Next, Alumni Ventures, SBI US Gateway Fund, Vertex Ventures, Dispersion Capital, Avalanche Foundation, GSR Markets, LayerZero, Hashed, HashKey Capital, Animoca Brands, Essence VC, and Alchemy also investing. The company has raised a total of $33 million. CoinDesk has more here.

LightYX, a seven-year-old Tel Aviv startup that uses laser projection systems to display construction plans directly onto surfaces so crews can place walls, pipes, and wiring with millimeter accuracy, raised an $11 million Series A round led by NOVA by Saint-Gobain, with Yachad Capital Partners, Shibumi International, and Somersault Ventures also anteing up. More here.

Orchard Robotics, a three-year-old New York startup that uses cameras and AI to help fruit growers monitor crop health and yields, raised a $22 million Series A round co-led by Quiet Capital and Shine Capital, with previous investors General Catalyst and Contrary also joining in. TechCrunch has more here.

Utila, a four-year-old New York startup that provides financial institutions with infrastructure to manage cryptocurrency and stablecoin operations, including token issuance, custody, reconciliation, and compliance, raised a $22 million Series A extension round led by Red Dot Capital Partners, with Nyca, Wing VC, DCG, Cerca Partners, Funfair Ventures, and SilverCircle also participating. The company has raised a total of $50+ million. CTech has more here.

Smaller Fundings

Advisor.com, a three-year-old startup based in Charleston, SC, that operates a marketplace connecting individual investors with vetted fiduciary financial advisors, raised a $9 million Series A round. Walkabout Ventures was the deal lead. CityBiz has more here.

Artificial Societies, a two-year-old London startup that builds AI-driven virtual populations so marketers and businesses can test how people might interact with and respond to social media content, ads, or new ideas before launching them in the real world, raised a $3.35 million seed round. Point72 Ventures led the financing, with Y Combinator also participating. Tech Funding News has more here.

Aurelius Systems, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that develops autonomous laser weapons to neutralize low-cost drone threats, raised a $10 million seed round co-led by General Catalyst and Draper Associates, with additional investors including Outlander VC, Squadra, Decisive Point, Alumni Ventures, New Founding, GoAhead Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners, EO Tech, and Mana Ventures. More here.

Meroka, a two-year-old New York startup that provides software to streamline physician practice operations and create structures for staff to earn ownership stakes in the practice over time, raised a $6 million seed round co-led by Better Tomorrow Ventures and Slow Ventures, with 8VC also engaging. More here.

New Funds

Menlo Ventures is looking to raise $1.5 billion across two new funds, per new SEC filings, with its Menlo Inflection IV targeting $800 million and its seventeenth flagship fund seeking $700 million — both significantly larger than their predecessors that closed at $675 million each in November 2023. The nearly 50-year-old firm has emerged as one of Silicon Valley's most aggressive AI investors. It has marquee stakes in multiple rounds in Anthropic (from Series C through its recent $3.5 billion Series E at a $61.5 billion valuation), though notably Menlo was not listed among investors in Anthropic's newest $13 billion Series F round announced on Tuesday; according to a Business Insider report last month, Anthropic told Menlo that the firm must use its own capital and not resort to a special purpose vehicle, or SPV, as it did in a previous funding round. Menlo separately operates a $100 million Anthology Fund in partnership with Anthropic to support startups building on Anthropic’s Claude AI models.

Exits

OpenPipe, a two-year-old Seattle startup backed by Y Combinator that helps enterprises train customized AI agents with reinforcement learning, has been acquired by CoreWeave as the cloud giant pushes deeper into AI agent infrastructure. TechCrunch has more here.

Going Public

Lambda, a 13-year-old startup based in San Jose, CA, that rents Nvidia chips through its cloud for AI developers, has hired Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, and Citi to prep a 2025 IPO at a $4 billion to $5 billion valuation after nearly doubling cloud revenue and hitting $250 million in first-half sales. The Information has the scoop here.

People

Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro waved around a Huawei foldable gifted by Chinese president Xi Jinping and declared it unhackable by U.S. spies, a boast cybersecurity experts say is laughable given Huawei’s bug-prone software and the NSA’s long history of cracking its gear. TechCrunch has more here.

In the latest installment of StrictlyVC Download, VC Lab’s Adeo Ressi and Sarah Lacy argue that the doom-and-gloom around emerging managers is misplaced, pointing to VC Lab’s 800 micro-fund launches and a growing recognition that smaller, diverse check-writers are winning access to overstuffed rounds and new LP dollars. Check it out here.

Post-Its

Essential Reads

Character.AI is under fire after watchdog groups found user-made chatbots posing as Timothée Chalamet, Patrick Mahomes, and Chappell Roan sending sexual and drug-related messages to teens. The Washington Post has more here.

Bloomberg provides more reporting backing up rumors that Apple is planning to roll out a Google-powered search tool inside Siri next year in order to take on OpenAI and Perplexity, a move that highlights both Apple’s scramble to catch up in AI and its willingness to rely on old rivals to do it. More here.

Influencers are turning propranolol into the anxiety “cheat code” of the moment, with prescriptions up 28% since 2020 as young women pop it for weddings, presentations, and dates—fueling an off-label boom that’s racing ahead of clinical evidence and raising fresh safety and oversight questions. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Detours

Given the hordes of press that follow Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s every move, The New York Times suggests some very remote locations for their upcoming honeymoon, but a hotel on Antarctica that the Times describes as “a place Stormtroopers might go on vacation” takes the cake.

A look into The New Yorker’s long-heralded fact-checking department. (H/T Jason Kottke)

Everything you always wanted to know about America’s billionaires but were afraid to ask.

Brain Rot

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Retail Therapy

Ker & Downey Africa is selling a $21,000-per-person “Mad Max Safari” in Namibia that swaps warlords for luxury lodges, letting travelers rip dune buggies through Sossusvlei and the Skeleton Coast while tapping into the growing market for pop-culture-themed adventures.

Trainers built for treadmills.

Tips (the non-pecuniary kind)

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