BusinessWayve launches $85M employee share buyback at $8.5B valuationUK self-driving startup Wayve has opened an $85 million tender offer allowing employees to sell a portion of vested equity at the company's $8.5 billion valuation set in February.3 min read
BusinessFormer DeepMind Team’s EquiLibre Valued at $500M After Applying Poker AI to TradingThree ex-DeepMind researchers who built the poker-beating AI DeepStack have founded EquiLibre Technologies in Prague and applied reinforcement-learning methods to market trading.4 min read
BusinessEtched emerges with $5B valuation and $1B in orders for inference-focused AI systemsEtched, an AI-chip startup founded in 2022, says it has secured $1 billion in contract orders for full systems built around its newly manufactured chips and has raised $800 million in total, including a $500 million round that set a $5 billion post-money valuation.3 min read
BusinessBig Tech turns to foreign‑currency bonds and lease‑backed deals to fund AI buildoutSpending on chips, cloud infrastructure and data centres is pushing major cloud providers to issue more debt in non‑dollar currencies and to use lease‑backed financing tied to data‑centre contracts.3 min read
BusinessLux Capital leads $30M round for Gulf-focused infrastructure AI startup 1001Dubai- and London-based startup 1001 raised $30 million in a funding round led by Lux Capital, with participation from 9Yards, Hanabi and Saudi sovereign fund unit Sanabil.2 min read
BusinessQualcomm is shifting toward physical AI and data centers as growth driversQualcomm is repositioning beyond smartphones toward so-called physical AI applications and data-center chips as part of a diversification strategy.2 min read
BusinessAI-driven optimism fuels record share offerings on US marketsWall Street has seen an unprecedented surge in IPOs and secondary share sales through June 26, driven largely by optimism around artificial intelligence and AI infrastructure.2 min read
BusinessSouth Korean giants commit over $900 billion to memory chips, AI data centers and infrastructureSamsung and SK Hynix pledged $518 billion to build four new memory fabs in southwestern South Korea, part of a broader national investment plan unveiled at a presidential briefing.3 min read
BusinessArena hits $100M annualized run-rate from crowdsourced AI evaluationsArena, a startup that began as a UC Berkeley research project, has reached $100 million in annualized run-rate revenue eight months after launching its commercial service.3 min read
BusinessApple raises device prices citing memory shortage amid criticism over markupsOn June 25 Apple increased prices across Macs, iPads, Apple TV, HomePod and Vision Pro, attributing the move to a memory shortage described by Tim Cook as a “hundred-year flood.” Critics and market observers, including an X post from @BluthCapital and comments attributed to Micron executives, argue Apple amplified a relatively small chip cost increase into a much larger consumer price hike.2 min read
BusinessEx-Tesla lead Jay Li’s Proception raises $11M seed, ships sensor-glove robotic hand after settling lawsuitProception, founded by former Tesla Optimus technical lead Jay Li, has raised an $11 million seed round led by First Round Capital and begun shipping its high-dexterity robotic hand to researchers and robotics firms.4 min read
BusinessOmen AI raises $31M to monitor liquid coolant health in data centers with real‑time spectrometersOmen AI, founded in 2024 by Zach Laberge, announced a $31 million Series A led by Nava Ventures to commercialize a miniature spectrometer that monitors liquid coolant chemistry in real time.4 min read
