Anthropic Urges Its Competitors to Hit the Pause Button

We're thrilled to be bringing StrictlyVC back to Los Angeles on Thursday night, June 18 at Aerospace Corp.'s stunning El Segundo campus — a perfect backdrop for this particular evening. On the agenda: Ethan Thornton, founder and CEO of Mach Industries, on building for the new era of defense tech; a powerhouse physical AI panel featuring Founders Fund partner Delian Asparouhov and Shinkei Systems CEO Saif Khawaja; and venture investor Carter Reum of M13 Ventures. And we're not done programming.

We wanted to make sure this event was as accessible as possible, so we're offering tickets at $99; nab your seat while you can. We’ll have plenty of food, drinks, and networking. More details to come.:)

Top News

Anthropic is urging top AI labs to consider a global slowdown or temporary pause in frontier AI development, warning that models may be nearing “recursive self-improvement,” or the ability to improve themselves without human intervention even as critics question whether the $1 trillion startup’s safety push is also a way to slow rivals. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

Mira Murati Steps Back Into the Spotlight, Carefully

Image Credits: Bloomberg

By Connie Loizos

Mira Murati isn't a natural creature of the conference stage. As the CTO of OpenAI, she was present but rarely the public face of the company. As CEO of her own company, Thinking Machines Lab, she has been even harder to find. So when she sat down with Bloomberg in San Francisco on Thursday — her first major media appearance in roughly 18 months — it was worth paying attention, even if she was careful not to say too much.

The timing makes sense. Thinking Machines has spent the better part of a year and a half operating largely in the background: raising capital, hiring researchers, and shipping one product, Tinker, an API for fine-tuning open-source AI models.

In the meantime, the companies competing for the same talent, customers, and headlines have only grown more omnipresent. OpenAI, where Murati spent six years as CTO, is constantly in the news cycle. Anthropic's momentum is all that anyone can talk about right now. And xAI, Elon Musk's AI venture, has been folded into SpaceX ahead of what is expected to be its massive public offering, generating its own gravitational pull on attention and investment. In that environment, staying heads down has diminishing returns; at some point, you have to make some noise just to remind the market you exist.

Murati used the Bloomberg appearance to do exactly that and not much more. She previewed what Thinking Machines is calling "interaction models," which she described as a fundamentally different kind of AI interface. Rather than the turn-based, prompt-and-response dynamic that defines most AI products today, she told interviewer Emily Chang, the company's models are designed to process continuous streams of audio, text, and video in 200-millisecond intervals. The idea is that they can pick up on the texture of human communication — the interruptions, the mid-thought corrections, even pauses to think — in something closer to real time. But Murati was careful to frame it as a first step, not a finished product, and she declined to put a specific release date on anything.

She also answered questions about the episode that first put her more squarely in the public eye.

Massive Fundings

Flourish, a New York startup founded this year that is trying to build brain-inspired AI systems that learn continuously while using far less energy than large language models, has raised $500 million from investors including Jeff Bezos, Lux Capital, and Google Ventures at a reported $2.5 billion post-money valuation. Wired has more here.

Generalist AI, a two-year-old startup based in San Mateo, CA, that develops AI foundation models for robots to learn and perform physical tasks, raised a $400 million round at a $2 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by Radical Ventures, with 8VC, Union Square Ventures, and Hanabi Capital as well as previous investors NVentures and Bezos Expeditions also opting in. SiliconANGLE has more here.

Helion, a 13-year-old company based in Everett, WA, and backed by Sam Altman that develops fusion power plants designed to generate electricity directly from magnetic fields, raised a $465 million Series G round at a $15.5 billion post-money valuation. Thrive Capital was the deal lead, with Alta Park Capital, Anti Fund, BoxGroup, Lux Capital, Peak XV Partners, and Bill Ford as well as previous investors Capricorn Technology Impact Funds, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mithril Capital, Good Ventures Foundation, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and an unnamed university endowment fund also piling on. The company has raised a total of $1.5 billion. TechCrunch has more here.

Lila Sciences, a three-year-old startup based in Cambridge, MA, that develops autonomous AI agents and robotic laboratory systems that run closed-loop experiments and simulate materials to discover new molecular compounds for healthcare, energy, and defense applications, is reportedly in the market to raise $2 billion at an $8.5 billion pre-money valuation. CalPERS and NVentures are the purported co-leads. The company has raised a total of $550 million. Bloomberg has more here.

Ramp, a seven-year-old New York startup that provides corporate cards and manages business expenses, payments, procurement, vendor management, fraud detection, and accounting, and tracks and controls companies’ AI tool spending and usage, raised a $750 million round at a $44 billion valuation, nearly tripling its valuation in just a year. ICONIQ, GIC, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan co-led the deal, with Goldman Sachs Alternatives, D.E. Shaw & Co., Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Generation Investment Management, Insight Partners, and BroadLight Capital also piling on. The company has raised a total of $3+ billion. TechCrunch has more here.

Supabase, a six-year-old San Francisco startup that provides open-source database and back-end tools for building and scaling AI apps, raised a $500 million round at a $10.5 billion post-money valuation. The deal was led by GIC, with Accel, Y Combinator, Craft, Felicis, Coatue, and Stripe also stepping up. CNBC has more here.

Tripo AI, a three-year-old Beijing and San Francisco startup formerly known as VAST that develops models and tools that generate, edit, and simulate 3D assets and persistent interactive environments for creators, developers, and researchers across gaming, film, and industrial applications, raised nearly $200 million in capital from an undisclosed set of investors. Pulse 2.0 has more here.

Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings

Airspeed, a four-year-old London and New York startup that deploys AI agents that act on sales calls, emails, tickets, and CRM data to update records, flag risks, and generate follow-ups for revenue teams, raised a $20 million Series A round led by DN Capital, with Vi Partners, Framework Venture Partners, and Atlassian Ventures also participating. The company has raised a total of $25+ million. Tech Funding News has more here.

Fuse Energy, a four-year-old London startup that supplies electricity to households while operating generation, trading, and retail in-house, using household-level demand modeling to forecast consumption and balance energy purchasing and distribution costs, raised $30 million from 20VC and Collaborative Fund. The company has raised a total of $248.9 million. EU-Startups has more here.

Honeycomb, a seven-year-old Chicago startup that analyzes property location, environmental, and structural data using computer vision and imagery to assess risk, underwrite insurance policies, and price coverage for residential and commercial real estate owners, raised a $40 million round led by Zeev Ventures, with Peakline Alpha Partners, Meitar Partners, and Practical VC as well as previous investor Ibex Investors also taking part. The company has raised a total of approximately $95 million. CTech has more here.

InCharge Energy, an eight-year-old Los Angeles startup that manages EV charging networks and electrical and distributed energy assets for fleets, schools, and municipalities, handling monitoring, diagnostics, maintenance, and field service to keep infrastructure operating and reduce downtime, raised a $46 million round led by S2G Investments, with QIC also contributing. More here.

Innovorder, a 13-year-old Paris company that provides restaurants and contract caterers with order taking, payment, kitchen management, and back-office systems and deploys AI agents to automate daily operations and reporting, raised a $23.3 million round. UL Invest was the deal lead. EU-Startups has more here.

Scotch, a two-year-old Denver startup that provides liquor store owners with point-of-sale hardware, payment processing, and back-office tools to manage inventory, vendors, and state-specific alcohol regulations, using AI to automate administrative tasks, raised a $20 million Series A round led by VMG Partners, with First Round Capital, Lerer Hippeau, and Toba Capital also joining in. Crunchbase News has more here.

Semble, a nine-year-old London startup that provides practice management, patient scheduling, billing, and care coordination tools that help outpatient clinics and hospitals manage patient journeys and clinical and administrative workflows across integrated systems, raised a $40.3 million Series C round led by Revaia, with Partech as well as previous investors Mercia Ventures and Octopus Ventures also chiming in. More here.

Shifters, a three-year-old startup based in Washington, DC, that develops autonomous ground robots that operators deploy to scan terrain, gather intelligence, and navigate hazardous environments for defense and security missions, raised a $10.2 million seed round led by Ace Capital Partners, with Aurelius Capital Management, Corner Ventures, Arkin Capital, STEP World, and Fresh Fund also engaging. The company has raised a total of $15 million. More here.

Uncover, a six-year-old São Paulo startup that measures and forecasts the impact of advertising across channels using marketing mix modeling, raised a $16 million Series A round led by Cloud9 Capital, with ABSeed Ventures and Endeavor also anteing up. LatamList has more here.

Smaller Fundings

Kodesage, a two-year-old London startup that analyzes and converts legacy enterprise codebases into modern applications by extracting business logic, generating documentation, and automating migration, testing, and maintenance within on-premises or restricted environments, raised a $6.6 million seed round led by VentureFriends, with Portfolion also investing. SiliconANGLE has more here.