Happy Juneteenth, and happy Father's Day to all the dads reading! We've been in transit and mostly offline today, so we're sending you into the weekend with an abbreviated newsletter — see you Monday. | P.S. For those of you looking for some pictures from last night’s event, you can find them here. - CL | | Top News | Though President Trump essentially suggested Anthropic is a national security threat last week, he just walked it back, telling Axios "not now, but a week ago, maybe" when asked earlier today if he saw the company or CEO Dario Amodei that way — crediting a G7 sit-down with Amodei, whom he called "nice" and "smart," for the apparent thaw. He also kept the threat of invoking emergency powers on the table and revealed it was a competitor and part owner, Amazon, that "turned Anthropic in.” (Some strategic partner, sheesh.) | | |
The AI Platform Powering Top Funds' Deal Sourcing | Stop spending weeks building market maps and chasing founders. Raylu's AI agents find companies matching your thesis, score them against your firm's investment criteria, sync bi-directionally with your CRM, and run automated founder outbound that hits 4x reply rates. Trusted by 50+ of the world's leading investment funds. | See Raylu in action | | The U.S. Says ASML’s Top Chip Tool May Be in China, but How? |  | Image Credits: Wiktor Dabkowski / Bloomberg / Getty Images |
| By Connie Loizos | According to Bloomberg, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has, in a series of recent meetings, told senior ASML executives he’s concerned that one of the Dutch chipmaker’s extreme ultraviolet lithography machines — the EUV systems that are the only tools on Earth capable of printing the most advanced semiconductor patterns — may have ended up in China. That would be a major breach of export controls that have barred ASML from selling EUV to China since the first Trump administration. | It’s a serious claim. Senior administration officials told Bloomberg they have evidence that ASML shipped EUV-related components and transport equipment to China, though they’ve declined, repeatedly, to show it — to Bloomberg or, apparently, to ASML itself. The company says no such machine exists in China and has never existed there. The Commerce Department didn’t respond to Bloomberg’s questions about whether it has evidence of an actual EUV system on Chinese soil. | You might think this isn’t worth paying attention to if you’re outside the chip industry, but it is. ASML is a Dutch company most people have never heard of, but it is, by a wide margin, the most important company in the global AI buildout that isn’t named Nvidia or one of the hyperscalers. It makes the only machines on the planet capable of EUV lithography — the process of printing the microscopic circuit patterns that define the most advanced chips. | Every cutting-edge processor made by TSMC, the foundry behind Nvidia’s and Apple’s chips, depends on ASML tools that took the company roughly two decades and untold billions to develop. There is, at present, no second supplier. That monopoly has made ASML Europe’s most valuable public company, with a market capitalization that has been trading in the neighborhood of $700 billion as of this week, up sharply over the past year on the back of insatiable AI-driven chip demand. | That scale is exactly why the China question matters so much. If even one EUV machine made it into Chinese hands, it would represent one of the most consequential breaches of the export-control regime the U.S. has built over the past several years to keep advanced AI capability out of Beijing’s military and industrial base. | I sat down with ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet six weeks ago, well before this story broke, and asked him directly about the China question. | Fouquet told me ASML tracks every machine it has ever shipped — they’re either in active use with monitored customers or have been dismantled and returned to the company. He said the firm built an internal firewall years ago: Employees who can access EUV technology, documentation, and training are walled off from those who can’t, and ASML’s China-based staff sit on the wrong side of that wall by design. | | | |
PwC. The next generation of tech companies is being built now. | From AI-native startups to breakout growth companies, founders are scaling faster than ever in an increasingly complex market. Growth brings new expectations from investors, boards, and future stakeholders. Can your reporting, governance, and finance operations keep pace? PwC helps emerging companies build the capabilities needed to navigate growth with confidence and prepare for what comes next - from rapid expansion to public company readiness. Explore Emerging Company Solutions. | | New Funds | The Chainsmokers are apparently better at venture capital than most people expected from a DJ duo. Their firm, Mantis VC, is raising a fourth fund targeting $100 million, which would push the firm past $300 million in assets and officially graduate Alex Pall and Drew Taggart from "emerging managers" to – as The Information puts it – "just regular old VCs" on the strength of bets like Rogo and Factory AI, both now valued north of $1.5 billion. More here. | | Going Public | Even after barring Chinese and Hong Kong investors from its record-breaking IPO over security concerns, it turns out SpaceX had already let some in the back way years earlier, which isn’t so shocking. Newly obtained records show at least a dozen investors based in mainland China, Hong Kong, or Russia quietly bought stakes worth $800,000 to $40 million between 2018 and 2021 through a U.S. middleman firm, including $15 million from an entity tied to a Beijing VC co-founder whose firm has also backed Chinese satellite companies that were later sanctioned for allegedly helping Russia's Wagner Group and Iran. ProPublica has more here. | | People | Nadia Carlsten, the CEO of Allbirds’ new AI business, has a plan but no team. TechCrunch has more here. | | Data | More than $5 billion has been traded on the World Cup across Polymarket and Kalshi so far in 2026, and it's playing out like a real-time ledger of fortunes won and lost, including one Polymarket bettor who lost nearly $9 million on a single wrong call that Belgium would beat Egypt. Bloomberg has more here. | | Post-Its | | | Essential Reads | AI's appetite for memory chips is so massive that Apple is raising iPhone prices over it; the companies that dominate the memory-chip market are pouring much of their capacity into the AI boom; and new U.S. factories meant to ease the squeeze won't even open until next year at the earliest — all of which is leaving the White House with the politically awkward option of loosening restrictions on Chinese chipmakers. The WSJ has more here. | The 11 standout startups from YC’s Demo Day, according to VCs. | | Detours | How “goy” went from Yiddish to Zoomer slang. | Unsung heroes of fatherhood. | RIP, James Burrows. | | Brain Rot | | | Retail Therapy |  | Image Credits: Kristoffer Tripplaar via Associated Press |
| There's a seven-story office building in Ohio shaped exactly like a giant picnic basket — complete with two massive handles on the roof that have to be heated in winter so icicles don't come crashing through the glass atrium below — and it's now on the market for $8.5 million, with one small catch: the current owner already turned down a buyer who wanted to remove the handles, calling it "a hard no.” | | Tips (the non-pecuniary kind) | Please send all of your hot gossip to connie@strictlyvc.com or alex@strictlyvc.com. | | Want to advertise on StrictlyVC? | To book ads directly, contact us at advertise@techcrunch.com. |
|
