OpenAI Inks Giant Deal with AMD

Top News

OpenAI is set to take up to a 10% stake in AMD through a multiyear deal to deploy six gigawatts of its GPUs, marking one of the biggest AI hardware purchases ever and signaling a move to reduce its dependence on Nvidia. CNBC has more here.

Speaking of OpenAI, the company just turned ChatGPT into an app platform, letting users pull in services like Spotify, Zillow, and Coursera directly into chats while raising new questions about how much data third-party developers will see. TechCrunch has more here.

The Supreme Court rejected Google’s emergency bid to delay changes to its Play Store, letting a lower-court order stand that forces the tech giant to open its app marketplace to rival billing and pricing systems after losing an antitrust case to Fortnite maker Epic Games. The New York Times has more here.

A 19-Year-Old Nabs Backing from Google Execs for His AI Memory Startup, Supermemory

Image Credits: Supermemory

By Ivan Mehta

Context windows of AI models, which indicate the ability of a model to “remember” information, have increased over time. However, researchers have suggested new ways to increase long-term memory of AI models, as they often can’t hold context over several sessions.

Nineteen-year-old founder Dhravya Shah is attempting to solve problems in this area by building a memory solution, called Supermemory, for AI apps.

Originally from Mumbai in India, Shah started building consumer-facing bots and apps a few years ago. He even sold his bot that formatted tweets into good-looking screenshots to the social media tool Hypefury.

The founder, who was preparing for an entrance exam to get into IIT (Indian Institute of Technology), earned good money from this sale and decided to move to the U.S. to attend Arizona State University instead.

After relocating, he challenged himself to build something new each week for 40 weeks. During one of those weeks, he built Supermemory (which was initially called Any Context) and put it on GitHub. At that time, the tool allowed you to chat with your Twitter bookmarks.

The current version of the tool extracts “memories” or insights from unstructured data and helps the applications understand the context better.

Massive Fundings

Filigran, a three-year-old Paris startup that helps enterprises detect, analyze, and respond to cyber threats using open-source intelligence tools, raised a $58 million Series C round led by Eurazeo, with additional participation from Deutsche Telekom, Accel, and Insight Partners. The company has raised a total of $100+ million. Tech Funding News has more here.

Harvey, a three-year-old startup that develops AI tools for law firms and enterprises to automate contract analysis, due diligence, and compliance, raised a $58.5 million round led by EQT Growth, bringing the company’s total funding to more than $850 million. Tech Funding News has more here.

Heidi Health, a four-year-old Australian startup that develops AI tools to automate medical documentation and administrative work for clinicians, raised a $65 million Series B round led by Point72, with Headline, Blackbird VC, Possible Ventures, and Archangel also participating. The company has raised a total of $96.6 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings

Bee Maps, a startup that uses crypto incentives to crowdsource real-time mapping data on Solana, raised a $32 million round co-led by Pantera Capital, LDA Capital, Borderless Capital, and Ajna Capital. CoinDesk has more here.

Oath Surgical, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that operates AI-powered, surgeon-owned surgery centers, raised a $24 million Series A round led by FPV Ventures, with McKesson Ventures as well as previous investors OSE, Black Opal Ventures, Tau Ventures, and Rogue VC also participating. MassDevice has more here.

Price.com, a nine-year-old Los Angeles startup that develops AI tools to help consumers find and save money while shopping online, raised a $12 million funding round led by Waterbridge Capital, with TRAC VC also anteing up. More here.

Smaller Fundings

Agio Ratings, a three-year-old London startup that provides risk analytics to help banks and trading firms assess the default probability of crypto exchanges and lenders, raised a $6 million round led by AlbionVC, with Portage Ventures and MS&AD also participating. The company has raised a total of $11+ million. EU-Startups has more here.

Longeye, a San Francisco startup founded this year that develops AI tools for law enforcement to examine digital evidence, raised a $5 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Seven Stars Capital also contributing. More here.

MokN, a two-year-old Paris startup that develops AI tools to lure hackers into exposing stolen credentials, raised a $3 million round led by Moonfire, with OVNI Capital and Kima Ventures also investing. SecurityWeek has more here.

Nozomio, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that develops AI coding agents to improve software development performance, raised a $6.2 million round co-led by CRV, BoxGroup, and LocalGlobe and including Y Combinator and 20VC Product. More here.

PEAK:AIO, a four-year-old startup based in Manchester, UK, that develops high-performance storage infrastructure for GPU-based AI workloads, raised a $6.8 million seed round led by Pembroke VCT, with Praetura Ventures also stepping up. More here.

Vycarb, a three-year-old New York startup that helps industrial emitters store CO₂ by turning it into bicarbonate, raised a $5 million seed round led by Twynam, with MOL Switch, Hatch Blue, Clocktower Ventures, Idemitsu, and SGInnovate also chipping in. Tech Funding News has more here.

New Funds

Sugar Free Capital, a one-year-old New York VC firm that backs technical founders, often from MIT, who are building AI-native infrastructure and other category-defining startups, raised its inaugural $32 million fund to invest in about 15 early-stage companies. TechCrunch has more here.

Exits

Securiti, a six-year-old startup based in San Jose, CA, that provides software for data privacy, security, and governance, is reportedly in the process of being acquired by Veeam, a Kirkland, WA-based data protection company owned by Insight Partners, for approximately $1.8 billion. Bloomberg has more here.

Firefly Aerospace, a 10-year-old Cedar Park, TX-based launch and spacecraft company, agreed to acquire SciTec, a 17-year-old Princeton, NJ-based defense analytics firm specializing in missile-warning and space domain awareness systems, for about $855 million in cash and stock. TechCrunch has more here.

Going Public

Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman now says that the Nvidia rival’s decision to pull its IPO filing was a mistake, explaining that the company only wanted to update its financials and strategy after recently raising $1.1 billion at an $8.1 billion valuation. CNBC has more here.

People

MrBeast warned that AI-generated videos could threaten millions of creators’ livelihoods, calling it “scary times” for the industry as platforms like YouTube and OpenAI race to automate content creation. (Ironically, this warning came after he faced a backlash for testing AI tools himself.) TechCrunch has more here.

After raising $10 billion and budgeting a $13 billion burn for 2025 to build a roughly million-square-foot xAI data center in Memphis, Elon Musk is now looking to raise another $18 billion to buy even more Nvidia chips. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

The New York Times profiles Riley Walz, a 23-year-old San Francisco software engineer whose tech-fueled pranks such as tracking parking cops in real-time have made him only the latest San Francisco techie to playfully joust with authority. More here.

Data

The Financial Times reports that the U.S. government and private investors have poured $9 billion into small modular reactors to power the AI boom, but experts warn the unproven technology remains far more expensive than renewables or gas and could become another costly tech bubble in the making. More here.

Sam Altman said ChatGPT now has 800 million weekly active users, up from 700 million in August and 500 million in March, with 4 million developers building on its API and 6 billion tokens processed per minute. TechCrunch has more here.

Essential Reads

xAI has rolled out two sexually explicit chatbot companions, Ani and Valentine, in a risky play to grab market share and user intimacy in the crowded AI race, sparking backlash from regulators and raising new questions about the ethics and economics of digital desire. The New York Times has more here.

Noted author and internet activist Cory Doctorow — who earlier coined the term “enshittification” to describe how once-useful tech platforms inevitably rot as they exploit users and businesses for profit — has turned years of essays into a book that argues that only aggressive regulation and breaking up Big Tech can reverse what’s become the defining decay of the digital age. The New York Times has more here.

Detours

ChatGPTio, “the first AI that feels like talking to a Latino uncle.”