Wishing you a happy weekend.:) Also, so you can steel yourselves, we want to mention that during the first two weeks of August, we’re shutting down the works so we can read books and be lazy blobs, as is our annual custom. We’ll remind you again late next week so you aren’t wondering why we’re not in your inboxes at the top of next month. | | Top News | Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Palantir, and 21 other tech companies released an open letter urging U.S. policymakers to reject broad restrictions on open-weight AI models, warning that they would stifle competition and concentrate power among closed-model providers. CNBC has more here. | India’s government appears to have ordered GitHub to remove repositories for Jack Dorsey’s offline messaging app Bitchat, arguing that its decentralized design lets protesters communicate during internet shutdowns and evade surveillance, prompting legal concerns over targeting open-source software itself. TechCrunch has more here. | The Pentagon awarded Oracle a nearly $7 billion, up-to-10-year contract to consolidate software licenses across the military, Coast Guard, and intelligence community, estimating at least $441 million in savings as it replaces fragmented purchasing with enterprise-wide agreements. Reuters has more here. | | |
Deploying AI in fund ops? You have 3 problems. | 1 - security, 2 - accuracy, and 3 - a context window big enough for 1000s of documents. PortfolioIQ solves all three. It extracts every number from documents, maps it to the source, keeps full audit history, and feeds clean data securely to the AI of your choice. | Build on data you can trust → PortfolioIQ. | | Prentis, New AI Lab Co-Founded by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus in Talks to Raise $100M |  | Image Credits: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg / Getty Images |
| By Marina Temkin | Prentis, a new AI research lab focused on computer use models, co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das and tech heavyweights Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, is in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, according to two people familiar with the discussions. | Launched in April, Prentis is training models to learn how office workers navigate routine workflows across documents and systems, with the goal of building AI agents that can control computers to automate those tasks. | Prentis will ostensibly develop agents tailored to these customers’ needs, such as handling insurance claims and automating customs duty refund exceptions without needing a human to hunt down paperwork. | The startup has already signed contracts worth up to $50 million with several customers, including a healthcare management service organization, a manufacturer, and goods and clothing manufacturers, the two people familiar with the discussions tell TechCrunch. This echoes investor materials obtained by TechCrunch that predict an estimated $75 million annualized run rate by the third quarter of this year. (Prentis’ pitch deck notes those figures reflect estimated annualized value based on a contracted fee equal to 20% of savings realized, not recognized revenue, and are “performance-dependent and subject to final execution.”) | By its own account, Prentis says its Hive-32B model outperforms rivals, including OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6, on two computer-use benchmarks: WindowsAgentArena, which measures end-to-end task completion on real Windows applications, and ScreenSpot-v2, which tests a model’s ability to locate the right on-screen control. | In its pitch deck, the company argues its edge comes from running a much smaller, cheaper model. In fact, it claims roughly 10 times lower cost per task than frontier APIs, saying it’s more economical to deploy across everyday workflows. TechCrunch hasn’t independently verified the company’s benchmark results. | | | Massive Fundings | Anduril, a nine-year-old startup based in Costa Mesa, CA, that builds autonomous drones and other defense systems, is reportedly in talks to raise new funding at about a $100 billion valuation, up from the $61 billion valuation it secured in May. TechCrunch has more here. [Editor’s note: Anduril co-founder Trae Stephens denied Reuters’s reporting in a tweet: “Our IR team talks to investors every day. Routine dialogue is not a fundraising process.”] | Genesis AI, an 18-month-old startup based in Paris and San Carlos, CA, that is building general-purpose robots and robotics foundation models, is reportedly in talks to raise about $500 million at a $3 billion pre-money valuation. Bloomberg has more here. | World Foundation, a seven-year-old San Francisco startup co-founded by Sam Altman that scans users’ irises to prove they are human, raised $52.5 million through a 12-month-locked sale of its WLD token led by Pantera Capital. TechCrunch has more here. | | Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings | Andrenam, a two-year-old startup based in Hawthorne, CA, that deploys buoy-based underwater acoustic sensors that detect, track, and classify submarines and other vessels for maritime surveillance, raised an $18 million Series A round led by Upfront Ventures, with Valor Equity Partners, Also Capital, and First Round Capital also anteing up. The company has raised a total of $30 million. Tectonic Defense has more here. | Elio, a four-year-old startup based in San Mateo, CA, that builds adaptive optical sensors that help AI systems identify objects and materials by their physical characteristics rather than fixed images, raised a $21 million round co-led by Innovation Endeavors and Xora, with Kevin Weil and Scribble VC as well as previous investors UpWest and Resolute Ventures also chiming in. CTech has more here. | Moa Technology, a nine-year-old startup based in Oxford, UK, that develops synthetic and biological herbicides that control resistant weeds and help farmers protect crop yields, raised a $29.6 million Series C round co-led by Oxford Science Enterprises and Supernova Invest, with Agri Investment Fund, GrainInnovate, Infinity Investment Partners, Magdalen College, and Oxford as well as previous investors Lansdowne Partners, Parkwalk, and Oxford University Innovation also digging in. EU-Startups has more here. | Paper, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that helps designers and engineers connect visual designs with production code and coding agents through an HTML/CSS canvas, raised a $34 million Series A round co-led by Accel and ICONIQ, with Designer Fund also participating. More here. | Ropedia, a one-year-old Singapore startup that collects and prepares video, spatial, and motion data from wearable devices for robotics developers training robots to handle real-world tasks, raised a $22 million round from an undisclosed set of venture investors. The company has raised a total of $30 million. Pulse 2.0 has more here. | TidalSense, a 13-year-old company based in Cambridge, UK, that develops a handheld breathing test that helps healthcare workers diagnose COPD from normal breathing without spirometry, raised a $19 million round. Investors included Cross-Border Impact Ventures as well as prior backers BGF, Airstream Capital, and Foresight Group. The company has raised a total of $40 million. Tech Funding News has more here. | | Smaller Fundings | Cast Insights, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that analyzes TV, radio, and podcast speech to help institutions track emerging narratives, sentiment shifts, and geopolitical risks, raised a $4.5 million pre-seed round led by Abstract Ventures, with HF0, Village Global, Max Ventures, Embassy Ventures, and Stratus Ventures also buying in. SiliconANGLE has more here. | Imagi, an eight-year-old New York and Stockholm startup that provides K-12 teachers with curriculum tools and screened classroom access for teaching coding, computer skills, and AI literacy, raised a $4.5 million seed round co-led by Brighteye Ventures and Day One Capital, with FemInvest, We Are Human, Morgan Stanley, and Sparkmind Capital also chipping in. TechCrunch has more here. | | |
General Compute raised $15m to build the world's first ASIC cloud. By removing the GPU bottleneck, it runs frontier LLMs up to 16x faster than standard GPU clouds. And because ASIC silicon is far more energy efficient, it deploys in air-cooled data centers, making expansion dramatically easier. Learn more at generalcompute.com. | | Exits | Cognition, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that makes the autonomous coding agent Devin, acquired The Interaction Company of California, a two-year-old Palo Alto startup whose Poke assistant handles everyday tasks through messaging apps, in a deal valuing it in the low nine figures. TechCrunch has more here. | AI image- and video generation startup Midjourney has acquired Co-Star, a social astrology app with about 4.3 million monthly users whose 24-person team creates AI- and human-written horoscopes, compatibility readings, and other personalized advice. Terms were not disclosed. TechCrunch has more here. | Poolin Technology, a nine-year-old Singapore company that once operated one of the world’s largest bitcoin mining pools, filed for Chapter 11 and plans to auction its Texas assets with a $52 million floor against $173.1 million in obligations, mostly frozen customer IOUs. The Block has more here. | | Going Public | MetaX, a five-year-old Shanghai chipmaker that develops high-performance GPUs and computing platforms for AI training, inference, and graphics rendering, confidentially filed for a Hong Kong listing targeted for year-end amid China’s AI-chip fundraising boom. The South China Morning Post has more here. | | People | President Trump ordered a Section 301 trade investigation into the European Union and threatened “substantial” tariffs after regulators fined Google about $1 billion, accusing Brussels of targeting and “robbing” U.S. technology companies. CNBC has more here. | In a contentious Economist interview, Elon Musk predicted AI would make money irrelevant within a decade, suggested the Treasury could simply issue checks, and grew defensive when pressed about DOGE, European politics, racism, and his conduct on X. Gizmodo has |
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