The signal wire.

Wire harnesses are the nervous system behind every advanced platform, yet they're still built on PDFs, spreadsheets and tribal knowledge

Ben Shanahan helped write the application software that scaled Starlink production from day one

Interlagos is described as one of the most active checkbooks in the El Segundo hard tech scene and has backed Apex, Castelion, Neros, Impulse Space, and Cowboy Space

The reindustrialization of America is the macro thesis driving investment in physical production infrastructure

Ken Venner applies 'Remove before automate' discipline from SpaceX—eliminate unnecessary steps before automating what remains

Anduril and SpaceX are representative fast-scaling defense tech customers driving demand

SpaceX's Warp Drive is a direct analog for Senra's Amp manufacturing OS

Wire harnesses represent a $95.9B global market that accounts for up to 25% of vehicle cost and is still entirely hand-assembled

In the 11 years I was there, grew to 10,000 employees and 8.6 billion in revenue, did 52 mergers and acquisitions.

Ken Venner's move from a 175-person platform team at SpaceX to a 6-person team at Senra signals a structural shift in how manufacturing technology companies can scale their operations. I think I'll be able to do exactly what I did at SpaceX with only 6 because AI drives most of what we're doing.

Senra's competitive differentiation is not cheaper labor or faster hands — it is Amp, a proprietary manufacturing operating system that encodes tribal knowledge into a repeatable, scalable recipe.

Senra Systems just raised $65M Series B co-led by Lowercarbon Capital and Interlagos, with participating investors including Dylan Field. · Lowercarbon Capital, Interlagos +1

Oura — Smart ring maker — Received a strategic investment from Eli Lilly

Claros — Data center energy efficiency startup; Red Cell portfolio — Cited for minimizing "energy waste at data centers."

Trase — AI operating system; Red Cell portfolio company — Shares a CEO with Red Cell; cited as a key portfolio investment

Feathery, "an SF-based decisioning system for financial services, raised $30m" from Allstate Strategic Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Erie Strategic Ventures.

A $71B valuation for a Chinese LLM — larger than most U.S. AI unicorns — suggests that either the market disagrees with the policy thesis or that DeepSeek has found a path around hardware constraints

Youngkin's own quote is carefully non-committal: "The bottom line is, I don't have a team. I'm not organizing a big campaign."

The conventional wisdom is that Venmo's massive consumer install base is the crown jewel of any PayPal acquisition.

Financial incumbents are increasingly writing checks into the infrastructure layer, signaling they view embedded fintech and stablecoin rails as strategic necessities rather than threats

AI efficiency infrastructure as a distinct investment category is emerging

Healthcare AI and diagnostics are attracting mega-rounds at steep step-ups

The convergence of government-adjacent VCs, defense primes, and dual-use hardware is becoming a repeatable pattern

The largest fintech acquisition ever — and a rare case of a venture-backed company buying an S&P 500 company

DeepSeek... "may file for an IPO as soon as this year."

PayPal has struggled to monetize Venmo, despite its ubiquity.

Simran Arora — New Head of Finance at Gigascale Capital — Previously at SemperVirens Venture Capital.

Edwin Conway — Newly appointed CEO of Future Standard — Executive appointment noted without further detail.

Katie Biber — Newly promoted CEO of Paradigm — Promoted internally at the crypto-focused investment firm.

Glenn Youngkin — Former Virginia Governor; former Carlyle co-CEO — Joining Red Cell Partners as partner, chairman, and board member; will focus on LP relationships, government relations, and business partnerships

KKR will buy a 51% stake in Thomson Reuters' legal and tax publishing business, Global Print, in a $500m deal.

Uber is in advanced talks to acquire Delivery Hero, a German food-delivery company.

The proposed Stripe/Advent acquisition of PayPal marks a structural shift in fintech M&A... The offer of "$60.50 per PayPal share, a 28% premium to the company's Tuesday closing price," backed by "some $50 billion in committed financing from banks,"

DeepSeek, "the Chinese LLM developer, is seeking to raise $1.5b at a $71b valuation" and "may file for an IPO as soon as this year."

TYLsemi, "a San Jose, Calif.-based chiplet platform, raised a $43m round" led by Matter Venture Partners with Viola Ventures and others. · Matter Venture Partners, Viola Ventures

Meticulous — Code review and testing platform — Raised $15M Series A; notable angel roster from Dropbox, Adobe, and Stripe alumni.

Lumin — San Ramon, CA-based digital bank — Raised $115M at $1.6B valuation led by Light Street Capital. · Light Street Capital

Oak — Israel-based identity governance company — Raised $60M seed led by Accel, CRV, and Greylock · Accel, CRV +1

Flex — SF-based AI banking platform for mid-sized business owners — Raised $70M Series B1 at ~$1.2B valuation

Velocity, "a London-based stablecoin treasury and settlement platform, raised $38m in Series A funding" from a coalition that includes Capital One Ventures, QED Investors, Coinbase Ventures, and Ripple · Capital One Ventures, QED Investors +2

Spectro Cloud, "an AI infrastructure company that helps manage token costs, raised $100m at an over $1b valuation" led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, with strategic investors including AMD, Ericsson, and LG. · Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, AMD +2

TerraFirma — Austin-based interplanetary construction startup — Raised $115M including $100M Series A, led by Kleiner Perkins · Kleiner Perkins

Emergent — SF-based vibe coding startup — Raised $130M at $1.5B valuation; backed by Khosla, SoftBank, Lightspeed, YC · Khosla, SoftBank +2

AdvanCell, "an Australia-based radiopharmaceutical company focused on cancer, raised $315m in Series D funding." · Ally Bridge, Alpha Wave +3

Miles Wang, "an OpenAI researcher leaving to found an AI model company for drug discovery, is in talks to raise $200m" at a "$2b valuation" before even launching. · Lightspeed

Neko Health, "a Stockholm-based whole-body scan company, raised $700m in Series C funding" at a "$7b" valuation — "up from $1.8b." · Lightspeed

Senra Systems, "a wire-harness startup, raised $65m in Series B funding" with backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, and General Catalyst. · Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund +3

Brinc, "a Seattle-based 911 drone maker, raised $125m in funding" led by Motorola Solutions · Motorola Solutions, Index Ventures

Red Cell Partners — focused on "defense, healthcare, and cyber" and "named after the CIA's post 9/11 Red Cell unit" — is raising a second fund that has "already surpassed" its first fund's $91.2 million close.

Common Sense Media conducted 2,600+ searches and audited 2,100+ cited sources across accounts configured for 11- and 15-year-olds for its Google child safety report

Using AI in your writing for a short time can make you prone to mirroring its speech patterns

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns of future hiccups to GPT-5.6

New York Democrats are offering a legislative roadmap around data center policy as AI infrastructure buildout accelerates

Using AI in your writing for a short time can make you prone to mirroring its speech patterns, raising questions about authentic communication and creative differentiation

Google Search is often the default on children's personal and school-issued devices, and its AI answers can't be turned off - a systemic gap in child safety infrastructure

Anthropic's 'doomsday' positioning is a strategic asset enabling recruitment of rare domain experts like weapons analysts, nuclear specialists, and biosecurity professionals

OpenAI is hiring a researcher specializing in biological and chemical risks with an annual base salary of $295K to $445K

Anthropic has 32 open roles — covering nuclear, chemical, cybercrime, and financial harm vectors — paying mid-to-upper $200Ks

Kalshi launched a tool to monitor the cost of compute

IBM Bob coordinates planning, coding, testing and validation across the SDLC with built-in governance

Google Search's AI Overviews and AI Mode received the lowest possible safety rating from Common Sense Media, failing all five 'Red Line' severe-harm tests and seven of eight AI safety principles

Their bonus comp is decreasing. And as you see more continuation vehicles, that kind of payday is getting pushed out further.

It's not at all clear which states are going to be data center central. And when you're starting to see New York and Texas on the same side of an issue, it's an extraordinarily weird situation.

Transformers and interconnection queues: Capital can eventually engineer around [that]. Permits and a governor's signature, it can't.

Brown and Columbia received credit outlook downgrades, reflecting monetary constraints on top-tier higher education.

The Investing in All of America Act lifted SBIC leverage caps to $250M from $175M, boosting flow of capital into independent sponsor deals.

Independent sponsor deals generated median equity IRR of 23.8% compared with 18.5% for comparable US buyout investments.

Expansion-stage deal value rose in 2025, driven by larger transactions focused on energy, semiconductors, and logistics bottlenecks.

Only about a third of the 241 gigawatts of US data center capacity in the pipeline is under active development; the rest has stalled largely due to power constraints.

71% of Americans oppose a data center being built near them, outpacing the 53% who oppose a new nuclear power plant.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an executive order creating a one-year moratorium on new data centers exceeding 50 megawatts.

San Jose-based TYLsemi, a developer of chiplet technology for custom silicon design, emerged from stealth with a $43 million round led by Matter Venture Partners. · Matter Venture Partners

Greylock launched a new $1.5 billion fund, Greylock 18, targeting early-stage VC investments.

Uber is in talks to acquire Berlin-based quick delivery company Delivery Hero in a €12 billion ($13.7 billion) deal.

Nvidia-backed AI model developer Reflection AI agreed to acquire computing power from Nebius in a $1 billion deal.

Open-source AI agent developer Nous Research is raising a new round led by Robot Ventures at a $1.5 billion valuation. · Robot Ventures

Singularity, a developer of low-cost air defense systems, emerged from stealth with an $80 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures and Felicis valuing the company at $400 million. · Khosla Ventures, Felicis

BRINC, a developer of drones for public safety and emergency responses, raised a $125 million round led by Motorola Solutions. · Motorola Solutions

Singapore-based PixVerse, an AI video generation platform, extended its Series C with investment from Alibaba, Lollapalooza Capital and Ivy Capital, bringing the round's total to $439 million. · Alibaba, Lollapalooza Capital +1

TerraFirma, an Austin-based startup that builds semi-autonomous construction robotics, raised a $100 million Series A led by Kleiner Perkins. · Kleiner Perkins

LimX Dynamics, a China-based humanoid robotics startup, raised a $200 million round led by IDG Capital, Lens Technology and Stone Venture at a valuation of $2.2 billion. · IDG Capital, Lens Technology +1

San Francisco-based Chai Discovery, which builds AI models for molecular drug design, raised a $400 million Series C led by Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital at a $3.8 billion valuation. · Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins +1

Stripe has teamed up with Advent International on a $53 billion bid for rival payments group PayPal.

Greylock backs early-stage startups across AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, applications, deep tech, consumer, and fintech

Neko Health offers full-body preventive health scans using proprietary sensors, blood analysis, and clinician consultations

Open models handled nearly a third of AI requests on the Vercel platform in June

Uber manages a complicated coopetition relationship with Waymo while maintaining relationships with robotaxi partners it competes with

Miles Wang may launch his new AI drug discovery startup with $200M in funding

Demis Hassabis is calling for an independent standards body to review frontier AI models before release

Only 28% of venture-backed companies with $1M+ revenue cleared the Rule of 40, and 89% of those did it through growth, not profitability

AI token spend is becoming a material operating cost that may soon approach the scale of headcount costs

xAI installed 59 unpermitted natural gas turbines for Colossus 2 data center - more than double the 27 previously acknowledged

Enterprises are increasingly choosing to own AI models rather than rent them via APIs due to cost, control, and strategic risk concerns

On OpenRouter, top six most popular models are all open models from Chinese firms including Tencent, Xiaomi, DeepSeek, MiniMax, and Z.ai

Chinese open-weight models are capturing developer mindshare at a scale that challenges frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic

Miles Wang...is leaving the ChatGPT maker to launch a new startup focused on developing AI models for drug discovery.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the nation's first statewide moratorium on hyperscale data centers, pausing approvals for projects using 50 megawatts or more for one year.

OpenAI's first hardware device is reportedly a screenless, mobile smart speaker designed as a 'humanlike AI companion' for the home, with moving parts, ChatGPT integration, and the ability to personalize responses using information from a user's digital life.

Delivery Hero confirmed it is in advanced talks with Uber over a potential takeover offer, a deal that would expand Uber Eats across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America.

Greylock...[raised] $1.5B for its 18th fund; continued confidence in early-stage AI bets.

TerraFirma...develops remote-operated and semi-autonomous construction equipment [raised] $115M from Kleiner Perkins and Bain Capital Ventures. · Kleiner Perkins, Bain Capital Ventures

State Affairs...helps lawmakers, agencies, and companies track legislation, regulations, hearings, and policy trends [raised] $70M from Founders Fund and Khosla. · Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures

Singularity...builds counter-weapons for military users with automotive-style manufacturing [raised] $80M Series A.

Pearl Health...uses AI to help healthcare providers manage risk and deliver value-based care for Medicare patients [raised] $110M including $50M equity from a16z. · a16z

LimX Dynamics...develops autonomous humanoid robots for commercial service work and entertainment deployments [raised] $200M at $2.2B valuation.

Brinc...builds drones for police, fire, and other emergency-response agencies [raised] $125M led by Motorola Solutions...Dylan Field [participating as] an individual investor alongside Index Ventures · Motorola Solutions, Index Ventures

Switch...has hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan for an IPO that could raise up to $10 billion and value the company at nearly $80 billion. · Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan

Neko Health, an eight-year-old Stockholm startup co-founded by Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek that offers full-body preventive health scans [raised $700M Series C].

Chai Discovery...develops AI models that help drugmakers design molecules by predicting and reprogramming how molecules interact, raised a $400 million round at a $3.8 billion post-money valuation. · OpenAI

Chinese LLM startup DeepSeek is preparing for an IPO – potentially as soon as later this year – while seeking to raise about $1.5 billion at a $71 billion valuation.

The idea behind the AMC was to pull a bunch of money from, in this case, the Gates Foundation and a bunch of other countries to say, hey, pharma companies, if you can make a vaccine to spec, there's a billion and a half dollars waiting for you. And it worked.

I think maybe a difference between a YC type of approach and like a GM type of approach is in a GM type of approach, you are obsessed with the outcome that you want to deliver. And you're working backwards from the outcome, whereas oftentimes in startups, you're sort of like, yeah, starting somewhere and like pivoting your way to the outcome.

One of Mark's centrally — singularly great skills in — rare and important is his ability to like create a meme around a thing. Software is eating the world. American dynamism. Whatever.

Christian Anderson, who started Watershed, wrote this post at the time.

This woman on my team, Hannah, who basically founded Frontier — you know, we founded Frontier together. She's amazing. She's been — you know, we've been working on this for five years. She's basically running Frontier at this point.

Patrick was like, I think we should keep it in Stripe. And his — one of the reasons was we want to shepherd this for the long run. And the other reason was that we can pay people tech salaries while working on this. And so we're going to be able to attract better people.

AI company. Its foundation is cited alongside Anthropic as the source of the third wave of philanthropic capital.

AI safety company. Mentioned as a primary source of the incoming $40B/year philanthropic wave through founder pledges and a notable employee matching program.

Payments infrastructure company. Mentioned as the rare organizational home that enables long-term, high-autonomy philanthropic work at tech salaries — a structural model Nan believes is replicable by other companies.

Lower Carbon Capital is a climate-focused venture fund, mentioned as an early connector in carbon removal journey

Watershed is a carbon accounting and climate software company, mentioned as an example of early theorizing around demand creation for carbon markets

More companies could house organizations like Frontier and like this new respiratory infection initiative

Anthropic has implemented an epic employee matching program put in place by the founders

Advance market commitment for carbon removal, housed within Stripe. Coordinates buyers (including Stripe, Shopify, McKinsey, and others) to pre-purchase $1 billion in carbon removal before 2030, creating demand-side certainty for suppliers.

Anthropic founders have pledged to give a huge amount of their money away, and the company has an epic employee matching program

Pre-purchased $1 billion in carbon removal before 2030, creating demand-side certainty for suppliers

Between just OpenAI and Anthropic, we can expect something like $40 billion a year, fairly conservatively

Founders Fund incubated companies including Palantir (Peter Thiel), Anduril (Trey Malone), and General Matter (Scott).

Siebel Systems was the pre-Salesforce incumbent in CRM/sales software - used as historical analogy for how incumbents lose during platform shifts.

Jack Altman is co-founder and CEO of Lattice, and is a customer and partner of Monaco.

Pedro Franceschi and Enrique Dubugras, co-founders of Brex, now involved with Figure - cited as formative influences on Sam Blond's career.

I think they're the one that I understand as much as any was like the protest... at a big Siebel or Oracle conference where it was like the no software, which I think was really smart.

Peter Thiel's 'competition is for losers' framework is applied operationally to Monaco's market positioning strategy.

Parker Conrad invented the 'compound startup' model and set audacious goals, like the famous 2014 whiteboard session increasing target from $10M to $20M ARR.

Jameson Young was CRO at Gong. He's now SVP of something important at Rippling in their sales organization.

My first two hires were the top two sales reps at EchoSign... Matt Plank is now the CRO at Rippling.

Co-founder and CEO of Monaco. Former CRO of Brex ($12.5B exit valuation), VP of Sales at Zenefits, and senior sales leader at EchoSign.

There was a company called Divi that was acquired by Bill.com a little later.

We were actually beating DocuSign when Adobe acquired us. And DocuSign is maybe the more familiar name now because EchoSign evolved into Adobe Sign.

Monaco is AI-native go-to-market and sales platform targeting early-stage startups; positioning itself as the AI-era replacement for Salesforce and HubSpot... The company launched in February 2025.

Anthropic's strategic posture is to build an open ecosystem rather than a walled garden - they partner with Modal, Vercel, Cloudflare, and Amazon micro VMs for sandboxes rather than locking users into proprietary compute

The important part is all the kind of like context engineering and like architecture that we put underneath the hood... I think André Karpathy said it really well. It's like, it's like an org level harness. There's a lot of like complexity baked into that.

Anthropic's platform roadmap is explicitly structured around three ascending layers. The knowledge layer covers model access and context primitives; the execution layer covers managed infrastructure and harnesses for agentic work; and the emerging coordination layer introduces "strategies" — meta-harnesses that assign different jobs to different tokens.

With Oratomic raising $300M for quantum computing, the attack surface that post-quantum cryptography addresses is becoming more credible and urgent

The middleware layer between commercial software companies and government buyers is massively underbuilt and apparently fundable at large seed scale

Raises $5M Pre-Seed Round from Maveron, WndrCo · Maveron, WndrCo

Raises $40M Series A Round from Mayfield Fund, The House Fund, Wing Venture Capital · Mayfield Fund, The House Fund +1

Raises $35M Seed Round from Susa Ventures · Susa Ventures

Raises $25M Series B Round from FJ Labs, a16z, Y Combinator, HV Capital · FJ Labs, a16z +2

Raises $76M Series C Round

Raises $97M Series B Round from DRW, Tribe Capital, Redpoint Ventures, New Enterprise Associates · DRW, Tribe Capital +2

Raises $175M Series B Round

Raises $1.75B

Raises $225M from Eni Next · Eni Next

Raises $17M Seed Round from Merlin Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Singtel Innov8, Qbeat Ventures, Evolution Equity Partners · Merlin Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners +3

Raises $1B from Sixth Street Growth, Insight Partners, Summit Partners · Sixth Street Growth, Insight Partners +1

TJM Labs ($75M Series B)

Raises $100M Series E Round from Fifth Down Capital, Susa Ventures, Maverick Ventures, Addition, Stripes, XYZ Ventures, 8VC, Generation Investment Management · Fifth Down Capital, Susa Ventures +6

Fore Bio ($67.4M)

Raises $126.3M Series A Round from CPP Investments, Bain Capital · CPP Investments, Bain Capital

Pearl Health ($110M from a16z) · a16z

Raises $110M

Raises $91M Series B Round from Draper Associates, PEAK6 Investments, Lockheed Martin Ventures · Draper Associates, PEAK6 Investments +1

Raises $134M Series B Round from Safar Partners, Prelude Ventures · Safar Partners, Prelude Ventures

Raises $10B from Coatue at $130B Valuation · Coatue

Raises $300M Series A Round from Bain Capital, Spark Capital, Lowercarbon Capital, Formation 8, Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures, ARCH Venture Partners, General Catalyst · Bain Capital, Spark Capital +6

Raises $65M Series B Round from GTMfund, 8VC, Theory Ventures, Y Combinator, Benchmark · GTMfund, 8VC +3

Raises $120M Series C Round from Coatue, The Blackstone Group, Khosla Ventures at $1.2B Valuation · Coatue, The Blackstone Group +1

Lyzr ($100M Series B)

Raises $900M from Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs · Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan +2

Raises $1B from Capital Group Private Markets, General Atlantic, T. Rowe Price at $11B Valuation · Capital Group Private Markets, General Atlantic +1

Raises $130M Series A Round from Nvidia, Radical Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Intel Capital

At the moment, I'm discontent with the lack of compute in the world... Every single person who dies from cancer, every single person who becomes old and infirm and dies, there could come a point where AI comes up with ways to slow aging. All of that I feel is kind of on my shoulders.

Jim Collins's Return on Luck thesis says the best companies capture more of the breaks they get, rather than getting more breaks.

There is no circumstance at NVIDIA where Jensen has one-on-ones with people and tells them one thing. Private conversations produce different understandings of the same decision. Employees compare notes, and the gaps become conflict.

If you express intentional leadership, you say, I intend to do this. People don't tend to offer their opinion, but if it's very wrong, and there's a reason, they will push back.

Referenced as opportunity one that Ross's team 'said it would fail' on, leading him to be talked out of it. Ross personally missed two major opportunities (including a GitHub CEO inquiry about LLM code completion) because he deferred to team pessimism.

Groq's single dominant metric for deployed capacity used across all teams

AI inference chip designed for memory-throughput-bound tasks like weight application in LLM inference

The $20B NVIDIA deal didn't emerge from a negotiation process. It emerged because the working prototype already existed. Ross had integrated GPUs and LPUs for 3–4 months before the call with Jensen Huang. The deal closed in three weeks because the engineering gave Huang nothing to doubt.

Anson Lin breaks down the repeatable post formats used by successful founders who reuse the same six structures with new inputs.

The DDVC Landscape Report 2026 just launched! Check out how 345 VC firms are using AI and automation to become more efficient & win against their peers.

Nomad List's first post got 85 likes in 2014; the crowdsourced spreadsheet it launched still generates $15K/month a decade later - case study in content compounding

Roundtable has facilitated 1,000+ SPVs and 15+ funds, including for Mistral, Quantum Systems, and Proxima Fusion

Dan Gray argues venture firms suffer diseconomies of scale much like operating companies - raising bigger funds works against the mechanics of good investing

90% Cost Cut via Prompt Caching: Anthropic's prompt caching discounts repeated context blocks like system prompts by up to 90%, with a 5-minute cache window that refreshes on each use.

Gap between Claude's capabilities and typical usage is primarily behavioral - most users never activate most powerful features

2010 study finds fund size and firm valuation move in convex U-shaped pattern, while fund size and successful exit odds move in concave inverted-U pattern