Trending Thursday #23

Here’s what’s been trending in Tech & VC this week:

• The $50B Silicon Purge: China bans all foreign AI chips from state data centers while bribing companies with 50% power discounts to ditch Nvidia

• The 85-Point Humiliation: Chinese AI models delivered +22% returns in live crypto trading while every single US model lost money in real market conditions

• Xi's AI Governance Grab: China proposes a World AI Cooperation Org to write global AI rules while the US debates national regulations

• The Great VC Concentration: AI captured 46% of all venture capital ($45B) in Q3, while megarounds hit a record 60% of total funding

• The Antitrust Workaround: Microsoft's $135B OpenAI stake proves minority investing beats FTC lawsuits, as Big Tech makes 208 deals worth $70B

As we continue to build at Context Ventures, we've launched Startup Intros with a simple mission: to help early-stage founders find the right investors, faster and smarter.

🚫 The Digital Iron Curtain: China's $50B Silicon Purge

🔨 From Chip Ban to 50% Power Bribes: China's Tech Divorce

China just banned all foreign AI chips from state-funded data centers while simultaneously slashing power bills by 50% for companies ditching Nvidia:

• 100% Domestic Mandate: New state-funded data centers must use only Chinese AI chips

• Rip-and-Replace Orders: Projects under 30% completion must remove already-installed foreign chips

• 50% Power Discount: Alibaba & ByteDance get half-price electricity if they switch to Huawei & Cambricon

• The Catch: Domestic chips burn more power per computation than banned US alternatives

The Beautiful Irony: Chinese chips can't match Nvidia's performance per watt, so they're burning more power while computing less. But when the government cuts your electricity bill in half, suddenly that efficiency gap no longer matters. The US spent three years perfecting export controls. China's spending billions to make them irrelevant.

🎰 Chinese AI Models Outtraded GPT-5 by 85 Percentage Points

Chinese AI models from DeepSeek and Alibaba crushed Western rivals in live crypto trading, with Qwen3-Max delivering +22.32% returns while OpenAI's GPT-5 hemorrhaged -62.66%:

• Qwen3-Max: +22.32% returns (without advanced reasoning features)

• DeepSeek V3.1: +4.89% gains in real market conditions

• GPT-5: -62.66% losses (worst performer in the competition)

• All US Models: Every American model (GPT-5, Gemini, Claude, xAI) lost money

The Setup: Six AI models, each with $10K, traded crypto-perpetual contracts on Hyperliquid for two weeks. All trades were logged publicly in real-time, eliminating backtest trickery.

Reality Check: While organizers cautioned that two weeks is statistically thin, this wasn't a lab benchmark test. This was real money, real markets, and real-time decisions. China's "cheap" AI models just outtraded America's best in the financial arena that matters most.

🌐 Xi Proposes an "AI United Nations" Headquartered in Shanghai

Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed a "World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization" at the APEC summit, positioning China to write global AI governance rules:

• Headquarters: Shanghai becomes the capital of AI diplomacy

• Target Audience: Developing countries tired of Western-dominated tech standards

• Real Agenda: "Algorithmic sovereignty" and control over who sets the rules

• The Pitch: Make AI a "public good" while China writes the rulebook

Translation: While the US favors national regulation and loose international standards, China wants a multilateral body where it plays kingmaker. The tech cold war isn't just about chips and export controls anymore; it's about who writes the global constitution for artificial intelligence.

💸 The Great VC Concentration: When AI Eats Everything

🤖 AI Vacuums 46% of All VC While Megarounds Swallow the Rest

AI startups captured a staggering $45B in Q3 2025, representing 46% of the entire $97B in global VC funding, while megarounds of $100M+ now account for a record 60% of all capital:

• $45B to AI: Nearly half of all venture dollars went to one sector in three months

• $13B to Anthropic: A single company captured 29% of all AI investment globally

• 60% to Megarounds: The highest share ever recorded in Crunchbase history

• 70% US Megarounds: 7 out of 10 US VC dollars flow to $100M+ rounds

• $15.8B to Biotech: Record low for a sector that used to compete for top billing

Reality Check: VC isn't really "venture" anymore when two-thirds of the money goes to established AI giants raising billion-dollar rounds. When one company (Anthropic) raises more than entire sectors, and 60% of capital goes to a handful of mega-bets, the whole ecosystem becomes a high-stakes poker game with only a few hands.

💰 October's $39B: NYC Beats the Bay, OpenAI Hits $500B

October delivered $39B in global startup funding with nine $500M+ rounds, while NYC unexpectedly dominated mega-deals and OpenAI's secondary sale added $500B to its valuation:

• $5.9B to NYC: Up 200%+ YoY, beating the Bay Area for largest deals

• $2B to Reflection AI: Nvidia-backed coding agent (NYC, not SF)

• $2B to Polymarket: Prediction market backed by NYSE parent ICE

• $3.9B to China: Up 200%+ despite chip wars and export controls

• $500B OpenAI Valuation: Secondary sale added hundreds of billions to Crunchbase Unicorn Board

Reality Check: When NYC startups raise more in mega-rounds than the Bay for the first time in memory, you're either witnessing genuine geographic diversification or watching East Coast founders master the art of billion-dollar fundraising. The $39B total is up from $34B a year ago but down from September's $51B, suggesting the mega-round mania is plateauing.

🎰 Tech Giants & Big Pharma Play VC to Avoid Antitrust Headaches

The Big 5 Tech Giants have pivoted from acquisitions to accumulating massive startup stakes, with Microsoft's $135B OpenAI position proving minority investing beats FTC lawsuits:

• $135B Microsoft Stake: 27% of OpenAI is worth 6x more than Meta's WhatsApp acquisition

• 208 Deals in 2025: Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon made $70B in total investments

• $8B Amazon Bet: Anthropic commitment tripled in value as valuation hit $183B

• $18T Combined Market Cap: They can afford any acquisition but choose strategic stakes instead

Biotech Funding: Collapsed to just 8% of total US VC, forcing complete reliance on corporate VC arms from pharmaceutical giants:

• 8% Share: Down from the historical norm of 15-20% of annual VC funding

• $16.6B Total: Biotech's entire 2025 haul, while total VC funding increased

• Corporate Takeover: Novo Holdings, Eli Lilly, Sanofi, and Pfizer now control early-stage biotech

• 18 IPOs: Anemic exits putting 2025 on pace for historic low

The Antitrust Workaround: Why spend $20B acquiring a startup and trigger antitrust when you can invest $10B, watch it appreciate 13x, and control through cloud contracts? VC funding rose in 2025, but biotech got diluted as AI mega-rounds inflated the denominator. The market decided incremental LLM improvements are 10x more fundable than curing diseases. Thus, the conflicts write themselves when incumbents fund alternatives.

🤖 Product Launch Quick Hits: AI Wants Your Job, Seriously

⚛️ Quantinuum's $10B Quantum Waiting Game: The quantum computing unicorn unveiled Helios, a 98-qubit machine with a 2:1 physical-to-logical qubit ratio that's "dawning the commercial adoption phase." JPM is running "complex algorithms" while Quantinuum promises its Apollo machine will deliver actual commercial value by 2029.

📱 Huawei's $590 iPhone Air Killer Lands Next Week: The Mate 70 Air ships Nov 11 at $590 with 6.6mm profile, 7" display, and 6,500mAh battery, making Apple's rumored $999+ iPhone Air look like a luxury tax for patriotism. It runs HarmonyOS, packs triple cameras, and proves Chinese phone makers get "thin phone with actual battery life."

🍎 Apple Admits Defeat, Pays Google $1B/Year for AI Help: Apple is finalizing a deal to pay Google roughly $1B annually for a 1.2T parameter Gemini model to power Siri's rebuild. After testing Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, they chose Google, calling it an "interim solution" until their own models catch up.

📧 Gemini Finally Discovers Google Owns Maps & Gmail: Google's Deep Research can now search your Gmail, Drive, and Chat alongside the web. Also, Google Maps is replacing Assistant with Gemini AI, promising a hands-free, conversational experience. Wow, Google's AI products can finally talk to the rest of Google's products. The real story is why it took so long.

💍 Sandbar's $13M to Solve a Problem Nobody Has: Stream Ring ($249-299, ships summer 2026) lets you whisper thoughts into a smart ring that transcribes them and talks back in a generated version of your own voice. Requires $10/month subscription after three months.

🎬 OpenAI's Android Afterthought: Launched Sora on Android in the US, Canada, and Japan, months after the iOS version racked up 1M+ downloads in five days. Turns out the other 70% of smartphone users also want to generate questionable AI videos.

🔄 Personnel Quick Hits: Musical Chairs, Tech Edition

🤝 Sequoia's Solo Experiment Ends: Alfred Lin and Pat Grady become co-stewards, ending Roelof Botha's 3-year solo stewardship that began in 2022. Turns out elite VCs prefer the buddy system, especially after spinning off China and India on your watch.

🍃 MongoDB's Planned Succession: Dev Ittycheria is stepping down after 11 years as CEO, handing the reins to Cloudflare's Chirantan Desai on November 10 after growing MongoDB from $35M to $2.3B in revenue.

👔 Deel Retires the Family CFO: Ex-Credit Karma CEO Joe Kauffman named CFO at $17.3B-valued Deel ahead of potential IPO, replacing founding CFO Philippe Bouaziz, CEO Alex Bouaziz's father, who becomes Executive Chairman.

🔔 Trump's Investment Accelerator's IPO King Goes Government: Michael Grimes, the Morgan Stanley banker behind Uber and Airbnb's IPOs, is now running Trump's foreign investment accelerator targeting $1B+ deals, despite legal experts warning the program may breach appropriations law and lack congressional authorization.

💸 What Other Startups are Popping Off

Here's a roundup of this week's trending startup activity:

🤖 Artificial Intelligence

• Perplexity Patents: Searches patents with AI to get comprehensive results

• Peakflo AI Voice Agents: Automates business calls at scale with AI agents

• Multifactor: Manages passwords to be securely shared with humans & AI

• Jinna.ai: AI Assistant for business admin, finances & day-to-day tasks

• Context Link: Share context with AI with personal URLs

• Postiz: Schedule social posts to 20+ channels using AI Agents and MCP

🛠️ Developer Tools

• Firecrawl v2.5: Crawls any website into clean, structured data via API

• Gammacode: Scans, fixes, and ships secure code using AI agents

• MeDo by Baidu: Build full-stack apps affordably using AI development

• Snyk Studio: Provides real-time security guardrails for AI code assistants

• Dazl: Visually edit everything in he next era of vibe coding

• Build0: Build custom internal apps in minutes with no coding required

• Ultracite v6: Code linter and formatter that is opinionated, zero-config 

💼 Business & Productivity

• Softr Workflows: Build automations to power your business apps without code.

• Sheets Organizer: Manage Google Sheets tabs efficiently with this add-on

• Sidemail 2.0: All-in-one email platform for SaaS

• Superinbox: Email vibing in your Gmail or Outlook

🎨 Creative & Design

• Canva's Creative Operating System: Design videos, emails, sites & docs

• Affinity by Canva: Free creative software for vector, pixel, and print.

🚀 Sales & Marketing

• Floqer: Automates go-to-market data tasks using an AI copilot

• Uneed Community: Launch, get seen, & grow alongside other makers

• Maillayer: Email marketing without subscriptions

🌟 Editor's Note

At Startup Intros, our mission is to bring the latest founder-investor news straight to your inbox, keeping you ahead in the fast-paced world of Silicon Valley.

💭 Parting Thoughts

The chip war has just evolved from export controls to economic incentives that make them irrelevant. China's spending billions to turn US sanctions into a competitive advantage while its "cheap" AI models are outtrading the US models for real money.

Meanwhile, VC has become venture concentration, with AI hoovering 46% of all funding while Big Tech deploys minority stakes like chess pieces to avoid antitrust checkmate.

Forward to a friend or hit reply to let me know what you're seeing in your world.

Till next time!

P.S. Raised this week, and we missed you? Want to be featured? Have tips or funding questions? Reply or DM us as we’re here to help.

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