Weekly Download #13

Sep 3: AI Pitch Night: Applications to pitch are open! Join us in Palo Alto for an exciting pitch night featuring the hottest startups in AI. Sign to pitch here!

Sep 4: Caffeine & Capital: The next round of our morning coffee series. Come ready to get caffeinated and talk startups. Sign up on Luma!

Sep 9: Live Podcast w/ Meka Asonye: First Round Capital's Partner talks about GTM strategy, founder support, and building startups from Day 0. Sign up on Luma!

Oct 6: Startup Intros Product Launch Party: Celebrate our platform launch with founder tools demo and SF's best startup networking. Apply on Luma!

Oct 9: Early-Stage Matchmaking: Curated founder-investor matching during SF Tech Week. High-signal connections for serious builders at DG. Apply on Luma!

Meta's $10B Own Goal: Zuck pays Google $10B for cloud services to compete against... Google, funding his rival's AI war chest in the dumbest deal of 2025

Apple's AI Panic Tour: Desperately courting OpenAI, Anthropic, and now Google's Gemini because Siri is so bad that GPT-2 would be an upgrade

Intel's Corporate Welfare Era: SoftBank drops $2B for 2% stake while US govt wants 10% equity for $8B, proving socialism is fine when it's for semiconductors

Coinbase's Saturday Night Massacre: Brian Armstrong hosts weekend shame meeting to fire engineers who won't install AI tools, peak Silicon Valley dystopia

FieldAI's Robot Revolution: Raises $405M (two rounds at once) for "embodied AI" while Nuro bleeds from $8.6B to $6B after ditching delivery bots

$50k in PostHog credit to track real user behavior

$60 in v0 by Vercel credit to vibe code your front-end

$50 in Supabase credit to spin up your backend

Up to 6 months of Notion Biz + AI to run your startup

A Vetted List of 2,000+ early-stage VCs & accelerators

50 Pitch Decks from YC, a16z & Sequoia startups

Guides on pitching and raising from the best founders!

$10+B over 6 years: One of Google Cloud's largest deals ever

"Hundreds of billions": What Zuck plans to spend total on AI infrastructure

The irony: Meta is literally funding Google's AI war chest to compete against Google's AI

Also included: Access to Nvidia GPUs in Google's data centers (because of course)

Meta already uses AWS and Azure, but apparently needs ALL the clouds

Running its own data centers wasn't enough for Zuck's AI dreams

Google is happily taking money from direct competitors (also has an OpenAI deal)

Meta is essentially subsidizing its rival's R&D budget

Already working with: OpenAI (because they had to start somewhere)

Currently flirting with: Anthropic and now Google's Gemini

The prize: Access to iOS's billions of users

The problem: Siri is so bad that even GPT-2 would be an upgrade

Cook promises to "reinvent" the iPhone (translation: add AI because we're late)

Planning foldable iPhone for next year (Samsung had one in 2019)

Magic Cue AI feature is already being done better by Google's Pixel 10

Magic Cue: Uses Google AI to get info from the relevant apps on your device and offer proactive tips and actions in texts.

Made by Google: This hardware event was Google’s attempt to outdo Apple in its poor rollout of Apple Intelligence.

Alphabet Stock: Didn't budge because everyone knows hardware isn't its thing.

Gets a modest 2% stake in a company that posted a $2.9B quarterly loss

Part of Son's $100B pledge to Trump (announced at that surreal press conference)

SoftBank's track record: WeWork (-$10B), Uber (-$5B), and now... Intel?

The Terms: Would convert $8B in CHIPS Act funds into ownership

The Kicker: Bessent says they won’t pressure companies to buy Intel chips

"The last thing we're going to do is take the stake and then try to drum up business."

🤖 FieldAI Raises $405M for Robot Brains: Two rounds in one announcement for "foundational embodied AI models." The most recent round raised $314M, being co-led by Bezos Expeditions, Prysm, and Temasek.

🚗 Nuro Pulls $203M Despite Death Spiral: Once worth $8.6B, now $6B, Nuro ditched its delivery bots to license software. The latest $97M Series E bridge came from Icehouse Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Nvidia, and Pledge Ventures.

🛏️ Eight Sleep Gets $100M for AI Mattresses: Rised a fresh Series D from investors such as HSG, Valor Equity Partners, Founders Fund, YC, and more because regular sleep wasn't complicated enough, now your bed needs AI to optimize your REM cycles.

👑 Chamath's $250M Redemption Arc: The SPAC king who lost billions on 10 failed SPACs is back with "American Exceptionalism Acquisition A." Only vests if shares hit $15 (50% premium).

🕵️ Andreessen Hires Biden's Cyber Chief: Anne Neuberger jumps from White House to a16z for "American Dynamism."

🤖 Coinbase CEO's AI Ultimatum: Brian Armstrong gave engineers one week to adopt AI tools or get fired. Held Saturday meeting for stragglers, fired those without good excuses.

🏠 Opendoor CEO Shown the Door: Carrie Wheeler "stepping back" after public criticism of the iBuyer's collapse. Stock jumped on the news, proving that sometimes the best CEO move is leaving.

TinyFish: Raised $47M Series A led by ICONIQ Growth for enterprise web agent software that automates interactions with complex and dynamic websites.

Functionize: Raised $41M Series B led by LHH and Mumford Investments for their intelligent testing platform that uses machine learning to automate QA processes.

Casca: Raised $29M Series A led by Canapi Ventures for their advanced fraud detection and prevention solutions leveraging machine learning.

Tote.ai: Raised $22.6M led by Cota Capital for their workforce marketplace platform enhanced with AI capabilities.

Convoke: Raised $8.6M Seed led by Dimension Capital and Kleiner Perkins for their personalized video platform for marketing and sales.

SRE.ai: Raised $7.2M Seed led by Crane Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures for their AI-powered site reliability engineering platform.

Agenda Hero: Raised $5.6M Seed led by Upfront Ventures for their calendar management AI assistant that schedules meetings automatically.

Paradigm: Raised $5M Seed led by General Catalyst for their AI-powered talent acquisition and recruitment platform.

Oway: Raised $4M Seed for their AI-native remote work collaboration and productivity platform.

MiChamba: Raised $1.8M Seed for their AI-powered agricultural technology connecting farmers with buyers and services.

EffiGov: Raised $500K Pre-Seed led by Y Combinator for their platform aimed at streamlining local government management through AI.

Zed Industries: Raised $32.4M Series B led by Sequoia Capital for their next-generation code editor designed for collaboration and performance.

Firecrawl: Raised $14.5M Series A led by Nexus Venture Partners for their data extraction infrastructure as a service for developers.

Twin Health: Raised $53M Series E led by Maj Invest Equity for their metabolic health platform that uses sensors and AI to reverse, prevent, and improve chronic metabolic diseases.

Medallion: Raised $43M led by Acrew Capital for their network management platform that streamlines credentialing and licensing operations for healthcare organizations.

Develop Health: Raised $14.3M Series A led by Wing Venture Capital for their health technology platfor,m accelerating patient outcomes.

Kasa Living: Raised $40M led by SLW for their hospitality management platform for modernizing lodging experiences.

Pylon: Raised $31M Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz and Bain Capital Ventures for their customizable user analytics and insights platform.

OneCrew Software: Raised $7.5M Series A led by Stage 2 Capital for their workforce management platform, facilitating efficient scheduling and communication.

Grid Aero: Raised $6M Seed led by Calibrate Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures for their aviation technology optimizing aircraft operations.

Lettuce Financial: Raised $3M for their financial services platform designed to simplify investment decisions.

Astro Mechanica: Raised an undisclosed amount led by United Airlines Ventures for their aerospace technologies.

CLIKA: Raised an undisclosed Seed round led by Accenture Ventures for their platform bringing advanced analytics and insights.

Mainflow: Raised an undisclosed Pre-Seed led by a16z Scout Fund and Y Combinator for their developer tools platform.

Amotions AI: Raised an undisclosed Pre-Seed for their emotion AI technology.

Relcu: Raised an undisclosed Seed round for their enterprise relationship management platform.

Netskope filed for IPO in a surprise Friday drop after raising over $1B across 12 years. The cloud security unicorn posted $328.5M revenue in H1 2025 (up 31% YoY) but remains deeply unprofitable on GAAP basis despite positive operating cash flow. Lightspeed, ICONIQ, and Accel each own 5%+ stakes.

Salesforce acquired Regrello, an AI-powered operating system for manufacturing and supply chain operations, as the CRM giant continues its acquisition spree in AI agents. Terms undisclosed.

Salesforce acquired Waii, the natural language-to-SQL startup that just raised $10M Seed, doubling down on making databases conversational.

Databricks acquired Tecton in an all-stock deal, nabbing the 5-year-old ML data management platform backed by Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, a16z, Bain Capital Ventures, and General Catalyst as it builds out its AI agent stack.

StackGen acquired OpsVerse, combining their infrastructure-from-code platform with DevOps automation capabilities.