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Welcome to the week where Anthropic proved you can raise $13B and pay $1.5B in copyright settlements simultaneously, while Silicon Valley's elite lined up at the White House like it's the world's most expensive networking event.
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Here's what's moving markets and making headlines:
🎯 BLUF: Bottom Line Upfront
Anthropic's $183B Victory Lap: Raises $13B Series F while settling copyright lawsuit for $1.5B being the first major AI company to pay for training data theft
Tech's White House Pilgrimage: Silicon Valley elite gather for Trump's AI dinner, with Zuck promising $600B spending while caught on hot mic
AI Search Wars Heat Up: Sierra hits $10B, Exa raises $85M at $700M for AI-native search, while traditional players scramble
Government Intervention Era: From self-driving car deregulation to AI education initiatives, Washington shapes tech's future
Personnel Musical Chairs: Salesforce axes 4,000 heads "because AI," while xAI bleeds executives amid Musk's management style
🤖 Anthropic's Historic Double Play: $13B Raised, $1.5B Paid
💰 The Biggest AI Round Just Got Bigger
Anthropic closed a monster $13B Series F led by ICONIQ Capital, Fidelity, and Lightspeed, valuing the company at $183B post-money, making it one of the most valuable private companies in history.
The Mind-Bending Numbers:
Revenue Explosion: From $1B run-rate at the start of 2025 to over $5B by August, making Anthropic "one of the fastest-growing technology companies in history"
Enterprise Dominance: 300,000+ business customers, with large accounts ($100K+ ARR) growing 7x in the past year
Claude Code's Breakout: Already generating $500M run-rate with 10x usage growth in just three months
All-Star Investors: Blackstone, Coatue, Goldman Sachs, TPG, Qatar Investment Authority, and basically everyone with serious money
💸 The $1.5B Copyright Reality Check
But here's the plot twist: Anthropic simultaneously agreed to pay $1.5B to settle claims from authors whose pirated books were used to train Claude.
The Precedent-Setting Deal:
First Major Settlement: No AI company has paid this much for training data violations
The Original Sin: Authors proved Anthropic downloaded millions of illegally pirated books for training
Could Have Been Worse: If it went to trial, damages could have hit $1 trillion for 7 million books
Industry Implications: Dozens of similar lawsuits are pending against OpenAI, Meta, and others
The Judge's Ruling: Training AI on published works is "fair use" as long as output doesn't impact the original's sale value, but using pirated sources? That'll cost you $1.5B.
🌏 The China Lockdown
Anthropic is also cutting off Chinese-owned entities from accessing Claude, citing military and intelligence risks.
The New Rule: Any company majority-owned by Chinese entities loses access
Revenue Impact: Low hundreds of millions in global revenue loss
Closing Loopholes: Chinese companies can't access it through overseas subsidiaries anymore
Geopolitical Chess: Part of broader U.S. efforts to prevent China from accessing frontier AI
Bottom Line: Anthropic is simultaneously raising record amounts while paying record settlements, proving that in AI, you can be incredibly successful and incredibly sued at the same time.
🛡️ Inside Anthropic's "Red Team" PR Machine
Fortune took a deep dive into Anthropic's Frontier Red Team, the 15-person group tasked with stress-testing Claude for national security risks while conveniently burnishing the company's safety reputation.
The Safety Theater:
Unique PR Mandate: Unlike other companies' red teams, Anthropic's explicitly publicizes findings, sitting in policy, not technical security
Dream Team Credentials: Former Air Force captains, Oxford PhDs, and ex-UK government advisors who are "AGI-pilled"
Recent Win: Led to Claude Opus 4 being released under "AI Safety Level 3" for enhanced CBRN capabilities
Business Strategy: Defense experts say the safety work is "good for business" with government contracts, while critics like Nvidia's Jensen Huang accuse Amodei of regulatory capture
🏛️ Silicon Valley's Mar-a-Lago Moment: When Tech Meets Trump 2.0
🤝 The Rose Garden Networking Event
Tech's biggest names gathered at the White House for what can only be described as the world's most expensive networking dinner, moved inside due to rain because even Mother Nature wasn't buying the optics.
The Guest List:
The Zuckerberg Show: Seated closest to Trump (prime real estate), promised "at least $600B through 2028" in U.S. spending
The Usual Suspects: Tim Cook (Apple), Sundar Pichai (Google), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sam Altman (OpenAI), Bill Gates
The Wild Card: Sergey Brin thanked Trump for "putting aggressive pressure on Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro" (because AI and geopolitics go hand in hand)
Notable Absence: Elon Musk was invited but didn't show (probably too busy firing xAI executives)
The Praise Parade: Everyone thanked Trump for his "pro-business, pro-innovation" agenda, like it was a rehearsed talking point
The Real Takeaway: Silicon Valley's power players are hedging their bets with performative loyalty, knowing that in Washington, access can beat principles every time.
👩🎓 Melania's AI Education Push
First Lady Melania Trump hosted an AI education event with Sundar Pichai and IBM's Arvind Krishna, because apparently, AI needs to start in kindergarten now.
The Commitments:
Amazon: Supporting AI education initiatives
Microsoft: New commitments to AI learning
Anthropic: Signed pledge to invest in AI education for America's youth
The Real Story: Tech companies are playing politics while positioning themselves for government contracts and favorable regulation.
🚗 Policy Wins: Self-Driving Cars Get the Green Light
The White House announced it's relaxing federal vehicle safety standards for autonomous vehicles:
New Rules: Three proposed changes to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards
The Logic: "One-size-fits-all" rules don't apply to driver-free vehicles
What's Gone: Requirements for windshield wipers, defrosters, and other human-centric features
Who Wins: Tesla, Waymo, and anyone trying to deploy robotaxis
⚡ Startup Quick Hits: When AI Search Meets Quantum Dreams
🎯 Sierra Hits $10B for AI Agents That Actually Work: Bret Taylor's conversational AI startup raised $350M from Benchmark and Sequoia, jumping to a $10B valuation. Sierra's AI agents handle customer service for major brands, proving that boring enterprise AI is where the real money lives.
🔍 Exa's 10x Jump to $700M for AI-Native Search: The AI search startup raised $85M Series B led by Benchmark's Peter Fenton, valuing it at $700M (a 10x increase from its previous round). Built for AI agents rather than humans, Exa is positioning itself as "the Google of the machine-to-machine internet."
⚛️ Quantinuum's $600M Quantum Bet: Nvidia joined a $600M round valuing the quantum computing startup at $10B. Honeywell owns 54% of Quantinuum, which promises computers capable of designing new drugs and building more powerful AI models. The quantum hype train keeps rolling.
⚡ VC Quick Hits: From Climate Death Valleys to Billion-Dollar Alliances
🌱 TED's Chris Anderson Launches $300M Climate 'Valley of Death' Fund: The All Aboard Coalition aims to bridge the "missing middle" for climate tech startups needing $100-200M for first-of-a-kind projects. Backed by Breakthrough Energy, Khosla Ventures, and 12 other top climate VCs, it's designed to signal to institutional investors that these companies are worth backing.
🇮🇳 Indo-US Deep Tech Alliance Pledges $1B: Eight U.S. and Indian VC firms, including Accel, Blume Ventures, and Premji Invest, formed an unusual coalition to back India's deep tech startups. The alliance addresses funding gaps while India's government pushes its ₹1T RDI scheme for strategic tech domains.
🧬 Atlas Venture Doubles Down with $400M Opportunity Fund: Just nine months after closing a $450M early-stage fund, Atlas is back with $400M specifically for follow-on investments in portfolio companies. The oversubscribed Opportunity Fund III will fuel later-stage rounds for biotechs like Be Bio, Renasant Bio, and Vima Therapeutics.
💼 Personnel Quick Hits: The Great AI Workforce Reckoning
🪓 Salesforce CEO's Brutal Honesty: "I Need Less Heads": Marc Benioff confirmed cutting 4,000 customer support roles because AI made them redundant. "I've reduced it from 9,000 heads to about 5,000, because I need fewer heads," he said, crediting Agentforce bots with eliminating half the workload.
🚪 xAI's Executive Exodus Continues: CFO Mike Liberatore left after just three months, joining co-founder Igor Babuschkin and infrastructure head Uday Ruddarraju in the exodus. Apparently, even $100B+ valuations can't overcome Musk's management style.
⚖️ DOJ Charges IRL Founder Following The Information's Investigation: Abraham Shafi faces criminal fraud charges for lying to SoftBank about the $1B social app's user numbers. The case stems directly from The Information's 2022 investigation that exposed the company's fake metrics.
💸 In Other Funding News
Here's a roundup of notable recent funding rounds across various sectors:
🤖 AI Technology & Infrastructure
Baseten: Raised $150M Series D for AI model deployment and infrastructure platform.
You.com: Raised $100M Series C for an AI-powered search and productivity platform.
Recall.ai: Raised $38M Series B for AI meeting recording and transcription platform.
Allocate: Raised $30.5M Series B for an AI-powered venture capital and private equity management platform.
Isotopes AI: Raised $20M Seed for AI technology solutions.
Kite AI: Raised $18M Series A led by General Catalyst, PayPal Ventures, for building the foundational transaction layer for the agentic internet.
🔧 Business Process Automation & AI
HappyRobot: Raised $44M Series B led by Base10 Partners for an operating system for building and managing an AI workforce for business automation.
Solver: Raised $8M Venture Round for AI-powered business solutions.
Symmetri: Raised $6M Seed for AI automation platform.
Koah Labs: Raised $5M Seed for AI-powered development tools.
Nyne.ai: Raised $1M Pre-Seed for AI automation solutions.
🏥 Healthcare & Biotech
Galvanize Therapeutics: Raised $100M Series C led by Sofinnova Partners for a biomedical platform company that provides therapeutic products and services to deliver healthcare solutions.
Octave: Raised $35.6M Series C for mental healthcare platform and services.
Daymark Health: Raised $26M Venture Round for healthcare technology solutions.
Boomerang Medical: Raised $20M Series B for medical device and healthcare technology.
Model Health: Raised $1M Pre-Seed for healthcare technology platform.
🔧 Developer Infrastructure & Tools
Human Behavior: Raised $5M Seed for developer tools and platform solutions.
Leadoptik: Raised $4.6M Venture Round for developer infrastructure technology.
GroundControl: Raised $2.5M Seed for developer platform solutions.
🚀 Hardware & Computing
Mojo Vision: Raised $75M Series B for augmented reality and smart contact lens technology.
Aurelius Systems: Raised $10M Seed for advanced computing and hardware solutions.
Brilliant: Raised $9.7M Venture Round for hardware and computing technology.
💡 Other Notable Rounds
Flex: Raised $15M Series A led by Core Innovation Capital, First Round Capital for financial services company that provides analysis, integration, and management solutions for HSA/FSA payments.
Plural Energy: Raised $7.1M Seed for climate and energy technology solutions.
Potrero Medical: Raised $2.3M Venture Round for medical technology solutions.
Aervivo: Raised $2.2M Venture Round for technology solutions.
LineWise: Raised $1.1M Pre-Seed for AI technology platform.
Curbsidr: Raised $45K Pre-Seed for technology solutions.
Babylon Ventures: Raised $25K Pre-Seed for security and infrastructure solutions.
Please note that we're still working on building our data pipelines to identify pre-seed rounds as they come.
📈 IPO Watch
Klarna sets IPO pricing range: The Swedish buy-now-pay-later giant will offer 34.3M shares at $35-37, raising $1.2B and valuing the company at up to $14B. Sequoia owns 21% as the largest shareholder, while CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski holds 7%. Most shares being sold belong to existing investors cashing out.
🤝 M&A Activity
Atlassian acquired The Browser Company for $610M: All-cash deal for the Dia AI-powered browser, aimed at building a browser "optimized for work." CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said, "Today's browsers weren't built for work, they were built for browsing." Perplexity had also been in acquisition talks.
OpenAI acquired Statsig for $1.1B: The product analytics startup raised $150M this year at a $1.1B valuation, with ICONIQ leading the round. Ironically, Statsig investors converted holdings into OpenAI shares.
CoreWeave acquired OpenPipe: The cloud GPU provider bought the YC-backed AI startup that helps developers train custom agents with reinforcement learning. OpenPipe raised $6.7M Seed in March 2024.
Nvidia acquired Solver: The chipmaker bought the 3-year-old AI coding agent startup (formerly Laredo Labs) that raised $8M from Radical Ventures. Marks a shift from Nvidia's usual infrastructure acquisitions to developer tools.
🌟 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. Our free weekly newsletter delivers curated insights, deals, and trends to help you navigate the startup ecosystem.
Stay tuned for our upcoming paid daily newsletter, packed with deeper dives, plus weekly spotlights on top VCs, investors, and founders, and practical tips for raising your next round.
💭 Parting Thoughts
That's a wrap on the week where AI companies discovered that "move fast and break things" applies to copyright law too, and Silicon Valley learned that the fastest way to Trump's heart is through a $600B promise you make up on the spot.
Between Anthropic paying $1.5B for digital piracy and tech CEOs playing courtier at the White House, we've officially entered the era where AI companies are too big to fail but not too big to pay for their crimes.
Till next time!
Dev Chandra
CEO @ Startup Intros
Associate @ Context VC
LinkedIn: /in/devchandra
Tim Hsia
Investor @ Context VC
Co-Founder @ Startup Intros
LinkedIn: /in/timhsia
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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