US Troops + Air Battery To Israel + Latest VC and Startup News

TECH IN THE NEWS

Boots on the Ground — The US will send an Air Defense Battery and Troops to Israel, as a cyber attack hits Iranian government sites and nuclear facilities.

RoboFail — Investors were unimpressed by Tesla’s two-seater cybercab and lack of financial detail, with TSLA stocks down 9% Friday, wiping out $60B in value.

SpaceX Boosts — Starship was issued an FAA license for its fifth flight test and successfully caught the 20-storey high booster on its return to the launch tower.

AI Antitrust — The G7 nations have collectively pledged that anti-competitive practices in the semiconductor industry are an urgent issue to be addressed jointly.

Driver Lockout — Uber and Lyft may have been locking New York City drivers out of their apps in order to game city regulations and thereby save millions.

YC backed AptDeco, the only end-to-end furniture resale solution

AptDeco offers a comprehensive suite of resale technology and logistics solutions tailored for the furniture industry. They make sustainable decorating easy, affordable and accessible. Connecting consumers with the perfect piece helps divert millions of pounds of furniture from landfills. With over $84M GMV, 500K+ active users, & partnerships with top brands like West Elm and Pottery Barn, AptDeco is transforming the $702B furniture industry. They’ve raised more than $1.3M from 250+ investors.

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DEALS WE’RE WATCHING
Closed Deals:

MASSIVE DEALS

AI Mineral Discovery — Kobold Metals, a Berkeley AI metal research startup, raised a $527M round targeting a $2B valuation. Investors included Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, Andreessen Horowitz, and Breakthrough Energy.

Personal Injury Legal AI — San Fran legal AI startup EvenUp raised a $135M Series D at $1B+ led by Bain, joined by Premji, Lightspeed, Bessemer, & SignalFire.

Supply Chain & Logistics Software — Bellvue logistics optimization software startup Auger, led by ex Amazon exec Dave Clark raised a $100M Seed from Oak.

Robotic Prefabricated Construction — Vienna-based startup by a co-founder of Delivery Hero, Gropyus raised €100M to rebuild Ukraine and scale in Germany.

RNA-Based Therapies — 1. City Therapeutics, a startup pioneering RNA interference-based medicines, raised a $135M Series A round led by Arch VPs. | 2. Judo Bio, a MA renal RNA therapies startup raised $100M in seed and Series A rounds co-led by Atlas, TCG, and Droia.

AI Assistants for Hospitals — California Healthcare startup Suki raises $70M at a $500M valuation led by Hedosophia, with Venrock and March Capital chipping in.

Bio-GPT — London startup Basecamp Research has raised a $60M Series B to build an AI agent for biological research insights that outperforms DeepMind’s AlphaFold.

LARGE DEALS

Top Republican Bank — Chain Bridge Bancorp, a lender popular with Republicans (incl. presidents), raised $40.7M through an IPO at $22 per share, at $141M.

Modular Nuclear Energy — DC-based SMR design company Blue Energy raised a $45M Series A co-led by Engine Ventures and At One Ventures, with Tamarack Global, and Propeller Ventures joining.

AI Infrastructure — Las Vegas startup TensorWave raised $43M at a $100M valuation to build AI infrastructure, with Nexus VP, Maverick Capital, and StartupNV.

SMALLER DEALS

AI Search Engine for Researchers — Seoul and San Francisco-based Liner raised a $29M Series B led by Intervest and Atinum Investment, with Samsung joining.

Automated AI Accounting — San Francisco startup Numeric raised a $28M Series A led by Menlo & joined by IVP, 8VC, and Founders Fund. Revenue is up 4x.

AI Testing Automation — Berkeley AI testing startup Distributional raised a $19M Series A led by Two Sigma, with Andreessen Horowitz and Operator Coll.

Decentralized Developers Network — Startup Delta raised $11M in pre-seed and seed funding from Figment Capital, Maven 11, Variant, and DBA.

Sales AI Agent — San Francisco OpenAI Converge accelerator graduate startup Unify raised a $12M Series A led by Emergence and Thrive, with OpenAI joining.

Open Source Data Tools — San Francisco’s Lightdash raised an $11M Series A led by Accel, with support from Operator Partners, Shopify Ventures, and YC.

Lithium Water Extraction — Boston startup Lithios raised a $10M seed round led by Clean Energy Ventures, with GS Futures and MassCEC joining.

GenAI Fact-Checking — San Fran startup Infactory raised a $4M seed at $25M , led by Bee Partners, with FJ Labs, Andreessen Horowitz, & Alumni participating.

Exit Watch:

LiveIntent — The New York company helping businesses target ads to users through email newsletters was acquired by Swiss digital marketing company Zeta Global for $77.5M in cash and $172.5M in stock.

Cerebras Systems — The California AI and ML chip startup will most likely postpone its IPO plans due to an SEC probe into a minority investment by UAE-based G42.

Companies to Watch:

Enterprise GenAI — San Fran enterprise-grade gen AI startup Writer is set to raise between $150-200M at a $1.9B valuation, double its Series B valuation a year ago.

Rio Tinto — The global mining giant agreed a $7B deal to buy US Lithium mining firm, Arcadium, a deal that makes it one of the largest global producers of lithium.

Aetherflux — Robinhood co-founder and CCO Baiju Bhatt is launching a self-funded startup focused on capturing solar energy in space.

Scale AI — The San Francisco startup that labels data for big AI developers quadrupled its revenue in H1 this year. In May it raised $1B valued at $14B from Nvidia, Amazon, Meta, others.

TensorWave — The Las Vegas cloud platform aims to break Nvidia’s grip with an AMD-powered cloud and just raised $43M to increase its data center capacity.

The Funding Buzz

General Catalyst — One of Silicon Valley’s largest VC firms is gearing up to launch a “continuation fund” worth between $800M and $1B to create liquidity for LPs.

SpaceX VC Spinout — Interlagos, a new VC firm led by former SpaceX execs, seeks to raise $550M to focus on deep tech investments from inception to Series B.

Sequoia Capital — The firm partnered with Google to enable portfolio companies to gain access to up to $500K of cloud credits, enhanced support and other services.

The Audacious Project — A funding initiative at TED will give $38M to public policy research organization RAND to fund dev tools to evaluate frontier AI safety.