Word on the street: AMI Labs, the new venture cofounded by Turing Prize winner Yann LeCun after his Meta exit, just raised a jaw-dropping $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. The French AI lab is building "world models" — AI that learns from reality, not just language. LeCun himself serves as chairman, with former Nabla CEO Alexandre LeBrun running the show.

Here's the juicy part: the round was co-led by Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, Hiro Capital, HV Capital AND Bezos Expeditions. Celebrity angels include Tim and Rosemary Berners-Lee, Jim Breyer, Mark Cuban, and Eric Schmidt. Even NVIDIA, Samsung, Sea, and Toyota Ventures piled in. Sources say they originally sought just €500M but investors threw so much money at them they had to expand the round. You didn't hear it from me, but when the inventor of the web AND the father of AI both want in... this isn't just a startup, it's a moonshot. Read more on TechCrunch

Word on the street: $1B seed rounds are the new $100M. Inflation is real, darling.

Spotted: Four years after selling Mandiant to Google for $5.4 billion, cybersecurity legend Kevin Mandia is back with a vengeance. His new startup Armadin just raised nearly $190 million in a round led by Accel, with Google Ventures (his former acquirer!), Kleiner Perkins, Menlo Ventures, and Ballistic Ventures joining the party.

Armadin creates autonomous AI agents for cybersecurity — completing tasks that used to take days in minutes. Mandia told CNBC: "I wasn't going to sit on the sidelines watching another shift change in cybersecurity without leveraging 30 years in the industry." The company name came to him in the middle of the night while reflecting on the 1588 Spanish Armada. You can't make this up. Read more on CNBC

Sources say: When you've already built one billion-dollar company, Google Ventures assumes you can do it again.

Sources say Eridu, an AI networking startup, just emerged from stealth with a $200 million Series A led by Socratic Partners and legendary VC John Doerr. Total raised: $230M. The founder? Drew Perkins, who invented PPP (the protocol that powers the internet) and sold previous companies to Ciena and Nokia.

After a chat with Sam Altman about GPU bottlenecks, Perkins realized the real problem isn't chips — it's how they communicate. Eridu's solution replaces tiered optical connections with on-chip communications. The VC frenzy was so intense that Perkins said, "My phone has been ringing off the hook." Hudson River Trading, Capricorn Investment Group, and TSMC's VentureTech Alliance also joined. Read more on TechCrunch

Spotted: Unlike a vibe-coded product built by a college dropout, Eridu's founder actually invented the internet's plumbing.

Darlings, Founders Fund is raising capital like it's going out of style. Sources say the firm is nearing a $6 billion close for Founders Fund Growth IV — and here's the kicker: $1.5 billion of that is coming from the firm's own partners. That's confidence.

This comes less than a year after their $4.6B Growth III fund. The firm is now one of the few with stakes in BOTH leading AI labs — OpenAI AND Anthropic (they just co-led Anthropic's $30B round at $380B valuation). But here's the tea: despite all this growth-stage aggression, they haven't raised a new early-stage fund since 2022. You didn't hear it from me, but when the Thiel-verse focuses on growth, early-stage founders might want to look elsewhere. Read more on TechCrunch

KAST, a stablecoin payments startup founded by former Circle chief Raagulan Pathy, just raised $80 million in Series A funding co-led by QED Investors and Left Lane Capital. Valuation? A cool $600 million. The company has over 1 million users and nearly $5 billion in annualized transaction volume since July 2024.

KAST is targeting an annual run rate of $100 million by year-end and plans to expand across Latin America, North America and the Middle East. You didn't hear it from me, but when former Circle execs start stablecoin companies, they're not betting on crypto winter — they're betting on the infrastructure layer. Read more on FinTech Futures

While everyone else chases mega-rounds, Brazilian fund Shiva raised $10 million to do something delightfully contrarian: back 1-3 person AI teams with monthly stipends instead of huge upfront checks. Total per startup? Capped at $300K. Equity? Capped at 15%.

Founder Lucas Marques believes AI has made large headcounts unnecessary — and profitable exits in the $20-50M range can change lives for founders from disadvantaged backgrounds. One early portfolio company (FoxApply) already has 600 international customers. You didn't hear it from me, but when Silicon Valley is throwing billions at GPU clusters, betting on lean, diverse teams is either genius... or a brilliant way to stand out. Read more on Business Insider

In possibly the weirdest (and most fascinating) deal of the day: Cortical Labs is building data centers powered by human brain cells on silicon. The Australia-based biotech startup unveiled its first biological data center in Melbourne and is building another in Singapore.

Yes, you read that right — lab-grown neurons on silicon chips, potentially challenging Nvidia's dominance. The company is putting biological neural networks to work on computing tasks. You didn't hear it from me, but when the alternative to GPUs is literally brain cells... we've officially entered sci-fi territory. Read more on Bloomberg

Sources say Uzum, the Uzbekistan fintech, just hit a $2.3 billion valuation — a 53% jump in just seven months. The company started as an e-commerce marketplace and has expanded into digital banking (Uzum Bank), consumer lending (Uzum Nasiya), and express food delivery (Uzum Tezkor).

They're planning to add 5 million banking customers this year. You didn't hear it from me, but when emerging market fintechs are growing faster than their Silicon Valley counterparts... maybe the valley isn't the only place to find unicorns. Read more on TechCrunch

Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) just sounded the alarm on AI costs — and it's going viral. His startup 8090 is trending toward spending $10 million annually on AI, with costs tripling since November 2025. His concern? "The problem is that my costs are going up 3X every three months. My revenues are not."

The target of his wrath? Cursor. Chamath is very publicly migrating to Anthropic's Claude Code, calling it "equivalent" but far cheaper. He suspects some bills are due to "Ralph Wiggum loops" — when engineers just keep feeding the same prompt back into AI until something works. You know, the Simpsons character who's famously persistent... but not exactly bright.

The mic drop: "Thank you to the VCs who will fund this all-you-can-eat token consumption through their huge investments." Read the thread | Read more on Business Insider

Spotted: When even Chamath can't afford AI tools, maybe the bubble is showing cracks.

Katelin Holloway (@katelin_cruse), founding partner at Seven Seven Six, dropped some serious wisdom: "Two lessons have shaped how I think about venture investing. First: founders rarely fail because they lack vision. They fail because their systems can't keep up with their ambition. Second: you can't scale a product faster than you can scale trust."

Her pedigree? Teaching, Pixar, and helping turn Reddit around — all before writing venture checks. The kicker: "When human systems break, everything else follows. That's why the work of supporting founders often looks like empathy from the outside. In reality, it's much closer to risk management." Read the full post

Dhruv Agarwal (@furst_fly) went viral with receipts on VC behavior in India. His co-founder reached out to "pre-seed" VCs and got... a dismissive email rejecting the pitch without a meeting. His take? "And people wonder why India doesn't have a good startup ecosystem lol!"

The post racked up 436 likes, 130 replies, and 99K views. The replies are a masterclass in founder frustration — and VCs wondering why founders name-and-shame instead of staying quiet. You didn't hear it from me, but in an era where every email can be screenshotted, maybe don't send responses that make you look like a villain in a teen drama? Read the thread

DeReK WaTSoN (@derek__Watson) dropped a spicy take that's making rounds: "The middle-tier VC is dead, squeezed by giants and specialists. Founders now have fewer choices, less competition for their rounds. Bad for startups."

His point? Consolidation is real, and it's hurting founder optionality. Meanwhile, Ammar Gadit (@GaditAmmar) is asking why nobody talks about VC efficiency: "VCs are the ones who evaluate startups with a huge checklist... yet they are the very firms who spray and pray for 100x return." His solution? AI-driven due diligence à la Palantir. Read the post | Read Gadit's take

Jason Malki (@JasonNabilMalki) distilled what VCs actually look for: "If I had to guess whether a startup will raise, I look at one thing first: Focus. Not the logo. Not the slides. Not even the TAM. Focus."

His drift detectors? Customer keeps changing, pricing is still "being tested," roadmap goes in five directions, story shifts every meeting. The winners? "Clear customer. Tight narrative. Metrics that match the strategy." Read the full thread