Hey Upper East Siders (and Sand Hill Road dwellers)...

Gossip Girl here, your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Silicon Valley's elite. And darlings, today we've got fresh drama worth spilling — from female founders crushing it in construction tech to the VCs fighting over whether they're even still relevant. Grab your oat milk latte and settle in.

💰 The Freshest Deals on the Block

Trunk Tools — $40M Series B Spotted: Sarah Buchner, the PhD-turned-founder taking on the $13 trillion construction industry, just secured a $40M Series B to scale her AI platform. While you were doom-scrolling, she was solving the productivity crisis that costs construction companies over $1 trillion annually. Sources say CNBC just named her a 2026 Changemaker. You didn't hear it from me, but when a female founder is disrupting an industry dominated by hard hats and egos, you pay attention.¹

Pepper — $50M Series C Word on the street: This ag-tech darling just raised $50M in Series C funding. Because apparently feeding the world requires venture capital now. The precision agriculture space is heating up, and Pepper is positioning itself as the go-to platform for farmers who want their crops to be as data-driven as your Instagram algorithm.²

Verley — $38M Series A The precision fermentation startup that's unlocking new protein segments just fetched $38M led by BLG. If you're wondering what "precision fermentation" means, join the club. But investors are betting big that the future of protein isn't just plant-based — it's lab-engineered and French.³

BrainCheck — $13M Series A Extension This Austin-based digital cognitive care platform added $13M to its Series A, led by Next Coast Ventures and joined by S3 Venture and UPMC Enterprises. Mental health tech continues to be one of the rare spaces where investors are actually putting their money where their values are.⁴

Trace — $3M Seed A London-based enterprise AI adoption startup raised $3M from YC, Zeno Ventures, Transpose Platform Management, Goodwater Capital, and Formosa Capital. Because every enterprise now needs an AI strategy, and most of them have no idea where to start.⁵

Huper — $1.5M Pre-Seed This Atlanta-based AI productivity tool for private markets raised $1.5M from Nadia Partners, Link Ventures, and Long Ridge Equity Partners. Private equity firms realizing they need to get with the AI program or get left behind.⁶

Veritus — $10.1M Seed US fintech Veritus raised $10.1M to deploy AI agents across the consumer lending value chain. Co-founder and CEO Joshua March is betting that lending decisions can be faster, smarter, and less biased with AI. Bold claim. We'll see.⁷

🎙️ What the VCs Are Saying

Buckle up, because the timeline is spicy today.

Peter from 1kx is out here declaring the death of traditional VC as we know it. His take? "The required cost of capital to launch a software company will trend towards zero." He's predicting VCs will pivot from being checkwriters to being... checks notes... media brands, governance consultants, and service providers. Basically, VCs are about to become the consultants they used to mock. The irony is chef's kiss.⁸

Christian Oguejiofor is not holding back: "Venture capital used to be about finding two kids in a garage with a weird idea. Now it feels like a high stakes game of following the leader... If you aren't building a foundation model or buying ten thousand GPUs then the VCs act like you don't exist." He's calling out the concentration problem — where AI gets all the love and everything else gets ghosted. The frustration is palpable, and honestly? He's not wrong.⁹

Founder Mode dropped a 50-minute lecture summary featuring Marc Andreessen and Ron Conway on "How to Raise Money." Key takeaway: "Be so good they can't ignore you." Steve Martin's career advice, now repurposed for startup founders. The thread is blowing up with 315 likes and counting.¹⁰

Sudarshan from WithPipeline is giving founders a masterclass in running a fundraising process: "Don't talk to VCs just because they reached out. Wait until you're ready, have all your materials, then schedule all your raise meetings for 1 week & set a 'final' date." The post is packed with insider tactics on FOMO, information symmetry, and why founders need to stop being cute about sharing data. If you're raising, bookmark this thread.¹¹

And in case you missed it, Sarah Tavel quietly left Benchmark along with Miles Grimshaw and Victor Lazarte. Some thought the firm had lost its edge, but their AI portfolio (Sierra, Cursor, LangChain, HeyGen) suggests otherwise. Still the most desirable Series A term sheet? The jury's out, but the brand is holding strong.¹²

🫖 The Quick Sips

• Sunway Healthcare is raising $736M in Malaysia's biggest IPO in nearly a decade. Billionaire Jeffrey Cheah is expanding hospitals like they're shopping malls.¹³
• Biosort secured NOK 100M (about $9.5M) to transform salmon farming with advanced lice control. Yes, you read that right. Salmon lice. This is what we're funding now.¹⁴
• Alpa launched with $3.5M to close hospitality's financial visibility gap. Ex-Deliveroo exec betting that restaurants need better bookkeeping.¹⁵
• IKOS Advanced raised €8M to strengthen agricultural digitization in Spain. Impact Bridge is betting on precision farming going mainstream.¹⁶

💭 Parting Thoughts

Here's the tea, darlings: we're living through a weird moment in VC. On one hand, female founders like Sarah Buchner are proving you don't need to be in the boys' club to build billion-dollar companies. On the other hand, the industry is fracturing between the mega-funds chasing foundation models and the niche players betting on overlooked verticals.

The capital is commoditizing. The networks are opening up. And the old guard is scrambling to figure out what value they actually provide beyond money. If you're a founder watching all this unfold, the lesson is clear: build something so undeniable that the money has to come find you.

Until next time, remember: in the world of venture capital, the only constant is that everyone thinks they know what's coming next — and almost everyone is wrong.

You know you love me,

XOXO — Gossip Girl 💋