Apple building smart glasses to take on Meta & Waymo considers selling robotaxis to individual owners.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup funding updates

Cipher Surgical, a Chantilly, VA-based laparoscopic surgical technology company, raised $10M in Series A funding. The round was led by Medical Solutions.

nuclivision, a Gent, Belgium-based medtech startup, raised €5M in Seed funding. Backers included HERAN Partners, LUMO Labs, and imec.istart future fund.

NetFoundry, a Charlotte, NC-based secure-by-design networking company, raised $12M in funding. The round was led by SYN Ventures.

Gestalt Diagnostics, a Spokane, WA-based AI-powered digital pathology solutions company, raised $7.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Cowles Ventures, TVF Funds, Inland Imaging Investments, KickStart Funds, and angel investors from the Pacific Northwest.

Veza, a Los Gatos, CA-based identity security company, raised $108M in Series D funding, at $808M valuation. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), with participation from new investors Atlassian Ventures, Workday Ventures, Snowflake Ventures and existing investors, Accel, GV (Google Ventures), True Ventures, Norwest, Ballistic Ventures, J.P. Morgan, and Blackstone Innovations Investments.

Deferred, a Los Angeles, CA-based technology-powered qualified intermediary company supporting 1031 exchanges, raised $3.6M in Seed funding. The round was led by B Capital and Fika Ventures, with additional support from strategic investors including founders and executives at companies such as Ramp, Zillow, SoFi, Compass, Opendoor, Plaid, and Newfront.

Lightrun, a NYC-based developer observability company, raised $70M in Series B funding. The round was led by Accel and Insight Partners, with participation from Citi, Glilot Capital, GTM Capital, and Sorenson Capital.

LayerX, a NYC-based secure enterprise browser extension company, raised an $11M extension to its $26M Series A funding. The latest round was led by Jump Capital, with participation from initial backers Glilot Capital Partners and Dell Technologies Capital.

Reducto, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an ingestion platform generating unstructured data for AI pipelines, raised $24.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Benchmark, alongside existing investors First Round Capital, BoxGroup and Y Combinator.

Ovo Labs, a London, UK-based biotech company, raised £4M in funding. The round was led by Creator Fund and LocalGlobe, with participation from Blue Wire Capital, Ahren Innovation Capital, and Antonio Pellicer.

Fora, a New York based travel tech startup, raised $40m in Series C funding. The round was round co-led by Thrive and Insight Partners, with participation from Forerunner and Heartcore Capital.

Zest Equity, a Dubai, UAE-based digital infrastructure solutions platform provider for private market transactions, raised $4.3M in Pre-Series A funding. The round was led by Prosus Ventures with participation from Morgan Stanley Inclusive & Sustainable Ventures (MSISV).

Next Generation, a Paris, France-based fintech providing a payment ecosystem, raised $5M in Seed funding. Backers were undisclosed. A written note just specify there were two Cyprus-based firms, an Austrian enterprise, and a prominent European entrepreneur.

Cheehoo, a Los Angeles-based AI-powered animation tool startup, raised $10M in funding. The round was led by Greycroft, with participation from Point72 Ventures, Basis Set, Headline Asia, Powerhouse Capital, Playground Productions, and Rideback.

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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital updates

Intel Capital, the venture arm of Intel, will remain internal after all, reversing earlier plans to spin it out as an independent firm. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan announced during the company’s Q1 earnings call that Intel Capital will instead focus on monetizing its existing portfolio and make selective new investments aligned with Intel’s strategic goals. The decision halts a previously announced spinout that was slated for Q3 2025.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest in tech

Huawei develops Ascend 910D AI chip to rival Nvidia’s H100:

• Huawei is advancing the development of its new AI chip, the Ascend 910D, and seeking Chinese companies as testing partners, according to the Wall Street Journal.

• The chip aims to compete with Nvidia’s H100 series, which is widely used for training AI models, amid tightened U.S. export restrictions on AI chips to China.

• If successful, Huawei’s new chip could help address China’s growing demand for high-end AI hardware following U.S. trade limitations.

Hugging Face releases a 3D-printed robotic arm starting at $100:

• Hugging Face released the SO-101, an upgraded $100 programmable and 3D-printable robotic arm developed with The Robot Studio, WowRobo, Seeed Studio, and PartaBot.

• Compared to the earlier SO-100, the SO-101 offers easier assembly, improved motors, and camera support for AI-based training to perform tasks like picking up Lego blocks.

• Hugging Face is expanding its robotics push, recently acquiring Pollen Robotics and planning to sell its humanoid robot, Reachy 2, with open-source developer support.

Alibaba releases Qwen3 AI models to challenge OpenAI and Google:

• Alibaba launched Qwen3, a new family of AI models ranging from 0.6B to 235B parameters, with most models available for download via Hugging Face and GitHub under an open license.

• The largest Qwen3 model outperforms OpenAI’s o3-mini and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro on benchmarks like Codeforces and AIME, while the smaller Qwen3-32B model is competitive against models like DeepSeek’s R1.

• Qwen3 models feature hybrid reasoning modes and mixture-of-experts architecture, support 119 languages, and highlight the growing competitiveness of open Chinese AI models amid rising U.S.-China tech tensions.

Apple is building smart glasses to take on Meta:

• Apple is reportedly developing AI-powered smart spectacles, similar to Meta's Ray-Bans, as part of an effort to incorporate Apple Intelligence into additional wearable devices following internal research.

• This specific eyewear project focuses on real-time AI assistance using camera and audio input, differing significantly from the company's more ambitious, longer-term augmented reality headset plans.

• Following successful employee trials under the codename "Project Atlas," the technology giant is proceeding with manufacturing, though a consumer release is not anticipated for several years.

Third Neuralink patient with ALS communicates using brain implant:

• Bradford G Smith, an author diagnosed with ALS impacting motor functions, confirmed he is the third recipient of a Neuralink brain-computer interface implant system.

• Mr. Smith leverages the sophisticated apparatus to navigate his laptop cursor, engage Grok AI for voice replication, and even edited his announcement video using the technology.

• Company founder Elon Musk envisions the BCI restoring sight for the visually impaired, while Neuralink is pursuing significant venture capital for ongoing expansion efforts.

Waymo considers selling robotaxis to individual owners:

• Alphabet's CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that Waymo is contemplating the future possibility of making its self-driving automobiles available for individual consumers to buy directly.

• The autonomous technology firm currently manages a significant fleet exceeding 700 vehicles for its ride-hailing operations in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Phoenix.

• This consideration arises amid competition from companies such as Tesla, which aims to launch its own automated taxi service and critiques Waymo's expensive sensor approach.

Amazon launches first 27 Project Kuiper satellites to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink:

• Amazon launched 27 satellites for its $10 billion Project Kuiper broadband network on Monday, aiming to deploy 3,236 satellites to rival SpaceX’s Starlink and offer global internet service.

• The satellites lifted off from Cape Canaveral on a ULA Atlas V rocket, with Amazon aiming to begin delivering service later this year and facing a mid-2026 deadline to deploy half of its constellation.

• Despite SpaceX’s massive lead with over 8,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, Amazon’s executives remain optimistic about Kuiper’s success, highlighting strong consumer demand and future defense applications.

LAST COFFEE SIP

☕Other news

Deel officially agrees to be served legal papers in Rippling’s lawsuit:

• Deel’s CEO Alex Bouaziz and top lawyers formally accepted service through their Irish law firm after Rippling failed for weeks to locate them in France and Italy; Deel denies any attempt to avoid being served.

• The dispute stems from Rippling’s allegations that Deel bribed an employee to spy on its operations, with Deel countersuing Rippling and accusing it of planting an insider at Deel.

• Deel says Malik’s move to Dubai was long-planned and Mieli was always reachable in Italy, while Rippling’s CEO maintains that Deel hasn’t refuted the core accusation of corporate espionage.

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