Google lays off hundreds in Android and Pixel teams & Mira Murati’s AI startup aims for $2B seed round.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup funding updates

Dealstack, a London, UK-based provider of a private capital management platform, raised $5.5m in seed funding round. Backers included current and former professionals at firms such as Paul Weiss, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham&Watkins, KKR, CVC, TA Associates, Goldman Sachs and more.

Simplifyber, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based bio-based materials company, raised US$12m in Series A funding. The round was led by Suzano Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of wood pulp supplier, Suzano, alongside investors including At One Ventures, Techstars, Plug and Play Sustainability Fund, One Small Planet, Staddle Holdings, Collateral Good, M.I.H. Capital, Overlay Capital, Meliorate Partners, and others.

Cofertility, a fertility startup offering no-cost egg freezing in exchange for donation, raises $7.25M Series A led by Next Ventures and Offline Ventures.

Sparrow Quantum, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based supplier of photonic quantum chips, raised €21.5m in Series A funding. The round was led by PensionDanmark, with backing from EIFO and Novo Holdings and additional investments from existing investors 2xN, LIFTT, and the European Innovation Council.

Remedy Scientific, an Oakland, CA-based environmental remediation automation company, raised $11M in seed funding round. Backers included Eclipse, Refactor, Cantos, and Box Group.

Solix DePIN, a Munich, Germany-based developer of decentralized physical infrastructure networks, raised $29.5m in funding from Eclip Foundation.

Tessell, a San Francisco, CA-based multi-cloud database-as-a-service (DBaaS) provider, raised $60m in Series B funding. The round, which brought total funding to $94m, was led from WestBridge Capital, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners and new investments from B37 Ventures and Rocketship.vc.

Outtake, a NYC-based automation platform for cybersecurity, raised $16.5m in Series A funding. The round, which brought total funding raised to date to $20m, was led by CRV, joined by Nikesh Aurora and Bill Ackman.

nEye Systems, an Emeryville, CA-based optical switch startup, closed a $58m Series B financing. The round, which brought total funding to $72.5m, was led by Alphabet’s independent growth fund, CapitalG, with participation from M12, Microsoft’s venture fund; Micron Ventures; NVIDIA; and Socratic Partners.

Aiper, an Atlanta, GA-based cordless robotic pool cleaning company, announced an agreement for a new financing round totaling $100m. The investment was made by Fluidra, a global leader in pool equipment and connected solutions in the pool and wellness sector.

illumicell AI, a Boston, MA-based techmed startup, raised $2M in pre-seed funding. Investors included healthcare operators, clinicians, and early-stage funds such as KOFA Healthcare, Harvard Phoenix Venture Fund, and MedTechSyndicates, as well as Dr. Jeremy Teoh.

Bliss Aesthetics, a Bay Harbor Islands, FL-based AI-driven platform for cosmetic enhancement, raised $17.5m in seed funding. The round was led by Shine Capital, followed by Synchrony Ventures, Sheva Ventures, Point72 Ventures, and Cerca Partners.

incident.io, a London, UK- and San Francisco, CA-based incident management platform provider, raised $62m in Series B funding. The round was led by Insight Partners with continued support from Index Ventures and Point Nine Capital, brings the company’s total funding to over $96m.

Agonalea Games, a Buenos Aires, Argentina-based mobile gaming studio, raised $2m in seed funding. Mika Games made the investment.

groundcover, a San Francisco, CA-based eBPF-driven observability platform for modern architectures, raised $35M in Series B funding. The round, which brought total funding to $60M USD, was led by Zeev Ventures with follow-up participation from Angular Ventures, Heavybit, and Jibe Ventures.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital updates

Symphonic Capital, founded by Sydney Thomas, raises $13.5M for its inaugural fund to back early-stage startups in healthcare and financial services. The firm will write $250K checks to founders outside the Bay Area, focusing on building a more equitable future. LPs include institutional investors aligned with the firm’s mission.

Revent, a Berlin-based VC focused on “planetary and societal health,” has closed a €100M ($109M) Fund II to back climate, healthcare, and economic empowerment startups. Backers include Otto Group, Beiersdorf, and the European Investment Fund. Revent has invested in 26 startups to date and sees growing interest in mission-driven, performance-focused tech across Europe.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest in tech

Google to merge Gemini with Veo to deepen AI’s real-world understanding:

• DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis revealed Google plans to combine its Gemini AI with Veo, a video-generation model, to create a more capable, real-world-aware digital assistant.

• The integration will support Google’s vision for an “omni” model — one that can understand and generate across text, image, audio, and video.

• Hassabis suggested the models are trained heavily on YouTube content to learn real-world physics, aligning with Google’s updated terms allowing AI training on platform data.

Mira Murati’s AI startup is reportedly aiming for a massive $2B seed round:

• Thinking Machines Lab, led by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is reportedly aiming to raise $2 billion in seed funding at a valuation of at least $10 billion, per Business Insider.

• The startup has no public product or revenue but boasts a stacked roster of top AI talent, including ex-OpenAI researchers Bob McGrew and Alec Radford as advisers.

• Thinking Machines Lab says its mission is to build more customizable, general-purpose AI systems than what’s currently available.

The rise of AI ‘reasoning’ models is making benchmarking more expensive:

• Evaluating reasoning models like OpenAI’s o1 and Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet can cost thousands of dollars, with o1 costing nearly $2,800 across key benchmarks, due to the high token output required for multi-step tasks.

• These costs are significantly higher than for non-reasoning models like GPT-4o, which cost as little as $108 to benchmark, creating challenges for independent replication and validation by researchers with limited budgets.

• Experts say this rising cost trend, combined with subsidized access from AI labs, raises concerns about the transparency and reproducibility of performance claims.

OpenAI adds memory feature to ChatGPT for more personalized replies:

• OpenAI is rolling out a new memory feature for ChatGPT Pro and Plus users that allows the chatbot to reference past conversations for more relevant and personalized responses.

• The update, currently unavailable in the U.K., EU, and a few other countries due to regulatory reviews, applies across text, voice, and image interactions.

• Users can turn the feature off, view or delete specific memories, and use “Temporary Chat” mode for sessions that aren’t stored.

Microsoft study shows top AI models still struggle with basic debugging:

• A Microsoft Research study found that top AI models like Claude 3.7 Sonnet and OpenAI’s o1 fail to debug more than half the issues in a 300-task benchmark called SWE-bench Lite.

• Claude 3.7 Sonnet led with a 48.4% success rate, followed by OpenAI’s o1 (30.2%) and o3-mini (22.1%), despite being equipped with tools like a Python debugger.

• Researchers blame the underperformance on a lack of training data that captures real-world debugging workflows, stressing that human coders remain far more capable.

Report reveals internal chaos behind Apple's Siri failure:

• Apple's leadership repeatedly changed direction on Siri's backend, considering local and cloud-based language models before settling on a cloud-based approach, causing frustration among engineers and staff departures.

• The internal AI team has been labeled "AIMLess" by employees who cite poor leadership, lack of ambition, and a risk-averse culture as primary factors in Siri's development problems.

• Apple's impressive demonstration of Siri features at WWDC 2024 was reportedly fictitious, with only the colorful display ribbon actually functioning on test devices, breaking from Apple's tradition of showcasing working products.

Anthropic rolls out a $200-per-month Claude subscription:

• Anthropic has introduced a premium "Max Plan" subscription for Claude AI, offering a $100 monthly tier with five times the resources of the standard Pro plan and a $200 tier with twenty times the resources.

• The new subscription targets power users working with lengthy conversations, complex data analysis, and document editing, while also providing priority access to Claude's latest versions and features.

• This pricing strategy follows OpenAI's similar $200 tier launched in December 2024, signaling a shift toward usage-based pricing as AI companies aim to align costs with computing resources and delivered value.

LAST COFFEE SIP

☕Other news

AI shopping app founder charged with defrauding investors over fake automation:

• Albert Saniger, founder of AI shopping startup Nate, was charged with fraud for allegedly misleading investors about the company’s automation capabilities.

• Despite raising $50M and claiming AI handled transactions, Nate relied almost entirely on human contractors in the Philippines to complete orders, with a 0% automation rate according to the DOJ.

• Nate ran out of cash and sold its assets in 2023, leaving investors with “near total” losses; Saniger is now listed as a partner at VC firm Buttercore.

Google lays off hundreds in Android and Pixel teams amid restructuring:

• Google has laid off hundreds of employees in its platforms and devices unit, affecting teams behind Android, Pixel, and Chrome, according to The Information.

• The layoffs follow a voluntary exit program launched in January, part of efforts to make the combined Platforms and Devices teams more efficient.

• This marks the latest in a series of job cuts across Alphabet, which began slashing thousands of roles in 2023 to streamline operations.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

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