Google loses adtech monopoly case & Former Y Combinator president Geoff Ralston launches new AI ‘safety’ fund.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup funding updates

Risa Labs, a Palo Alto, CA-based oncology AI company, raised $3.5M in funding. The round was led by Binny Bansal (Flipkart co-founder) with participation from Oncology Ventures, General Catalyst, z21 Ventures, ODD BIRD VC, and Ashish Gupta.

Cy4Data Labs, a San Jose, Ca-based data protection company, raised $10M in funding. The round was led by Pelion Venture Partners.

Exaforce, a San Jose, CA-based company developing an Agentic SOC platform, raised $75M in Series A funding. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, Mayfield, and Thomvest Ventures.

Toku, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an account receivable SaaS platform, raised $48M in Series A funding. The round was led by Oak HC/FT. Existing investors, including Gradient Ventures, F-Prime, Clocktower, Y Combinator, and Honey Island by 4UM, also participated.

Trellis Health, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a digital health platform, raised $1.8M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Palette Ventures, Swizzle Ventures, NEXTBLUE, Suncoast Ventures, and Sundial Foundation, along with Sheila Marcelo, Yuri Gurski, Andrei Kouzel, Mike Prytkov, Naseem Sayani, and others.

Meadow, a NYC-based company providing student financial services, raised $14M in funding. The round was led by Matrix Partners, with participation from existing backers including Susa Ventures, Giant Ventures, Treble Capital, and GoGlobal Ventures.

Vizzy, a London, UK-based talent platform provider for global brands, raised £3.65M in Seed funding. The round was led by Adjuvo.

Crux, a NYC-based capital markets technology company, raised $50M in Series B funding. The round was led by Lowercarbon Capital. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Ardent Venture Partners, CIV, New System Ventures, The Three Cairns Group, Acrew Capital and Giant Ventures also participated.

Assort Health, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of an AI platform for managing patient phone calls, raised $26M in funding. The round was led by First Round Capital and Chemistry, with participation from existing investor Quiet Capital.

Glider, a NYC-based financial orchestration layer for building automated onchain investment portfolios, raised $4M in funding. The round was led by a16z CSX, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Uniswap Ventures, First Commit, Selini Capital, GSR, Generative Ventures, Pivot Global, and MoonPay Ventures.

Graze, a Portland, OR-based company creating custom feeds on Bluesky, raised $1M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Betaworks and Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Factorial, Apertu Capital, Skyseed, and angel investors from Mozilla and Protocol Labs.

Pillar Security, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based AI security startup providing end-to-end security controls, raised $9M in Seed funding. The round was led by Shield Capital, with participation from Golden Ventures, Ground Up Ventures and other strategic angel investors.

Arcana Labs, a Los Angeles, CA-based AI-powered content production platform and studio, raised $5.5m in funding. The round was led by SEMCAP AI and its co-founders and co-CIOs Walter “Buck” Buckley and Cyrus Vandrevala.

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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital updates

Former Y Combinator president Geoff Ralston launches new AI ‘safety’ fund:

• Former Y Combinator president Geoff Ralston announced SAIF (Safe Artificial Intelligence Fund) to back early-stage startups focused on AI safety and responsible deployment.

• SAIF will write $100K checks on a $10M SAFE cap, targeting startups working on AI security, compliance, disinformation detection, and safe forecasting — but steering clear of autonomous weapons.

• Leveraging his YC network, Ralston will mentor founders and help them connect with investors and apply to Y Combinator.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest in tech

OpenAI pursued Cursor maker before entering into talks to buy Windsurf for $3B:

• OpenAI reportedly tried to acquire Cursor creator Anysphere in 2024 and again in early 2025, but talks fell through; Anysphere is now pursuing funding at a $10B valuation.

• OpenAI is instead in talks to acquire Windsurf, which has $40M ARR, for $3B—despite Cursor generating roughly $200M in ARR.

• The moves highlight OpenAI’s urgency to lock in a leading position in AI-powered code generation, beyond its existing tools like Codex CLI.

Google loses adtech monopoly case:

• A federal judge concluded that Google violated antitrust laws by unlawfully maintaining dominant control over the digital advertising technology sector, siding with the Department of Justice.

• The court found Google engaged in deliberate anticompetitive behavior to establish and preserve its monopoly in the markets for publisher ad servers and advertising exchanges on the open web.

• This significant ruling confirms the government's assertion that the technology firm unfairly profits, preceding another legal phase concerning potential changes to Google's search operations.

AI benchmarking platform Chatbot Arena forms a new company:

• Chatbot Arena, the go-to benchmarking platform for top AI labs, is now forming a company called Arena Intelligence Inc. to scale its operations.

• The platform, originally run by UC Berkeley researchers and funded through grants, aims to stay neutral while improving testing capabilities.

• Backers like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have used Chatbot Arena to benchmark their models; the new company hasn’t revealed its business model or investors yet.

OpenAI launches Flex processing to cut model costs by 50 percent:

• OpenAI introduced Flex processing for o3 and o4-mini models, offering half-price API access in exchange for slower speeds and occasional unavailability, targeting non-critical tasks like model evals and async workloads.

• With Flex, o3 costs drop to $5M per million input tokens and $20M per million output tokens; o4-mini drops to $0.55M input and $2.20M output.

• OpenAI also now requires ID verification for users in lower usage tiers to access o3 and other advanced features like reasoning summaries and streaming APIs.

Snapchat would have grown faster if it accepted $6B buyout offer:

• Chinese e-commerce apps DHgate and Taobao skyrocketed in U.S. App Store rankings after viral TikTok videos explained how many luxury goods originate from Chinese factories.

• U.S. consumers, seeking luxury dupes or direct-from-manufacturer deals amid rising prices on Shein and Temu, fueled a 514% increase in Taobao downloads in April.

• Though the apps don’t bypass tariffs, shoppers believe buying from Chinese sellers can cut costs; Taobao reached No. 5 overall and No. 2 in Shopping on the iOS App Store.

Zuckerberg admits TikTok slowed Meta’s growth in antitrust trial testimony:

• Mark Zuckerberg testified that TikTok’s rise in 2018 posed a major threat to Meta, directly slowing Facebook’s growth and prompting a strategic shift.

• He acknowledged Meta restructured its reporting metrics to obscure slowing Facebook user growth after TikTok gained popularity.

• Zuckerberg also said social platforms are now “discovery engines” rather than built solely on friend networks — even as Meta pushes to revive Facebook’s social graph.

OpenAI’s $500B Stargate project eyes U.K., Germany, and France for global expansion:

• Stargate, the massive AI infrastructure project by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, is exploring international sites in the U.K., Germany, and France, per the Financial Times.

• Originally focused on building U.S.-based AI data centers, Stargate is still raising its first $100B, with SoftBank set to contribute tens of billions.

• President Trump called Stargate a “declaration of confidence in America” when it was announced in January, but global expansion now appears to be on the table.

LAST COFFEE SIP

☕Other news

Google, Apple, and Snap aren’t happy about Meta’s poorly-redacted slides:

• Meta received strong complaints from Apple, Google, and Snap after poorly redacted court documents in its antitrust case inadvertently revealed confidential competitor information to the public.

• The insufficiently obscured legal filings contained sensitive business details, including data suggesting Apple Messages leads on iOS and that Snapchat faced numerous successful competitors beyond Meta's platforms.

• Lawyers representing the other technology giants voiced sharp criticism regarding the information exposure, suggesting this error could damage future trust and cooperation with Meta concerning sensitive data.

Meta blocks Apple Intelligence on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp:

• Meta has opted to disable Apple Intelligence functions, including Writing Tools and Genmoji creation, within its suite of iOS applications like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

• Users accessing the social media firm's mobile software will find that integrated features for AI text assistance or customized emoji generation are currently inaccessible on their iPhones.

• Although the technology company did not provide a specific reason, speculation suggests it aims to promote its own Meta AI amid past disagreements with Apple.

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