Google makes Android development private & SpaceX reportedly has a secret backdoor for Chinese investment.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup funding updates

Yutori, a San Francisco, CA-based the company building personal AI assistants that automate everyday digital tasks, raised $15m in seed funding. The round was led by Radical Ventures, with participation from Felicis and angel investors Fei-Fei Li, Jeff Dean, Elad Gil, Sarah Guo (Conviction) and Sandhya Venkatachalam (Axiom), Amjad Masad (Replit), Akshay Kothari (Notion), Oliver Cameron (Odyssey), Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Soleio, Logan Kilpatrick (Google AI Studio), among others.

Hakimo, a Menlo Park, CA-based AI-powered physical security monitoring company, raised $10.5M in funding. The round was led by Vertex Ventures and Zigg Capital with participation from RXR Arden Digital Ventures and existing investors Defy.vc and Gokul Rajaram.

Former Meta AI execs Devi Parikh and Dhruv Batra have raised $15M for Yutori, a San Francisco-based startup building autonomous AI personal assistants. The round was led by Radical Ventures, with backing from Felicis, Fei-Fei Li, and Jeff Dean.

Galatea Bio, a Miami, FL-based AI-driven genomic research and clinical genetic testing company, raised $25M in funding. Backers included F-Prime, Helios Digital Ventures, Digitalis Ventures, AME Cloud, CEI Ventures, Alexandria, Founders Collective, Stanford President’s Fund, and HBM Genomics.

WunderGraph, a Miami, FL-based creator of Cosmo, an open-source GraphQL Federation solution, raised $7.5M in Series A funding. The round was led by Karma Ventures, eBay Ventures, and Aspenwood Ventures.

Connectivity Wireless, a Boca Raton, FL-based provider of in-building wireless solutions, received $200M. The amount consisted of: $110M in senior debt facility with an additional $30M available at a later date led by First Citizens Bank, including participations from CIBC Bank USA, Third Coast Bank, and Axiom Bank NA.

Taxo, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a data extraction and reasoning engine for healthcare administration, raised $5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Y Combinator, General Catalyst, and Character, with participation from angels including Kulveer Taggar and Yahya Mokhtarzada.

Plural, a NYC-based provider of a Kubernetes management platform, raised $6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Primary Venture Partners, with participation from Capital One Ventures and New York stage firms including Company Ventures.

Mendel, a Mexico City, Mexico-based provider of an enterprise spend management platform, raised $35M in Series B funding. The round was led by Base10 Partners with participation from PayPal Ventures, and existing investors Infinity Ventures, Industry Ventures, Hi.vc and Endeavor Catalyst.

BuildVision, a Charleston, NC-based provider of a commercial construction procurement platform, raised $10M in Series A funding. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners with participation from existing investor Crosslink Capital. 

Chord Commerce, A NYC-based provider of a customer data platform (CDP) built for commerce, raised $5.5M in funding. The round was led by M13, with participation from Act One Ventures and GR0 Capital.

CADDi, a Chicago, IL- and Tokyo, Japan-based provider of an AI data platform for manufacturing companies, raised $38M in Series C extension funding. The round was led by Atomico, with participation from other investors including Global Brain and Minerva Growth.

Straiker, a Sunnyvale, CA-based AI-native security company, raised $21M in funding. Backers included Lightspeed Ventures and Bain Capital Ventures.

enza, an Abu Dhabi, UAE-based fintech company providing payments solutions, raised $6.75M in Seed funding. The round was led by Algebra Ventures and Quona Capital.

Mila Beauté, a Delhi, India-based color cosmetics brand, raised $2.16M (approximately ₹18 crores) in Pre-Series A funding, at ₹303 crore valuation. The round was led by Rukam Capital.

SplxAI, a Dover, DE-based company developing an offensive security service for Agentic AI, raised $7M in Seed funding. The round was led by LAUNCHub Ventures with participation from Rain Capital, Inovo, Runtime Ventures, DNV Ventures and South Central Ventures.

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital updates

Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has joined deep tech VC firm Playground Global as a general partner. He will work with 10–20 portfolio companies, focusing on breakthrough technologies. Gelsinger also became executive chairman of xLight, which is developing energy-efficient lasers for EUV lithography. The move signals Gelsinger’s continued push to advance semiconductor innovation and Moore’s Law.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest in tech

Google makes Android development private:

• Google is shifting Android development to private repositories, only releasing source code after official launches, marking a significant departure from the real-time collaboration previously available through the Android Open Source Project.

• The company claims this change will streamline engineering processes and deliver updates more efficiently, but it creates delays for developers and manufacturers who previously had early access to upcoming features.

• While Android technically remains open-source with code published under the AOSP license after each release, this move follows Google's broader trend of exerting tighter control over its projects like Chromium and Fuchsia OS.

SpaceX reportedly has a secret backdoor for Chinese investment:

• SpaceX reportedly allows Chinese investors to purchase stakes in the company through offshore vehicles like the Cayman Islands, raising national security concerns given its role as a Pentagon defense contractor.

• Details of this investment approach emerged during testimony in a Delaware corporate dispute, revealing that a $50 million deal with a Chinese firm was canceled when it became public knowledge.

• Experts find this practice troubling as it potentially conceals foreign ownership interests, which is particularly concerning as SpaceX handles sensitive military technology that could be accessed by foreign adversaries.

Signal downloads spike amid US government scandal:

• U.S. officials including VP J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth discussed plans to attack the Houthis in a Signal group chat — but mistakenly added Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who published the messages.

• The incident wasn’t a Signal flaw but a user error, highlighting how encrypted apps can still pose risks if misused, especially for military communications.

• Following the scandal, Signal downloads surged globally — up 45% in the U.S. and 42% in Yemen — with the app jumping from No. 50 to No. 9 in Yemen’s social category.

Google rolls out new vacation-planning features to Search, Maps, and Gemini:

• AI Overviews in Search now help create custom travel itineraries like “Costa Rica nature trip,” with maps, photos, reviews, and export options to Docs, Gmail, or Google Maps.

• Gemini’s “Gems” feature is now free for all users, letting travelers create personalized AI trip planners to suggest destinations, activities, and packing lists.

• Google Maps adds screenshot detection, identifying vacation-related places from your camera roll and saving them to a map-based list; plus, hotel price tracking now joins flight alerts globally on mobile and desktop.

Open source devs are fighting AI crawlers with cleverness and vengeance:

• Open source developers are under siege from AI web crawlers that ignore robots.txt, overwhelm servers, and mask their identities — often causing outages and draining resources.

• In response, devs are deploying creative defenses like Anubis, a reverse proxy tool that blocks bots with proof-of-work challenges, and Nepenthes, a trap that feeds bots fake content in an endless loop.

• Tools like these — along with Cloudflare’s AI Labyrinth — reflect a growing trend of devs using humor and clever engineering to defend against relentless AI scraping, amid rising frustration across the FOSS community.

LAST COFFEE SIP

☕Other news

TikTok to launch TikTok Shop in France, Germany, and Italy:

• TikTok Shop, already live in the U.K. and U.S., will launch in France, Germany, and Italy on Monday as part of its European expansion.

• The company is actively onboarding local European merchants to diversify beyond China-based sellers and broaden product offerings and price points.

• TikTok’s head of operations in the U.K. highlighted efforts to attract premium sellers, including a U.K. store offering secondhand luxury Birkin bags.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

💼 Today’s VC & startup job opportunities

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