OpenAI in talks to buy Windsurf for $3 Billion & Trump to consider a US DeepSeek ban.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup funding updates

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.

Auradine, Inc., a Santa Clara, CA-based provider of energy-efficient solutions for blockchain and AI infrastructure, raised an additional $153m in connection with its Series C funding round. The round was led by StepStone Group and included participation from Maverick Silicon, Premji Invest, Samsung Catalyst Fund, Qualcomm Ventures, Mayfield, MARA Holdings, GSBackers and other existing investors.

Finch Legal, a NYC-based pre-litigation operations platform built for personal injury law firms, raised a Seed funding round of undisclosed amount. The round was led by Sequoia Capital with participation from Roar Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, Ironclad CEO Jason Boehmig, Digits CEO Jeff Seibert, DoorDash CBO and former Chief Legal Officer Keith Yandell, former DoorDash COO and President Christopher Payne, and Simon Law Group Co-founder Robert Simon.

Bauplan, a San Francisco, CA- and NYC-based provider of a Python-first serverless data platform, raised $7.5M in Seed funding. The round was led by Innovation Endeavors with participation from Wes McKinney, Aditya Agarwal, and Chris Re.

Chapter, a NYC-based provider of a medicare navigation platform, raised $75M in Series D funding. The round was led by Stripes, with participation from XYZ Venture Capital, Susa Ventures, Addition, Narya Capital, and Maverick Ventures. Ron Shah, Partner at Stripes, will be joining Chapter’s Board of Directors.

Flock Mobility, a London, UK-based B2B cleantech company, raised £1M in funding. Backers included Gareth Williams and a Boston-based family office.

Glycomine, a San Carlos, CA-based biotechnology company focused on developing new therapies for orphan diseases, raised $115M in Series C funding. The round was led by CTI Life Sciences Fund, abrdn Inc., and Advent Life Sciences, with participation from existing investors Novo Holdings, Sanofi Ventures, Abingworth, RiverVest Venture Partners, Sanderling Ventures, Chiesi Ventures, Remiges Ventures, and Asahi Kasei Ventures.

Hammerspace, a San Mateo, CA-based provider of a data platform for AI, raised $100M in funding. Backers included Altimeter Capital and ARK Invest.

PolicyMe, a Toronto, Canada-based digital insurance provider, raised CAD$30M in funding. Backers included Blue Cross Life Insurance Company of Canada and Securian Canada.

Blue Onion, a NYC-based subledger used by retail and ecommerce brands, raised $10M in Series A funding. The round, which brought total funding to $17.6M, was led by Viola FinTech with participation from existing investors Y Combinator, Entrée Capital, Green Visor, and Vinyl Capital.

Scout AI, a Sunnyvale, CA-based defense-specific Vision-Language-Action (VLA) company, raised $15M in Seed funding. The round was led by Align Ventures and Booz Allen Ventures, with participation from Draper Associates, Decisive Point Ventures, Perot Jain, Sigmas Group, Evolution VC, BVVC, Habitat Partners, Piedmont Capital Investments, FJ Labs, Revelry Venture Partners, Monte Carlo Capital, Expansion VC, and Gaingels.

SlashExperts, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a platform built for B2B marketing and sales teams, raised $2M in Seed funding. The round was led by Social Leverage with Touring Capital and Veridical Ventures also participating, among other angel investors.

Atomic, a NYC-based provider of an AI-powered supply-demand management software, raised $3M in Seed funding. The round was led by DVx Ventures and Madrona Ventures.

Healthera, a Cambridge, UK-based provider of a patient experience platform, raised an additional £2m in funding. This funding round, which brought Series A round to £5.6m in total, was completed by private investors through the network of Committed Capital, who led the investment.

Inephany, a London, UK-based AI model optimisation system provider, raised $2.2M in Pre-Seed funding. The round was led by Amadeus Capital Partners, with participation from Sure Valley Ventures and Professor Steve Young.

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NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital updates

Startup funding hit records in Q1:

• U.S. startups raised $91.5 billion in Q1, up 18.5% from the previous quarter, but nearly half of that went to OpenAI’s $40 billion round, skewing the perception of broad investor enthusiasm.

• PitchBook analyst Kyle Stanford says expectations for a 2025 IPO rebound are fading due to market turbulence and Trump’s tariff policies, with major companies like Klarna delaying listings.

• Many startups may soon face down rounds or fire-sale acquisitions, with a growing risk of widespread closures if a recession hits and revenue drops further.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest in tech

OpenAI is reportedly in talks to buy Windsurf for $3B:

• OpenAI is negotiating a $3 billion acquisition of Windsurf (formerly Codeium), an AI coding assistant startup with $40 million in annual recurring revenue, Bloomberg reports.

• The deal could raise conflict of interest concerns, as OpenAI is also a major investor in Cursor, a rival AI coding tool with $200 million ARR and a reported $10 billion valuation.

• Windsurf recently notified users of a pending announcement and offered a $10/month subscription lock-in, while OpenAI’s product chief publicly praised the tool, fueling acquisition speculation.

xAI adds a ‘memory’ feature to Grok:

• xAI’s chatbot Grok now remembers details from past chats, enabling more personalized responses and advice.

• The feature, similar to memory tools in ChatGPT and Gemini, is in beta on Grok.com and its mobile apps (except in the EU and U.K.).

• Users can view, delete, or disable memories through the app’s Data Controls, with future support planned for Grok on X.

OpenAI launches a pair of AI reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini:

• OpenAI released two new reasoning models, o3 and o4-mini, that outperform prior models in coding, math, science, and visual understanding — both now available in ChatGPT and through APIs.

• These models can analyze images, run Python code in-browser, and access the web, offering better performance at competitive pricing for developers.

• O3 scored 69.1% on SWE-bench Verified, topping Claude 3.7 Sonnet, and a more powerful o3-pro model is expected soon ahead of the upcoming GPT-5 release.

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

• During Meta’s antitrust trial, CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed Snapchat would have scaled faster if it had accepted Meta’s $6 billion buyout offer in 2013.

• He testified that Meta would have improved the app’s growth, but acknowledged the idea as speculation.

• The FTC is using the failed deal to argue that Meta seeks to dominate social media through acquisitions, not competition, as it pushes to break up Meta’s ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp.

OpenAI debuts Codex CLI, an open source coding tool for terminals:

• OpenAI has launched Codex CLI, an open-source AI coding agent that runs locally from the command line and connects its models with developers' local code and computing tasks.

• Codex CLI supports multimodal input like screenshots and low-fidelity sketches and will soon integrate OpenAI’s new o3 and o4-mini models.

• To encourage adoption, OpenAI is offering $1 million in API grants to dev projects using Codex CLI, with $25K awarded per selected team.

Trump administration reportedly considers a US DeepSeek ban:

• The Trump administration is considering new limits on DeepSeek that may block it from buying Nvidia chips and restrict U.S. access to its AI services.

• The move comes amid broader efforts to curb China’s AI capabilities and follows recent actions tightening chip export rules.

• DeepSeek’s rise and aggressive pricing have stirred U.S. concerns, especially after OpenAI accused it of violating model usage policies.

LAST COFFEE SIP

☕Other news

Anthropic is reportedly launching a voice AI you can speak to:

• Anthropic is preparing to introduce a novel voice interaction function for its Claude AI assistant, with a potential release planned around the end of April 2025.

• The forthcoming capability, possibly named "voice mode," could provide users with diverse audio options including Airy, Mellow, and a British-accented voice called Buttery.

• Launching this audio feature would position Anthropic alongside competitors like OpenAI and Google, both offering established conversational tools for their own chatbots.

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