OpenAI raises $40B at $300B post-money valuation & Apple is working on an AI Doctor.

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STARTUPS RAISING MILLIONS

💰 Startup funding updates

Isomorphic Labs, y spinout from DeepMind, has raised $600M in its first external round led by Thrive Capital, with participation from GV and Alphabet. The funding will boost development of its AI drug design engine and help advance drug candidates to clinical trials. Founded by Demis Hassabis, the company leverages DeepMind’s AlphaFold and has signed multi-billion-dollar partnerships with Eli Lilly and Novartis.

Marit Health, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of a community-powered, anonymous and verified salary sharing platform for physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs), raised $3.2M in Seed funding. The round was led by Define Ventures, with participation from physicians and technology entrepreneurs, including Rich Barton (co-founder of Zillow, Glassdoor, and Expedia), Tim Besse (co-founder of Glassdoor), Jay Desai (founder of PatientPing) and Aneesh Chopra (co-founder of CareJourney and former Chief Technology Officer of the US).

Sourcetable, a San Francisco, CA-based AI spreadsheet and data analyst, raised $4.3M in Seed funding. The round was led by Bee Partners with participation from Julien Chaumond (Hugging Face co-founder), Preston-Werner Ventures (GitHub co-founder), Roger Bamford (Distinguished Architect at MongoDB), and James Beshara (Magic Mind co-founder).

Temporal, a Seattle-based microservices orchestration startup, has raised a $146M Series C led by Tiger Global, bringing its total funding to $350M and valuing the company at $1.72B.

Kay.ai, a NYC-based AI co-worker designed to eliminate manual data entry work for insurance brokers and agencies, raised $3M in funding. The round was led by Wing VC, with participation from South Park Commons, 101 Weston Labs, and angel investors.

Qneiform, a Budapest, Hungary-based HR software platform provider, raised €3m in funding. The round was co-led by PROfounders and DayOne Capital with participation from existing investors Keen Ventures and DFF Ventures (formerly known as Dutch Founders Fund).

InfiniLink, a Cairo, Egypt-based semiconductor startup specializing in advanced optical data connectivity chips for AI-driven data centers, raised $10M in funding. The round was led by MediaTek, and Sukna Ventures, with participation from Egypt Ventures and angel investor M Empire Angels.

Phlux Technology, a Sheffield, UK-based infrared sensor startup, raised £9M in funding. The round was led by BGF. Octopus Ventures, Northern Gritstone, and Foresight also participated.

Ribbon, a Toronto, Canada-based provider of a voice AI recruitment platform, raised $8M in funding. The round was led by Radical Ventures, with participation from Social Leverage, Cadenza Ventures, and GD1.

Temporal Technologies, a Seattle, WA-based inventor of open-source durable execution platforms Temporal.io and Temporal Cloud, raised $146M in funding, at $1.72 Billion valuation. The round was led by Tiger Global with participation from StepStone Group, Amplify Partners, Index Ventures, MongoDB Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Conversion Capital, Hanwha Next Generation Opportunity Fund, and 137 Ventures.

Isomorphic Labs, a London, UK-based AI-first drug design and development company, raised $600M in funding. The round was led by Thrive Capital, with participation from GV, and existing investor Alphabet.

Gable, a Seattle, WA-based provider of a shift left data management platform, raised $20M in Series A funding. The round was led by Crane Venture Partners, with participation from Zetta Venture Partners, Databricks Ventures, B Capital, Capital One Ventures, In-Q-Tel (IQT), and angel investors, including Barr Moses and Tristan Handy.

Pockla, a London, UK-based startup providing a platform for marketers, raised €1.6M in funding. The round was led by Venrex. Other investors and advisors included The Sidemen’s VC arm Upside Ventures, Love Ventures, Shuttle, Syndicate Room, Rich Waterworth, Michael Chock and Ryan Quinn.

GridPoint, a Reston, VA-based energy management technology company, raised $45M in funding. The round was led by Marunouchi Innovation Partners (MIP), a climate tech fund sponsored by Mitsubishi Corporation. Marunouchi made a $20M investment.

BetterFleet, an Ann Arbor, MI-based provider of a SaaS platform for mission-critical transit, government, utilities, and logistics fleets, raised $15M in funding. Backers included Aligned Climate Capital, Ecosystem Integrity Fund (EIF), and Remarkable Ventures Climate (RVC).

NEW VCs IN THE MARKET

🏦 Venture Capital updates

Construct Capital, a Washington D.C.-based early-stage VC firm, has closed a $300M third fund to back startups in manufacturing, transportation, and defense tech. Founded by ex-NEA partner Dayna Grayson and former Uber exec Rachel Holt, the firm has previously invested in companies like Hadrian and Veho. The new fund highlights strong LP interest in U.S. manufacturing and defense tech amid geopolitical tensions and renewed government focus on domestic production.

KEY STORIES IN TECH

📜 Latest in tech

OpenAI raises $40B at $300B post-money valuation:

• OpenAI has raised $40 billion in a historic round led by SoftBank, bringing its post-money valuation to $300 billion — one of the largest private funding rounds ever.

• The raise includes participation from Microsoft, Coatue, Altimeter, and Thrive, and aims to accelerate AI research, scale compute infrastructure, and serve ChatGPT’s 500M+ weekly users.

• Roughly $18 billion will fund the Stargate project, OpenAI’s planned network of advanced AI data centers across the U.S.

Runway launches Gen-4, its most advanced AI video model yet:

• AI startup Runway has released Gen-4, a high-fidelity video generation model that creates dynamic, realistic scenes with consistent characters, locations, and perspectives — all without additional training or fine-tuning.

• Gen-4 builds on Gen-3 Alpha with better motion, prompt adherence, and “world understanding,” and allows users to craft scenes using visual references and text instructions.

• Backed by Google, Nvidia, and Salesforce, Runway is reportedly seeking a $4B valuation amid legal challenges over copyrighted training data and rising concern about AI’s impact on entertainment jobs.

Apple Vision Pro gets Apple Intelligence features with visionOS 2.4 update:

• Apple’s visionOS 2.4 brings AI-powered Apple Intelligence features to Vision Pro, including writing tools, Genmoji, Image Playground, natural language photo search, and Memory Movies.

• The update also adds a new Spatial Gallery app for immersive content, and launches an iPhone companion app to help users manage downloads, tips, and experience recommendations.

• Apple expands Apple Intelligence to the EU with support for multiple new languages, and introduces smarter notifications via Priority Messages and Summaries across apps.

Amazon unveils Nova Act, an AI agent that can control a web browser:

• Amazon launched Nova Act, an AI agent that can autonomously control a web browser to complete tasks like making dinner reservations or filling out forms; developers can build with it using the Nova Act SDK at nova.amazon.com.

• Built by Amazon’s new AGI lab, Nova Act outperforms OpenAI and Anthropic agents in Amazon’s internal benchmarks and will power key features in the upcoming Alexa+ upgrade.

• Co-led by ex-OpenAI researchers David Luan and Pieter Abbeel, the Nova Act team aims to bring reliable, human-supervised AI agents to market as a stepping stone toward broader AGI ambitions.

OpenAI to release its first “open” language model since GPT‑2:

• OpenAI announced plans to launch an open-weight language model with reasoning capabilities similar to o3-mini, marking its first "open" release since GPT‑2.

• The company is gathering feedback via a public form and will host developer events in San Francisco, Europe, and Asia-Pacific to shape the model’s direction.

• CEO Sam Altman admitted OpenAI has been on the “wrong side of history” regarding open source and said the upcoming model will undergo rigorous safety evaluations under its preparedness framework.

Apple is working on an AI Doctor:

• Apple is developing an AI-powered doctor under Project Mulberry, which could be released as early as spring or summer 2026 with iOS 19.4, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

• The revamped Health app, unofficially called Health+, will collect data from Apple devices and provide healthcare recommendations, with features including food tracking and workout technique analysis.

• A team of in-house physicians led by Dr. Sumbul Desai is creating the platform, which aligns with CEO Tim Cook's vision that health initiatives will be Apple's "greatest contribution to mankind."

LAST COFFEE SIP

☕Other news

Apple's satellite plans could be stalled by SpaceX:

• Apple's satellite communication expansion for iPhones is facing opposition from Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has urged federal regulators to impede Apple's efforts as it competes directly with Starlink.

• SpaceX's resistance stems primarily from concerns about spectrum rights, which are limited resources used for satellite-to-Earth communications and valuable to operators seeking to secure bandwidth for their services.

• Despite the tension, some collaboration exists between the companies, as Globalstar has hired SpaceX to launch Apple-funded satellites, though previous discussions about connecting iPhones to SpaceX satellites haven't resulted in agreements.

ChatGPT adds 1 million users in a single hour following viral image feature launch:

• OpenAI’s new image generation feature for ChatGPT, which went viral for creating Studio Ghibli-style art, has triggered a massive spike in usage.

• CEO Sam Altman announced that ChatGPT gained one million users in just one hour, surpassing the platform’s original viral growth rate of one million in five days.

• Altman jokingly added that “our GPUs are melting,” reflecting the intense demand sparked by the image generation rollout.

HIRING ALERT: STARTUPS & VC ROLES

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