Notion launches agents for data analysis and task automation

👉 https://go.nzoko.com/USYjQ

⚡️ AI tools reshape venture investing in 2025

Venture capital is drowning in data and deal flow, AI is becoming the must-have copilot for funds and angels.

🖱 Splore: automates sourcing and portfolio tracking, adds generative startup analytics.
🖱 PitchBook AI: forecasts valuations and market trends using the largest industry dataset.
🖱 Kruncher: builds dynamic startup watchlists, tracking deals, team shifts, and metrics in real time.
🖱 Hebbia: due diligence via conversational search, ask a question, get sourced answers.
🖱 Xapien: runs automated risk and compliance checks across media, databases, and online records.

AI isn’t replacing investors, it’s amplifying them. The funds that master these tools will spot winners faster and leave manual workflows behind.

📊 Powered by Technco

👓 Meta unveils Ray-Ban Display AR glasses

Meta has revealed Ray-Ban Display, its first AR glasses with a built-in 600×600 pixel lens display that stays nearly invisible to others.

🔸 Classic Wayfarer design, but right lens doubles as a private screen.
🔸 Functions: messages, social feeds, calls, music, maps, Meta AI assistant.
🔸 Gesture bracelet reads muscle signals, finger bend to select, double move to hide.
🔸 Battery: 6h glasses (30h with case), 18h bracelet.
🔸 Price: $799, US launch late September; Canada, France, Italy & UK in early 2026.

Meta is betting on stylish, everyday AR, but the question is whether a single-eye micro-display can win mass adoption.

📊 Powered by Technco

🚀 AI Tools for Productivity in 2025.

🔎 1. Research
• ChatGPT • Claude • DeepSeek • R1 • Gemini • Abacus • Perplexity

🎨 2. Image
• Midjourney • Dall·E 3 • Flux • Stability AI • Grok

✍🏾 3. Copywriting
• Rytr • Copy AI • Writesonic • Adcreative AI • Otio

📝 4. Writing
• Jasper • HIX AI • Jenny AI • Textblaze • Quillbot

🌐 5. Website
• 10Web • Durable • Framer • Style AI • Landingsite

🎬 6. Video
• Sora • Luma • Kling • Pika • InVideo • HeyGen • Runway • ImgCreator AI • Morphstudio.xyz

📅 7. Meeting
• Tldv • Otter • Noty AI • Fireflies

📈 8. SEO
• VidIQ • Seona AI • BlogSEO • Keywrds AI • Seona

🤖 9. Chatbot
• Droxy • Chatbase • Mutual Info • Chatsimple

📊 10. Presentation
• Decktopus • Slides AI • Gamma AI • Designs AI • Beautiful AI • PopAi

⚙️ 11. Automation
• Make • Zapier • Xembly • Bardeen

🎨 12. UI/UX
• Figma • Uizard • UiMagic • Photoshop

🖌️ 13. Design
• Canva • Flair AI • Clipdrop • Autodraw • Magician Design

🔖 14. Logo Generator
• Looka • Designs AI • Brandmark • Stockimg AI • Namecheap

🎧 15. Audio
• Lovo AI • ElevenLabs • Songburst AI • Adobe Podcast

🚀 16. Startup
• Tome • Ideas AI • Namelix • Pitchgrade • Validator AI

📂 17. Productivity
• Merlin • Tinywow • Notion AI • Adobe Sensei • Personal AI

📱 18. Social Media Management
• Taplio • Typefully • Hypefury • TweetHunter • RewriteAI


#AI #Productivity #SaaS #Innovation #FutureOfWork

⚡️ Nvidia buys $5B stake in Intel for AI chip pact

Nvidia is taking a 4% stake in Intel, investing $5 billion to anchor a partnership on next-gen AI and PC chips.

🖱 Data centers: Intel will design custom x86 CPUs tuned for Nvidia’s AI infrastructure.
🖱 PCs: new “x86 RTX SoCs” will embed Nvidia GPU chiplets directly into Intel processors, targeting AMD’s CPU-GPU edge.
🖱 Architecture: Nvidia’s NVLink will be built into Intel systems, enabling faster CPU-GPU communication than PCIe.
🖱 Rollout: first products expected across data center and consumer lines in the coming years.

This is more than a financial move, it’s an architectural alliance. If Intel executes, Nvidia gains tighter integration and performance control, while Intel finally gets a credible GPU boost against AMD.

📊 Powered by Technco

⚡️ DeepSeek claims $294K training cost for AI model

China’s DeepSeek says it trained its reasoning-focused R1 model for just $294,000, using 512 Nvidia H800 chips over 80 hours, a fraction of the hundreds of millions U.S. players report spending.

🖱 Hardware: trained mainly on H800s (export-restricted chips), with some A100 use in early stages.
🖱 Claim: training cost under $300K, far below OpenAI’s “$100M+” models.
🖱 Scrutiny: questions over whether OpenAI outputs in the dataset amount to “distillation” or unlicensed use.
🖱 Implication: if true, the cost curve for building frontier AI models may be collapsing fast.

If DeepSeek’s numbers hold up, the moat around expensive AI training could shrink dramatically, turning efficiency, not scale, into the real competitive edge.

📊 Powered by Technco

📈 Early-stage startups snapped up in record M&A wave

In H1 2025, M&A deals among Carta companies rose 18%, with all the growth concentrated in Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A, up 30% YoY.

🖱 Buyers: Big Tech, private equity, and even peer startups are driving the surge.
🖱 Motive: AI-native teams and products are the hottest assets, letting acquirers shortcut R&D and talent gaps.
🖱 Advantage: early-stage founders avoid the inflated 2021 valuations that made exits painful, so deals are cleaner and more rewarding for teams.

This wave shows how AI-driven capabilities, not late-stage scale, are becoming the most valuable acquisition currency.

📊 Powered by Technco

🔔 Oura Ring nears $11B valuation with fresh $875M raise

Bloomberg reports Oura Health, maker of the Oura Ring, is raising about $875M, doubling its valuation to $11B less than a year after its last round.

🖱 Impact on product: Funds will fuel R&D and new features in sleep, fitness, and women’s health tracking, while scaling hardware production.
🖱 Impact on market: Positions Oura as a heavyweight in wearables, taking on Apple and Samsung as it expands globally.
🖱 Impact on users: With 5.5M rings sold and $1B in projected 2025 sales, expect more personalized health insights and faster global rollout.

Oura’s surge shows how niche hardware can carve out a dominant space in consumer health tech, if it can outpace big-tech rivals.

📊 Powered by Technco

⚡️ Google’s $5 AI Plus goes global

Google rolled out AI Plus in 40 countries, bundling Gemini 2.5 Pro, 200 GB cloud, and creative tools (Flow for images, Whisk, Veo 3 Fast for video).

🖱 Smarter tools: Gemini 2.5 Pro brings advanced AI chat + reasoning at consumer pricing.
🖱 Global rollout: Expansion across Asia, Africa, LatAm, plus Ukraine and Central Asia, targets underserved regions.
🖱 Price war brewing: OpenAI fires back with a $4.5 plan in India & Indonesia.

Cheap AI is no longer U.S.-first, it’s going frontier.

📊 Powered by Technco

🗣 Sam Altman: “If your product has any retention at all, you’re actually in really good shape”

Sam reflects on the first group of users that tested ChatGPT:

“This was back when the model was really bad. Very few of the users actually stuck with it. Retention was atrocious. But for the users that did retain, their usage increased over time.”

He admits that OpenAI almost didn’t even launch ChatGPT because of how atrocious early retention was. But after reflection, he believes this is a really important learning for startup founders:

“If you have a product that has any retention at all, you’re actually in really good shape. If it’s 5%, that can be totally fine. The default is almost all the way down in a straight line to zero. But I didn’t quite understand that as intuitively at the time.”

📊 Powered by Technco

✅ Viral app Neon goes dark after massive data leak

Neon, the call-recording app that shot up the App Store charts, has been pulled offline after exposing users’ phone numbers, call recordings, and transcripts.

🔸 A security flaw let users access other people’s private calls and data with ease.
🔸 TechCrunch verified the bug, which revealed full transcripts and direct audio links.
🔸 The founder shut down servers, promising “extra security,” but didn’t admit a breach.

Recording calls for cash sounded edgy, until privacy blew up. Would you ever trust an app like this with your conversations?

📊 Powered by Technco

✅ Meta bets big on humanoid robots as its next AR-sized play

Meta is investing billions into humanoid robotics, positioning them as the company’s next frontier after augmented reality. The strategy leans less on hardware and more on becoming the dominant software platform for robots.

🖱 Internal project “Metabot” serves as Meta’s prototype, but the real goal is licensing robotics software, an Android-style model for humanoids.
🖱 Focus is on “world models” and simulation: training robots to grasp, move, and manipulate objects safely in real environments.
🖱 Meta’s new Superintelligence Lab works alongside its robotics team, bringing in top hires like MIT roboticist Sangbae Kim and ex-Cruise CEO Marc Whitten.
🖱 The company believes “good enough” designs (not perfect human mimicry)...

Instead of chasing flashy humanoids, Meta wants to own the operating system that powers them, hedging its bet so no matter who builds the body, Meta controls the brain.

📊 Powered by Technco

Uber leaves Ivory Coast.

Fatal error:

not to bet on Mobile Money, which already accounts for 5% of GDP 🇨🇮 and more than USD 357 billion in transactions in West Africa.

👉 In Africa, ignoring Mobile Money is signing your own withdrawal.

https://go.nzoko.com/KMzrN

✅ Viral app Neon goes dark after massive data leak

Neon, the call-recording app that shot up the App Store charts, has been pulled offline after exposing users’ phone numbers, call recordings, and transcripts.

🔸 A security flaw let users access other people’s private calls and data with ease.
🔸 TechCrunch verified the bug, which revealed full transcripts and direct audio links.
🔸 The founder shut down servers, promising “extra security,” but didn’t admit a breach.

Recording calls for cash sounded edgy, until privacy blew up. Would you ever trust an app like this with your conversations?

📊 Powered by Technco

📈 Solo founders are on the rise

More startups are being launched by a single founder rather than co-founding teams. In 2015, just 17% of companies were started solo. By 2024, that number has more than doubled to 35%.

Factors: faster prototyping tools, AI copilots, remote work culture, and less stigma around going it alone.

The solo-founder path is shifting from exception to norm, raising the question: will investors adapt their playbooks to back more “one-person startups”?

📊 Powered by Technco

🚀 International Venture news for the past week

🖱 Healthtech consolidation accelerates: 2025 has already seen 102 healthtech M&A deals, nearly matching last year’s full count (112). The sector is rapidly consolidating as scale becomes survival. 🔗 WSJ

🖱 VCs use AI to source startups: San Francisco’s Touring Capital deployed its “R2-D2” algorithm to scout deals, closing a $330M fund for AI startups. AI is moving upstream into venture itself. 🔗 WSJ | Economic Times

🖱 Brazilian legal AI attracts US giants: Enter, a São Paulo startup automating legal workflows, raised $35M from Founders Fund and Sequoia at a $350M valuation. Clients include Airbnb and Nubank. 🔗 WSJ
🖱 Fewer deals, larger checks
2025 deal value up 42.8%, but deal count down 31.4%. The shift favors bigger rounds for fewer winners. 🔗 Axios

🖱 Pharma doubles down on venture: Sanofi Ventures boosted its capital to $1.4B, focusing on biotech and digital health bets. Big Pharma is increasingly playing as LP + operator. 🔗 MedCityNews
📊 Powered by Technco

🔔 Trump’s DOE bans “climate change” and “green” from staff vocabulary

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy has circulated a memo forbidding staff from using terms like “climate change,” “green,” “decarbonization,” and “sustainability.” The directive comes as the Trump administration reframes federal energy policy.

🖱 The banned list also includes “emissions,” “carbon footprint,” and “transition,” signaling a retreat from standard climate terminology.
🖱 The change is led by a Trump-appointed official and reflects political positioning rather than scientific consensus.
🖱 Global clean energy investment, meanwhile, hit a record $386B in H1 2025, highlighting the gap between U.S. rhetoric and market momentum.
🖱 DOE staff now face constraints in reporting, grants, and external communication, raising concerns over transparency and accountability.

By policing language, the administration isn’t just shaping optics, it risks reshaping how U.S. energy policy is written, tracked, and enforced.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

💰 TikTok’s US sale looks like a steal

The Trump-approved deal values TikTok US at $14B, a fraction of what comparable platforms trade for. The app generates an estimated $10–20B annually in the US, yet sold for roughly 1× revenue.

🖱 By comparison: Snap trades at ~2.5× revenue, Reddit at ~25×, making TikTok’s price look like daylight robbery.
🖱 The Chinese side has not commented publicly, leaving questions about consent or coercion.
🖱 Trump claims the agreement is final, though details on buyer structure and governance remain vague.

If the valuation holds, this may go down as one of the most lopsided deals in tech history.

📊 Powered by Technco

🔔 How Larry Ellison Kept 40% of Oracle

Oracle’s founder still owns ~40% of his $300B company, a rare feat when most tech founders get diluted down to 5–15%. The reason? In 1977, no venture capitalist would fund software.

🖱 Late ’70s VC dollars flowed to hardware and biotech, Intel, Apple, Genentech all raised millions.
🖱 Ellison couldn’t even get a meeting. He and two co-founders pooled $2,000 and lived off consulting.
🖱 Their first break was a $50K CIA contract; nights were spent building their own database product.
🖱 Oracle launched in 1979 with “Version 2” (nobody trusted a Version 1). By 1984 revenue hit $70M; by 1987 it was the world’s largest database company.

By necessity, Ellison bootstrapped, making money from day one, avoiding dilution, and keeping control.

The irony: being ignored by VCs turned $2K of founder capital into one of the greatest fortunes in tech history.

📊 Powered by Technco

🎓 MBAs in Venture Capital

PitchBook tracked where VC firm employees earned their MBAs. The leaders look familiar, HBS, Stanford, Wharton, but unlike unicorn founder charts, the distribution is much smoother.

🖱 Top schools still show up, but the drop-off is gentle rather than steep.
🖱 Normalized by class size, the gap would shrink even further.
🖱 Takeaway: for breaking into VC, the brand of your MBA matters far less than in founder circles.

VC isn’t about heavy lifting, any solid MBA can open the door.

📊 Powered by Technco