✅ 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?

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📈 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”?

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🚀 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
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🔔 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.

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💰 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.

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🔔 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.

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🎓 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.

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💳 Ex-OpenAI & DeepMind Researchers Raise $300M to Automate Science

Periodic Labs, a new startup from AI veterans Liam Fedus (ex-OpenAI) and Ekin Dogus Cubuk (ex-DeepMind), just pulled in a $300M seed round to build autonomous labs powered by AI “scientists.”

🖱 Fedus helped lead large language model research at OpenAI; Cubuk pioneered AI-driven materials discovery at Google Brain/DeepMind.
🖱 Their vision: robotic labs where AI designs experiments, runs them, collects data, and iterates without humans in the loop.
🖱 First focus: superconductors, materials that could unlock breakthroughs in energy and computing.
🖱 The pitch: turn science into scalable software, cutting years of trial-and-error into rapid AI-driven discovery cycles.

If it works, Periodic Labs could redefine R&D itself, shifting science from slow human bottlenecks to autonomous discovery engines.

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💡 Bill Gates on Why You Shouldn’t Compare Yourself

“Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.” ~ Bill Gates

In venture (and in life), comparison is a trap. Others’ wins often look effortless, but you rarely see the mistakes, resources, and timing behind them.

🔥 What matters:
🖱 Focus on your own path: test your ideas instead of copying others.
🖱 Learn from experience: treat others’ wins and failures as lessons, not standards.
🖱 Think like a portfolio investor: diversify approaches instead of chasing one “perfect” play.

In Business @ the Speed of Thought, Gates explains how systems thinking lets you make decisions without looking back at competitors, staying ahead by design, not by comparison.

A useful selection of Bill’s books:
1. Business @ the Speed of Thought (1999): how IT and “digital nervous systems” transform decision-making.
2. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021): a roadmap to net zero with industry-specific solutions.
3. The Road Ahead (1995/96): forecasts of the digital revolution and its societal impact.
4. Showing Up for Life (2009): wisdom and life lessons from Gates’ father.

Venture is a marathon, not a sprint. Your victories are unique, your mistakes are priceless, don’t trade them away by measuring against others.

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🚀 Musk becomes the first $500B man

Elon Musk just became the first person in history to see his net worth hit $500 billion, thanks to Tesla’s rebound and soaring valuations for SpaceX and xAI. By the market close, it dipped slightly to $499.1B, but the milestone was crossed.

🖱 Tesla remains the core driver: Musk still owns ~12% of the EV giant, whose stock has surged this year.
🖱 SpaceX and xAI have added billions in private-market value, boosting his fortune far beyond Tesla alone.
🖱 Tesla’s board has dangled a new $1T compensation package, tied to aggressive growth targets.
🖱 Much of the wealth isn’t liquid, it’s paper value tied to stock and private equity, making his net worth highly volatile.

For Musk, hitting half a trillion isn’t just a personal record, it’s a signal that the world’s richest person is building wealth on an unprecedented scale, faster than anyone before.

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🤖 OpenAI crowned the first $500B startup

OpenAI’s secondary share sale has vaulted its valuation to $500 billion, making it the most valuable private company ever and a symbol of how far the AI boom has run. Unlike a traditional fundraise, the deal let insiders cash out while investors fought for a seat at the table.

🖱 Roughly $6.6B worth of employee and early-backer stock changed hands.
🖱 Heavyweights like SoftBank, Thrive, Dragoneer, MGX, and T. Rowe Price joined the cap table.
🖱 The valuation leap, from $300B just months ago, reflects both AI demand and scarcity of access.
🖱 Still, OpenAI is burning cash, betting scale and distribution will cement its lead over rivals.

The $500B milestone isn’t just about valuation, it’s proof that in AI, investors are willing to pay sovereign-nation prices for a private company.

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🔔 Durov opens Telegram’s AI lab in Kazakhstan

Pavel Durov has just launched a specialized AI laboratory in Kazakhstan, partnering Telegram with the country’s AI supercomputer cluster to extend AI access globally.

🖱 The lab is housed in the Alem.ai building as part of a joint project with Kazakhstan’s Ministry of AI and the national supercomputer cluster.
🖱 Durov says the goal is to let over a billion people use AI tools in a way that’s confidential, transparent, and efficient.
🖱 Telegram’s own mini-apps will be among the first to leverage the new tech.
🖱 The Kazakh supercomputer cluster is expected to be a major provider of compute power for the network.

This move signals Telegram’s pivot from messaging into AI infrastructure, using the state’s compute assets to deepen its technological footprint in Central Asia and beyond.

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🤖 Where startups actually spend their AI budgets, a16z’s top 50 list

Andreessen Horowitz analyzed real transaction data from thousands of startups to find which AI tools are getting the most money, not hype, but actual spend.

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🔔 Google launches AI fitting room for virtual shoe try-ons

Google has rolled out a new AI-powered shoe try-on feature, letting users see how sneakers look on their own feet before buying. Just tap “Try on” on a product card and upload a full-length photo, Google’s model then generates a realistic preview.

🔸 Available for now in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and Japan, with plans to expand to more regions.
🔸 The tool uses generative AI and pose-estimation to match shoes to your body type and lighting.
🔸 Initially supports major brands on Google Shopping, with apparel integration expected next.
🔸 Builds on Google’s earlier AI try-on for clothing, expanding into full-body visualization for retail.

E-commerce is entering its AR moment, and Google wants to own the virtual dressing room.

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🤖 Figure unveils “Figure 03”, its first humanoid ready for mass production

Figure AI has introduced Figure 03, a next-generation humanoid robot designed as a versatile assistant for both homes and businesses. It can handle everyday tasks like doing laundry or greeting guests at a hotel reception, marking Figure’s shift from prototypes to production-ready robotics.

🔸 The robot features a textile suit and soft protective inserts to make human interaction safer and more natural.
🔸 It adds new sensors, cameras in its hands, an upgraded battery, and wireless charging, all powered by Figure’s in-house Helix neural network.
🔸 Figure 03 is optimized for large-scale manufacturing, with the first line capable of producing up to 12,000 units per year.
🔸 Pricing and launch details remain undisclosed, but the design suggests a move toward commercial deployment.

With Figure 03, the company is signaling that humanoid robotics is moving out of the lab, and into real-world service.

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🎧 David AI secures $50M to expand its global audio data lab

San Francisco–based David AI, a YC-backed audio data research company, has raised $50M in Series B funding led by Meritech and NVIDIA, with participation from Alt Capital, First Round, Amplify Partners, and Y Combinator. The round brings total funding to $80M.

Founded in 2024 by ex-Scale AI engineers Tomer Cohen and Ben Wiley, David AI calls itself the world’s first dedicated audio data research lab. The company builds large, diverse datasets that capture global human speech — across languages, emotions, and real-world environments — to train next-generation voice and audio AI models.

🔸 The new capital will fund research expansion, team growth, and deeper collaboration with global AI and hardware firms.
🔸 David AI’s datasets already power voice models used by top AI labs and several “Mag 7” tech giants.
🔸 The company recently surpassed an eight-figure annual revenue run rate.
🔸 Competitors include Defined.ai, PublicAI, Human Native AI, Ydata, and Syntheticus.

David AI positions itself as the data backbone for the coming wave of audio-first AI - powering the interfaces that will connect humans and machines in the physical world.

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🧠 Neuralink patient controls robotic arm with his thoughts

Nick Ray, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), has become the first Neuralink patient to control a robotic arm purely through thought. Implanted with Neuralink’s brain interface in July 2025, he recently connected it to Tesla’s Optimus robot, and the results are stunning.

🔸 Nick reports that the delay between his thoughts and the arm’s movement is “almost unnoticeable.”
🔸 For the first time in years, he was able to put on a cap, heat up nuggets in the microwave, and eat by himself.
🔸 He’s also learned to slowly control his wheelchair through the same neural interface.
🔸 The experiment marks the first integration of Neuralink’s implant with a humanoid robot, showing early progress toward mind-controlled assistive machines.

A powerful glimpse into the future, where human thought could directly control the tools that restore independence.

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𝙊𝙥𝙚𝙣𝙀𝙫𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚, 𝙡𝙚 “𝘾𝙝𝙖𝙩𝙂𝙋𝙏 𝙙𝙚𝙨 𝙢𝙚‌𝙙𝙚𝙘𝙞𝙣𝙨”, 𝙙𝙚‌𝙘𝙧𝙤𝙘𝙝𝙚 𝟮𝟬𝟬 𝙈$ 𝙖‌ 𝟲 𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙙𝙚 𝙫𝙖𝙡𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣.

Founded in 2022, OpenEvidence is establishing itself as a cutting-edge medical AI, trained on leading scientific journals (JAMA, NEJM Group).
The objective: to enable healthcare professionals to obtain reliable answers based on medical literature in just a few seconds.

In just three months, the #startup doubled its valuation (from $3.5 billion to $6 billion), driven by a new round of funding led by Google Ventures, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, ThriveCapital™, and other #venturecapital giants.

This fundraising illustrates the current trend: the future of AI is no longer general, but vertical.
Specialized models are emerging in #health, #law, #finance, #construction...
Each sector is building its own “smart co-pilot”.

Source: https://go.nzoko.com/rahXN


#AI #HealthTech #Innovation #VentureCapital #Startups #Tech

🇺🇸 @LangChain becomes a $1.25 billion #unicorn

𝙇𝙖 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙩-𝙪𝙥 𝙤𝙥𝙚𝙣 𝙨𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙘𝙚 𝙦𝙪𝙞 𝙢𝙚𝙩 𝙙𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙨 𝙙'𝙄𝘼 𝙙𝙖𝙣𝙨 𝙡𝙚𝙨 𝙢𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙨 𝙙𝙚 𝙩𝙤𝙪𝙨.

LangChain, founded by Harrison Chase in 2022, has just raised $125 million at a valuation of $1.25 billion, led by IVP with participation from CapitalG (Google), Sapphire Ventures, Sequoia, Benchmark and Amplify.

What started as a simple #framework to connect #LLMs to #databases, #APIs and #web searches has grown into a complete #infrastructure for building autonomous agents.

Their flagship products are evolving:
• #LangChain → the agent builder.
• #LangGraph → the context and memory orchestrator.
• #LangSmith → the testing and observability tool.

With 118,000 stars on GitHub, LangChain remains the backbone of the open source AI movement.

LangChain is becoming the equivalent of React for artificial intelligence.

Source: https://go.nzoko.com/sAgrm