Tootfinder

Sources: Aaru, which uses AI to simulate user behavior, has raised a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures at multiple valuation tiers, including a $1B tier (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/05/ai-syntheti…

Sources: AI synthetic research startup Aaru raised a Series A at a $1B 'headline' valuation | TechCrunch
The one-year-old startup, which does market research on simulated populations, had a multi-tier valuation round, sources tell TechCrunch.

The Cuba-born Harvard economist behind Trump’s immigration crackdown
#George #Borjas has provided the intellectual underpinnings of the White House’s sweeping immigration policy changes, including restrictions on H-1B visas.

#Stephen

The Cuba-born Harvard economist behind Trump’s immigration crackdown
George Borjas has provided the intellectual underpinnings of the White House’s sweeping immigration policy changes, including restrictions on H-1B visas.

During the ESA Director General’s 2026 annual press briefing today - #Ariane 6 reached 5 successful launches earlier than many other heavy launchers. (This stands in stark contrast to the table 1b of https://planet4589.org/space/papers/space25.pdf in which Europe's contribution to the global launch successes in 2025 has been minuscule.)

Dette kan gjerne gjentas: Har du jobbet med faktasjekking eller innholdsmoderering, så får du ikke arbeidsinnvandre til USA. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-orders-enhanced-vetting-applicants-h-1b-visa-2025-12-04…

Docs: xAI had a net loss of $1.46B in Q3, up from $1B in Q1; sources: xAI told investors it plans to build AI that will eventually power Optimus humanoid robots (Carmen Arroyo/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

The Trump administration orders enhanced vetting of H-1B applicants and their families for past work in "censorship", including fact-checking and online safety (Humeyra Pamuk/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-adm

This troubles my Bill-of-Rights-loving soul. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/announcement-of-expanded-screening-and-vetting-for-h-1b-and-dependent-h-4-visa-applicant…

Announcement of Expanded Screening and Vetting for H-1B and Dependent H-4 Visa Applicants

Walz bears 'full responsibility' for $1B fraud scandal, GOP challenger Demuth declares (Deirdre Heavey/Fox News)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/walz-bears-full-responsibility-1b-fraud-scandal-gop-challenger-demuth-declares
http://www.memeorandum.com/251204/p80#a251204p80

US is denying H-1B visas to anyone who has worked in online safety.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-orders-enhanced-vetting-applicants-h-1b-visa-2025-12-04/

Sources: Skild AI, which develops a foundational model for robots, is in talks to raise $1B from SoftBank and Nvidia at a $14B valuation, up from $4.7B in July (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-tel

Tesla CEO Elon Musk bats for H-1B visas, says tariffs distort markets
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/02/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-bats-for-h-1b-visa-says-tariffs-distort-markets-.html

Some positive signs for AI coding tools. Claude-code is a $1B run rate product six month after launch. The latest Claude Opus 4.5 model is several times cheaper and faster than last month’s version and uses about a quarter of the number of tokens to get work done. My own benchmark saw over an hour of coding reduced to 17 minutes. The high rate of change continues. The boundary of what does/doesn’t work is pushing back fast.

Anthropic acquires Bun as Claude Code reaches $1B milestone
Anthropic is an AI safety and research company that's working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

Neara, which builds digital twins of critical infrastructure to help prepare for disasters, raised a AU$90M Series D, a source says at a AU$1.1B valuation (Rhiannon Hoyle/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/ar…

#GitPages now supports incremental site updates when uploading via the CLI!
pictured are logs for two individual uploads:
1a. PUT probe (says blobs are missing)
1b. PUT upload (uploads all the blobs)
2. PUT probe (says all the blobs are already there)

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has voted to dissolve after Republicans rescinded $1.1B at President Trump’s behest.
This ends the 58-year-old agency that distributed federal funds to NPR, PBS and more than 1,500 local public radio & television stations. https://apple.news/AXdo2-zPuRCiJSiIVd3

Corporation for Public Broadcasting, gutted of federal funds, votes to dissolve — The Washington Post
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans succeeded this summer in stripping federal funds from public media. Now the 58-year-old organization is gone.

Sources: Apollo nears a $3.4B loan deal to a Valor-led investment vehicle to buy and lease Nvidia chips to xAI; through fall 2025, xAI was burning $1B per month (Miles Kruppa/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apollo-nears-3-bil…

Apollo Nears $3 Billion Chip-Funding Deal Tied to XAI
Apollo Global Management, one of Wall Street’s biggest private credit firms, is nearing a deal to lend about $3.4 billion to an investment vehicle that will purchase Nvidia chips and lease them to Elon Musk’s xAI, which just merged with SpaceX, said a person with knowledge of the deal. The deal ...

Snowflake agrees to acquire Observe, an observability platform built on Snowflake databases; the deal was previously reported to be valued at around $1B (Rebecca Szkutak/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/08/snowflake-announces-…

Snowflake announces its intent to buy observability platform Observe | TechCrunch
Snowflake is bolstering its data stack to make the platform better suited to the sheer volume of data produced by AI agents.

Illegal fishing, other maritime threats cost Western Indian Ocean $1b a year: Report https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/12/illegal-fishing-other-maritime-threats-cost-western-indian-ocean-1b-a-year-report/…

Illegal fishing, other maritime threats cost Western Indian Ocean $1b a year: Report
Maritime threats in the Western Indian Ocean cost the region more than $1.1 billion annually, with illegal fishing, trafficking, piracy, migration and pollution undermining economies, ecosystems and coastal livelihoods, a new U.N. report finds.

Uber agrees to buy Getir's delivery operations from Mubadala, without giving the terms; a November 2025 report said it would value Getir's business at up to $1B (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/202…

Unconventional AI raised a $475M seed led by a16z and Lightspeed at a $4.5B valuation to build a more energy-efficient AI computer, part of an up to $1B round (Rachel Metz/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-…

Has anyone thought about redefining what valuation makes a startup a "unicorn"? 🦄
Clearly, $1B floor is too low these days. 🧐
#business #investment #capital #question #unicorn #startup

Reddit reports Q4 revenue up 70% YoY to $726M, vs. $665M est., DAUq up 19% to 121.4M, above est., forecasts Q1 revenue above est., announces a $1B share buyback (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/05/reddit-rddt-q4-2025.html

Check out today's Metacurity for the most critical cybersecurity developments you should know, including
--MI5 warns that China uses LinkedIn to recruit and compromise lawmakers,
--WhatsApp feature can extract 3.5B users' phone numbers,
--Police raid KT for allegedly hiding breach evidence,
--Beijing rumors cost TP-Link $1B,
--LG Energy Solution was hit by a cyberattack,
--Airlines won't sell passenger data to the US,
--Toronto schools wer…

MI5 warns that China uses LinkedIn to recruit and compromise lawmakers
WhatsApp feature can extract 3.5B users' phone numbers, Police raid KT for allegedly hiding breach evidence, Beijing rumors cost TP-Link $1B, LG Energy Solution was hit by a cyberattack, Airlines won't sell passenger data to the US, Toronto schools weren't prepared for PowerSchool breach, much more

Judge Rules That Trump Administration Can Add $100,000 Fee to H-1B Visa - Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/court-rejects-bid-overturn-trump-h-1b-visa-application-fee-2025-12

Source: Benchmark invested at least $225M in Cerebras' ~$1B Series H led by Tiger Global at a $23B valuation; Benchmark led Cerebras' $27M Series A in 2016 (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/06/benchmark-rais…

Benchmark raises $225M in special funds to double down on Cerebras | TechCrunch
Benchmark Capital has been an investor in the Nvidia rival since 2016.

Sources: Paramount has raised a proposed breakup fee in its WBD bid to $5B, up from a $2.1B fee; WBD would receive it if a deal is agreed to but not finalized (Lucas Shaw/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-1…

AI Chipmaker Cerebras raised a $1B Series H led by Tiger Global at a $23B valuation, up from $8.1B in September 2025 (Ian King/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-04/cerebras-raises-1-billion-in-funding-at…

Trump's H-1B Visa Crackdown to Accelerate Wall Street's Expansion in India (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-11-11/trump-s-h-1b-visa-curbs-banks-to-add-more-finance-specialist-jobs-in-india
http://www.memeorandum.com/251111/p116#a251111p116

US immigration lawyers, talent managers, and creators say influencers and OnlyFans models now dominate O-1B visas, which are reserved for "exceptional" artists (Ian Hodgson/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/8816fcec-4148-4cda-be7f-fc59d5bcbf59

Influencers and OnlyFans models dominate US ‘extraordinary’ artist visas
Work permits increasingly being awarded on basis of online reach, favouring content creators

US Approves $1B Loan to Restart Three Mile Island, as Microsoft Data Centers Drive Demand
https://gizmodo.com/us-approves-1b-loan-to-restart-three-mile-island-as-microsoft-data-centers-drive-demand-2000688138

Apple is nearing a deal with Google that would see the iPhone maker pay the tech giant roughly
$1 billion a year for a custom version of Google’s Gemini AI model
to power its overhaul of Siri.
The move is a big one for Apple,
which has traditionally relied on its own technology
but plans to use Google’s model as a temporary solution until its own AI becomes powerful enough,
including to power a slate of upcoming features for the voice assistant.
The…

Apple nears deal to pay Google $1B annually to power new Siri, report says | TechCrunch
Apple is turning to Google's technology to help revamp Siri and power a slate of upcoming features for the voice assistant.

The Trump administration orders enhanced vetting of H-1B applicants and their families for past work in "censorship", including fact-checking and online safety (Humeyra Pamuk/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-adm

Sources: London-based 9fin, a data provider for debt markets, is in talks to raise as much as $150M at a pre-money valuation of $1B, about 20x its ARR of ~$50M (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-06/cred…

Credit Data Firm 9fin Seeks $1 Billion Valuation in Fund Talks
Debt intelligence provider 9fin Ltd. is in talks to raise fresh capital at a valuation of as much as $1 billion as it seeks to gain a stronger foothold in the highly competitive market for credit research.

DMGT reports revenue down 1% YoY to £1.1B, adjusted operating profit up 11% to £97M, and digital ad revenue down 15% to £148.3M due to Google's AI Overviews (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/media_busin

DMGT reports revenue dip as Google changes hit traffic for Mail publisher
Digital advertising revenue at the publisher of the Daily Mail fell by 15% last year, results for the year to 30 September 2025 show.

The Trump administration has said it will issue nearly 65,000 additional H-2B guest worker visas through September,
-- effectively doubling the maximum number that can be issued in a year.
Trump has broadly moved to drastically cut legal avenues of immigration, and he has directed a mass deportation campaign that has brought aggressive ICE crackdowns to American cities.
Another visa for skilled workers through another program, known as the H-1B, has been imperiled by the …

Trump Officials Move to Double Number of H-2B Guest Visas This Year
It was a rare move by the Trump administration to expand a foreign worker program, amid a sweeping effort to drastically cut immigration.

A US bankruptcy judge ordered Indian edtech startup Byju's founder Byju Raveendran on Nov. 20 to pay $1B to US lenders, over missing funds from Byju's US unit (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/22/byju

Byju's founder to appeal U.S. court order to pay over $1B in bankruptcy case | TechCrunch
A U.S. bankruptcy court has ordered Byju's founder Byju Raveendran to pay over $1.07 billion in a case over missing company funds.

Reddit reports Q4 revenue up 70% YoY to $726M, vs. $665M est., DAUq up 19% to 121.4M, above est., forecasts Q1 revenue above est., announces a $1B share buyback (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/05/reddit-rddt-q4-2025.html

Reddit reported fourth-quarter earnings and revealed strong guidance and $1 billion buyback
Reddit reported fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday in which the social media company beat on the top and bottom lines.

Dealroom: 76 European deep tech and life sciences companies spun out from universities reached $1B valuations or $100M in revenue in 2025, or both (Anna Heim/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/30/76-european-deep-tech-uni…

Almost 80 European deep tech university spinouts reached $1B valuations or $100M in revenue in 2025 | TechCrunch
According to Dealroom’s European Spinout Report 2025, 76 European deep tech and life sciences spinouts have either reached $1 billion valuations, $100 million in revenue, or both.

Source: Kalshi raised $1B led by Sequoia and CapitalG at a $11B valuation, less than two months after it announced a $300M fundraise at a $5B valuation (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/20/source-kalshis-valuatio…

Source: Kalshi's valuation jumps to $11B after raising massive $1B round | TechCrunch
The quickly growing prediction betting market raised fresh capital from Sequoia and CapitalG, according to someone familiar with the deal.

Sources: US-based Arcee AI is pitching investors on a $200M funding round valuing it at over $1B, as it plans to train an open-weight model with 1T parameters (Anna Tong/Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/annatong/2026/02…

The Top Open AI Models Are Chinese. Arcee AI Thinks That’s A Problem.
The American startup is pitching investors on a $1 billion+ valuation to train a model over a trillion parameters, aiming to reclaim the open-weight lead from Chinese labs like Moonshot and DeepSeek.

In 2025, several books saw audiobook sales outperform hardcovers, even as digital audiobook growth slowed to 1% through October after 2024's ~24% jump to $1.1B (Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/lis

KKR and Singtel agree to acquire the remaining 82% stake in data center operator STT GDC for ~$5.1B, giving the company an enterprise value of ~$10.86B (Lee Ying Shan/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/04/kkr-and-singtel-stake-in-stt-gdc-for-over-5-bi…

KKR and Singtel to acquire remaining stake in data center firm STT GDC for over $5 billion
The deal pegs the enterprise value at S$13.8 billion.

Uber reports Q4 revenue up 20% YoY to $14.4B, above $14.32B est., Gross Bookings up 22% YoY to $54.1B, trips up 22% YoY to 3.8B, and a $296M profit, below est. (Connor Hart/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/busin…

US immigration lawyers, talent managers, and creators say influencers and OnlyFans models now dominate O-1B visas, which are reserved for "exceptional" artists (Ian Hodgson/Financial Times)

TRM Labs, which helps law enforcement and companies track crypto and blockchains, raised a $70M Series C led by Blockchain Capital at a $1B valuation (Leo Schwartz/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2026/02/04/trm-labs-blockchain-analytics-fundi…

Crypto crime-fighting startup TRM Labs notches $1 billion valuation with new $70 million funding round
With its blockchain analytics tools, TRM Labs helps private companies and agencies like the FBI track illicit finance.

Resolve AI, which offers autonomous AI agents to monitor source code and infrastructure to resolve outages, raised $125M led by Lightspeed at a $1B valuation (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Malaysian authorities are using drones, power sensors, and tips to hunt Bitcoin miners over power theft, which cost a state energy company $1.1B over five years (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Bitcoin (BTC) Miners Hunted After Stealing $1 Billion Power From Malaysia Grid
Cracking down on illegal Bitcoin mining gangs has become a cat-and-mouse game in Malaysia.

Tomorrow.io raised $175M at a $1B valuation to deploy an AI-driven LEO satellite network for weather forecasting, bringing its total funding to ~$500M (Meir Orbach/CTech)
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rj67r5yvze

Tomorrow.io raises $175 million at over $1 billion valuation to build AI-driven weather satellite network
DeepSky constellation aims to replace aging government infrastructure and close global forecasting gaps.

Sources: Stripe is paying ~$1B to acquire Metronome, and the deal is expected to be predominantly cash; PitchBook: Metronome was valued at $470M in February (Alex Konrad/Upstarts Media)

Scoop: Stripe Is Paying $1 Billion To Acquire Billing Startup Metronome
The acquisition will double Metronome’s valuation in less than a year, sources tell Upstarts Media. And it’s all about AI software growth.

Bhutan unveils a pledge of up to 10,000 bitcoin to develop Gelephu Mindfulness City; Arkham says Bhutan holds 5,984 bitcoin, ranking 7th among sovereign holders (Vismaya V/Decrypt)
https://decrypt.co/352685/bhutan-pledges-10000-bitcoin-worth-1b-fund-mind…

Bhutan Pledges 10,000 Bitcoin Worth $1B to Fund Mindfulness City
The 10,000 BTC will generate yields for GMC's growth while being held long-term, with Bhutan ruling out selling the reserves.

ServiceNow announces a deal to acquire identity security startup Veza, sources say for between $1B and $1.5B; Veza had a private valuation of $808M in March (Valida Pau/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/servicenows…

ServiceNow’s $1 Billion-Plus Acquisition Aimed at Winning Agent War
Dealmakers apparently did not get much of a break over the Thanksgiving weekend, as a flurry of recent merger announcements showed. In just the last day, The Information broke the news that Marvell Technology was buying photonics startup Celestial for billions of dollars and Anthropic was making ...

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump's American Bitcoin closed down 38.8% on December 2, wiping out ~$1B in market value; TMTG is down nearly 70% in 2025 (George Steer/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/18e3bfc1-c2aa-49a0-8c6d-a37255a23017

IoT security device maker Verkada hit a $5.8B valuation after new funding, source says totaling $100M, led by CapitalG; it passed $1B in annualized bookings (Jaures Yip/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/03/verkada-capitalg-valuation-security.html

Security startup Verkada hits $5.8 billion valuation in latest funding round led by CapitalG
In September, Verkada rolled out over 60 new AI features and platform updates, including tools like "AI-Powered Unified Timeline."

Sources: Alphabet plans a new complex in Bengaluru, India, which can accommodate up to 20K extra staff, amid US visa restrictions and proposed H-1B fee hikes (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-03/alphabet…

Prediction market Kalshi raised $1B led by Paradigm at an $11B valuation, up from $5B after raising $300M in October 2025, making its co-founders billionaires (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/business/dealb…

Kalshi, a Prediction Market, Raises $1 Billion in New Round
The fund-raising effort, the company’s third this year, values it at $11 billion, and comes amid stiff competition in the increasingly popular industry.

Sources: Anthropic is in talks to buy developer tool startup Bun for low hundreds of millions, its first acquisition; Claude Code hit $1B in annualized revenue (Sri Muppidi/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/an

Anthropic in Advanced Talks to Buy Developer Tool Startup in First Acquisition
Anthropic is in advanced discussions to buy Bun, a maker of software used to run and manage code more efficiently, according to a person with knowledge of the deal. The artificial intelligence company is in talks to pay in the low hundreds of millions of dollars for the startup, which would be ...

How Arizona is training talent for its growing chip industry as suppliers fear tighter US immigration policy; Arizona has drawn $200B in investments since 2020 (Nikkei Asia)
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/tech/semiconductors/how…

How Arizona is cultivating talent for a US chip revival
TSMC and Intel need talent and advanced programs are in place, but H-1B visas a hurdle

An analysis of Crunchbase and PitchBook data: in 2025 so far, 80 tech startups reached $1B valuations, many of them focused on AI with exceptions like Kalshi (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/01/at-least-36-new-tech-…

At least 80 new tech unicorns were minted in 2025 so far | TechCrunch
Using data from Crunchbase and PitchBook, TechCrunch tracked down the VC-backed startups that became unicorns so far this year.

German AI startup Black Forest Labs, which develops the open-source Flux image models, raised $300M at a $3.25B valuation, up from $1B in September 2024 (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/1acae2af-c0da-4be3-9cd9-af6120d1f7aa

Inside Physical Intelligence, a startup co-founded by Stripe veteran Lachy Groom that is building general-purpose robotic foundation models and has raised $1B (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/30/phys…

A peek inside Physical Intelligence, the startup building Silicon Valley's buzziest robot brains | TechCrunch
If co-founder Lachy Groom has any doubts, he doesn’t show it. He’s working with people who've been working on this problem for decades and who believe the timing is finally right, which is all he needs to know.

Analysis: Tata, Infosys, and Cognizant are set to bear the brunt of Trump's $100K H-1B fee; from 2020 to 2024, 93% of Infosys' H-1B hires would have had to pay (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12…

Sources: bids for GroqCloud, Groq's AI inference platform, are expected to exceed $1B after Nvidia's $20B non-exclusive licensing agreement with Groq (Kate Clark/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/nvidia-

Binance says it will convert $1B in stablecoin reserves held in its SAFU into bitcoin over the next 30 days, as BTC falls to its lowest level since November (Danny Park/The Block)
https://www.theblock.co/post/387786/binance-1-billion-safu-bitcoin

UK-based Octopus Energy reaches a deal to sell about $1B of equity in Kraken Technologies, its tech spin-off, at an $8.65B valuation to a syndicate of investors (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/eaad78f4-b52c-4116-ad1b-3e79694ebeed

Sources: Granola, which makes an AI-based note-taking app, aims to raise $100M led by Index Ventures at a $1B valuation, up from a $250M valuation in May 2025 (Iain Martin/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/20

VCs’ Favorite Note-Taking App Granola In Talks To Hit $1 Billion Valuation
The London-based AI startup aims to raise a new round of at least $100 million led by Index Ventures, making the popular note-taking app the latest AI unicorn.

Insurance tech company Ethos raised ~$200M in its Jan. 29 IPO, selling 10.5M shares at $19 each; it reached a $1.1B market cap, below its 2021 $2.7B valuation (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/29/how-sequoi…

How Sequoia-backed Ethos reached the public market while rivals fell short | TechCrunch
The profitable life-insurance platform was one of the first major tech companies to test the 2026 public markets.

Coupang says it is offering $1B in compensation to all 33.7M customers affected by South Korea's biggest-ever data breach, after an ex-staffer accessed data (Shinhye Kang/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Satya Nadella says Windows 11 reached 1B users during Q2, growing over 45% YoY and at a faster rate than Windows 10 did (Tom Warren/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/869889/microsoft-windows-11-1-billion-users

Windows 11 has reached 1 billion users faster than Windows 10
Microsoft says 1 billion people are now running Windows 11. The operating system has reached this milestone quicker than Windows 10.

Apple reports Q1 revenue up 16% YoY to $143.76B, vs. $138.48B est., net income up 16% to $42.1B, and China net sales up 38% to $25.53B (Kif Leswing/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/29/apple-aapl-earnings-report-q1-2026.html

Apple set to report earnings: iPhone growth, AI, memory costs will be in focus in first quarter
Apple's fiscal first quarter ended in December and the company has already signaled last year it's expecting a big earnings report.

Dow plans to cut 4,500 staff to save costs and will rely on AI to boost productivity, resulting in $1.1B to $1.5B in charges; it currently employs ~34,000 staff (Rob Curran/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/dow-<…

Sources: ServiceNow is in advanced talks to buy corporate data management and security startup Veza for $1B in a deal as early as next week (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/servicenow-advanced-talks-buy-security…

ServiceNow in Advanced Talks to Buy Security Startup For At Least $1 Billion
ServiceNow, an IT and HR software provider, is in advanced talks to buy five-year-old security startup Veza for more than $1 billion, according to people with knowledge of the deal. Veza’s subscription software helps businesses see which of their employees, as well as AI agents that automate ...

AI sales startup Clay launches its second employee tender offer in under nine months, valuing it at $5B, up from $3.1B in August and $1.5B in its May 2025 offer (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/business/dealbook…

Clay, an A.I. Sales Start-Up, Lets Employees Cash Out. Again.
The company is part of a newer generation of software upstarts holding multiple tender offers where workers can sell stock before going public.

PaleBlueDot, which operates a GPU capacity marketplace and designs GPU clusters for enterprises, raised a $150M Series B led by B Capital at a $1B valuation (Krystal Hu/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific

Chinese-language crypto laundering networks processed ~$16.1B in 2025, or $44M per day on average across 1,799 wallets, representing 20% of laundering activity (Chainalysis)
https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/2026-crypto-money-laundering/

The Chinese-language Underground Crypto Money Laundering Ecosystem
Chinese-language money laundering networks processed $16.1 billion in illicit funds in 2025, dominating over 20% of crypto money laundering activity.

Crypto payments network Mesh raised a $75M Series C led by Dragonfly at a $1B valuation, bringing its total funding to $200M (Naga Avan-Nomayo/The Block)
https://www.theblock.co/post/387241/crypto-payments-net…

Japanese memory chipmaker Kioxia's stock falls 14% after a Bain Capital-backed entity sold $2.1B worth of shares at a discount, stoking AI valuation concerns (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-26…

Chipmaker Kioxia Sinks After Bain-Backed Firm Discloses Selloff
Kioxia Holdings Corp.’s shares dived more than 14% after a Bain Capital-backed entity unloaded $2.1 billion of shares in the Japanese memory chipmaker at a discount, stoking concerns about the lofty valuations of global AI-related firms.

Sources: AI chipmaker Cerebras is in talks to raise ~$1B, valuing the startup at $22B before the new investment, up from an $8.1B valuation in September 2025 (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/chipmaker-cerebras-tal…

Chipmaker Cerebras in Talks to Raise $1 Billion at a $22 Billion Valuation
AI chip startup Cerebras Systems is in talks to raise about $1 billion, valuing the company at $22 billion before the new investment, as the chipmaker prepares to go public this year, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. That’s a big jump from its last private valuation of $8.1 ...

Sources: Peter Thiel and Larry Page may leave CA over a proposed ballot measure, opposed by Newsom, that levies a one-time 5% tax on those with $1B in assets (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/26/tec…

A Wealth Tax Floated in California Has Billionaires Thinking of Leaving
It’s uncertain whether the proposal will reach the statewide ballot in November, but some billionaires like Peter Thiel and Larry Page may be unwilling to take the risk.

A profile of Chen Tao, founder of Chinese AI circuit board company Victory Giant, which is up 530% in 2025 so far, giving Chen and his wife a $9.1B net worth (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-25/coupl…

Chinese state media: China launches three VC funds of $7.1B each to back early-stage "hard technology" startups valued below ¥500M, or about $71M (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boa…

Onebrief, which makes AI-powered military workflow software, raised a $200M Series D, nearly doubling its valuation from $1.1B to $2.1B in about half of a year (Colin Demarest/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/01/13/onebrief-demaree-battleroad-seriesd-ai

Exclusive: Onebrief, now valued at $2 billion, acquires Battle Road
"We need things to move hundreds of times faster than they do, and that takes automation."

London-based enterprise AI video startup Synthesia raised a $200M Series E led by GV at a $4B valuation, up from $2.1B after raising $180M in January 2025 (Nat Rubio-Licht/The Deep View)
https://www.thedeepview.com/articles/synthesia-doubles-to-usd4b-pre…

Dell reports Q3 revenue up 11% YoY to $27.01B, vs. $27.13B est., Infrastructure Solutions revenue up 24% to $14.1B, and Client Solutions revenue up 3% to $12.5B (Kif Leswing/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/25/dell-earnings-report-q3-2026.html

Dell misses on revenue, offers strong forecast driven by AI sales
Dell is an important bellwether for the health of the AI infrastructure industry as one of the top vendors for systems based around Nvidia graphics processors.

Sources: NY-based Tandem, which uses AI to automate the paperwork for writing and receiving medical prescriptions, raised a $100M Series B at a $1B valuation (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Investigation: Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps used two UK-registered companies to move ~$1B in stablecoins since 2023, evading international sanctions (TRM Insights)
https://www.trmlabs.com/resources/blog/how

How Two UK-registered Companies Moved Over a Billion in Stablecoins for the IRGC | TRM Blog
Two UK exchanges linked to Iran’s IRGC moved ~USD 1B in crypto—underscoring how sanctioned actors are building infrastructure, not just abusing it.

Sources: Snowflake is in talks to buy app monitoring startup Observe for around $1B; Observe has raised more than $470M (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/snowflake-talks-buy-app-monitoring-startup-observe…

Snowflake in Talks to Buy App Monitoring Startup Observe Inc. For Around $1 Billion
Snowflake is in talks to buy app monitoring startup Observe Inc. for around $1 billion, which would likely be the biggest deal in Snowflake’s history, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Observe, based in San Mateo, Calif., sells so-called observability tools that help ...

The Trump administration says it will replace the lottery program used to grant H-1B visas with a "weighted" system that prioritizes higher-paid individuals (Aime Williams/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/2e50f86f-2a40-4e5c-9470-7978b979c081

Sam Altman says OpenAI added more than $1B in annual recurring revenue in the past month "just from our API business" (Lee Chong Ming/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-1-billion-a-month-api-business-chatgpt-sam-…

OpenAI is making more than $1 billion a month from something that has nothing to do with ChatGPT
Sam Altman says OpenAI added more than $1 billion in annual recurring revenue in a month, driven by its API business rather than ChatGPT.

Source: by the end of 2025, Claude Code's ARR had grown by at least another $100M from the $1B announced in November, making up 12% of Anthropic's total ARR (Maxwell Zeff/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/claude-code-success-anthropic-business-model/…

How Claude Code Is Reshaping Software—and Anthropic
WIRED spoke with Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code, about how the viral coding tool is changing the way Anthropic works.

New York-based emergency alerts platform RapidSOS raised $100M led by Apax Digital Funds, a source says at a $1B valuation, for US and international expansion (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-19/rapid…

Sources: Fei-Fei Li's World Labs is in discussions with investors to raise hundreds of millions at a valuation of $5B; World Labs was last valued at $1B in 2024 (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

ServiceNow agrees to acquire cybersecurity startup Armis for $7.75B, set to close in H2 2026, pending approvals; Insight acquired Armis in a $1.1B deal in 2020 (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-23/serv…

BitGo raises $212.8M in its US IPO at $18 per share, above the marketed range of $15 to $17 per share, giving it a market value of about $2.1B (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-22/bitgo-is-said-to-price-us…

LiveKit, which offers tools for building voice, video, and physical AI models, including for ChatGPT's voice mode, raised a $100M Series C at a $1B valuation (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-0…

A look at military tech startup Shield AI, recently valued at $5.6B, and its new CEO Gary Steele, who aims to grow annual revenue from $300M to $1B by 2028 (Jessica Mathews/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/12/21/shield-ai-ukraine-defense-tech-gary-steele/

Shield AI took its drones from the ‘Batcave’ to the battlefield. Now the $5.6 billion defense-tech startup’s new CEO says it’s at an inflection point
After eight months spent tweaking its surveillance drone in Ukraine, demand for Shield AI’s V-BAT is ramping up in Europe and Asia.

Google advises some employees on visas, including H-1B visas, not to travel outside the US due to processing delays, following new social media screening rules (Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-tells-visa-holders-stamp-le…

Google warns some visa employees not to leave the US due to 'significant' return delays of up to a year
The US State Department said it was "prioritizing thoroughly vetting" each visa case, which could cause delays.

Upscale AI, which is building AI networking infrastructure, raised $200M led by Tiger, Premji Invest, and Xora Innovation at a $1B valuation to take on Cisco (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

OpenEvidence, which is building "ChatGPT for doctors", raised $250M led by Thrive and DST at a $12B valuation, up from $6B in October and $1B in February 2025 (Kate Rooney/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/21/openevidence-chatg…

OpenEvidence, the 'ChatGPT for doctors,' doubles valuation to $12 billion
OpenEvidence, based in Massachusetts, has topped a $12 billion valuation in a funding round led by Thrive and DST.

Nielsen: Christmas Day 2025 set a record for US streaming usage with 55.1B minutes, or 54% of all TV viewing for the day, up by 3.9B minutes on Christmas 2024 (Rick Porter/The Hollywood Reporter)
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business

Christmas 2025 Was the Biggest Streaming Day Ever in the United States, Says Nielsen
The month of December also marked another all-time high for streaming usage.