Tootfinder

QUOTE
Unusual Machines' CEO, Allen Evans told Forbes,
when asked what experience Donald Trump Jr. had that appealed to the drone maker:
“He had a strong alignment with investors through 1789 [Capital,
JD Vance's a venture capital fund]
and otherwise who are very interested in MAGA or on-shoring or making America great, et cetera.
So the engagement is really the outreach to the groups that are interested in what we’re trying to do,”

The Telegraph's sale to RedBird Capital faces new controversy after the paper linked RedBird's John Thornton to Chinese leader and suspected spy chief Cai Qi (Simon Goodley/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/oct

Clover Security, whose AI agents plug into developer platforms like GitHub to predict and detect security flaws, raised $36M led by Notable Capital and Team8 (Sam Sabin/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/25/clover-security-funding-wiz-crowdstrike-no…

Exclusive: Wiz founders back AI security agent startup
Clover Security provides agentic tools that help companies embed security throughout their products and ensure that their products remain secure during their lifecycle.

Toxic haze chokes Indian capital #India

Toxic haze chokes Indian capital
India's capital New Delhi was shrouded in a thick, toxic haze on Monday as air pollution levels soared to more than 16 times the World Health Organization's recommended daily maximum.

foursquare_global: Foursquare global check-ins (2013)
A bipartite network of users and locations, representing check-in events worldwide on Foursquare, from April 2012 to September 2013. Metadata include country, city name, city type (e.g. national capital), and vender's latitude and longitude.
This network has 3935215 nodes and 22809624 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted, Metadata, Timestamps

Donate to the Capital Region Food Program: https://www.capitalregionfoodprogram.org/

Brilliant week in Bristol.
Especially invigorating to present the invited talk, 'Private Education Capital: Beyond Caste-based Educational Exclusion as "Tradition"' at Centre for International Research in Education. I also gave a Roundtable Presentation, 'Epistemic Humility as Experienced Provocation' for doctoral students.
Grateful to wonderful colleagues who took such care, asked such thoughtful questions, and showed me beautiful Bristol with scrumpt…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Andrew Bird:
🎵 Capital I
#AndrewBird
https://andrewbird.bandcamp.com/track/capital-i
https://open.spotify.com/track/05aeDb92Kyyy6ANkRzoQJf

From ⁨⁨⁨⁨⁨#AnnafromUkraine⁩⁩⁩⁩⁩ @AnnafromUkraine@youtube.com
🧵 👇
SECOND AIR DEFENSE RING AROUND MOSCOW, PANIC IN LUKOIL Vlog 1210: War in #Ukraine
#Moscow, the capital of

PitchBook: US AI and robotics VC deals are up over 4x since 2023 to $160B so far in 2025, while comparable China deals are just $10B , up from $9.24B in 2023 (CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/26/cnbc-china

CNBC's The China Connection newsletter: Foreign investors warm to China’s cheaper AI valuations despite fears of a U.S. bubble
For all the worries about a bubble in U.S. AI spending, capital flows into China's tech sector is far less, pushing startups to do more with less.

Beckstrom initially did not want to go to the capital because she was concerned about feeling lonely away from home.
“She hated it. She cried about it,” her boyfriend said.
But with time, she came to enjoy the deployment and bonded with other troops.
In her spare time, he said, she visited monuments and museums, taking pictures and soaking up D.C.’s history.
She was especially interested in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

National Guard member killed in D.C. shooting remembered for 'heart of gold'
Sarah Beckstrom, the slain West Virginia National Guard member, took a keen interest in criminal justice and dreamed of one day becoming an FBI agent.

"German City Wins European Green Capital Title With Bold Environmental Vision"
#Germany #Environment
https://hap…

German City Wins European Green Capital Title With Bold Environmental Vision | Happy Eco News
Heilbronn wins European green capital award for 2027 with 600,000 euros in funding. Learn how the German city's innovative environmental planning beat competitors across the continent.

Iran's president says moving the capital Tehran is now a necessity as the water crisis deepens. That'll be moving 16 million people (metro area) then, almost equal to the entire population of the Netherlands.
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202511209098

Iran president says capital move now a necessity as water crisis deepens
Iran’s capital must be moved because the country “no longer has a choice,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday in remarks carried by state media, warning that severe ecological strain has made Tehran impossible to sustain.

Tracxn: VC funding for Indian startups fell 17% YoY to $10.5B in 2025 across 1,518 deals, down ~39% YoY; AI startups raised $643M, up 4% YoY, across 100 deals (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/27/india-startu…

India startup funding hits $11B in 2025 as investors grow more selective | TechCrunch
Startup funding rounds in India fell sharply in 2025 as investors concentrated capital into fewer companies.

Wait...
DC deployment of National Guard was ruled unlawful:
https://apnews.com/article/national-guard-dc-deployment-c1c2b13a7102632632267bf1262506ff
So what were they doing there before they were shot:

Federal judge orders end to National Guard deployment in DC
A federal judge is ordering the Trump administration to end its monthslong deployment of National Guard troops to help police the nation’s capital. U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb concluded Thursday that President Donald Trump’s military takeover in Washington, D.C., illegally intrudes on local officials’ authority to direct law enforcement in the district. She put her order on hold for 21 days to allow for an appeal, however. District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued to chall…

Good Morning #Canada
In 1882, Lieutenant-Governor Dewdney acquired land adjacent to the route of the future CPR line at a site known as Pile-of-Bones. He then announced that this featureless site, distinguished only by collections of bison bones, would be the new capital of the North West Territories in western Canada. Thus, Regina was born out of a national scandal and conflict of interest. It became the provincial capital when Saskatchewan officially joined Canada in 1905. The North West Mounted Police were headquartered in Regina, starting in 1885, and the city remains as a training centre for the RCMP. Regina survived a cyclone in 1916 and a great depression riot in 1935. Recently, they recovered from a marketing faux pas when they canceled their tourism slogan, "Regina: The City That Rhymes With Fun."
#CanadaIsAwesome #CanadianCapitals
https://youtu.be/L8eHaVi1yfE?si=Oc2NsqG6tnB4Zqnn

Money capital follows vectors.
[contains quote post or other embedded content] https://bsky.app/profile/bmann.ca/post/3m5xx5mgdgs2s

"There was no choice, there is no choice: either submit to capital or watch your ideas wither and die. There are no other practical ways to raise significant capital. Real Angels don’t exist"
On the Feudal-like structures in Silicon Valley. Written in 2018, but not much has changed.
https://<…

Eigentümer-Rückzug - Schuhriese Humanic an slowenische Gruppe verkauft #News #Nachrichten

Mailbag: Use draft capital to boost defense? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mailbag-use-draft-capital-to-boost-defense

Amid a deepening ecological crisis and acute water shortage, Tehran can no longer remain the capital of Iran, the country’s president has said.
The situation in Tehran is the result of “a perfect storm of climate change and corruption,” says Michael Rubin, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
“We no longer have a choice,” said Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian during a speech on Thursday.
Instead Iranian officials are considering moving the capital to…

Iran's Capital Has Run Out of Water, Forcing It to Move
The decision to move Iran’s capital is partly driven by climate change, but experts say decades of human error and action are also to blame

In the shadow of defensive pratfalls, lurks a real elephant in the room.
LFC spent massively on offense and they can't score. They've an aging superstar in Salah, who looks finished. He can't be benched without blowing huge amounts of political capital, but at this point Slot almost has no choice. This decision is overdue, and yes, it hurts!
The wing-heavy attacking ideas that carried #LFC

Blame finance capital, not Brexit, for budget crisis | Morning Star
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/blame-finance-capital-not-brexit-budget-crisis

The 🇧🇪 Belgian postal service claims to be the first emission-free postal service in a European capital. All deliveries in the 19 municipalities of the Brussels capital region are now made on foot, by bike (some with e-trailer) or in an electric van.
https://

bpost makes Brussels the first European capital with emission-free daily postal deliveries
On October 1st, 2025, bpost completed the transition to zero-emission last-mile delivery for its regular letter and parcel rounds across the 19 municipalities of Brussels. The Belgian capital, the capital of Europe, is now the first major European metropolis where daily delivery rounds by postmen and postwomen are emission free.

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.

This is a subtweet...
People who are not anti-capitalist sometimes wonder: "Why is there a monopoly on X life-critical thing?" (E.g., epipens, insulin, web search).
This one is really simple actually: because monopolies are more profitable than competition, and the foundation of capitalism is that capital = power.
Various societies have recognized the necropolitical outcomes of monopolies and have tried to erect barriers to monopoly; we all know that monopolies are bad, death-and-suffering-causing things. But since these societies mostly remain capitalist, they allow these barriers to be eroded by the power of capital (to do otherwise would be to repudiate capitalism because it puts a limit on the power of money). The barriers are ineffective, and the capital = power equation holds, and monopolies result and get to do their killing & maiming thing (remember: even things like social media monopolies that you wouldn't expect to pay for political assassinations like a mining company still profit from inciting genocides). *Sometimes* there are oligopolies instead of monopolies, but instances of really competitive markets are pretty rare for things that are widely sought-after.
The "government will manage the markets to prevent bad outcomes like monopolies" strategy has failed repeatedly, spectacularly, and almost universally. To actually prevent monopolies you need a population that no longer believes that money should equal power, it's that simple. Sadly, it's actually not that simple, since all of the alternatives which equate something else to power, like "the king" or "party loyalty as judged by the supreme leader" have the same problems or worse. The attitude you need to cultivate is "nobody should have power," which is hard because *all* of the power-systems we have constantly propagandize against this attitude in myriad ways. Still, in the future once we've broken free of this age where hierarchy is accepted, people will look back and wonder whether the historical records are even credible given how much needless death and suffering were endured with little resistance.
#anarchy #capitalism

Kantar Media appoints former WPP boss Mark Read as its chairman, after HIG Capital acquired the analytics company from Kantar Group in a $1.1B deal in August (Daniel Thomas/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/dd68b487-a24e-4dc7-b8e3-de7056f6a118

Former WPP boss Mark Read set to become Kantar Media chair
Appointment to media analytics group follows its acquisition this year by HIG Capital

The Authoritarian Stack.
This is brilliant – if you’re interested in human rights, democracy, and tech, and want to understand technofascism/corporatocracy bookmark and read this.👇
#AuthoritarianStack #tech

#TIL there are capital variants of small capital letters.

U A7AE Ɪ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SMALL CAPITAL I

Ɪ - Wikipedia

From @… #KSLNews, a story by Gail Miller about her husband.
"Larry H. Miller served on various community boards, where he'd get stipend checks that he'd cash and store away in a suitcoat pocket tucked in a closet of their home. It was money they&…

'It is our problem': Gail Miller donates $10M to bolster Salt Lake homeless services
Gail Miller plans to donate $10 million to Shelter The Homeless, with most of it going to capital improvements for the Gail Miller Resource Center and other area shelters.

Seneca, which is developing autonomous firefighting drones, raised $60M in seed and Series A rounds led by Caffeinated Capital and Convective Capital (Christopher Marquis/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/…

How Seneca’s Firefighting Drones Signal A New Era Of Climate Adaptation
Seneca’s firefighting drones show how adaptation tech is shaping a resilience economy amid rising climate risks and billion-dollar wildfire disasters.

Sweden has had a stated goal of economic equality for 20 yrs, but the income gap between men and women remains the same. Capital is the blind spot. Women own less, save less and therefore benefit from significantly lower capital returns than men.
Additionally, capital is taxed less than wages which further reinforces the inequality. As long as Sweden's rules put more resistance in women's paths than in men's, capital, power and security will primarily benefit men.
Fro…

Ny vitbok gör politiken svaret skyldig: Halvera inkomstgapet till 2030 | Fredrika Bremer-förbundet
Inkomstgapet mellan kvinnor och män har varit oförändrat i tre decennier. Kvinnor har fortfarande bara cirka 80 procent av mäns disponibla inkomster. Nu släpper Fredrika Bremer-förbundet vitboken "Därför blir män rikare än kvinnor" som visar varför vi står och stampar, och vad som krävs för att vända utvecklingen. Vitbokens forskarteam lyfter 20 skarpa åtgärder för att minska den ekonomiska ojämställdheten. Målet är tydligt: inkomstgapet ska kunna halveras till år 2030.

I’m getting enough of these to think it must be the new Nigerian prince scam. Am I right? Anyone know how it works?

So, the new LLM from Zhipu, GLM 4.6, is about as good at coding as Anthropic's Sonnet 4.5. but roughly 8 times cheaper. It's impressive since, apparently, Zhipu has raised 13x less capital than Anthropic. Additionally, since GLM 4.6 is an open(ish) model, the inference costs will come down rapidly.
The beginning of the end for the #AI investment bubble?
#AIResearch #opensource

»The Story of Pixar's Stock Market Debut« – Which is also a story on venture capital and investment banking. Told by people who were part of the IPO. Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c9CmnG3UzE

Why Washington, D.C., the U.S. capital, won’t host 2026 World Cup matches https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6841652/2025/12/02/2026-world-cup-washington-dc-usa-capital-fifa/

After 18 years #edu tech and online #tutor service #Chegg, that started out simply renting #textbooks has now had to lay off nearly half its staff and bo…

Donald Trump has been forthright about his intention to bring about a death-penalty renaissance,
and now his efforts are coming to fruition.
This year has been a particularly lethal one for America’s death-row prisoners.
Together, Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas have executed a total of 40 people in the past 10 months
by injection, nitrogen hypoxia, and firing squad,
surpass…

The Next Golden Age of the Death Penalty Is Beginning
Trump and the Republican Party are bringing capital punishment back to the forefront of American criminal justice.

Raiders possess the capital required to rebuild or reset in 2026 https://raiderswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/raiders/2025/11/05/raiders-possess-the-capital-required-to-rebuild-or-reset-in-2026/…

“[S]top investigating low-level crimes where [Met] judged there was little prospect of catching the culprits”
meet: “Problems grow the size they need for them to be acknowledged.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/1…

London Became a Global Hub for Phone Theft. Now We Know Why.
About 80,000 phones were stolen in the British capital last year. The police are finally discovering where many of them went.

The Fatbergé sewer
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/22/100-tonne-fatberg-discovered-in-east-london-sewer?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Fatberg weighing 100 tonnes discovered in east London sewer
Mass of congealed fat, oil and grease 100 metres in length found blocking sewers in Whitechapel area of capital

Good Morning #Canada
In July 1871, the City of Victoria officially became the capital of British Columbia, when the province joined the rest of Canada. At the time, the city was larger than Vancouver and had served as the most important settlement in the area for decades. The Colony of Vancouver Island also stamped their little feet and demanded that Victoria be designated as the capital in return for the island to join with the mainland to become part of Canada. Captain James Cook was the first British person to set foot on Vancouver Island in 1778, and in 1843, Fort Victoria was established by the Hudson's Bay Company. There is a long history of Vancouver Island serving as a naval base, and today, Victoria is the home of Canada’s Pacific Coast naval and military headquarters in nearby Esquimalt. Victoria is a top tourist destination and is regularly rated top 5 worldwide as an awesome place to live.
#CanadaIsAwesome #CanadianCapitals
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/victoria-bc

Suspicions in the crypto community point to AI-supported hackers carrying out a concentrated campaign to steal around $5 million in old and sometimes abandoned DeFi projects.
Is an AI hacker targeting old DeFi projects in $5M spree?
https://protos.com/is-an-ai-hacker-tar

Is an AI hacker targeting old DeFi projects in $5M spree?
Old Ribbon Finance, Yearn Finance and Rari Capital contracts were hacked. Are attackers using AI to scan for missed opportunities in DeFi?

The UK proposes a "no gain, no loss" tax rule for crypto lending and liquidity pools in DeFi, deferring capital gains tax until a true economic disposal occurs (CoinDesk)
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2025/11/27/uk-p…

RedBird Capital drops its £500M bid for the Telegraph Media Group, after intense pressure from the Telegraph newsroom and allies over the group's links to China (Mark Sweney/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/nov/14/redbird-ca…

San Francisco Compute, which provides a marketplace for AI computing capacity, raised a $40M Series A led by DCVC and Wing Venture Capital at a $300M valuation (Yuliya Chernova/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/s…

India's pollution refugees fleeing Delhi's toxic air #India

India's pollution refugees fleeing Delhi's toxic air
Pollution levels in India's capital shaped Natasha Uppal and her husband's decision on parenthood—either raise their child away from the city, or stay put and remain childless.

I don't usually post articles from the Telegraph but this from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is worth a read. A key point is that the emphasis should be on decarbonising the sources not yet electified. Tories mis-estimate costs of a return to gas, not including capital costs.
The Tories are even bigger fools than Labour on energy policy

The Tories are even bigger fools than Labour on energy policy
If the UK acts unilaterally, British companies will face a carbon border tax nightmare

"Zero-Emissions Ferryboat to Glide Commuters Up and Down Historic River in European Capital"
#Europe #Emissions

Zero-Emissions Ferryboat to Glide Commuters Up and Down Historic River in European Capital
Lithuania’s capital Vilnius recently debuted a new electric ferryboat for transit up and down the River Neris. Called the Lašiša, it joins a trend of electric ferryboats on the famous rivers and bays of Europe such as the Elbe or the Copenhagen harbor. Tickets can be bought online and through an app for just €3, […]

UnifyApps, which lets companies build AI chatbots by connecting SaaS apps and data, raised a $50M Series B led by WestBridge, after a $20M Series A in 2024 (Chris Metinko/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/enterprise-software-deals/2025/10…

Exclusive: UnifyApps raises $50M Series B led by WestBridge Capital
Siloed systems of record and data make it harder for enterprises to adopt AI.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Andrew Bird:
🎵 Capital I
#AndrewBird
https://andrewbird.bandcamp.com/track/capital-i
https://open.spotify.com/track/05aeDb92Kyyy6ANkRzoQJf

Tidalwave, whose AI agents automate mortgage docs checks and give real-time multilingual feedback to borrowers, raised a $22M Series A led by Permanent Capital (Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/11/21/tidalwave-raises-22-million-se…

Tidalwave raises $22 million Series A to improve the mortgage process with AI
Tidalwave, which builds agentic AI for mortgage origination, has now raised its $22 million Series A, Fortune has exclusively learned.

Good Morning #Canada
In 1905, when Alberta joined Canada, a temporary provincial legislature resided in Edmonton and they were given the task of choosing the capital. Edmonton, by a vote of 16 to 8, was selected over their southern rival Calgary. This choice was despite Calgary's larger size and incorporation as a city a full decade before Edmonton. But the new capital had used their history as an important trading post established on the fur trade route and federal relationships to secure their status as the capital. In 1941, Edmonton was still a relatively small city, ranking 9th in population in Canada. Oil would transform the entire province, and Edmonton would rapidly grow as the gateway to the resource rich Alberta north.
#CanadaIsAwesome #CanadianCapitals
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/edmonton

The AI buildout, surpassing railroads and the internet, moves Big Tech from its successful asset-light model, and prior booms have resulted in overinvestment (Kai Wu/Sparkline Capital)
https://www.sparklinecapital.com/post/surviving-the-ai-capex-boom

Surviving the AI Capex Boom
Big Tech’s AI buildout is transforming markets. Drawing on the lessons of past capex booms, we offer a playbook for investors.

Eros Innovation, an AI and IP company which owns 12K film titles and 100K AI-ready characters, closed ~$150M in capital and acquisitions at a $2B valuation (Naman Ramachandran/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/eros-innovation-150…

Eros Innovation Secures $150 Million, Expands AI-Media Platform
Eros Innovation has closed $150 million in capital and strategic acquisitions as the company continues its transformation into an AI-driven platform.

"Schools told to keep children indoors and flights cancelled as air pollution peaks in Sarajevo"
#Sarajevo #Education

Air pollution is keeping children indoors in Bosnian capital
IQAir has ranked the air quality as “unhealthy".

The US AI data center boom is consuming capital, power, and people that the rest of the economy needs, and is crowding out Trump's manufacturing revival plans (Bloomberg)

It is not clear whether the National Capital Planning Commission was consulted or received any meaningful insight prior to the White House’s demolition,
particularly as it has been closed since the government shut down 23 days ago.
“The decisions were made in complete secrecy and undertaken without public disclosure or proper consultation,” 
the ranking members on the House Oversight and Natural Resources committees and the subcommittee on energy on mineral resources wrote T…

Karoline Leavitt Says Trump Can Destroy Entire White House if He Wants
Leavitt dodged a key question on the limits to Donald Trump’s abilities to renovate.

Defakto, which lets enterprises secure automated interactions between internal systems and AI agents or other non-human actors, raised a $30.75M Series B (Chris Metinko/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/enterprise-software-deals/2025/10/21/defakt…

Exclusive: Defakto raises $31M to ID nonhumans
XYZ Venture Capital led the round.

"After Ruining a Treasured Water Resource, Iran Is Drying Up"
#Iran #Climate #ClimateChange

After Ruining a Treasured Water Resource, Iran Is Drying Up
Iran is looking to relocate the nation’s capital because of severe water shortages that make Tehran unsustainable. Experts say the crisis was caused by years of ill-conceived dam projects and overpumping that destroyed a centuries-old system for tapping underground reserves. 

AI dictation startup Wispr Flow raised $25M, after raising a $30M Series A in June, taking its total funding to $81M (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/20/as-its-voice-dectation-app-takes-off-wispr-secures-25m…

As its voice dictation app takes off, Wispr secures $25M from Notable Capital | TechCrunch
Voice AI company Wispr is raising $25 million in funding merely months after its $30 million Series A.

Sources: Tempo, a stablecoin-focused blockchain developed by Stripe and Paradigm, raised a $500M Series A led by Greenoaks and Thrive Capital at a $5B valuation (Fortune)
https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/10/17/stripe-para…

Exclusive: Stripe-backed blockchain startup Tempo raises $500 million round led by Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital and Greenoaks
The Series A values the Matt Huang-led Tempo at $5 billion and includes participation from Sequoia, Ribbit, and SV Angel.

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…

"Offshore fossil fuel exploration jeopardizes Brazil’s climate leadership, study says"
#FossilFuels #Brazil #Climate

Offshore fossil fuel exploration jeopardizes Brazil’s climate leadership, study says
This November, as Brazil opened the curtains to host the UN Climate Conference (COP30), in its Pará state capital, Belém, the troubles orbiting the country’s environmental agenda were featured in a new report by U.S.-based conservation technology nonprofit SkyTruth, which is dedicated to satellite-based environmental monitoring. In the run-up to the climate summit, the study […]

Adaptive Security, which uses AI to simulate social engineering attacks and help companies prevent them, raised an $81M Series B led by Bain Capital Ventures (Chris Metinko/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/enterprise-software-d…

Exclusive: Adaptive Security raises $81M to stop social-engineered attacks
Bain Capital Ventures led the Series B round.

A power outage in San Francisco on Saturday,
which left 124,000 of 414,000 customers in the dark.
🔥also caused a widespread Waymo meltdown,
with apparently all active Waymo robotaxis in the affected parts of the city stuck in robotic comas
-- blocking intersections and choking traffic on some streets.

Blackout in San Francisco Litters Streets with Traffic-Blocking, Deactivated Waymos
Robot chaos in the tech capital of the U.S.

Lightspeed raised a record $9B across six funds to invest in AI, with $3.3B to back breakout companies like Anthropic; Lightspeed has backed 165 AI startups (Erin Griffith/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/technology/ai-venture-capital-big-fun…

In A.I. Boom, Venture Capital Firms Are Raising Loads More Money
Lightspeed Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley venture firm, has amassed more than $9 billion to invest in artificial intelligence. That is its biggest haul.

Sequoia, a16z, and other VC firms invested $1.2B into police and public safety tech startups over the past year, following the success of Palantir and others (Abram Brown/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/a

Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Add to $1.2 Billion Funding Boom for Police Tech Startups
Over the past year, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and many of Silicon Valley’s other top venture capital firms have funneled at least $1.2 billion in funding to startups selling technology to city police departments and local public safety agencies. Those companies illustrate the technology industry’s growing enthusiasm for making software and hardware for the government and law

Endra, whose AI tools automate mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design for commercial buildings, raised a $20M seed led by Notion (Jeremy Kahn/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/12/18/endra-ai-startup-automating-mep-design…

Exclusive: Swedish startup automating mechanical, electrical, and plumbing design for commercial buildings raises $20 million in seed round
Notion Capital is leading the seed round for Endra, which says reduces the time to design buildings' electrical systems from months to hours.

Singapore-based wealth management platform Endowus raised $70M , bringing its total funding to $130M , and says the new capital will boost its AI advisory tools (Katrina Bianca Cuaresma/DealStreetAsia)
https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/endowus-70-m-round-460635/…

Endowus closes $70m round to deepen AI, regional expansion
The funding round was led by Illuminate Financial.

Okay, my obscure background as an erstwhile DC land use lawyer is finally relevant.
There are several agencies that oversee any projects at the White House, including the Commission of Fine Arts, the Commission for the Preservation of the White House, the National Park Service, and the National Capital Planning Commission.
Guess who apparently hasn't filed for approval from any of them?
-- Jamie Baker Roskie
Considering that Trump has one of his cronies running N…

Meta forms a JV with Blue Owl to fund the $27B, 2GW Hyperion data center in Louisiana, its largest ever private capital deal; Meta will retain a ~20% equity (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/technology/meta-forms-joint-ventu…

Cerrion, which develops AI video agents that detect and resolve production line issues in real time, raised an $18M Series A led by Creandum (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2025/11/25/cerrion-raises-18m-to-reduce-factory-downtime-wi…

Cerrion raises $18M to reduce factory downtime with AI video agents
Cerrion, the Swiss-founded AI video agent platform that detects and resolves production line issues in real time, has raised $18 million in Series A funding to further expand and scale operations in the US and Europe. The round was led by Creandum, with participation from existing investors Y Combinator, Goat Capital, 10x Founders and Session VC, alongside prominent angels including Harry Stebbings (20VC), Oskar Hjertonsson, Thomas Wolf (Hugging Face) and Garret Langley (Flock Safety).Fa…

New York-based Valthos, which is developing AI tools to detect and prevent AI-enabled bioweapon attacks, raised $30M from OpenAI, Founders Fund, and Lux Capital (Lizette Chapman/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Paris-based Upciti, which offers city operations software and hardware to over 150 municipalities in 17 countries, raised a $20M Series A led by Notion Capital (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2025/10/16/upciti-closes-20m-to-dr…

UPCITI closes $20M to drive global growth of its urban operating platform
UPCITI, a Paris-based company building an operating system for cities, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Notion Capital, with participation from Point Nine and Chalfen Ventures.UPCITI combines proprietary software with purpose-built hardware to help municipalities run critical operations, such as traffic flow, street management, and public safety, more efficiently and securely, with a clear ROI that simplifies adoption. By owning both the software an…

Raise Financial Services, the parent company of Indian stock trading and investment app Dhan, raised $120M led by Hornbill Capital at a $1.2B valuation (Kunal Manchanada/Entrackr)
https://entrackr.com/news/dhan-turns-unicorn-after-120-mn-f…

Dhan turns unicorn after $120 Mn fundraise led by Hornbill Capital
Dhan plans to deploy the new funds to scale its technology stack, expand its omnichannel presence, and roll out new financial products for retail investors.

Dutch online grocery store Picnic raised €430M from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust and others, after raising €355M in January 2024 (John Reynolds/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2025/11/21/dutch-online-grocery-store-picnic-raises-430m/

Dutch online grocery store Picnic raises €430M
Dutch online grocery store Picnic has raised €430 million from existing investors and is ploughing much of the funding to grow its operations in Germany.Picnic's existing investors include German supermarket giant Edeka, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, Dutch investment firm Hoyberg and Amsterdam-headquartered investment firm NPM Capital.As well as bolstering its presence in Germany, where Picnic says it's the market leader, the funds will be used to expand into multiple unnamed m…

Brett Harrison, the former president of FTX US, raised $35M for his new global exchange AX, which offers perpetual futures, a source says at a $187M valuation (Yueqi Yang/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/former-ftx-head-raises-…

Former FTX US Head Raises $35 Million for New Exchange
Brett Harrison, the former president of FTX US, has raised $35 million for his startup Architect Financial Technologies, which offers a global perpetual futures exchange. The round, led by Miami International and Tioga Capital, values the company at $187 million, according to a person familiar with the fundraising. The exchange, AX, offers perpetual futures on traditional assets such as stocks

Source: Erebor, a digital bank co-founded by Palmer Luckey, raised $350M led by Lux Capital at a $4.35B post-money valuation; it secured FDIC approval last week (Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/12/22/palmer-luckey-digital-bank

Scoop: Palmer Luckey's digital bank valued at over $4 billion
Investor excitement the stablecoin banking startup is reaching AI levels.

Federato, which provides AI-powered insurance lifecycle software, raised a $100M Series D led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, taking its total funding to $180M (InsurTech Analyst)
https://insurtechanalyst.com/2025/11/18/federato-launches-ai-n…

Keycard, which lets enterprises manage AI agent access to internal systems, raised a $30M Series A led by Acrew Capital and a $8M seed led by a16z and boldstart (Maria Deutscher/SiliconANGLE)
https://siliconangle.com/2025/10/21/ai-agent-security-startup-keyca…

AI agent security startup Keycard reels in $38M - SiliconANGLE
AI agent security startup Keycard reels in $38M - SiliconANGLE

Thoma Bravo acquires a majority stake in Java platform Azul, which received a $340M majority investment from Vitruvian Partners and Lead Edge Capital in 2020 (Chris Metinko/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/enterprise-software-deals/2025/11/18/tho…

Exclusive: Thoma Bravo buys Java platform Azul
Azul battles Oracle in the Java marketplace.

Meanwhile, a Bermuda-regulated bitcoin life insurance provider, raised $82M from Apollo, Bain Capital, Haun Ventures, and others, after a $40M Series A in April (Muyao Shen/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-…

Bitcoin Life Insurance Provider Meanwhile Raises $82 Million
Apollo, Northwestern Mutual, Pantera Capital and Stillmark are joining Bain Capital and crypto investor Haun Ventures to back the Bitcoin life insurance firm Meanwhile in a $82 million funding round.

Coinbase agrees to acquire Echo, a blockchain platform to let crypto companies quickly raise capital, for ~$375M, marking Coinbase's 8th acquisition in 2025 (Lauren Thomas/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/finance/coin…

Sources: Apptronik, a humanoid robot maker backed by Google, is in the process of raising at least $400M led by B Capital at a $5B pre-money valuation (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-backed-apptronik-tal…

Google-Backed Apptronik in Talks to Raise Funding at $5 Billion Valuation
Apptronik, a humanoid robot maker backed by Google, is in the process of raising at least $400 million at a $5 billion valuation not including the new money, according to two people familiar with the discussions. The new round,led by B Capital, would at least triple the startup’s valuation from ...

PitchBook: VC investment in Asia slowed to $48.9B in the first nine months of 2025, just over half of 2024's total, amid uncertainty due to US tariff policies (Pak Yiu/Nikkei Asia)
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/finance/asian-ven…

Asian venture capital activity slows amid US tariff uncertainty
Investors increasingly cautious as deals shift toward supply chains and manufacturing

Sequoia announces that Alfred Lin and Pat Grady will be elevated to firm stewards, succeeding Roelof Botha, who led Sequoia solo since 2022 (Dan Primack/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/04/sequoia-capital-roelof-botha-pat-grady-alfred-lin

Sequoia Capital transitions to new leadership
Alfred Lin and Pat Grady will become Sequoia's new stewards.

Sources: Chinese investment firm Capital Today bought ByteDance shares at a $480B valuation after a bidding war; ByteDance had a $330B valuation in September (Dong Cao/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-20…

Findem, an AI-powered talent acquisition startup, raised $51M in equity and debt, including a $36M Series C led by SLW, taking its total funding to $105M (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/findem-funding-ai-powered-hiring-re…

Exclusive: Findem Lands $36M Series C To Supercharge AI-Powered Hiring 
Findem is just one of more than a dozen startups at the intersection of AI and recruitment globally that has raised venture capital in 2025.

Runware, which operates a developer tool platform that generates images, video, and audio in real-time, raised a $50M Series A, taking its total funding to $66M (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/11/runw

Runware raises $50M Series A to help make image, video generation easier for developers | TechCrunch
Runware lets developers integrate realtime image generation in their apps, with an affordable pricing model.

Source: Twenty, which uses AI to help hackers for the US military penetrate adversary computer networks, raised a $38M Series A led by Caffeinated Capital (Margi Murphy/Bloomberg)

London-based Sokin, which develops tech for B2B cross-border payments, raised a $50M Series B led by Prysm Capital at a $300M valuation (John Reynolds/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2025/12/01/cross-border-payment-fintech-sokin-lands-50m-funding-round/…

Cross-border payment fintech Sokin lands $50M funding round
Cross-border payment fintech Sokin has received $50m in a funding round, valuing the UK fintech at $300m.UK-headquartered Sokin says it will use the funding to speed up overseas expansion and on product development.The Series B funding round was led by US investment firm Prysm Capital, with Watershed Ventures participating. Existing investors, including investment funds managed by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and Aurum Partners, also participated.Founded in 2019 and headquartered in London…

Copenhagen-based Formalize, whose compliance software serves organizations in 80 countries, raised a €30M Series B co-led by Acton Capital and Blackfin Tech (Tamara Djurickovic/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2025/10/28/formalize-raises-eur30m-to-a…

Formalize raises €30M to advance compliance solutions across Europe
Copenhagen-based Formalize has raised €30 million in a Series B co-led by Acton Capital and Blackfin Tech, with participation from West Hill Capital and CIBC Innovation Banking. The company has raised €50 million to date.Across Europe, organisations face an increasingly complex, interconnected regulatory landscape, with evolving rules reshaping expectations for information security, resilience, and reporting across industries and regions. Formalize, addresses this with a single platform…

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.

S&P Global: data center deals hit $61B globally in 2025; debt issuance nearly doubled YoY to $182B, with Meta raising $62B debt since 2022, ~50% of that in 2025 (April Roach/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/19/data-center-deals-…

Data center deals hit record $61 billion in 2025 as AI valuation risks and funding concerns grip investors
Hyperscalers are increasingly turning to outside capital in the form of debt to fund the energy-intensive infrastructure.

AI video startup Luma AI raised a $900M Series C led by Humain, sources say at a ~$4B valuation, and partners with Humain on a 2GW AI cluster in Saudi Arabia (Vaibhavi Khanwalkar/The Economic Times)
https://economictimes.i…

Video generation platform Luma AI raises $900 million, valued at $4 billion
The firm’s Indian-American CEO Amit Jain, an IITian who was formerly with Apple, told ET that the domain the company operated in is capital-intensive and requires sizable investments to scale. Sources close to the company pegged its valuation at around $4 billion.

Sources: Blue Owl Capital will not invest in Oracle's $10B, 1GW data center in Michigan after funding talks stalled due to concerns over debt terms and delays (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/84c147a4-aabb-4243-8298-11fabf1022a3

Kraken raised $200M at a $20B valuation, after raising $600M at a $15B valuation in Sept.; prior to the two rounds, Kraken raised only $27M in venture capital (Ben Weiss/Fortune)
https://fortune.com/2025/11/18/kraken-citadel-securities-ken-griffin-…

Exclusive: Crypto exchange Kraken raises $200 million from Ken Griffin’s Citadel to notch $20 billion valuation
Once skittish about digital assets, Citadel has warmed towards the crypto business in 2025.