Tootfinder

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.

Column of smoke seen, loud noises heard in Venezuelan capital (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/loud-noises-heard-venezuela-capital-southern-area-without-electricity-2026-01-03/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260103/p3#a260103p3

“Venezuelan interim government stands behind Maduro, says interior minister”
This could get interesting…
Https://news.sky.com/story/venezuela-latest-explosions-heard-in-capital-of-caracas-13489831?postid=10796150#l…

Maduro government 'still very much in control right now', says Sky correspondent
Nicolas Maduro is in the US - in handcuffs - where he said "happy new year" as agents escorted him through a corridor. He could appear in court tomorrow. But was this all legal? What is the reaction from US allies - and its foes? Follow the latest.

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/

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Guerilla Toss:
🎵 Cannibal Capital
#GuerillaToss
https://guerillatoss.bandcamp.com/track/cannibal-capital
https://open.spotify.com/track/5mhpd12wL82CIlXjUqngTA

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…

Miles from Nation's Capital, ICE Arrests ISIS-K Afghan Terrorist Who Was Released into the U.S. Under Biden's Operation Allies Welcome (Department of Homeland Security)
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/12/03/miles-nations-capital-ice-arrests-isis-k-afghan-terrorist-who-was-released-us-under
http://www.memeorandum.com/251203/p148#a251203p148

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

What the Raiders' Draft Capital Looks Like After Jakobi Meyers Trade https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-jacksonville-jaguars-john-spytek-jakobi-meyers

RT: Seth Harp @sethharpesq
Nov 1
The biggest capital outlay ever, for a product that no one will pay for.
OpenAI loses ten billion dollars a quarter. There is no path to profitability for subprime AI. These absurd data centers will stand sentinel over the ruins of our fake economy like moai on Easter Island.

It appears that the time has come to deny your future self entry to the great #USA with a little social media post. #Venezuela

Venezuela accuses US of bombing civilian, military installations
President Nicolas Maduro has declared a national state of emergency in Venezuela.

#Explosions, loud noises and low-flying aircraft have been heard in the #Venezuelan capital of #Caracas,
amid reports that Donald Trump had ordered strikes against the South American country.
In the early hours of Sat…

It doesn't matter if Nicolšs Maduro is a dictator or not, at all: no international law supports USA kidnapping a president and his wife bombing the capital of a country. For example: USA isn't going to kidnap Mohamed bin Salman, Saudi Barbaria's King, regardless of it being a brutal dictatorship, for a single reason: they already control Saudi oil.
#venezuela

Facts: “The report shouldn’t be a shock to anyone...because zoning is just one factor of 100. I’m afraid ‘We’re going to sue the government until the capital markets do what we want’ is basically the textbook definition of San Francisco YIMBYism.” - @…

It's looking like the motive for the US Venezuela takeover is definitely oil. Oil for USA capital. "Open Veins of Latin America" yet again.

"Greece still buries nearly 80% of its waste despite billions spent and bins everywhere"
#Greece #Environment

Why does Greece continues to bury its rubbish and recycle very little?
The waste problem is particularly critical in Athens and the wider area of the Greek capital.

The fact that so many on the Fediverse remain so uneducated isn’t surprising. It only reveals how deeply bourgeois ideology continues to shape public consciousness, molding perception to serve the interests of capital, especially US imperialism.
Just as it took decades for many to see the war on terror for what it truly was, and even longer to grasp Palestine’s struggle against imperialism and settler colonialism, the same pattern will repeat.
I wholeheartedly reject imperialis…

WTF does kidnapping a foreign leader on his own soil have to do with US Law Enforcement?
"This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement"
Trump says US forces have captured Nicolas Maduro
Here's text from a Truth Social post:
"The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Cou…

Donald Trump says US forces have 'captured' Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro
US President Donald Trump says the US has "captured" Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who earlier declared a national emergency and hit out at US "military aggression" after attacks in the capital, Caracas.

Seufz...
Explosions and low-flying aircraft reported in Venezuelan capital Caracas
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-explosions-venezuela-maduro-latest-news-updates-live?CM…

How AI automation can fulfill Thomas Piketty's predictions on rising economic inequality, and why highly progressive taxes on capital can help slow the spiral (Philosopher Count)
https://philiptrammell.substack.com/p/capital-in-the-22nd-century

Capital in the 22nd Century
Piketty was wrong about the past. He’s probably right about the future.

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.

Week 18 Rooting Guide shows 7 Saturday, Sunday games to help Cowboys https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2026/01/03/cowboys-rooting-guide-week-18-7-games-to-watch/88005961007/

Rright now it is unlikely that Trump gets a "rally around the flag" boost for his seizing of Maduro as
1) it didn’t happen with his invasion of cities or his attack on Iran
2) the country just isn’t on board some kind of extended military campaign in Venezuela
3) it increasingly feels like Trump has no real plan for what comes next in Venezuela, and like Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, thought the government would just fall and he could waltz into the Capital.

Trump Starts Underwater In Initial Venezuela Poll, US Oil Industry Not Rushing To Return, Chaos Reigns This Morning
This week Democrats must remind the world that we are still fighting for freedom, democracy, and rule of law here and everywhere.....

Mumbai-based Knight Fintech, which builds core infrastructure connecting banks, lenders, platforms, and borrowers, raised $23.6M led by Accel (The Economic Times)
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/…

Knight Fintech secures $23.6 million from Accel, IIFL, & others
Knight Fintech has raised $23.6 million in a funding round led by early-stage venture firm Accel, with participation from IIFL and Rocket Capital. Existing investors Prime Venture Partners, 3One4 Capital, Commerce VC, and Trifecta Capital also participated in the round.

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

Explosions hit Venezuelan capital Caracas (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/46ee8a0f-d421-4f7d-9514-297a576ec346
http://www.memeorandum.com/260103/p6#a260103p6

Primer paso: Heredar una fortuna.
Segundo paso: contactar a los amigos de tu papi.
__
La receta de Nicolšs Ibšñez hijo para invertir en Estados Unidos
https://www.latercera.com/pulso/noticia/la-receta-para-invertir-en-…

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.

There was no electric power in the whole centre of the Bulgarian capital for more than an hour. Not gonna lie, I was legit scared shitless those fuckers in the government were going to try to pull something against the ongoing protests 😬

Alphabet's X is increasingly spinning out independent companies via a dedicated Series X Capital fund, which has raised $500M with a minority Alphabet stake (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/02/alph

Alphabet is increasingly launching "moonshot" projects as independent companies -- here's why | TechCrunch
Despite the emphasis on detachment from ideas, X employees do have significant skin in the game when projects spin out.

"I ... think the odds of #Bluesky following #Twitter’s path is (sic) very high, given the structural similarities. Bluesky is a for-profit group still in the venture-capital honeymoon phase where it doesn’t need major revenue" — @…

A Mastodon Migration From Bluesky Would Be Different - Absolutely Maybe
The Mastodon migration from Twitter in 2022 was massive for the non-commercial community network: The number of accounts swelled with more than…

#Gig workers in #Indonesia are coming together to demand fair compensation and better working conditions, despite immense challenges & an anti-#labor government.
Read more in my latest at

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…

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://<…

"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.

📝 Tomorrow: "The State of American Religious Life," a lecture by Ryan Burge , Professor of Practice at The John C. Danforth Center for Religion and Society.
Sunday January 4th @ 4:00pm
In The Chapel
Immanuel Baptist Church Nashville
222 Belle Meade Blvd
Nashville, TN 37205
![Flyer for a talk by Ryan Burge it includes the text the state of american religious life and includes a photo of the capital
](https://cdn.some.pics/adjb/6959d9a15356d.png)

Good Morning #Canada
I bet you thought that I forgot about this unfinished series, but I was just waiting for a slow historical news day. Iqaluit is our newest provincial/territorial capital, as Nunavut was officially separated from the Northwest Territories to become the largest and northernmost territory of Canada on April 1, 1999. No fooling. Iqaluit, which means "place of many fish," has a long history as an Inuit hunting and fishing ground. In 1880 the British Government transfers the Arctic archipelago to the Canadian government which begins a century of colonization efforts to protect Canada's sovereignty in the area, with a bit of resource extraction that prompted settlements in Nunavut. Officially named "Frobisher Bay" In 1942 as a military airfield during WWII, the town reverted to its Inuit name in 1987.
#CanadaIsAwesome ##CanadianCapitals
https://www.iqaluit.ca/visitors/explore-iqaluit/history

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

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

https://apnews.com/article/croatia-protest-far-right-surge-4f76f067fef8ea56f682c79bb5fae61d

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

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

WTF this straight to VHS B-movie I've just found on Amazon starts out pretty awesome:
1. narrator introduces a backstory that is blatantly ripped from Mad Max (1979)
2. this shot
#MovieNight

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…

What Maxx Crosby trade could cost the Dallas Cowboys: Financial haul and draft capital https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/dallas-cowboys/news/what-maxx-crosby-trade-could-cost-dallas-cowboys/e5ced879f335ba1d40b31314…

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

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…

RE: https://social.linux.pizza/@midtsveen/115640672639634584
This is why I turn to anarchism, and especially anarcho-syndicalism, as the authentic praxis amid nothingness.
In Sartre's vision, serialized oppression under state and capital ali…

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

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

On January 1, 1994,
Indigenous peoples from #Chiapas, Mexico, rose up.
They took control of city halls in towns across the state.
They took the state capital #San #Cristobal

The 1994 Zapatista Uprising: Resisting NAFTA and corporate capitalism
The Zapatistas rose up on January 1, 1994, just over three decades ago. They remain an inspiration for social movements, communities, and individuals seeking change around the world. This is episode 83 of Stories of Resistance.

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

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.

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

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,”

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

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.

Cowboys trade for Maxx Crosby in 7-round mock, draft LB, dynamic RB https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2026/01/01/cowboys-trade-for-raiders-de-maxx-crosby-in-7-round-mock-d…

"In Malawi, a rural community shines bright with 100% solar power milestone"
#Malawi #SolarPower #Energy #Renewables

In Malawi, a rural community shines bright with 100% solar power milestone
LILONGWE — Four years ago, a U.K.-based charity, SolarAid, set out to provide solar-powered electricity to every home in Kasakula, a village around 90 kilometers, or 56 miles, from Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. The project was aimed at demonstrating the potential for distributing and maintaining renewable energy in rural Africa. Today, SolarAid says it has installed […]

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.

OpenAI has already committed to spending $1.4 trillion on infrastructure for AI, Sam Altman said during a livestreamed event on Tuesday, and he expects to continue moving aggressively on that front.
To finance that, OpenAI will need to raise unprecedented amounts of capital through venture funding, debt and an eventual public offering, the last of which Altman said remains the most likely path for the company.
SoftBank, one of OpenAI’s biggest backers, had reserved the right to pu…

OpenAI takes a stake in Thrive Capital's Thrive Holdings and plans to embed AI agents in its companies, which already includes an accounting and IT business (Michael J. de la Merced/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/business/dealbook/o…

OpenAI Takes Stake in Thrive Holdings, a Buyer of Services Firms
The move by the parent company of ChatGPT is meant to help imbue Thrive Holdings’ accounting and I.T. services companies with artificial intelligence tools.

Good Morning #Canada
I hope you're waking up to a scrumptious smell from the kitchen because it's National Bacon Day. While you're waiting for it to finish cooking, here are some facts to salivate over:
- Canadian Bacon, aka Back Bacon or Peameal Bacon, is a Canadian invention. It's also healthier than regular bacon, with far less saturated fats
- 42% of Canadians prefer their bacon crispy while 49% enjoy it limp. I assume 9% eat it raw?
- Winnipeg, home of the Bacon Centre of Excellence, is the Bacon Capital of Canada
- Canadians consume over 50M kilos of bacon annually. I ate my 1.25 kilos this year.
- Canadian Bacon, the movie, was a box office flop, only earning $178K on a production budget of $11M
- The average weight of a pig prior to processing is 111.2 kilos
- Canadian producers exported 18.6M kilos of cured bacon and 202K kilos of back bacon
- There are over 14M hogs in Canada
- 82% of Canadians add bacon on their burgers
- Kevin Bacon is not Canadian
#CanadaIsAwesome #MMMBacon

Report: China-based Moonshot AI, maker of Kimi models, raised a $500M Series C at a $4.3B valuation led by IDG Capital, with Alibaba and Tencent participating (Iris Deng/South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-trends/arti

China’s Moonshot AI raises US$500 million in latest funding round: report
The Kimi AI model developer is now valued at US$4.3 billion, with cash reserves worth US$1.4 billion.

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.

From the neoclassical station entrance
— with its massive emerald-green sliding steel doors, pyramid-like roof and domed ceiling
— to the wide concrete staircases leading down to the cool, musty underground platform and tracks, the station exudes a peculiar mix of mystery and urban decay.
“Be careful, there’s iron dust, mud and oil everywhere,” says Mamoru Iwai,
Keisei Ueno Station’s stationmaster and my guide inside Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station,

Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell
A sealed 1930s subway platform beneath Shimbashi Station still holds traces of what the capital looked like before the war.

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

For railway enthusiasts and ruin hunters alike,
these so-called "phantom stations" that have ceased service
offer a glimpse into Tokyo’s past.
Hidden from daily view and often closed to the public, they mark moments of transition in the capital’s transit history
— from the early years of railway and subway construction to the rapid postwar rebuild.
More than curiosities, they stand as weathered industrial records of how Tokyo has expanded, reconfigur…

Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell
A sealed 1930s subway platform beneath Shimbashi Station still holds traces of what the capital looked like before the war.

Thiel Capital opens an office in Miami, as Peter Thiel and others reportedly look to cut ties with California over a proposed ballot measure to tax billionaires (Biz Carson/Bloomberg)

Mailbag: Why waste offensive talent? https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mailbag-why-waste-offensive-talent

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.

In Saudi Arabia, Trump Jr. mocks ‘No Kings’ protests
Speaking alongside Omeed Malik of 1789 Capital,
Donald Trump Jr. criticized Democratic Party policies and protesters targeting his father.
Junior invests in 1789 and continues to work in the real estate arm of the family, the Trump Organization, which has expanded its Mideast offerings even as his father serves his second term in the White House.
In particular, Junior mocked the “No Kings” protests that drew milli…

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

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.

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.

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.

Amazon raises its forecast for capital expenditures to $125B in 2025, up from its earlier estimate of $118B, and says that number will likely increase in 2026 (Annie Palmer/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/30/amazon-amzn-q3-earnings-report-2025.html

Amazon stock soars 10% as earnings beat estimates, company posts strong cloud growth
AWS revenue accelerated 20.2% to $33 billion, which CEO Andy Jassy said was a pace it hadn't seen since 2022.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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

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.

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.

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…

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.

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…

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.

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)

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…

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.

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

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.

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.

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…

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 ...