Tootfinder

Catching up reading @…'s Cancer Capital series:
VC isn’t VC anymore — understanding the rise of Cancer Capital
https://www.anildash.com/2026/09/02/cancer…

VC isn’t VC anymore — understanding the rise of Cancer Capital
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

VC funding in physical AI companies totaled $47.4B across 521 deals in H1, up 80% from H1 2025, and more than the $41.9B invested from 2022 to 2024 (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/physical-ai-funding-startups…

VCs Pour Billions Into Physical AI As The Next Wave Of AI Investing Takes Shape
In the first half of 2026, global venture funding in the physical AI space totaled $47.4 billion across 521 deals, per Crunchbase data. That’s up dramatically — almost 4x — compared to the second half of 2025 when startups in the sector raised $12 billion across 470 deals.

As companies stay private longer, VC firms, like Spark, Gigafund, and Greenoaks, are investing in companies later on and buying stakes without seeking influence (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/finance/venture-capita

That feeling when you’ve got twice the number of followers on the fediverse as the closed-source VC-funded European social network being peddled by the EU Commission has accounts.
Hey, @…, y’all are so incompetent you can’t even do evil right.
Muppets.
@…

Elena Rossini on GoToSocial ⁂ (@elena@aseachange.com)
[1 media attachment] Good morning Fedi friends. Is anybody curious about how the #WSocial experiment is going? You know, the private, for profit "European answer to X" endorsed by the European Commission, which is a fork of Bluesky and has quietly gone closed-source before its beta launch (à la #TruthSocial)? I've got numbers for you! Nearly two months in, W Social has almost the same number of accounts as #Eurosky... You know, the European fork of Bluesky that does NOT require government …

How it started - how it's going. Die ganze gehässige Schäbigkeit kleptopischer Regimes erkennt man zuverlässig in solchen Details. Vannevar Bushs Report ist Legende, er war die Grundlage u.a. für die Gründung des NSF, der zahlreiche spätere Nobelpreisträger förderte. Kratsios ist gar nichts, ein Finanzheini, der von Wissenschaft nichts verstanden hat, sondern für Thiels VC-Fonds arbeitete, bis er auf die Leitung des OSTP geschoben wurde. Das Gestammel als Dublette von Bush anzulegen, sag…

Filing: college social app Fizz accuses Maveron's Jerry Lu of giving confidential info to rival Sidechat after he met with Fizz as a potential investor in 2022 (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/10/fili

Filing: College app Fizz accuses VC of sharing confidential startup information with rival Sidechat | TechCrunch
Fizz has expanded its lawsuit against rival Sidechat, alleging that a Maveron VC shared its confidential information obtained during a fundraising meeting with the competing startup.

In my series on how venture capital has evolved into something unrecognizable and too-often toxic, I switch from the big-picture view to a practical question: How does this affect founders? Well surprise — it's not good! Here, I break down how the deck gets stacked against founders by the increasingly-centralized power of the Cancer Capital firms, how smaller VC firms factor into the market, and what founders can try to do to fight back.

Cancer Capital: It sucks for founders, too!
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Munich-based Microagi, which collects factory and household data to train humanoid robots, raised $55M led by Hummingbird in Germany's largest ever seed round (Éanna Kelly/Sifted)
https://sifted.eu/articles/munich-robotics-startup-…

Munich robotics startup Microagi raises $55m, Germany’s largest ever seed round
The deal was led by VC firm Hummingbird, with participation from investors Northzone, LocalGlobe, Village Global and Redalpine.

from my link log —
Reverse engineering Prodigy.
https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/2921/reverse-engineering-prodigy-part-1
saved 2021-01-16

How dual-valuation deals became pervasive in the current frenzied AI funding cycle, with prestige VC firms monetizing their brand names by getting better prices (M. Sriram/Newcomer)
https://www.newcomer.co/p/ai-frenzy-brings-dual-valuation-deals

AI Frenzy Brings Dual Valuation Deals into the Mainstream
Prestige firms are monetizing their brand names by getting better prices than others in the same funding round

Crypto VC firm Paradigm raised $1.2B, its third fund, to invest in areas outside of crypto, including AI and robotics; Paradigm had $11.9B in AUM in 2025 (Rebecca Torrence/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/202…

Heavy boiling below the calm surface, occasionally breaking through... Incredible production by Samuel van Dijk aka VC-118A, Mohlao, Multicast Dynamics...
VC-118A — Silver (2021)
https://soundcloud.com/mohlao/silver

Eu contando para minha amiga que ontem entrei na Livraria da Travessa e não comprei nenhum livro. O comentšrio dela foi: "POXA, vc resistiu? Tirou 20 no d20." rs

Does the downtown VC AI company "Corgi Cafe" actually allow dogs in? If so I think this is one of the few times we should get the Department of Health to visit.

Sources: Index Ventures dropped plans to invest in AI assistant Town after Instinct, which Index is backing, complained about a potential conflict of interest (Alex Konrad/Upstarts Media)
https://www.upstartsmedia.com/p/scoop-town-fundraise-vc-reshuffle

Scoop: Conflict With Instinct Knocks Index Out Of Town’s Raise At $1B
Exclusive details on Town’s new $90M fundraise at a $1B valuation, and the eleventh-hour cap table reshuffling behind it, per Upstarts sources.

Modern venture capital has transformed into an unchecked oligarchy, or "Cancer Capital", where mega-firms managing $50B live off fees and shift risk elsewhere (Anil Dash)
https://anildash.com/2026/09/02/cancer-capital/

VC isn’t VC anymore — understanding the rise of Cancer Capital
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Sources: David Sacks' Craft Ventures is targeting around $1B for a new fund, its first since Sacks stepped down as the White House AI and crypto czar (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/sacks-craft-targets-1-b…

Sacks’ Craft Targets $1 Billion in First Fund Since White House Stint
Craft Ventures, the VC firm helmed by former White House AI czar David Sacks, is raising its first fund since Sacks stepped away from the Trump Administration role earlier this year, according to a securities filing and two people with knowledge of the effort. The firm is targeting around $1 ...

The AI boom is fueling a resurgence in VC bets in "moonshot" sectors such as BCI; Dealroom says non-AI deeptech funding has topped $150B since the start of 2024 (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)

Kraken Technology, which designs and builds autonomous maritime platforms, such as uncrewed subsurface vessels, raised a $175M Series B at a $1B valuation (John Reynolds/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2026/07/09/maritime-defence-startup-kraken-technology-…

Maritime defence startup Kraken Technology hits unicorn status
British-founded maritime defence startup Kraken Technology today said it had achieved unicorn status. The startup, founded in 2020 by former speedboat racer Mal Crease, said it had raised $175m in a Series B funding round at a $1bn valuation, according to a press release. The funding round was led by Digital Transformation Capital Partners (DTCP), with support from the British Business Bank, NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), Rheinmetall, Inocea group as well as VC firms Hico Ventures, Thesiger Capita…

The AI frenzy has divided the VC market, as the gap between top and bottom performers has more than doubled for 2024 funds compared to funds from 2017 to 2021 (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-08-04/big…

Sources: PayPal has paused plans to sell its VC portfolio for $900M-$1B after bids came in lower than hoped, months after deciding to wind down PayPal Ventures (Axios)
https://www.axios.com/pro/all-deals/2026/09/03/paypal-pause-venture-portfolio-sale…

Scoop: PayPal pauses venture portfolio sale process
Bids came in lower than expected.

Global VC funding hit a record $510B in H1 2026, with OpenAI and Anthropic accounting for $217B, or 43% of the total; in Q2, VCs put $205B into 5K startups (Gené Teare/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/global-startup-exits-ipo-ma-soar-a…

Crunchbase Data: Global Startup Investment Hit Record $510B In H1 2026 As AI Boom Accelerates Funding And...
Investors poured more than $200 billion into startups globally in the just-ended quarter, making Q2 2026 the second-largest quarter on record, our data shows. And, with IPOs and acquisitions returning in force, the second quarter notched one of the strongest periods for venture-backed exits in years.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #EssentialClassics
Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Johannes Moser, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande & Andrew Manze:
🎵 Andante cantabile, arr. composer for str orch (with vc solo)
#PyotrTchaikovsky #JohannesMoser #OrchestredelaSuisseRomande #AndrewManze

Chinese VC firms are rushing to raise new funds after three years of record-low fundraising, amid renewed enthusiasm for China's tech, AI, and robotics sectors (Eleanor Olcott/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/e6e4d553-2474-43e4-bc25-0f1cb952f66d

Twelve Labs, which is building AI models to make video searchable and understandable, raised a $100M Series B co-led by NEA and Naver, and signs an AWS deal (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07…

AI chip startup Etched says it has raised $800M from investors including Jane Street and a venture firm linked to TSMC, and has signed sales contracts worth $1B (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20…

How AI-native law firms use "management services organisation" structures to access capital historically barred from US law firms, including PE and VC funds (Stephen Foley/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/6f8f7acd-8afe-42bb-a5c7-89fffe1af91f

Dealroom: defense giants such as Lockheed Martin have participated in a record $4.1B worth of VC rounds YTD, as drones and autonomous systems transform warfare (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/fcb2bd34-b13f-4f4f-950d-92367d43d1f3

A look at JD Vance's "AI doctrine", which combines pro-innovation VC principles, worker protections, and concerns about power concentration in dominant AI labs (Vivian Salama/The Atlantic)

What Does J. D. Vance Think of AI
The vice president is making a case that is part Silicon Valley, part MAGA.

Infinity, founded by Jeremy Nixon, the creator of hacker network community AGI House, to build an inference library that runs on all chips, raised a $15M seed (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/20/infe

Inference startup Infinity raises $15M from Touring Capital, OpenAI and Anthropic researchers | TechCrunch
AI infrastructure company Infinity announced Monday a $15 million raise at a $100 million valuation from investors including Touring Capital, Principal VC, and researchers from companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic.