Daphni secures $215M for its third fund
French VC firm Daphni is announcing the first closing of its new fund, Daphni Blue. The firm has raised €200 million (around $215 million at current exchange rates). It expects…
Trump eliminating the USAGM cut the budget of the Open Technology Fund, launched in 2012 to let 24M+ people living in repressive regimes access the internet (Pranshu Verma/Washington Post)
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Arcade raises $12M from Perplexity co-founder’s new fund to make AI agents less awful
Arcade, an AI agent infrastructure startup founded by former Okta exec Alex Salazar and former Redis engineer Sam Partee, has raised $12 million from Laude Ventures. Laude is the new…
DeepSeek and its hedge fund parent, High-Flyer Capital, forbid some R&D staff from traveling abroad freely, asking them to hand in their passports (The Information)
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DeepSeek sparked an AI arms race among Chinese asset managers, shaking up China’s $10T fund management industry as firms expand AI research and adopt DeepSeek (Reuters)
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Terabase, which is developing robots and automated systems using AI to rapidly build solar farms, raised a $130M Series C led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 (Financial Times)
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Equator closes $55M fund to bring more private capital to African climate tech
African venture capital firm Equator has raised $55 million for its first fund, which will back climate tech startups through one of the most difficult and often overlooked phases in…
In defense tech, Lithuania’s sovereign VC fund is one step ahead
Europe is waking up to the need to invest in defense, and so are European VCs. But with a painful history of Soviet occupations, Lithuania didn’t wait for the third…
African VC LoftyInc Capital launches third fund for seed and Series A, reaches $43M first close
One of Africa’s most active investors, known for early bets on unicorns like Flutterwave, Andela, and Wave, has secured fresh capital to invest in startups across the continent. This comes…
OpenAI launches $50M grant program to help fund academic research
OpenAI on Monday announced a consortium, NextGenAI, focused on supporting AI-assisted research at top universities. NextGenAI, whose 15 founding academic partners include Harvard, the University of Oxford, and MIT, will…