Top News
The European Union has postponed levying sanctions against Apple and Meta while it tries to secure a trade deal with the U.S. The Wall Street Journal has more here.
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ChatGPT Is Referring to Users by Their Names Unprompted, and Some Find It “Creepy”
By Kyle Wiggers
Some ChatGPT users have noticed a strange phenomenon recently: Occasionally, the chatbot refers to them by name as it reasons through problems. That wasn’t the default behavior previously, and several users claim ChatGPT is mentioning their names despite never having been told what to call them.
Reviews are mixed. One user, software developer and AI enthusiast Simon Willison, called the feature “creepy and unnecessary.” Another developer, Nick Dobos, said he “hated it.” A cursory search of X turns up scores of users confused by — and wary of — ChatGPT’s first-name basis behavior.
“It’s like a teacher keeps calling my name, LOL,” wrote one user. “Yeah, I don’t like it.”
It’s not clear when, exactly, the change happened, or whether it’s related to ChatGPT’s upgraded “memory” feature that lets the chatbot draw on past chats to personalize its responses. Some users on X say ChatGPT began calling them by their names even though they’d disabled memory and related personalization settings.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Brellium, a four-year-old New York startup that offers an AI-powered platform to help healthcare providers automatically audit patient charts for clinical and billing compliance, raised a $13.7 million Series A round co-led by First Round Capital and Left Lane Capital, with Menlo Ventures, Digital Health Venture Partners, and Necessary Ventures also taking part. HIT Consultant has more here.
Meadow, a four-year-old New York startup that provides colleges and universities with modern financial tools to help students understand and manage the cost of higher education, raised a $14 million Series A round led by Matrix Partners, with Susa Ventures, Giant Ventures, Treble Capital, and GoGlobal Ventures also participating. The company has raised a total of $20+ million. More here.
Smaller Fundings
1Fort, a three-year-old New York startup that automates how businesses buy and manage cyber insurance, raised a $7.5 million seed round led by Bonfire Ventures, with Draper Associates, Village Global, Operator Partners, 8-Bit Capital, Character VC, and Company Ventures also participating. The company has raised a total of $10 million. VentureBeat has more here.
Arcana Labs, a one-year-old Los Angeles startup that provides an AI-powered content production platform and studio enabling creators to produce high-quality images, videos, and audio through an all-in-one suite of over 20 tools, raised a $5.5 million seed round led by SEMCAP AI. More here.
Cy4Data Labs, a one-year-old startup based in San Jose, CA, that develops encryption technology to keep data protected even while it is being used, raised a $10 million Series A round led by Pelion Venture Partners. SecurityWeek has more here.
Graze, a six-month-old startup based in Portland, OR, that enables users to create and monetize custom social media feeds on Bluesky, raised a $1 million pre-seed round co-led by Betaworks and Salesforce Ventures, with Factorial, Apertu Capital, and Skyseed also contributing. TechCrunch has more here.
Hammer Missions, a six-year-old London startup that provides AI-powered drone software enabling architects, engineers, and contractors to inspect and analyze building structures more efficiently, raised a $2.1 million seed round. ACF Investors participated in the deal. UKTN has more here.
Quilr, a two-year-old Austin startup that aims to prevent human-related security breaches by embedding intelligent agents into employee workflows, raised a $4 million seed round. Crew Capital was the deal lead, with additional participation from Sprout & Oak. More here.
Spur, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that provides e-commerce retailers and travel booking platforms with AI-powered quality testing that emulates real consumer shopping behavior, raised a $4.5 million seed round. Investors included First Round Capital, Pear VC, Neo, Conviction, Liquid2Ventures, and Predictive Venture Partners. More here.
Trellis Health, a two-year-old San Francisco startup whose AI-driven digital health platform aims to provide women with personalized, proactive care and support through pregnancy and beyond, raised a $1.8 million pre-seed round. Investors included Palette Ventures, Swizzle Ventures, NEXTBLUE, Suncoast Ventures, and Sundial Foundation. WWD has more here.
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New Funds
TechStars, an 18-year-old network of startup accelerators that invests in and mentors early-stage companies through programs and corporate partnerships, is upping its initial investment in new startups that enter its three-month program from $100,000 to $220,000. The new amount puts it on par with Y Combinator's investment structure. TechCrunch has more here.
Exits
According to a report by CNBC, OpenAI proposed acquiring Cursor last year before purchasing Windsurf this week for $3 billion. OpenAI is an investor in Cursor, but when it became clear that the coding assistant company was angling for a valuation in the $10 billion range, OpenAI moved on. TechCrunch has more here.
Going Public
Kraken, a fourteen-year-old San Francisco company that operates a crypto exchange, is reportedly in the process of laying off hundreds of employees as it prepares to go public. DL News has more here.
People
In the FTC v. Meta trial, former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg was asked about 2012 emails in which she complained that the $1 billion price tag for Instagram was too high. "I was wrong," she conceded on Wednesday. "Very wrong." The New York Times has more here.
Pershing Square founder Bill Ackman has been tweeting about the possibility of a partnership between Uber and Hertz. (Pershing Square has almost a 20% stake in the car rental company.) But an article about Ackman's plans in The Wall Street Journal also includes a very interesting detail: since Pershing Square was founded in 2012, it has generated a compound annual return of about 12.7%, less than the S&P 500's growth rate over the same period. More here.
Y Combinator founder Paul Graham is clearly not a big fan of Palantir's decision to build an "ImmigrationOS" for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
Essential Reads
Google is struggling to integrate AI into its search features. The Information has more here.
Insiders say that President Trump's tariffs could make it much more expensive to build semiconductor fabs and AI data centers in the U.S. The Financial Times has more here.
OpenAI’s new AI models are hallucinating more—not less—than earlier versions. TechCrunch has more here.
Did Silicon Valley make the wrong choice in backing Trump? Vox has more here.
Detours
Americans are obsessed with consuming protein, as Patrick Schwarzenegger’s character in The White Lotus suggests. "How about a chicken breast, people?" chides a personal trainer.
Speaking of The White Lotus, actor Jason Isaacs plans to wear Duke merch "whenever there’s a camera around" in response to the university's complaint that his character was denigrating their school by wearing its apparel.
Why high-net-worths are moving their money to Switzerland.
Actor Pedro Pascal is trying to inspire a new zaddy fashion trend: knee-high leather boots.
