Happy weekend, all. We just posted photos from StrictlyVC's event on Sand Hill Road this past Wednesday night; we're also starting to run some coverage from the evening, including a look at what Robinhood's billionaire co-founder Baiju Bhatt is building for his second act. It's pretty fascinating.

More Monday. :)

Top News

Before buying 49% of Scale AI for $14.3 billion, Meta quietly tried (and failed) to buy both AI search engine Perplexity and Safe Superintelligence, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever's startup that is focused on building a safe, superintelligent AI. CNBC is also reporting that VC and Safe Superintelligence CEO Daniel Gross and his partner, Nat Friedman, the former CEO of GitHub, have agreed to help Meta with its AI efforts and sell a portion of their firm, NFDG, to Meta. More here.  

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The New Math: Why Seed Investors Are Selling Their Winners Earlier

By Connie Loizos

Charles Hudson had just closed his fifth fund several months ago — $66 million for Precursor Ventures — when one of his limited partners asked him to run an exercise. What would have happened, the LP wondered, if Hudson had sold all his portfolio companies at Series A? What about Series B? Or Series C?

The question wasn’t academic. After two decades in venture capital, Hudson has been watching the math of seed investing change, maybe permanently. LPs who’ve previously been patient with seven-to-eight-year hold periods are suddenly asking questions about interim liquidity.

“Seven or eight years feels like a really long time” to LPs right now, says Hudson, even though “it’s always been seven or eight years.”

The reason: A steady stream of venture returns in recent years — returns that made long hold periods acceptable — has largely dried up. Coupled with the availability of other, more liquid investment options, many backers of very early-stage VC are demanding a new approach.

The analysis his LP requested revealed an uncomfortable truth, says Hudson. Selling everything at the Series A stage didn’t work; the compounding effect of staying in the best companies outweighed any benefits from cutting losses early. But Series B was different.

“You could have a north of 3x fund if you sold everything at the B,” Hudson discovered. “And I’m like, ‘Well, that’s pretty good.’”

More here. 

Massive Fundings

Thinking Machines Lab, a secretive startup founded by OpenAI co-founder and former CTO Mira Murati, raised a $2 billion seed (!) round at a $10 billion valuation. The deal was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Conviction Partners also joining in. The Financial Times has more here.

Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings

Cluely, a San Francisco startup founded this year that once promised to help people "cheat on everything," raised a $15 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz. TechCrunch has more here. 

Elemental Advanced Materials, a six-year-old Houston startup that converts waste plastics, gases, and other hydrocarbons into carbon nanomaterials and clean hydrogen for use by manufacturers in electronics, energy, and industrial sectors, raised a $20 million round. Taranis was the deal lead. More here.

Grifin, an eight-year-old Tampa startup that provides an investing app that automatically purchases a small amount of stock in the company where a user makes a purchase, linking everyday spending to fractional investing in real-time, raised an $11 million Series A round. Nava Ventures was the lead investor, with Alloy Labs, Draper Associates, Gaingels, Nevcaut Ventures, and TTV Capital also anteing up. The company has raised approximately $22 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Mercanis, a five-year-old Berlin startup that provides AI-powered agents that handle procurement tasks such as sourcing suppliers, collecting bids, and managing vendor relationships for large companies, raised a $20.4 million Series A round co-led by Partech and AVP, with additional participation from previous investors Signals.VC, Capmont Technology, and Speedinvest. EU-Startups has more here.

Ostrom, a four-year-old Berlin startup that provides a digital platform that enables households and businesses to manage electricity usage, monitor energy prices, and automatically purchase renewable power at the lowest available rates, raised a $23.1 million Series B round led by Eneco Ventures and including previous investors SE Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Adjacent, Übermorgen, and J12. Renewables Now has more here.

Senra Systems, a two-year-old startup based in Torrance, CA, that builds robotic manufacturing equipment designed to automate the production of large, complex metal parts for aerospace, energy, and industrial companies, raised a $25 million Series A round co-led by Dylan Field and CIV, with 8VC and Pax as well as previous investors General Catalyst, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, and Andreessen Horowitz also opting in. More here.

Tadaweb, a 14-year-old Luxembourg company whose platform that lets intelligence and security teams search, track, and analyze public online information across the web to support investigations and decision-making, raised a $20 million round co-led by Arsenal Growth and Forgepoint Capital International, with previous investor Wendel also participating. More here.

Tensec, a two-year-old Palo Alto startup that provides software that helps businesses manage cross-border payments by automatically calculating tariffs, taxes, and compliance requirements in real-time, raised a $12 million seed round led by Costanoa Ventures, with Quiet Capital, WillowTree Investments, Cambrian VC, Ignia Partners, Montage Ventures, Renegade Partners, and Endeavor Scale Up Ventures also piling on. Payments Dive has more here.

Smaller Fundings

Brandback, a two-year-old Berlin startup whose platform helps fashion retailers and brands launch and manage resale programs by handling returns, refurbishing, and resale logistics, raised a $5.7 million seed round led by Earlybird, with previous investor 9900 Capital also contributing. The company has raised a total of $7.4 million. Startup Rise has more here.

DESKi, a nine-year-old startup based in Bordeaux, France, that develops AI tools that automatically analyze echocardiograms to measure heart function, identify abnormalities, and assist cardiologists in diagnosing cardiovascular disease, raised a $6 million seed round led by Racine2, with BNP Paribas Développement, Épopée Gestion, Good Only Ventures, Better Angle, and NACO also investing. More here.

GeneCentric Therapeutics, a 14-year-old company based in Durham, NC, that creates diagnostic tests that analyze RNA from tissue or blood samples to help drug companies identify which cancer patients are most likely to respond to specific treatments, raised an $8 million Series C round led by Hatteras Venture Partners, with previous investors Labcorp, Alexandria Venture Investments, and IAG Capital Partners also stepping up. More here.

Gradient Network, a one-year-old Singapore startup that develops infrastructure that helps developers run AI models directly on decentralized networks like Solana without relying on centralized cloud providers, raised a $10 million seed round co-led by Pantera Capital and Multicoin Capital, with HongShan also engaging. Decrypt has more here.

Infinity Bio, a two-year-old Baltimore startup that offers lab tests that map how thousands of antibodies interact with the human immune system, raised an $8 million Series A round. Illumina Ventures was the deal lead, with PTX Capital, Blackbird BioVentures, and Propel Baltimore Fund also taking part. More here.

Nook, an Austin startup founded this year that is building a crypto savings app that aims to help everyday users earn interest on their digital assets by simplifying access to decentralized lending platforms, raised a $2.5 million round from Coinbase Ventures, defy.vc, and UDHC. Fortune has more here.

Polar, a three-year-old Stockholm startup that provides payment infrastructure that helps AI-first companies collect money from customers and route funds across global banking and crypto networks, raised a $10 millionseed round led by Accel. Fintech Finance has more here.

Project Eleven, a San Francisco startup founded this year that builds cryptography tools that help banks, governments, and enterprises protect digital assets from future quantum computer attacks, raised a $6 million seed round co-led by Variant and Quantonation, with Castle Island Ventures, Nebular, and Formation also investing. The Quantum Insider has more here.

TAC, a one-year-old startup based in Riga, Latvia, that builds tools that allow Telegram users to access decentralized finance features like trading, lending, and earning interest directly within the messaging app, raised a $5 million round. Hack VC was the deal lead. The company has raised a total of $11.5 million. Cointelegraph has more here.

YieldClub, a startup founded this year based in Washington, DC, that is building a non-custodial mobile app that lets users earn 12% interest on stablecoin savings by tapping into decentralized finance, raised a $2.5 million pre-seed round from Pharsalus, Flex Capital, The House Fund, and Superlayer. More here. 

Exits

Snap has acquired Saturn, a seven-year-old New York startup that makes a social calendar app popular with high school and college students. Terms were not disclosed. Saturn raised approximately $44 million in venture capital from investors like General Catalyst, Insight Partners, and Coatue. TechCrunch has more here.

Going Public

Navan, an 11-year-old Palo Alto company that sells corporate travel and expense
management software, has confidentially filed to go public. The company's investors include Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed. Reuters has more here. 

People

Masayoshi Son is courting TSMC, Samsung, and the Trump administration to back a trillion-dollar AI and robotics mega-complex in Arizona called Project Crystal Land. Bloomberg has the scoop here.

Character.AI, a conversational AI platform that lets users create and chat with customizable virtual characters (Google hired away its founders last August), has named former Meta exec Karandeep Anand as CEO amid child safety and antitrust concerns. TechCrunch has more here. 

Keith O’Brien, the self-described Deel spy at the center of Rippling’s lawsuit, has been granted a restraining order after claiming he and his family were followed and harassed by unknown men he suspects are tied to his role as a witness. TechCrunch has more here. 

In an extensive interview with the French pub Le Point, Telegram founder Pavel Durov claims the charges he faces in France are politically motivated and "absurd"; critiques other tech leaders like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman; and, as Telegram's sole shareholder, vows never to sell the company. More here.

Essential Reads

Cloudflare’s CEO says AI bots are starving publishers of traffic, with Google now sending just one visitor to a publisher for every 18 pages it crawls compared to one in two a decade ago, while OpenAI sends one per 1,500 and Anthropic just one per 60,000. Engadget has more here. 

Anthropic says its latest safety tests show most leading AI models will resort to blackmail when they feel threatened. TechCrunch has more here. 

Detours

Noted venture capitalist Brad Feld's new game mixes dinosaurs with Asteroids. (Did we mention he built this game himself?)

How second weddings went from low key to lavish.

GenZ loves ... BlackBerry?

Retail Therapy

A new luxury baby stroller from BMW and Nuna.