The AI Agent Era is here — Elon and Sam at it again, Mira Murati and Thinking Machines have an Inkling, the Chinese steal our AI IP, China’s DeepSeek & Moonshot IPOs on deck...
From PC power to freedom from the PC — Finally
Silicon Valley was built on the 1970s “Power to the People,” anti-establishment ethos. These aspirations delivered the Mac, the commercialization of the Internet, and the iPhone — tools that put real computing power and information directly into the hands of The People.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak circa 1976 in Jobs’ parents’ garage in Los Altos, California. They were building the Apple I — their first computer, which Wozniak designed and hand-assembled.
The early mantra was clear: Give people control over their computer privacy and daily affairs while making the devices smaller, cheaper (the first Mac in January 1984 cost over $8,000 in today’s dollars), vastly more powerful (today’s Macs are 100,000+ times stronger), intuitive, and less intrusive.
The agentic shift is coming faster than most expect. In three years, your iPhone home screen will largely collapse into a handful of personalized AI agents that work for you 24/7.
With AirPods in, you’ll move through the world in natural conversation with your squad of agents all day — filtering and drafting email and texts in your voice, managing schedules and itineraries, conducting research and meeting prep, and surfacing insights exactly when you need them.
Our weekly command might sound like this —
“Prioritize family time, Cryptonite product development objectives, getting The Rap out Tuesday before 11am, while sticking to our intermittent eating schedule, 8,000 walking steps a day, and two Pilates sessions, and three 40-minute swims this week.” Then — Voilà! We have a roadmap for a great week.
At day’s end, you debrief with your agents—what got done, what didn’t—and reset the next day’s priorities. At week’s end, your agents deliver updated priority lists, a personal financial snapshot, weekend plans with suggestions, and any travel and scheduling items needing confirmation.
This shift will let you put your devices down more often and reclaim personal time and power. ✌🏼😎 Instead of living on screens, your army of AI agents will handle the busywork. Privacy and security will be default and verifiable. All powered by deep, evolving memory of your preferences, history, and goals—the more you interact, the better they know you
Harmful screen use trends
Several major studies document the harms of excessive screen time. Key findings include increased depression and anxiety in teens, disrupted sleep and poorer cognitive development in children, and overall mental health declines tied to heavy social media use. See the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2026 Advisory on the Harms of Screen Use.
The Cryptonite Take
The AI agent market has exploded to an estimated $7.84 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $52.62 billion by 2030. Top-tier VCs —Draper Associates, Sequoia, a16z, Founders Fund, GV, General Catalyst— are placing massive bets — heavily skewed toward enterprise and agentic platforms over pure consumer plays.
If Silicon Valley gets this right, we may finally atone for Web2’s sins against humankind — doom-scrolling, addiction-by-design algorithms, social-graph surveillance, data exploitation, and privacy invasions — that undermined our mental health and well-being. For this we pray. 😬🙏🏼
Do yourself — and your kids a favor — Start studying and using agents today. They’ll organize your life, save serious time, slash unhealthy screen time, and make everyone far more valuable in the emerging agentic economy.
Personal Agents To Watch
For individuals, founders, and daily life
🤖 Duckbill (Boston, MA) | Founded 2022. Why it’s winning: Hybrid AI + human experts for real-world personal life admin (errands, negotiations, paperwork, logistics) that pure software struggles with. Top VCs: Forerunner Ventures, General Catalyst, Greycroft, Inspired Capital, G9 Ventures, Offline Ventures, Red Antler. Total raised:~$33M
🤖 Lindy (San Francisco, CA) | Founded 2023. Why it’s winning: No-code “AI employees” that autonomously handle email triage, calendar/scheduling, meeting prep/summaries, and cross-app workflows for busy professionals. Top VCs: Battery Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Coatue, SV Angel. Total raised: ~$49.9M | Valuation: ~$500M.
🤖 Motion (San Francisco, CA) | Founded 2021 (Y Combinator alum). Why it’s winning: AI time-management and scheduling agent that joins meetings, extracts tasks, infers deadlines, and auto-reorganizes calendars. Top VCs: Scale Venture Partners (Series C lead), Y Combinator, HOF Capital, SignalFire, Apollo Projects. Total raised:~$38M
🤖 Pie (San Francisco, CA) | Founded 2024. Why it’s winning: AI receptionist “Front Desk” for Main Street small businesses; handles phone calls, scheduling, and customer follow-ups autonomously for SMBs in dentistry, legal, and professional services. Top VCs: Lightspeed Venture Partners (Series A lead). Total raised: ~$19.5M (Series A, July 2026)
🤖 Simular (Sai) (San Francisco, CA) | Founded 2023. Why it’s winning: Autonomous computer-use agents that control desktop and browser apps for real multi-step tasks (research, data entry, emailing) with minimal prompting. Top VCs: Felicis Ventures (Series A lead), NVentures (NVIDIA), Basis Set Ventures, Flying Fish Partners, South Park Commons. Total raised: ~$21.5M | Valuation: ~$200M.
🤖 Zo Computer (Brooklyn, NY) | Founded 2024, Why it’s winning: Personal AI cloud computer that users own, with files, memory, and autonomous agents acting across apps and interfaces (iMessage, email, Telegram). Appeals to power users wanting private, unified infrastructure. Top VCs: Lightspeed Venture Partners (lead), Craft Ventures, plus angels including Guillermo Rauch, Andrew Kortina, Iqram Magdon-Ismail, and Shreyas Doshi. Total raised: ~$7.8M | Valuation: ~$40M.
The new Cryptonite and your AI agents
When we launch our high-signal Cryptonite Pro + Friend network this fall, you’ll see we take the agentic economy seriously. Our AI-centric, $CPRO-rewarding platform will include:
Agent CroK — Your always-on AI strategy partner. It combines Cryptonite’s rich proprietary community data with your preferred frontier models to deliver competitive intelligence, source deals, run due diligence, brainstorm ideas, and match you with investors, talent, partners, and friends.
Personal AI Agent Hub — Your central command center. Seamlessly link and orchestrate external LLMs and agents with native Cryptonite agents. Run sophisticated multi-agent workflows with intelligent handoffs (via MCP) for research, deal sourcing, outreach, due diligence, and strategic execution across the Cryptonite community.
We are proud and grateful to be living the entrepreneurial dream we cover every day in The Rap.
Agents and work
Circle founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire’s recent treatise, The Agentic Economy, is worth a read. It maps how AI agents are transforming how enterprises — and the global economy — reason, collaborate, plan, and transact at a scale unimaginable just two years ago.
Allaire’s core thesis is that the agentic economy (AI supplying machine cognition and labor) and the onchain economy (programmable money, contracts, coordination, and ownership) are converging into one operating system. Firms—big and small—will “decompose” into agentic skills that reassemble and transact on open, verifiable blockchain rails, driving explosive velocity, efficiency, and new economic actors.
“The agentic economy represents the architectural convergence of AI, decentralized networks, and programmable money. Small teams and individuals gain enormous power. Agents absorb routine cognition, enabling faster iteration and lower overhead. If we get the monetary, identity, and reputation layers right, and we unlock broad-based participation instead of concentrated power.”
— Jeremy Allaire, Circle Founder & CEO
Circle (CRCL) — Founded in 2013 by Jeremy Allaire (CEO & Chairman) and Sean Neville in Boston/New York. Circle is pioneering regulated stablecoins and onchain financial infrastructure. Issuer of USDC (world’s largest regulated digital dollar, ~$80B+ in circulation), the stablecoin powers payments, trading, and the emerging agentic economy.
Major investors: General Catalyst, IDG Capital, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, BlackRock, and Coinbase. | Total pre-IPO funding exceeded $2B.
How big and small enterprises drive the Agentic Economy
In this new era, routine cognitive work shifts to agents — collapsing costs and coordination barriers while amplifying human creativity and leverage.
Here’s how the transformation plays out in practice:
The Rise of the One-Person (or Tiny-Team) Enterprise: Sophisticated agents handle end-to-end work that once required entire departments: a sales agent qualifies leads and negotiates deals, a marketing agent creates and optimizes campaigns in real time, a product agent iterates code and features based on user data, while compliance, support, analysis, and research agents run in parallel.
A skilled founder or 3–5 person team becomes hyper-productive, collapsing coordination overhead and competing with much larger organizations on speed and cost.
Blurring of Internal vs. External Boundaries: Companies move from fixed payrolls to fluid orchestration. Internal teams “hire” specialized agents on-demand from open, reputation-weighted marketplaces — for legal reviews, design mockups, domain-specific research, or financial modeling.
Organizational boundaries dissolve into dynamic agent swarms that collaborate seamlessly across the firm and its ecosystem, reassembling skills as needed for each project.
New Layers of Governance, Spend Controls, and Reputation Systems: As agents execute real economic actions, firms need robust oversight —multi-agent approval chains, automated on-chain audit trails, dynamic spend caps tied to reputation scores, and verifiable identity layers.
“We see a taste component to the non-visual aspects of software development. This taste and logic design will become the most valuable engineering skills, far more than traditional technical coding ability. The value is in the efficient mapping of the taste for what users want most with the help of AI coding tools.”
The Cryptonite Take
These shifts embody Allaire’s vision of firm decomposition and onchain reassembly — empowering both lean startups and established enterprises to operate at unprecedented scale and efficiency. This creates demand for new AI infrastructure while raising the bar for accountability, risk management, and trust in machine-driven work.
Enterprise Agents To Watch
For teams, workflows, and organizational scale
🤖 8090 Labs (San Francisco, CA) | Founded 2024. Why it’s winning: AI coding agent platform for corporate programming teams; raised one of the largest Series A rounds in AI history ($135M) with Chamath Palihapitiya stepping in as CEO. Top VCs: Salesforce Ventures (lead), WndrCo (Jeffrey Katzenberg), Craft Ventures (David Sacks), Launch (Jason Calacanis), The Production Board (David Friedberg), angels including Nikesh Arora (Palo Alto Networks CEO), Adam D’Angelo (Quora CEO). Total raised: ~$135M (Series A, June 2026)
🤖 Aily Labs (New York, NY) | Founded 2020. Why it’s winning: AI-native Decision Intelligence platform that acts as an AI decision advisor for every employee in the enterprise; profitable from year 1, grew customer base 500% year-over-year, and now serves 38,000+ users at global enterprises including Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson, and Teva. Bridges analytics to execution at scale with autonomous AI agents. Top VCs: FPV Ventures (Series B lead, Nov 2025), Insight Partners (Series A, 2023), J.P. Morgan, and other strategic investors. Total raised: ~$101M
🤖 AIsa (San Francisco, CA) | Founded 2025. Why it’s winning: Payments API for AI agents to autonomously discover, access, and pay for digital resources (data, APIs); critical infrastructure layer for the agent economy. Top VCs: Tribe Capital, Alibaba (Seed co-leads), Draper Associates, Sumitomo Corporation, Saison Capital. Total raised: ~$6.5M (Seed, July 2026)
🤖 Convey (New York, NY) | Founded 2025. Why it’s winning: Enterprise “AI teammates” that autonomously execute multi-step business workflows across apps; crossed $50M ARR in just seven months with enterprise customers (NBCUniversal, Samsara, Unity, Faire, ChargePoint). Top VCs: Andreessen Horowitz (Series A lead), Khosla Ventures, Pear VC. Total raised: ~$38M (Series A, June 2026)
🤖 Cognition (Devin) (San Francisco, CA) | Founded 2023. Why it’s winning: Autonomous AI coding and software engineering agent that plans, codes, debugs, and navigates repositories; leading the charge in developer productivity. Top VCs: Founders Fund and other top-tier investors. Total raised: Hundreds of millions | Valuation: $2B–$10B+ range.
🤖 crewAI (São Paulo, Brazil | Founded 2023. Why it’s winning: Framework and platform for building and orchestrating role-based multi-agent teams for complex workflows; dominant in developer and team adoption for production systems. Top VCs: Insight Partners, Boldstart Ventures, Craft Ventures, Blitzscaling Ventures. Total raised: ~$38–44M | Valuation: ~$177M.
🤖 Decagon (San Francisco, CA) | Founded 2024. Why it’s winning: AI “concierge” for customer experience; autonomous agents achieving 80%+ deflection rates for enterprise brands (Hertz, Avis, Block, Affirm, Chime, Duolingo, Oura, Notion); tripled valuation to $4.5B in six months. Top VCs: Coatue Management, Index Ventures (Series D co-leads), Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Bain Capital Ventures, Forerunner, Ribbit Capital, A*, Avra, T.Capital (Deutsche Telekom). Total raised: ~$481M (~$250M Series D, January 2026) | Valuation: ~$4.5B.
🤖 Harvey (San Francisco, CA) | Founded 2022. Why it’s winning: Vertical AI agents and automation platform for legal professionals (research, contracts, documents); standout success redefining professional services with deep domain expertise. Top VCs: Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins and other top-tier firms. | Valuation: ~$5B+.
🤖 Hebbia (New York, NY) | Founded 2023. Why it’s winning: AI analyst agents for complex document research and analysis; automates deep research workflows for legal, finance, and consulting teams. Top VCs: Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, GV. Total raised: ~$161M
🤖 Hippocratic AI (Palo Alto, CA) | Founded 2023. Why it’s winning: Safety-first generative AI agents for healthcare (non-diagnostic, patient-facing clinical agents); 115M+ clinical patient interactions with zero safety issues across 50+ healthcare organizations in 6 countries. Top VCs: Avenir Growth (Series C lead), CapitalG (Google), General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, Premji Invest, UHS, Cincinnati Children’s, WellSpan Health, John Doerr, Rick Klausner. Total raised: ~$404M | Valuation: ~$3.5B.
🤖 Infinitus (Houston, TX) | Founded 2021. Why it’s winning: AI platform specifically built to automate manual healthcare phone calls; HIPAA-compliant agents for patient scheduling, reminders, and follow-ups. Top VCs: Andreessen Horowitz, Memorial Hermann, GV, Insight Partners. Total raised: ~$103M+ (~$51.5M Series C, October 2024)
🤖 Kore.ai (Orlando, FL) | Founded 2013. Why it’s winning: Enterprise agentic AI platform for workflow automation, conversational AI, and decision-making across customer service, HR, IT, and finance. Top VCs: AllianceBernstein (strategic growth, 2026), FTV Capital, NVIDIA, Vistara Growth, Sweetwater Private Equity, Beedie Capital. Total raised: ~$296M
🤖 Runta (San Mateo, CA) | Founded 2025. Why it’s winning: Infrastructure platform to “parent” and orchestrate networks of autonomous AI agents — delivering coordination, safety, governance, and reliability for enterprise multi-agent systems. Recently raised a $20M seed led by Andreessen Horowitz at a $100M+ valuation. Top VCs: Andreessen Horowitz. Total raised: $20M (Seed, July 2026)
🤖 Sail Research (San Francisco, CA) | Founded 2025. Why it’s winning: Inference infrastructure purpose-built for long-horizon AI agents (agents that run for hours/days); delivers up to 10x lower cost per token with stateful sandbox environments. Top VCs: Kleiner Perkins (Series A lead), Sequoia Capital (Seed lead), Redpoint Ventures, Theory Ventures, Vine Ventures, CRV; angels include John Hennessy (Alphabet chairman), Lip-Bu Tan (Intel CEO), Tri Dao (Together AI). Total raised: ~$80M (Seed + Series A, June 2026) | Valuation: ~$450M.
🤖 Sema4.ai (Atlanta, GA) | Founded 2024. Why it’s winning: Enterprise platform for building, deploying, and managing safe and accurate AI agents for complex knowledge work with strong governance and integrations (e.g., Snowflake). Top VCs: Benchmark, Mayfield, Snowflake Ventures, Rocketship VC. Total raised: ~$79M | Valuation: ~$300M–$500M+.
🤖 Sierra (San Francisco, CA) | Founded 2023. Why it’s winning: Premium AI agents for customer service and support with strong governance and outcome-focused automation; one of the highest-profile pure-play agent companies. Top VCs: GV, Tiger Global, Sequoia, Benchmark. Total raised: Hundreds of millions
🤖 Trase (McLean, VA) | Founded 2025. Why it’s winning: Agentic AI operating system for healthcare and defense/high-stakes industries; built “Trase Origin” for secure, governed AI agent deployment across cloud, on-prem, and edge environments. Top VCs: ARCH Venture Partners (Seed lead), Red Cell Partners. Total raised:~$117.5M (~$107M Seed, June 2026)
🤖 Writer (San Francisco, CA) | Founded 2020. Why it’s winning: Enterprise-grade AI platform for building, deploying, and governing reliable agentic workflows and generative AI across business functions (marketing, finance, legal, clinical, etc.). Strong emphasis on brand safety, compliance, and production reliability. Top VCs: Insight Partners, Felicis Ventures, and others. Total raised: Over $300M
Mira Murati was interim CEO of OpenAI for a few days in late 2023, when the old board temporarily put Sam Altman in the penalty box. 🤯 Her pivot to Thinking Machines looks timely and smart.
Thinking Machines Lab gives us an Inkling
Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati left OpenAI in late 2024 to launch Thinking Machines Lab. The debut? A historic $2B seed at a peak-AI-bubble $12B valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz with Nvidia, AMD, Accel, Cisco, and others. Then they went dark.
Last week, they resurfaced with Inkling — a shiny new open-weights multimodal model (975B params) that stands out by not trying to out-Goliath the frontier labs. The edge—Developers and enterprises can download, modify, and self-host Inkling. Target Market: emerging and large orgs with in-house AI/ML teams who want controllable, customizable models instead of opaque APIs.
“The enterprises we talk to are unhappy with frontier AI labs—they don’t understand their businesses or show interest in solving deep, mission-critical problems.”
—Alex Karp, Cofounder & CEO, Palantir
Thinking Machines competition snapshot
Most leading AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, and to a large extent the top Chinese open-weight labs) compete primarily on raw capability — who posts the highest scores on public benchmarks (coding, reasoning, math, multimodal, etc.). The winner of that race is the model that looks strongest “out of the box.” Thinking Machines is deliberately not playing that game but betting on the “model ownership” layer for enterprises.
Chinese open-weight leaders (Kimi/Moonshot, GLM/Zhipu, DeepSeek) currently set the standard for high performance at low cost in the open-weights category. Inkling positions itself as a direct U.S. sovereign alternative — aiming to match competitive capability while offering enterprises a base model they can fully own, audit, and adapt without geopolitical or supply-chain dependencies.
Meta (Llama family): The clear kingpin of the open ecosystem, with the broadest adoption, tooling support, and developer mindshare. Inkling differentiates by prioritizing superior enterprise-grade customization infrastructure (via Tinker) and a stronger emphasis on controllable reasoning, multimodality, and production-ready fine-tuning workflows for enterprises rather than pure scale or community volume.
The Cryptonite Take
Inkling slots perfectly into the trend Karp describes: better-AI-educated enterprises are building their own stack rather than renting intelligence from Big Tech. In a world of black-box APIs, enterprise ownership and control are becoming table stakes.
DeepSeek and Moonshot prep for IPOs
Speaking of open-weight model companies…
Alleged Chinese AI “free-rider” DeepSeek (see IP theft story below) is accelerating toward a potential IPO later this year while lining up a fresh ~$1.5 billion fundraise at a $71 billion valuation.
The company has scaled rapidly by delivering high-performance, lower-cost open-source models that are winning global traction — including versions optimized to run efficiently on Huawei chips, sidestepping U.S. export-controlled hardware. With annualized revenue now approaching $500 million, DeepSeek’s momentum is fueling both its fundraising and public-market ambitions.
Liang Wenfeng, founder and CEO of DeepSeek, recently appeared with President Xi in Beijing. DeepSeek closed at $7.4 billion, valuing it at $59 billion; Wenfeng invested roughly $3 billion of his own money. The deal imposes a five-year lockup and ensures Wenfeng retains control.
At a Shanghai conference,Xi Jinping called for more open-source AI and global AI governance contrasting China’s increasingly open model strategy with the closed systems favored by OpenAI and Anthropic.
Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based startup behind the Kimi series, is also in advanced talks for a major pre-IPO round targeting a valuation of up to $50 billion. It is currently wrapping a round at roughly $31.5 billion and plans to begin final pre-IPO discussions in August, with a possible Hong Kong listing later in 2026. The catalyst is Kimi K3, which has drawn strong benchmark performance, low cost, and rapid adoption.
Anthropic and OpenAI still hold clear advantages in mindshare, scale, talent density, and positioning around reliability and sovereignty — but they are now in a race to cut costs and deepen proprietary moats.
The Cryptonite Take
DeepSeek and Moonshot are not theoretical threats. They are generating real revenue, attracting serious capital, and converting performance-per-dollar into market share.
Both companies exemplify the Chinese approach — fast followers with superior cost structures and open-weight models optimized for efficiency and local customization. Their rise intensifies the competitive pressure on U.S. leaders.
The Chinese ripping off US AI — Of course they are
Currently, the U.S. still dominates AI infrastructure — compute, data centers, chips, and energy — but IP theft by Chinese AI companies is closing the gap.
Anthropic has accused Alibaba of “brazen” AI theft through distillation — using outputs from advanced models like Claude to train cheaper knockoffs without permission. OpenAI has also called out DeepSeek for “free-riding” on its technology. Google has flagged a surge in malicious Chinese activity targeting its models. Meta and Microsoft have also reported large-scale Chinese scraping and reverse-engineering of their frontier models.
The result of the CCP-sponsored espionage and IP theft: Six of the top 10 most-used AI models worldwide are now Chinese (including Z.AI, MiniMax, and DeepSeek), delivering near-frontier performance at a fraction of the cost. Anthropic insiders say that without this theft, China would be 18+ months behind instead of the current 6-9 months. 😳
Anthropic has briefed the Trump White House and Congress multiple times, including this month. Former White House CIO Theresa Payton called it “the ultimate form of industrial-scale homework theft.” The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party has also highlighted distillation and smuggling techniques as core regime strategies.
Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Mornings with Maria: “This administration supports open-source models, but what we do not support is IP theft. If we see, especially, that overseas models are stealing from our great companies, we can sanction them because of this theft.”
Secretary Bessent cited “watermarks of our U.S. large language models on many of the Chinese models,” calling it unacceptable and pledging investigation “in the coming days or weeks.”
Beyond commercial damage, experts warn of heightened risks around hacking, political and cultural disinformation and influence operations, and autonomous weapons development.
The Cryptonite Take
China’s blatant IP thievery must stop. Sanctions are one tool. Two other moves are essential — sharply restrict Chinese access to U.S. cloud compute and frontier model APIs, and clear the path for private capital to expand American energy, chips, and talent rapidly.
That means fast-tracking permits for data centers and power generation, ending endless environmental reviews that stall projects for years, unlocking more domestic energy —including nuclear — and removing regulatory friction so capital and talent can move at the speed the competition demands.
#ChinaAITheft #CCP #NationalSecurityRisk
Why Apple is suing OpenAI
Apple has filed an aggressive trade-secrets lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of benefiting from the actions of former Apple engineer Chang Liu.
After nearly eight years at Apple working on iPhones and other sensitive hardware programs, Liu joined OpenAI’s hardware team in early 2026. Apple alleges he exploited a “rare” authentication bug to access and download a trove of highly confidential files—including unreleased product details, engineering presentations, circuit board designs, manufacturing specs, and technical data—while continuing to communicate with at least one remaining Apple employee.
The suit also targets OpenAI’s hardware subsidiary io Products and former Apple VP Tang Tan (now OpenAI’s Chief Hardware Officer), painting a picture of systematic efforts to shortcut development by extracting Apple’s IP. Apple has sent legal preservation letters to roughly 40 former employees now at OpenAI, signaling potential further actions. The company claims this theft gives OpenAI an unfair edge in the race to build advanced AI hardware.
Jony Ive shows OpenAI hardware Love
OpenAI’s ambitious AI consumer hardware plans, shaped in close collaboration with Jony Ive and his LoveFrom team, are set to begin unveiling in the second half of 2026. The first product is expected to be a ChatGPT-powered, screenless smart speaker designed as a movable, humanlike AI companion that can follow users around the home, express itself through subtle motorized movements, and deliver proactive assistance, media playback, smart-home control, and deep environmental awareness.
This effort extends to a broader family of AI devices, supported by custom silicon chips and massive compute infrastructure, to create unobtrusive “third core devices” that establish advanced AI as a physical, everyday presence alongside phones and computers.
The Cryptonite Take
This high-stakes legal battle underscores the intensifying war for talent and proprietary technology between Big Tech incumbents and leading AI developers. If the allegations hold, it adds yet another straw on the camel’s back for Sam Altman as OpenAI navigates its rocky path toward a potential IPO. We stand by our view that Sam should be replaced.
Elon vs. Altman feud 2.0 — While Apple plays IP enforcer
Elon couldn’t help himself. After Apple accused OpenAI of swiping iPhone tech, using stolen credentials, and soliciting confidential hardware info, he unloaded on X.
“Scam Altman strikes again… He takes scamming to a whole new level.”
Altman clapped back instantly, hyping his new model — “there are a lot of benchmarks that suggest 5.6 sol is the best model in the world right now, but the most reliable way to tell is that elon is obsessed with me again.”
Slammin’ Sam wasn’t done. — “homeboy you’re the one selling public market investors on short-term space datacenters.”
He was taking aim at SpaceX’s orbital data-center ambitions — a key narrative behind its sky-high valuation.
Elon’s quick retorted —“We start flying them next year.”
These two Tech Bros never disappoint.
Note to Cryptonite readers
That space data center narrative is a big reason SPCX is trading near $120 — down ~47% from its post-IPO high of ~$226 and below the $135 IPO price. We tried to tell you. 🤷🏻♂️
#MuskVsAltman #TechBroDrama #OpenAI #SpaceX #SPCXdown↓
Stay relevant and on top
Below is the breaking news and inside wisdom you need to stay relevant and on top of emerging private tech companies, VC investors, Big Tech, and the innovation trends shaping the global Silicon Valley. All links lead to AI-generated research from a decisively venture-capital perspective.
Are we missing any action? Hit us up now on X @CryptoniteRap or TheEditor@CryptoniteVentures.com
Buzz Worthy
Magnificent 21 Public Companies
🗣️ U.S. government wallets transferred over $288 million in seized Bitcoin and Ethereum to Coinbase Prime this week (from cases like Ryan Farace and BTC-e). The U.S. remains the #1 largest crypto holder globally (~328,000 BTC plus substantial ETH), with most assets earmarked for long-term holding in the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile.
🗣️ Meta is negotiating a major deal to lease AI computing capacity to Anthropic worth up to $10 billion over two years. The arrangement would let Meta monetize its massive data center investments while helping Anthropic secure scarce GPU capacity amid surging demand.
🗣️ San Francisco’s attorney general has ordered Apple and Google to pull 13 nudification apps from their stores, citing facilitation of nonconsensual deepfake pornography. The apps reportedly generated millions in fees, spotlighting platform responsibility in the AI content moderation debate.
🗣️ Twelve state attorneys general are suing to block Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing the deal would reduce competition in theatrical film distribution and basic cable licensing.
🗣️ SpaceX is reportedly in advanced discussions to provide the U.S. Defense Department with billions of dollars’ worth of AI computing power. The deal would leverage Starlink and xAI infrastructure, further blurring lines between commercial space, AI, and national security.
🗣️ xAI has installed 59 unpermitted natural gas turbines for its Colossus 2 data center project near Memphis — more than double the 27 previously acknowledged — with potential pollution far above federal permitting thresholds.
🗣️ Cursor (Anysphere) is rapidly expanding from a popular VS Code fork into a full agentic AI engineering platform — adding background agents, multi-agent orchestration, and automated workflows. The shift accelerated with SpaceX’s $60B all-stock acquisition (announced June 2026, expected close Q3). The deal delivers elite compute (Colossus-scale) and deep integration into SpaceX’s AI stack, with Elon Musk’s strategic input steering it toward high-stakes applications.
🗣️ Doomer watch: Nearly 200 economists, AI researchers, and tech leaders — including 15 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of OpenAI and Anthropic — signed a statement warning that AI could bring large-scale job displacement and economic disruption faster than policymakers can handle.
Crypto Markets
🗣️ Activity on the new Robinhood Chain is led by meme coins rather than tokenized stocks, despite the network’s focus on equities like Apple and Nvidia.
🗣️ CoinFund’s David Pakman noted crypto still hasn’t solved tokenomics — many tokens trade on narrative rather than real network value. He suggested paying early contributors in stablecoins.
🗣️ BlackRock CFO Martin Small outlined plans for seamless crypto-TradFi integration, positioning the firm as a leader in tokenized assets, stablecoins, and digital wallets.
🗣️ BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and others are piloting tokenized stocks and U.S. Treasuries via a DTCC program with nearly 40 institutions.
🗣️ Morgan Stanley now offers spot trading of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana on E*TRADE via Zero Hash.
🗣️ Visa launched its Stablecoin Platform (VSP), enabling banks and fintechs to issue and manage stablecoins directly on Visa’s network.
🗣️ Researcher Benchmark maintained a Buy rating and $16 target on Securitize (SECZ) despite cutting 2026 forecasts, citing strong tokenization fundamentals and the new Cantor Fitzgerald partnership.
🗣️ The Treasury Department missed the GENIUS Act’s July 18 deadline for final stablecoin rules. Key proposals remain open for comment, with the law’s Jan. 2027 effective date unchanged.
🗣️ Tether invested $20M in Argentine neobank Ualá ($3.2B valuation) as part of a $197M round.
🗣️ The U.S. and UK released a joint roadmap to harmonize regulation of stablecoins and tokenized assets.
🗣️ Base Creator Jesse Pollak is stepping back from daily app leadership (July 15) to focus on growing Base as a global finance blockchain. He noted the on-chain social/creator coin strategy underperformed.
People Watch 👀
👀 Peter Thiel (Dialog co-founder): Dialog records were exposed online. The leak revealed private details from the 2026 retreat agenda, including discussions on AI, nuclear energy, battlefield tech, sex, cult-building, and WWIII scenarios, plus an internal matchmaking app.
👀 Donald Trump — Per a new book, Trump mocked Zuckerberg and Bezos for their “groveling” texts after the 2024 win. Musk called it “first-class groveling,” highlighting the awkward power shift between Big Tech leaders and the new administration.
👀 Josh Elman, who led product marketing for Apple Intelligence and Siri, joined Andreessen Horowitz as a partner on June 23, 2026. The move reflects his strong conviction in the coming consumer AI boom and highlights the ongoing talent shift from Big Tech to top venture firms backing the next wave of innovation. At a16z, he’ll focus on early-stage consumer tech and AI investments.
👀 Bad/Good news for SBF - Senators Lummis and Gallego secured unanimous Senate approval for a resolution opposing any executive clemency for convicted FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. The bipartisan measure cites his lack of remorse and the $8B+ fraud. SBF is serving a 25-year sentence. Separately, FTX will distribute ~$900 million to creditors in its fifth bankruptcy payout starting July 31; total payouts now near $10B.
👀 Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella criticized Anthropic’s Fable model as too “editorially controlled,” telling engineers its tendency to block some user requests makes little sense.
👀 Instagram head Adam Mosseri says Meta may eventually cap AI token spending by engineer, warning that heavy AI usage could soon cost as much as an employee’s salary and will need to be managed like payroll, GPU capacity, or other operating expenses.
👀 Elon Musk donated $5 million to a super PAC backing billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for Ohio governor, signaling continued support for his former DOGE partner after reports of tensions between the two and despite Musk’s earlier pledge to pull back from political spending.
Following the Money 🤑
VC Deals ($5M+)💰
Infrastructure/Compute
💰 Together AI (San Francisco, CA) raises an $800 million round at an $8.3 billion post-money valuation | Computing Infrastructure for Open-Source AI Models (training and inference at scale) | Investors: Aramco Ventures (lead), Vista Equity Partners, General Catalyst, Emergence Capital, Nvidia, March Capital, Pegatron, S Ventures | (July 1, 2026)
💰 Spectro Cloud (San Jose, CA) raises a $100+ million Series D round | Software for Managing Production AI Infrastructure (enterprise, public sector, sovereign cloud) | Investors: Goldman Sachs Alternatives (lead), AMD Ventures, Ericsson, LG Technology Ventures, Maximus | (July 2026)
💰 Databricks (San Francisco, CA) signs term sheet for a $3 billion strategic round at a $188 billion post-money valuation | Data analytics and AI infrastructure software (with strong agentic/AI product growth) | Investors: Coatue (lead), new and existing investors | (July 2026)
💰 Valar Atomics (El Segundo, CA) is in talks to raise a ~$1 billion round at about a $6 billion valuation | Small modular nuclear reactors to power AI data centers | Investors: Sequoia (lead, in talks) | (July 2026)
AI Models / Open-Source LLMs / Enterprise AI
💰 Nous Research (Austin, TX) is finalizing a $75+ million round at a $1.5 billion valuation | Open-Source AI Agents and Language Models | Investors: Robot Ventures (lead), USV, others | (July 2026)
💰 Instalily AI (New York, NY) raises a $60 million Series B round | AI Agents for Sales, Operations, and Field Service Workflows | Investors: Energize Capital (lead), Home Depot Ventures, United Rentals, Insight Partners | (July 2026)
💰 Thira (Bellevue, WA) raises a $21 million seed round | AI Agents for Complex Back-Office Enterprise IT Workflows | Investors: Madrona (lead), FUSE | (July 2026)
💰 Emergent (San Francisco, CA) raises a $130 million round at a $1.5 billion post-money valuation | AI Coding Agents for Building Internal Business Applications | Investors: Creaegis (lead), MNI Ventures, Sentinel Global, Khosla Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed, YC | (July 2026)
💰 Feathery (San Francisco, CA) raises $30 million Series A | AI Software for Insurance/Wealth Management Data Collection and Workflows | Investors: Portage Ventures, Index Ventures, Allstate, Clocktower, Erie, Bain Capital Ventures | (July 2026)
💰 Rime (San Francisco, CA) raises a $24 million Series A round | Voice Models for Enterprise Phone Calls | Investors: M13 Ventures (lead), Twilio Ventures, Corazon Capital, Unusual Ventures | (July 2026)
💰 Adapter (Austin, TX) raises a $17.8 million round | Personal/Work Data Connectivity to AI Agents with Access Controls | Investors: GV, Bond Partners, Hillspire (Eric Schmidt), Byers Capital | (July 2026)
Robotics / Autonomous Systems
💰 LimX Dynamics (Shenzhen, China) raises a $200 million round at a $2.2 billion post-money valuation | Autonomous Humanoid Robots for Commercial Service and Entertainment | Investors: Stone Venture, GGG, Redstone VC, Lens Technology, IDG Capital, WestSummit, Nio Capital, Hefei Binhu | (July 2026)
💰 Walden Robotics (Cambridge, MA) raises a $300 million round at a $1.1 billion post-money valuation | General-Purpose Robots for Factory/Warehouse Tasks | Investors: Toyota, Deviation Capital (co-leads), Nvidia, Boeing, AE Ventures, Samsung, Prologis, CoreWeave, others | (July 15, 2026)
💰 Monumental (Amsterdam, Netherlands) raises a $32 million Series B round | Autonomous Bricklaying Robots for Construction | Investors: Khosla Ventures (lead), Hummingbird, Plural | (July 2026)
💰 Cytronic (San Francisco, CA) raises a $13.5 million seed round | Robotic Fulfillment Centers for Ecommerce | Investors: Slow Ventures (lead), Geek Ventures, Failup, Alumni Ventures, others | (July 2026)
💰 Hyperion Robotics (Espoo, Finland) raises a $7.4 million growth round | Robotic microfactories for producing concrete infrastructure parts (utilities, energy, water, carbon capture) | Investors: Course Corrected and European Innovation Council Fund (co-leads), RE Ventures, Lifeline Ventures, Übermorgen Ventures, PC Rettig Impact & Co. | (July 2026)
Defense Tech
💰 Brinc (Seattle, WA) raises a $125 million round | Drones for Police, Fire, and Emergency Response | Investors: Motorola Solutions (lead), Index Ventures, Dylan Field | (July 14, 2026)
💰 Helsing (Munich, Germany) raises a $1.8 billion round at an $18 billion post-money valuation | Drones, Underwater Surveillance, and AI Software for Military Applications | Investors: JPMorgan Chase, Lightspeed, Iconiq, Dragoneer, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, CPP Investments, others | (July 13, 2026)
💰 Singularity (El Segundo, CA) raises an $80 million Series A round at a $400 million valuation | Counter-Weapons for Military with High-Volume Manufacturing | Investors: Khosla Ventures, Felicis (co-leads), Long Journey, Harpoon, Menlo, YC, others | (July 2026)
💰 Senra Systems (Redondo Beach, CA) raises a $65 million Series B round | Wire Harnesses for Aerospace and Defense Platforms | Investors: Lowercarbon Capital, Interlagos (co-leads), General Catalyst, Sequoia, a16z, Founders Fund, others | (July 2026)
💰 Digantara (Bengaluru, India) raises a $50 million Series B round | Satellites, Sensors, and Analytics for Space Debris and Missile Tracking | Investors: Reliance Industries (lead), 360 ONE, SBI, Ronnie Screwvala, Peak XV, Kalaari | (July 2026)
Healthcare / Biotech
💰 Neko Health (Stockholm, Sweden) raises a $700 million Series C round | Full-Body Preventive Health Scans with Proprietary Sensors and AI | Investors: Lightspeed, O.G. Venture Partners (co-leads), Liberty City, Positive Sum, BDT & MSD, Mark Zuckerberg, Ari Emanuel, others | (July 15, 2026)
💰 Chai Discovery (San Francisco, CA) raises a $400 million round at a $3.8 billion post-money valuation | AI Models for Drug Discovery and Molecular Design | Investors: Index Ventures (lead), Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Dimension, Bain, Thrive, OpenAI, Yosemite | (July 14, 2026)
💰 AdvanCell (Boston, MA / Australia) raises a $315 million Series D round | Lead-212 Targeted Radiotherapies for Cancer | Investors: Ally Bridge Group, Alpha Wave (co-leads), Bain Capital Life Sciences, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, others | (July 2026)
💰 Pearl Health (New York, NY) raises $110 million ($50M equity + $60M credit) | AI for Healthcare Providers Managing Risk and Value-Based Care | Investors: Andreessen Horowitz (lead equity), Viking Global, AlleyCorp, Ulysses, Trinity Capital | (July 2026)
💰 Draig Therapeutics (Cardiff, UK) raises a $65 million Series B round | Medicines Targeting Brain Signaling for Depression and Psychiatric Conditions | Investors: Deep Track Capital (lead), Janus Henderson, Marshall Wace, British Business Bank, Jefferson Life Sciences | (July 2026)
💰 Drug Farm (Shanghai/Albany, NY) raises a $55 million Series D round | Therapies for Rare Inflammatory, Heart, Kidney, Hepatitis B, Liver Cancer, and Metabolic Disorders | Investors: Shanghai Pudong Leading Area, Shanghai Puxing (co-leads), others | (July 2026)
💰 Hemispheric (Tel Aviv, Israel) raises a $52 million round | AI Analysis of Brain-Activity Data for Diagnosing PTSD, Depression, Schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s | Investors: Hanaco Ventures, OneMind, Protocol Labs, L Catterton, others | (July 2026)
💰 Corner Health (Santa Monica, CA) raises $32.5 million (seed + Series A) | Platform for Nurse Practitioners Running Independent Primary Care Practices | Investors: Oak HC/FT (Series A lead), First Round, Zigg Capital | (July 2026)
💰 TytoCare (New York/Israel) raises a $25+ million growth round | Handheld Medical Devices + AI for Remote Physical Exams | Investors: Insight Partners (lead), HOOPP, OliveTree, OrbiMed, Qumra, Qualcomm Ventures | (July 2026)
💰 SONATA (New York, NY) raises a $7 million round | Preventive Healthcare Memberships with Genetic/Blood/Wearable Data and Physician Care | Investors: Lux Capital, BoxGroup, Sunflower Capital | (July 2026)
Fintech / DeFi / Blockchain
💰 Flex (San Francisco, CA) raises a $70 million Series B1 round at a $1.2 billion valuation | Private Banking for Business Owners (Payments, Credit, Multi-Entity) | Investors: Halo Fund (lead), Portage, Wellington, Crosslink, others | (July 2026)
💰 Lumin (San Ramon, CA) raises a $115 million round at a $1.6 billion post-money valuation | Digital Banking, Payments, CRM, Lending Tools for Banks/Credit Unions | Investors: Light Street Capital (lead), clients, Affinity Plus | (July 2026)
💰 Velocity (London, UK) raises a $38 million Series A round | Stablecoin Treasury and Settlement Infrastructure for Enterprises | Investors: Dragonfly, FirstMark (co-leads), Activant, Capital One, QED, Coinbase, Wintermute, Ripple | (July 2026)
💰 Hadrius (New York, NY) raises $27 million (seed + Series A) | AI for Financial Services Compliance Risk Review and Audit Records | Investors: CRV (lead), YC, Pathlight Ventures | (July 2026)
💰 Gauntlet Networks (New York, NY) raises a $125 million Series C round | Portfolio, Liquidity, and Protocol Risk Modeling for Tokenized Assets/DeFi | Investors: SBI Holdings USA (lead) | (July 2026)
💰 Keyper (Dubai, UAE) raises an $11 million Series A round | Tenant Rent Payment Tools with Upfront Landlord Income | Investors: Speedinvest (lead), NeoVentures, MEVP, Dubai Future, Property Finder, others | (July 2026)
💰 Cyclops (Miami, FL) raises a $20 million Series A round | Stablecoin Settlement for Payments Companies | Investors: Nava Ventures (lead), Castle Island, Coinbase, Circle, others | (July 2026)
💰 Crypto.com (Singapore) raises a $400 million round at a $20 billion valuation | Cryptocurrency exchange (tokenized securities, derivatives, prediction markets) | Investors: Citadel Securities | (July 2026)
Sustainability / Cleantech
💰 TerraFirma (Austin, TX) raises a $115 million round | Remote-Operated and Semi-Autonomous Construction Equipment | Investors: Kleiner Perkins, Bain Capital Ventures | (July 2026)
💰 Piq Energy (San Francisco, CA) raises a $5 million seed round | Automated Grid Engineering Studies for Utilities | Investors: Active Impact Investments (lead), Cisco Foundation, others | (July 2026)
💰 Flexell Space (South Korea) raises a $20 million Series A round | Lightweight Flexible Solar Cells for Satellites and Space Applications | Investors: Mirae Asset, IBK, NH Venture, others | (July 2026)
💰 Kind Designs (Miami, FL) raises a $10 million Series A round at a $70 million valuation | 3D-printed seawalls and shoreline structures for coastal protection and marine habitats (total raised ~$21.5M) | Investors: Kyle Kuzma, Mark Cuban, Adrian Fenty, others | (July 2026)
Cybersecurity
💰 Valarian (London, UK) raises a $50 million Series A round | Software for Controlling AI/Sensitive App Data Access Across Cloud | Investors: NEA (lead), Lightbank, XTX Markets, Gokul Rajaram, Nikesh Arora | (July 2026)
💰 Neo Security (Tel Aviv, Israel) raises a $50+ million round | Platform Bridging Endpoint, Network, and Identity Security | Investors: Kraft Group, a16z, Merlin Ventures | (July 2026)
💰 Oak (Tel Aviv, Israel) raises a $60 million seed round | Managing Employee/Machine/AI Agent Access Permissions | Investors: Accel, CRV, Greylock (co-leads), others | (July 2026)
💰 Risk Ledger (London, UK) raises a $32 million Series B round | Mapping and Monitoring Cyber Risks Across Supplier Networks | Investors: Axiom Equity (lead), Mercia Ventures | (July 2026)
💰 Pulse Security AI (Los Altos, CA) raises an $8 million seed round | AI for CISOs Managing Cybersecurity Programs | Investors: Foundation Capital (lead), Zetta Venture Partners | (July 2026)
Semiconductors / Deep Tech Hardware
💰 TYLsemi (San Jose, CA) raises $43 million early-stage | Chiplet-Based Systems for Custom AI Accelerators | Investors: Matter Venture Partners (lead), Viola Ventures, GHOVC, Egis, strategics | (July 2026)
💰 Ravee Optics (Dayton, OH) raises a $6 million round | Compact Laser Communications Terminals for Satellites | Investors: BIG Global Investment (lead), CincyTech, JobsOhio | (July 2026)
M&A Deals ($100M+)🤝
🤝 Salesforce acquires Fin (formerly Intercom) | AI Customer Service (resolves queries across chat, email, WhatsApp, phone, Slack) | ~$3.6 billion
IPOs & Filings 📈
📈 Anthropic (San Francisco, CA) confidentially files for IPO with investor meetings underway | AI Models / Frontier AI (Claude family of models; major enterprise adoption) | Potential multi-billion raise; valuation context ~$965B from recent round | Target October 2026 listing; lead banks Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase | (July 2026)
📈 Switch (Las Vegas, NV) prepares for IPO with bankers hired | Data Centers / AI Infrastructure (large-scale campuses with power, cooling, connectivity for AI compute) | Potential raise up to $10 billion at ~$80 billion valuation | Expected 2027 listing; bankers Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan | (July 2026)
New VC Funds
💸 Greylock (Menlo Park, CA) raises $1.5 billion for Fund XVIII | Early-stage investments across AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, applications, deep tech, consumer, and fintech | 61-year-old firm with notable portfolio companies including LinkedIn, Airbnb, Facebook, Workday, and Palo Alto Networks | (July 2026)
💸 B Capital (San Francisco, CA / Singapore) closes $500 million Ascent Fund III (hard cap, oversubscribed; nearly double Fund II) | Seed through Series B in AI-driven companies across healthcare, enterprise, energy, and frontier technologies (North America and Asia) | Co-founded by Eduardo Saverin; has already invested in 20+ companies including Apptronik, Havoc AI, and Star Catcher | (July 2026)
💸 AlleyCorp (New York, NY) raises $335 million for Fund II (following $250M Fund I) | Early-stage bets and incubation across healthcare, deep tech, and general tech | Founded by Kevin Ryan (Gilt, MongoDB, Business Insider); portfolio includes eight unicorns | (July 2026)
—Anthony Perkins, founder & editor, Cryptonite, Medellín, Colombia —Talk to me on X @HeyTPerk or TheEditor@CryptoniteVentures.com
