🎨 Insomnia Labs Prepares to Launch CreatorFi to Empower Digital Creators

Insomnia Labs is launching CreatorFi with a $12M credit facility, offering stablecoin-based advances against future creator earnings.

🚀 Unlocking Creator Liquidity
• Provides fiat and stablecoin credit tied to ad revenue, royalties, and subscriptions
• Built on Avalanche for fast, scalable smart contract lending
• Aims to replace predatory deals with transparent, flexible access

💡AI + Blockchain-Powered Underwriting
• Uses AI to forecast earnings and automate loan approvals
• Stablecoin disbursements via platforms like Coinbase
• Direct integration with creator tools and wallets

🤝 Backed by Key Partners
• Supported by Kamui Finance and Intrinsic Capital
• Live integrations with Yoola (1,200+ YouTubers) and Record Financial for music financing

CreatorFi is reimagining financial access for creators—turning future income into present opportunity.

📊 Powered by V3V Ventures

🌐Perplexity Launches Comet to Reinvent the Browser Experience

Perplexity has launched Comet, an AI-powered web browser built to transform how users search, browse, and interact with online content—directly challenging Google and Microsoft.

🧠 A Browser That Thinks With You
• Built-in assistant understands what’s on your screen
• Enables real-time summarizing, comparisons, and task execution
• Runs on Chromium and supports all Chrome extensions

🔓Privacy-Preserving, AI-Driven
• Keeps user data local with no AI model training
• Focused on productivity without compromising trust
• Supports secure, on-screen contextual assistance

🚀 Exclusive Launch for Power Users
• Available now via Perplexity Max ($200/month)
• Launches on Windows and macOS
• Mobile and Linux versions arriving later in 2025

Comet is Perplexity’s boldest move yet to redefine the future of browsing through AI-native experiences.

📊 Powered by V3V Ventures

📦 Parter Launches AI Tools to Fix Hardware Supply Chains

AI startup Parter is tackling hardware procurement delays with intelligent software that streamlines sourcing and flags disruptions before they escalate.

🔍 Visibility for Complex Hardware Teams
• Integrates BOMs, ERPs, datasheets, and spreadsheets
• Detects risks like obsolete parts and regulatory shifts
• Centralizes alerts and insights in a single dashboard

🌍 Built for Global Operations
• Dual headquarters in New York and Tel Aviv
• Trusted by early customers across electronics and manufacturing
• Seeded with $5.5M from StageOne Ventures, Zenda Capital, Mercer Ventures, and top angels

🚀 Scaling Development and U.S. Expansion
• Funding to accelerate product development and feature rollout
• Plans to grow U.S. team and expand market presence

Parter’s AI-powered platform is helping hardware teams move faster, source smarter, and avoid costly production delays across global supply chains.

📊 Powered by V3V Ventures

⚙️ Deepinvent Unveils AI-Powered R&D Engine for Instant Innovation

Deepinvent has launched the world’s first AI Innovator, a superintelligent platform that compresses months of research and invention into just minutes.

⚙️From Idea to Invention in One Session
• Inputs your idea and scans global patents and research
• Builds a dynamic knowledge graph to reveal breakthroughs
• Instantly generates patent-quality inventions

🚀2,000+ Innovations in Week One
• Early users created thousands of inventions across biotech, defense, semiconductors, and energy
• Designed for fast-moving startups and complex enterprise R&D

🧠 Built with Compound AI Architecture
• Merges deep learning with brain-inspired heuristics
• Self-generates disclosures, patent drafts, and validation insights

Deepinvent is redefining invention—giving individuals and teams the power to create with AI at unprecedented speed and scale.

📊 Powered by V3V Ventures

🚀UK Backs Eutelsat in Europe’s Push to Rival Starlink

The UK government is investing $191 million to maintain its stake in French satellite firm Eutelsat, as part of a €1.35 billion funding round led by France. The move deepens UK–France cooperation in space amid growing geopolitical focus on satellite networks.

⚙️ Strengthening satellite independence
• UK keeps golden-share rights in OneWeb
• Complements France’s €717M investment, now owning ~30%
• Supports Europe’s goal of securing space-based infrastructure

⛓A strategic rival to Starlink
• Eutelsat operates 600+ satellites including OneWeb’s LEO fleet
• Aims to counter Starlink’s 6,000-satellite scale with secure, sovereign networks
• Targets enterprise and government customers across Europe

💡Fueling next-gen satellite ambitions
• Backs the EU’s IRIS² project—290 satellites by 2030
• Tied to €1B French defense contract
• Eutelsat shares rose 8–10% post-announcement

Eutelsat is becoming Europe’s answer to Starlink—built on sovereignty, security, and strategic investment.

📊 Powered by V3V Ventures

💼 iCapital Expands Access to Alternative Investments with New Backing

New York-based iCapital has raised $820 million at a $7.5 billion valuation. The round was co-led by T. Rowe Price and SurgoCap Partners, with participation from UBS, State Street, Temasek, BNY, and existing investors like BlackRock and Apollo.

⚙️ Simplifying private market investing
• Platform offers access to private equity, credit, real estate, and annuities
• Serves 114,000+ advisors and 3,000+ firms
• Manages over $945 billion in assets

📈 Profitable growth with global reach
• Completed 23 acquisitions to date
• Profitable since 2019
• Expanding tech and entering new markets

💡Strategic backing for future expansion
• Funding supports platform upgrades and product innovation
• Aligns with rising demand for alternative investments
• Eyes potential IPO in coming years

iCapital is making alternatives more accessible—helping investors tap into private markets with institutional-grade tools.

📊 Powered by V3V Ventures

🧠Knox Accelerates FedRAMP Authorization for Government AI Use

San Francisco–based Knox has raised $6.5 million in seed funding to streamline FedRAMP certification and help U.S. government agencies adopt AI-powered cloud services. The round was led by Felicis, with support from Ridgeline and Firsthand Ventures.

⚙️ Cutting red tape for cloud compliance
• Reduces FedRAMP approval from years to just 90 days
• Uses automation, pre-cleared infrastructure, and digital control libraries
• Addresses a backlog of 30,000+ SaaS providers waiting for authorization

🏠Deployed across federal agencies
• Supports DHS, Treasury, and the U.S. Marines
• Works with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
• Offers real-time compliance and security via KnoxAI

💡Built by govtech veterans
• Founded by the team behind Adobe’s federal cloud systems
• Audited by leading assessor Coalfire
• Felicis: “Knox is solving one of the most urgent problems in government tech”

Knox is modernizing how U.S. agencies adopt cloud and AI—making compliance faster, smarter, and secure by design.

📊 Powered by V3V Ventures

🧠 Foundation EGI Unveils AI-Native Platform to Transform Engineering

MIT spinout Foundation EGI has secured $23M in Series A funding to transform industrial engineering using an AI-native platform. The round was led by Translink Capital, with backing from RRE Ventures, McRock Capital, and others.

⚙️ AI that engineers with you
• Physics-aware LLM turns messy specs into structured workflows
• Supports co-design between humans and AI—not just automation
• Speeds up prototyping, simulation, and documentation

🏠 Piloting in complex industries
• Live with Fortune 500 firms in aerospace and manufacturing
• Built for sectors like automotive and advanced appliances
• Helps engineers build smarter and faster

🧪 Deep tech from MIT labs
• Founded by Mok Oh, Prof. Wojciech Matusik & Michael Foshey
• Based on MIT research into LLMs for design and manufacturing
• Translink: “This is industrial AI with real-world impact”

Foundation EGI is reshaping the future of product design—where AI doesn’t just assist, it thinks alongside engineers.

📊 Powered by V3V Ventures

🧠 Groq Ramps Up Global Push in the AI Chip Race

Silicon Valley–based Groq is scaling rapidly with its custom inference chips, designed to deliver ultra-fast performance for AI workloads without the power drain of traditional GPUs.

⚙️ Built for blazing-fast inference
• Runs on proprietary Language Processing Units (LPUs)
• Delivers up to 10× faster and more energy-efficient performance than GPUs
• Already powering over 100,000 LPUs for real-time AI applications

🌍 Expanding global reach
• Opened its first European data center in Helsinki
• Recently signed a $1.5B deal with Saudi Arabia
• In talks to raise $300–500M at a $6B valuation

🤖 Defining a new chip category
• Targets inference workloads—not training—unlike Nvidia
• Backed by Cisco, Samsung, BlackRock, and other major investors

Groq is reshaping how AI infrastructure is built—offering a leaner, faster alternative for inference at scale.

📊 Powered by V3V Ventures

🧠 Grok 4 is here — and it might be the smartest AI ever built

The new model from xAI blows past Claude, GPT-4o, and Gemini 2.5 Pro.

It’s not just faster — it thinks better.

🔥Best-in-class at coding, math, and reasoning
🔥10× smarter than Grok 3 at analytical tasks
🔥Reliably predicts sports outcomes just by scanning Polymarket
🔥Runs business ops 6× more efficiently than humans
🔥Surpasses PhD-level in every domain — even invents new physics
🔥Uses tools (browser, code interpreter) more intelligently
🔥In voice: can whisper, sing, modulate tone — and respond faster than GPT
🔥Scores 44.4% on the “Final Human Exam” — AGI is knocking

Grok 4 is rolling out now — see it live.

🧠 How to convince investors the problem is real

A common founder line:

The problem is obvious — we’ve lived it ourselves.

Okay. But as an investor, I might not even know this problem exists. Saying “parents hate carrying car seats” sounds like "trust me, bro". I need proof this is a pain worth paying for.

Here are the strongest ways to validate a problem early:

1️⃣ Money
Show a screenshot:

In one week, we got X payments from Y customers.

Even if it’s small transfers to a personal card — when someone opens their wallet, they’re voting with actions, not words.

2️⃣LOIs (Letters of Intent)
A document from a real company saying:

We’re ready to buy, if the product meets these terms.

Not a contract, but serious signal. Shows you’ve talked to actual buyers, not just “the market.”

3️⃣ Paid pilots / test sales
Built a prototype — and someone paid for it? Perfect.
Even 10% of final price counts.
Especially valuable in DeepTech or hardware: early preorders, even scrappy ones, are a green flag.

What doesn’t count as real validation:
– “Friends said the idea is cool”
– “European fleets are interested, but haven’t paid”
– “People gave great feedback at our demo”
– “Survey says 87% would buy it”

Nice signals — but not validation.
Validation is when people pay you to solve a real problem.

The best way to prove a problem exists?
Try selling the solution.

If they buy — great, you hit a nerve.
If they dodge — that’s useful too. Better to find out before the pitch.

What validation worked best for you?
What convinced your investors?
Share in the comments.

🤖 RealSense goes independent to power the rise of physical AI

RealSense, Intel’s former computer vision unit, has officially spun out and raised $50M to scale its vision systems for robotics, biometrics, and AI-driven automation.

The company continues shipping its signature depth cameras — already used in 60% of the world’s humanoid and mobile robots.

✅ Launched the new D555 depth camera with PoE and Vision SoC V5
✅ Partners include Unitree Robotics, ANYbotics, Fit:Match, and Eyesynth
✅ Backed by Intel Capital, MediaTek, and a leading semi PE firm
✅ Active across robotics, healthcare, access control, and automation
• Holds 80+ patents and serves 3,000+ customers worldwide

RealSense says it’s building for a future where robots don’t replace humans — they protect and empower them.

🧠 Physical AI is coming fast.
RealSense wants to be the lens it sees through.

📺 Top Talks from Y Combinator’s AI Startup School

In June, Y Combinator hosted a 2-day AI bootcamp for over 2,500 students and PhDs. They brought in top voices from OpenAI, Tesla, Microsoft, and more.

Here’s a handpicked list of the most valuable talks:

🔹Andrew Ng, co-founder of Google Brain
Topic: Building Faster with AI

🔹 Andrej Karpathy, former Head of AI at Tesla & OpenAI co-founder
Topic: Software Is Changing (Again)

🔹 Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, SpaceX, xAI
Topic: Digital Superintelligence, Multiplanetary Life, How to Be Useful

🔹 Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI
Topic: The Future of OpenAI, ChatGPT’s Origins, and Building AI Hardware

🔹 Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
Topic: Microsoft’s AI Bets, Hyperscaling, Quantum Computing Breakthroughs

🔹 Fei-Fei Li, “Godmother of AI”
Topic: Spatial Intelligence is the Next Frontier in AI

🔹 François Chollet, creator of Keras & ARC Prize
Topic: How We Get to AGI

Coming soon: sessions from the founders of Perplexity, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind’s John Jumper.

📌 Save this post — it’s packed with signal.

⚡️ Meta takes 49% stake in Scale AI — the dataset factory behind Big Tech models

Founded in 2016, Scale AI builds the infrastructure that trains the trainers — cleaning, labeling, and structuring data for top AI systems.

It’s now 49% owned by Meta, which paid $14.3B and brought CEO Alexandr Wang into its elite AI group.

🖱️240,000+ contractors handle massive multi-modal data
🖱️Text, audio, 3D, and synthetic data for RLHF at scale
🖱️Quality via majority vote, dynamic calibration, and more
🖱️Upload raw — get back validated datasets via full-cycle API
🖱️Rapid-feedback pipelines using private foundation models

But trust issues surfaced fast: leaked docs revealed prompt sets, tasker emails, and internal client data — including Bard and xAI. Meta’s rivals (OpenAI, Google) are now freezing projects.

The big question: can Meta own the pipeline and still convince competitors to keep sending blood to its lab?

📊 25 AI startups on the rise

Not every AI breakthrough comes from Big Tech. This Forbes-backed list highlights startups quietly building the infrastructure, creativity, and productivity layers of the AI economy.

💰The biggest funding magnet? Productivity tools — with $700M+ across just 8 companies

🧠 From LangChain to Perplexity, Harvey to Cleanlab — each is solving a different bottleneck in the AI stack

✍️ Midjourney made the list without raising a dollar

🔒 But not everyone will survive — policy, trust, and data security are already major battlefields

The AI race isn’t just about model size — it’s about who trains faster, ships smarter, and earns trust first.

🔥 Base44: The profitable AI startup built solo and sold for $80M

Base44 is an AI-powered app builder that turns plain-text prompts into fully functional web apps.

It was created and scaled by a solo founder — and recently acquired by Wix for $80M.

🔍What makes it stand out

🖱️Built and scaled by one person — no devs, no team
🖱️Reached 400K users without VC funding
🖱️Routes prompts across Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini to maximize output
🖱️Daily product updates, viral loop built-in via social sharing
🖱️Grew via LinkedIn and direct feedback loops with early users
🖱️Generated profit early and kept full control before exit

📈 The exit and after
Wix paid $80M, with $25M set aside to retain the team post-acquisition. Base44 is now part of Wix Studio, continuing to operate independently.

Maor Shlomo may not have built the first solo unicorn — but he might’ve shown us exactly how it starts.

📞China is developing cyborg bees for surveillance

Chinese researchers are working on remote-controlled bees — real insects fitted with microchips that allow human operators to direct their movement.

The chip weighs just 74 milligrams and is light enough for a bee to carry in flight.

Use cases? State surveillance.
Authorities plan to deploy the cyborg bees for monitoring, eavesdropping, and intelligence gathering.

Nature meets control tech.

⚡️ Google killer? Comet browser by Perplexity and NVIDIA goes live

Google’s in trouble: NVIDIA and Perplexity launched Comet, the first AI-native browser — and early testers say it’s a game-changer.

🔺Comet Assistant works on any site: summaries, search help, problem-solving
🔺Perplexity is baked in — smarter, faster, and cleaner than Google
🔺Built-in AI agents book hotels, write emails, pay bills
🔺Manages tabs, bookmarks, and removes clutter by itself
🔺Comes preloaded with ad blockers and pop-up killers

Access is now open

🌐 Japan breaks 1 petabit/second fiber speed record

Japanese engineers just pushed the limits of data transmission: over 1 petabit per second across 1,800 km of fiber — using cables compatible with today’s internet infrastructure.

🔸That’s 10¹⁵ bits/sec — a quadrillion
🔸Enough to stream the entire Netflix library in one second (allegedly)
🔸Achieved using a custom multi-core optical fiber
🔸Compatible with existing transmission systems
🔸Reinforces that internet infra can handle surging global demand

You learned "kilo" from kilometers.
Now meet "peta" — the new speed benchmark for the digital era.