🎈Near Space Labs wants to rewrite aerial imaging — from the stratosphere

Near Space Labs is using helium balloon-powered robots to capture ultra-high-resolution images from 60,000 feet above the ground — offering a faster, cheaper alternative to drones and satellites.

🚀 Floating above the competition
• Swift aircraft ride wind currents with no engines, pilots, or heavy fuel systems
• 7cm resolution — higher quality than most satellite images
• Can cover huge areas in hours instead of weeks

🛡 How they’re scaling today
• Focused on insurance customers tracking disasters like fires and hurricanes
• Plans to cover 80% of the U.S. population twice a year
• Balloon-based design avoids licensing hurdles

🎱 Where they see the future
• Exploring agriculture for crop monitoring beyond drone limitations
• Preparing customized imagery plans for new industries
• Staying focused on commercial use, but dual-use (defense) potential exists

Sometimes it’s not about building bigger rockets — it’s about finding smarter ways to float above the noise.

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🔗 Nuvo builds a B2B trade network to replace faxes with real-time trust

Nuvo is developing a networked platform for businesses to trade physical goods, verify partners, and manage purchasing — replacing outdated workflows with a social-style system built for modern supply chains.

📇 What Nuvo offers
• Businesses create verified profiles with licenses, credit reports, FICO scores, and references
• Sellers invite buyers, who then bring in their own partners, growing the network
• Dashboard helps assess creditworthiness, track history, and reduce fraud or delays

❓ Who it’s for
• Focused on industries like food service, distribution, construction, and manufacturing
• Customers include Great Dane, Southern Glazer’s, and Fender
• Plans to expand into new verticals and add payments and AI features

🌎 What’s next
• Raised $34M Series A from Sequoia and Spark Capital
• Targeting international expansion to Mexico, LATAM, EU, and APAC
• On track to hit 50,000 businesses in the network by Q2

Nuvo isn’t just digitizing B2B — it’s betting on network effects to reshape how trade relationships form and grow in a $11T market.

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🔹Telgea is building a global mobile platform for business telecom

New York–based Telgea helps companies manage mobile plans across multiple countries through a single interface — removing roaming, contracts, and telecom admin headaches.

🌎 A single platform for 75+ countries
• Unlimited calls, texts, and data across supported regions
• No roaming fees, no local carrier contracts, no setup minimums
• Currently live in 8 countries, with $1M in signed ARR since launch

⚙️ Designed to reduce internal overhead
• Built-in AI handles onboarding, support, and international rollout
• Platform automates plan activation, troubleshooting, and account changes
• Frees up IT and HR teams from managing fragmented telecom operations

📈 Structured for global scale
• Adds a new country every month using AI-based telecom deployment
• Founded by former execs who scaled Tipser, Innometrics, and Sani Nudge
• Targets global companies dealing with rising mobile costs and admin burden

Telgea wants to do for telecom what Revolut did for banking — make it borderless, automated, and truly scalable.

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💻 Solda.AI brings autonomous voice agents to enterprise telesales

Berlin-based Solda.AI is building multilingual AI agents that can autonomously handle outbound sales calls — including lead engagement, follow-ups, and deal closing — with near-human fluency.

📞 Automating full telesales cycles
• AI voice agents trained to handle complex sales dialogues end-to-end
• Already integrated with 20+ partners, including InDrive, Treatwell, and tbi Bank
• Handles 100+ concurrent phone lines and 10,000+ leads daily

🌎 Designed for scale and global teams
• Supports multiple languages, including US/UK English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German
• Low detection rate (<1%) improves customer trust and reduces drop-off
• Remote-first team across Berlin, Amsterdam, London, and Munich

📈 Sales impact and business traction
• Delivered €6.1M in revenue in 2024; targeting €26.4M this year
• Clients report 30% cost efficiency gains vs. traditional call centers
• Training time reduced from months to weeks — agents ready in under 2 weeks

As more companies seek to modernize outbound sales, Solda.AI is positioning voice tech not just as support — but as the primary sales engine.

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🧠 Ai2 releases Olmo 2 1B — a small AI model outperforming Google and Meta

Nonprofit AI research institute Ai2 has launched Olmo 2 1B, a compact open-source model that beats rival offerings from Google, Meta, and Alibaba across key reasoning and factuality benchmarks.

🔍 What’s under the hood
• 1B parameters — small enough to run on laptops and mobile devices
• Trained on 4 trillion tokens from public, synthetic, and curated sources
• Released on Hugging Face under Apache 2.0 license — fully reproducible with open code and data

📊 How it stacks up
• Outperforms Gemma 3 1B, Llama 3.2 1B, and Qwen 2.5 1.5B on GSM8K and TruthfulQA
• Strong arithmetic reasoning and factual accuracy despite small size
• Ideal for low-resource devs, edge AI use, and experimental applications

⚠️Use with caution
• Ai2 warns of possible factual errors and sensitive content generation
• Not recommended for production use in commercial products

Olmo 2 1B joins a growing wave of compact open models — a reminder that small doesn't mean weak in the AI game.

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🚗 May Mobility to launch robotaxis on Uber by end of 2025

Autonomous shuttle startup May Mobility is teaming up with Uber to deploy self-driving rides in Arlington, Texas by the end of the year — with plans to expand nationwide.

⚙️ What they’re building
• May’s hybrid Toyota Siennas will be bookable via the Uber app
• First rides will include human safety drivers, with full autonomy to follow
• Expansion to more U.S. cities planned in 2026
• Goal: deploy thousands of AVs through Uber over next few years

📍 Why it’s interesting
• Marks May’s first move beyond campus microtransit into mainstream ride-hail
• Uber adds another AV partner after Waymo (Phoenix, Austin) and Cruise (pre-shutdown)
• May will go head-to-head with Lyft, which is also launching autonomous rides in Atlanta

A big leap for May Mobility — from controlled zones to real streets, side by side with Uber.

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🟣Dub is turning politicians and influencers into trading signals

Dub lets users copy the stock trades of celebrities, politicians, and peers — and just raised $30M to scale its copy-trading platform.

⚙️ What they’ve built
• A social investing app where users can automatically mirror trades of public figures or friends
• 13K+ users already copy-trade Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s portfolio via public filings
• Real-time mirroring available for users who choose to make trades public

📊 Traction and growth
• 1M+ downloads since launch in March 2024
• 50,000 paying subscribers on $10/month or $90/year plans
• Backed by Notable Capital, Neo, Sandberg Bernthal, Peak6, and others

📈 What’s next for Dub
• Launching a free tier to follow up to 2 people without paying
• Expanding into crypto and event contracts as new asset classes
• Secured $5.5M in venture debt from Silicon Valley Bank to fuel growth

Dub is building a trading layer for the influencer era — where ideas (and portfolios) spread as fast as memes.

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✈️ Mercor — The $2B AI hiring platform built by three teens

Meet the Gen Z founders behind Mercor — an AI-powered recruitment platform growing faster than their age would suggest. From high school debate club to Thiel Fellows to unicorn builders, they’re now running one of the most talked-about startups in hiring tech.

👩‍🎓From dropout to disruptor
• Founded by 3 teenagers: Adarsh Hiremath, Brendan Foody, and Surya Midha
• All skipped college to join the Thiel Fellowship ($100K to drop out and build)
• Launched Mercor in 2023 as a manual job-matching tool — now a full AI platform

⚙️ What Mercor does
• Automates the entire hiring flow — résumé screening, video interviews, skill profiling
• AI evaluates candidates, builds structured profiles, and even manages payroll
• Used by major AI labs to recruit creators for training data production

📈 The traction so far
• Valued at $2 billion just two years after launch
• $75M revenue run rate, 300K+ candidates screened, 100K+ interviews completed
• Active in 25+ countries, with a team of only 15 full-time employees

💰 The backers behind the rocket ship
• Raised $3.6M seed from General Catalyst, Soma Capital, and NEA’s Scott Sandell
• $30M Series A led by Benchmark, joined by Peter Thiel, Jack Dorsey, Adam D’Angelo
• $100M Series B from Felicia Ventures, DST Global, Benchmark

🌎 Built for global, not just Silicon Valley
• Largest candidate pools in India, U.S., and Southeast Asia
• Platform supports contractors, hourly workers, and full-time hires
• Mercor itself used the tool to hire its entire team

Mercor isn’t just redefining hiring—it’s rewriting the startup playbook. Still under 22, the founders are building one of the fastest-growing AI companies in the world.

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🥷 Cluely — The viral AI startup that lets you cheat on everything

From Columbia suspension to Silicon Valley sensation — Cluely is building stealth AI tools that automate interviews, exams, and sales calls. Critics call it dystopian. Users call it useful. VCs just dropped $5.3M to see which one’s right.

👾 Where it started
• Founded by Chungin “Roy” Lee and Neel Shanmugam, both 21, after being suspended from Columbia
• Began as “Interview Coder” — a tool to cheat during technical interviews
• Evolved into Cluely, a stealth browser overlay that feeds AI answers during real-time interviews and tests

💰What they’ve raised
• $5.3M seed round led by Abstract Ventures and Susa Ventures
• Surpassed $3M in ARR with zero paid marketing
• Manifesto compares Cluely to the calculator — “cheating until it wasn’t”

🥸 What the tool does
• Stealth interface that overlays live calls or exams — invisible to interviewers or proctors
• Use cases: job interviews, sales calls, exams, even dating (as shown in their viral launch video)
• Cluely plans to expand to smart glasses and brain interfaces if detection tools evolve

📈 Why it’s blowing up
• Cluely’s founders claim AI has changed the game — “the future of work is augmented”
• The product’s virality stems from outrage, memes, and debate about ethics vs. productivity
• Early adopters reportedly landed tech jobs, including at Amazon, using the tool

Love it or hate it, Cluely is confronting the question most startups tiptoe around:
What if “cheating” is just the next UX layer for knowledge work?

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👍 Hugging Face launches $100 robotic arm to democratize AI robotics

Hugging Face just dropped the SO-101 — a 3D-printed, AI-ready robotic arm that costs as little as $100. It’s open-source, upgradeable, and powerful enough to run reinforcement learning tasks on a laptop.

🧠 AI-native by design
• Features 6 motors, camera-based vision, and support for reinforcement learning
• Pairs with Hugging Face’s LeRobot toolkit and GitHub-hosted training pipeline
• Learns new physical tasks (like placing Lego) after a single demonstration

⚙️ Built for makers, educators, and researchers
• Fully 3D-printable with optional kits starting at $220
• Open source under Apache 2.0, with shareable datasets and models
• Compatible with Raspberry Pi–based LeKiwi mobile base for full autonomy

📊 How it compares to pricier competitors
• Niryo Ned2: $4,000+
• Dobot Magician: $1,700
• uArm Swift Pro: $1,000
• Hugging Face SO-101: $100–$500, depending on version

❓ Why it matters
• Makes real AI-robotics experimentation accessible for students, hobbyists, and labs
• Targets education, research, and prototyping with rapid iteration at low cost
• Hugging Face positions SO-101 as the entry-level AI robotics standard

Not everyone can afford a precision robotic arm—but Hugging Face is betting the next wave of robotics breakthroughs will come from a $100 kit and an open-source repo.

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⏫OSCAR raises €6M to scale its home services platform into the UK

Portugal-based OSCAR has secured €6 million in Pre-Series A funding to expand its on-demand home services app beyond Iberia and into the UK.

⚙️ Reinventing home services across Europe
• Offers plumbing, electrical, cleaning, laundry, and beauty services via app
• Guarantees fixed pricing, vetted professionals, and fast bookings
• Serves 600,000+ users with €20M+ in annual revenue

🌎 Strategic expansion and fresh capital
• New funds to reinforce leadership in Portugal and Spain
• UK entry planned to disrupt a fragmented market lacking trust and transparency
• Backed by Indico, Lince, Failup, Boost, and founders of Bolt and Wolt

📈 Why it’s working
• Strong execution team closing the gap between service reliability and customer expectations
• Unified platform simplifies home tasks for users — and empowers technicians with steady demand

From Lisbon to London, OSCAR is proving that convenience, speed, and trust still win in everyday consumer services.

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🛩 Zipline is building the logistics layer for the whole planet

From delivering blood in Rwanda to lunch in Dallas, Zipline is quietly operating the largest autonomous drone delivery network in the world — and it’s just getting started.

🌎From life-saving missions to daily convenience
• Zipline began by serving hospitals in Rwanda with drone-delivered blood transfusions
• Now operates in 8 countries, with clients like Walmart, Mayo Clinic, Chipotle, and Panera
• Delivered 22M+ vaccine doses and 75% of Rwanda’s blood supply outside the capital

🧱 One tech stack, many use cases
• Same drone, software, and autonomy stack used for both emergency health and commercial delivery
• Fully electric, zero-emission logistics platform, flying up to 150 miles per delivery
• 100M+ autonomous miles flown — the largest commercial autonomous system on Earth

🚁Why this matters
• Zipline combines impact, scale, and economics — serving both governments and private markets
• Expanding instant delivery beyond urban centers, even building national postal layers in some regions
• Their goal: make logistics universal, fast, cheap, and emission-free

While other drone delivery players pitch the future, Zipline is already operating it — at scale.

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🧠 Revelo sees AI-fueled hiring boom for Latin American developers

As U.S. firms ramp up post-training of LLMs, demand is surging for skilled developers — and Revelo is riding the wave by positioning LatAm talent as a critical piece of the AI supply chain.

🌎 What they’ve built
• A vetted network of 400,000+ developers across Latin America
• Full-stack hiring and payroll solution for U.S. companies
• Clients include Intuit, Oracle, Dell, and nearly every major hyperscale AI firm

⚙️ Why AI companies are hiring from LatAm
• Post-training phase of LLMs requires expert human data — especially from coders
• 22% of Revelo’s 2024 revenue came from LLM training roles
• Clients seek talent with deep language-specific coding expertise

📈 How Revelo scaled
• Founded in 2014 to solve Brazil’s tech hiring bottleneck
• Expanded across LatAm with $48M in VC backing from Social Capital, FJ Labs, Valor Capital
• Covid-era remote boom accelerated U.S. inbound demand

🫱 Strategic growth moves
• Acquired 5 LatAm-focused competitors in 30 months, including Alto and Paretisa
• Focus on nearshoring: same time zones, easier collaboration, better retention

While remote work buzz may be fading, Revelo’s thesis is holding strong — in the age of AI, proximity + expertise = staying power.

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❕ A $30B Cancer Drug Faces a Major Patent Showdown

Merck’s cancer blockbuster Keytruda, which pulled in nearly $30B last year, is at the center of a high-stakes patent dispute that could reshape access and IP rights for next-gen biologics.

🧪 What’s happening
• Merck plans to launch an injectable version of Keytruda (pending FDA approval by Sept 23, launch by Oct 1)
• San Diego-based Halozyme filed suit claiming the formulation infringes on its hyaluronidase tech
• Halozyme seeks an injunction; Merck says the case is “meritless”

📉 What’s at stake
• Keytruda’s core patents start expiring in 2028 — biosimilar threat is looming
• A new delivery format could extend exclusivity and boost sales
• Merck is investing $1B in a new factory to support this shift

⭕️ Broader implications
• Could impact the race to develop injectable biologics across oncology
• Signals growing tension between large pharmas and specialty platform players like Halozyme
• Underscores urgency around IP strategy as blockbuster biologics approach patent cliffs

As the industry eyes biosimilar waves and faster patient delivery, this battle over Keytruda’s next chapter could set the tone for the future of oncology access and biologic innovation.

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🛡 Mach Industries: A bold new force in defense tech at just 21

Founded by MIT dropout Ethan Thornton, Mach Industries is quickly becoming one of the most talked-about players in next-gen military tech. Now it’s reportedly raising $100 million more to push its vision even further.

🚀 What they're building
• Vertical-liftoff cruise missiles designed for long-range precision strikes
• Space-capable weapon systems aimed at future-proof battlefield readiness
• Microfactories that scale fast and decentralize production

⚙️ Momentum on the ground
• Developing “Strategic Strike” for the U.S. Army’s Applications Lab
• Opening its first 115,000 sq ft facility in Huntington Beach, CA
• Backed by Sequoia, Bedrock, and now Khosla Ventures, with Keith Rabois leading the latest round

📈 Numbers behind the hype
• Valuation reportedly hitting $470M post-money
• $185M total raised since launch
• $79M Series A closed just months after its $5.7M seed

Mach isn’t just chasing hype—it’s building serious firepower for a new era of defense.

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📈 Goparity wants to turn everyone into an impact investor — starting at €5

Portuguese fintech Goparity just secured €2.9M to expand its ethical investing platform, making it easier for anyone — not just the wealthy — to support sustainable projects across the globe.

🌱 Investing for the 99%
• Minimum investment starts at just €5, opening the door to mass adoption
• All projects align with the UN Sustainable Development Goals
• Focused on transparency, impact, and ethical finance over profit-first models

📊 Traction and expansion
• Over €50M in investments expected by mid-2025
• Raised €2.4M from institutional backers (3XP Global, Mustard Seed Maze, Schneider Electric)
• Added €470K via crowdfunding from 800+ retail investors under the same terms

🛠 Platform features
• E-wallet and ledger system for seamless micro-investments
• Tools like auto-invest and convertible loans to maximize returns and impact
• Full impact reporting — from clean energy to rural entrepreneurship

🚀 Why it stands out
• Low barriers vs. traditional crowdlending platforms
• SDG-exclusive project curation
• International reach, with traction in Spain, Canada, and beyond

Goparity is betting that the future of finance is transparent, inclusive, and built around doing good — one small investment at a time.

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💻 Rork: From broke and sleeping on floors to a16z-backed rocketship

Two founders, one viral tweet, and $2.8M later — Rork is rewriting the underdog playbook. Their mobile app builder lets anyone create full iOS apps with just a text prompt. Zero code. Zero fluff.

💡Built for the non-coders
• Users describe the app in plain English — Rork builds the iOS app automatically
• Designed for mobile-first — built on top of frameworks like React Native and Expo
• Targets creators, founders, and non-technical teams who want to launch apps instantly

🔥 A viral turning point
• On Feb 24, a tweet from investor Matt Shumer blew up — “My jaw just DROPPED”
• Within hours: 1M+ views, $100K from Austen Allred, $350K raised the same day
• Founders were $15K in credit card debt each just to keep the app online

💰 The seed round sprint
• After the tweet, angels and VCs flooded in: Hustle Fund, Founders Inc., ChapterOne, and more
• a16z Speedrun partner Andrew Chen swooped in with a last-minute term sheet
• $2.8M secured. Cohort starts July 28 with perks like $5M in infra credits

📈 From mattress to momentum
• $100K in revenue within 5 days of launch
• Now doing $550K+ ARR with just two full-time founders
• Co-founder Daniel Dhawan now has… a bed (and his own apartment)

Rork is what happens when obsession meets perfect timing — and a little help from Twitter.

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🟣 Bono is reinventing charitable giving for the digital era

Aiming to fix the clunky donation experience, Bono lets users set monthly giving plans, discover vetted causes, and track real-world impact — all in one sleek platform.

💡A simpler, smarter way to give
• Users pick causes they care about — climate, LGBTQ+ rights, animal welfare, and more
• Bono auto-distributes monthly donations (starting at just $5)
• A pilot AI chatbot matches donors with relevant charities

⭕️ Built for transparency and trust
• Weekly reports show real outcomes — meals donated, therapy sessions funded, etc.
• Mobile app tracks annual giving impact in real time
• Partnered with over a dozen content creators to spread awareness

📈 Momentum and mission
• Soft-launched in December during LA wildfire crisis
• Now covers 1.5M U.S. charities — all with high ratings and solid social proof
• Average user donates $20/month, with some giving over $1,000

💰 Backed by top execs
• Raised $1.6M pre-seed led by Progression.Fund
• Angels include senior leaders from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Intuit, and X/Twitter

Bono is turning passive charity into active impact — making giving as modern as the causes it supports.

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⭕️ Solena Materials is engineering the future of fashion — molecule by molecule

Imperial College spinout Solena just raised $6.7M to create high-performance, biodegradable fibres using AI and synthetic biology — with zero oil, no microplastics, and next-gen design baked in.

🧬 What they’re building
• AI-designed protein-based fibres that outperform traditional synthetics
• Created using engineered microbes — sustainable and biodegradable
• Tailored at the molecular level for strength, elasticity, and softness

⚙️ From lab to loom
• Relocating to a new pilot facility at Imperial’s Deep Tech Campus
• Equipped with automated bioreactors and fibre spinning lines
• Targeting integration into fashion and sports brands’ 2026 collections

🧠 Why it’s different
• Fibres aren’t just sustainable — they’re designed from scratch using deep learning
• Avoids the “green premium” by going after premium technical use-cases first
• Positioned to benefit from EU’s upcoming microplastics regulations

With custom AI-designed proteins, Solena wants to do for textiles what Impossible did for meat — redefine what’s possible without nature’s limits.

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📊 Skillvue wants to help you find your next top performer — already hiding in your org chart

AI-powered platform Skillvue just raised $6.3M to help companies move beyond resumes and job titles — and start hiring, promoting, and managing based on actual skills. The future of HR is skills-first.

🧠 What they’re building
• An AI-driven platform that analyzes hard and soft skills across candidates and employees
• Replaces gut-feel interviews with automated behavioral assessments
• Aims to unlock hidden talent internally and improve hiring precision

📊 Real traction, real results
• Predicts performance 5x more accurately than traditional assessments
• Boosts effective talent placement by over 100%
• Used by Unipol, Carrefour, Randstad, Credem, and Douglas

🧬 Scaling fast with a research-first model
• Created a Psychometric Team led by a clinical research veteran
• Split out an independent AI department to push model development
• Plans to launch next-gen Skills Assessment Agents for end-to-end automation

With €9.5M in total funding and growing global demand for upskilling, Skillvue wants to be the tech stack for the skills-based workplace revolution.

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