🪙 Surge AI nears Scale AI with $25B valuation

Surge AI is about to land a $1B round at a $25B valuation — putting it neck-and-neck with Scale AI in the race to label the AI world.

Profitable from day one, Surge is quietly becoming a heavyweight in one of the most overlooked parts of the AI stack.

🖱 Built a tool that finds human experts to label data better and faster than anyone else
🖱 First-ever fundraise, already playing in the big leagues
🖱 2024 revenue hit $1.2B — with real profits, not just paper growth
🖱 Rival Scale AI raised $14.3B from Meta and sits at $29B
🖱 Surge now looks like the #2 pick for investors betting on AI’s plumbing

Not every AI boom story is about models — some are winning big just by making them smarter.

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🎨 Figma IPO: $60B for a design app?

Markets at all-time highs — perfect moment for IPO frenzy.
After Circle mooned from $29 to $298, bankers rushed to repeat the magic.

Now it’s Figma’s turn:
🟡 Priced at $33 — $20B valuation
🟡 “Adobe tried to buy us” used as justification
🟡 40× oversubscribed
🟡 Opened at $85, halted at $93
🟡 $60B market cap — for a design tool

Retail might squeeze a few % from $85–95,
but the real upside was eaten on Day 1.

For context:
🟡 Nvidia IPO — $474M
🟡 Starbucks — $207M
🟡 Monster Energy — $8M → now worth $60B (7,500×)

Monster took 20 years to reach $60B.
Figma started there.

What’s the upside from $60B for Figma?
And who’s really being greedy here?

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🌍 Venture Events — August 2025

A curated list of key startup and VC events this month. Follow the trends, build your network, and find your next opportunity.

📍 Vntr Investor Roundtable
August 2 – Hanoi, Vietnam
Regional roundtable on VC trends across Southeast Asia

📍 Enterprise AI Summit Vancouver 2025
August 10 – Vancouver, Canada
AI-focused summit with investment panels, use cases, and workshops

📍 VC Fast Pitch
August 14 – Online
Startup pitch sessions with live feedback from global investors

📍 TechBBQ 2025
August 27–28 – Copenhagen, Denmark
Scandinavia’s largest startup+VC conference: 8,000+ attendees, 1,200 investors, 2,200 startups

🤝 Whether you're raising, investing, or scouting trends — August is packed with high-signal VC gatherings.

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🚨 OpenAI raises $8.3B at $300B valuation

According to the New York Times, OpenAI has raised $8.3 billion at a jaw-dropping $300 billion valuation — months ahead of schedule.

The deal is part of its plan to secure $40B in total funding this year.

🖱 First reported by DealBook, this is OpenAI’s largest round to date
🖱 SoftBank has already committed $30B for the year
🖱 The funding underscores the escalating race for AI dominance
🖱 Wall Street attention has shifted from tech giants to frontier labs like OpenAI

The compute arms race is in full swing — and OpenAI just pulled far ahead.

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🚀 Anthropic set to join world’s top 3 most valuable startups

Iconiq Capital is reportedly leading a new $5B round into Anthropic, pushing its valuation to $170B — nearly 3x its March valuation. That would make it the third most valuable private company globally, behind only OpenAI and SpaceX.

🖱 Iconiq manages capital for Zuckerberg, Hoffman, Moskovitz, and other tech billionaires
🖱 Anthropic is now in talks with MGX (UAE) and Amazon
🖱 The company had previously resisted Middle East capital, but CEO Dario Amodei said it’s now a matter of survival
🖱 The AI funding race is intensifying, and top players are reaching megacorp valuations faster than ever

If the deal closes, Anthropic won’t just be an AI lab — it’ll be an economic superpower.

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🐦 Who VCs and founders actually follow on Twitter

Want to understand how investors think? Follow who they follow.

These accounts shape startup culture — not just react to it. Sharp takes, deep experience, and trend-spotting in real time.

🔗 Shl
Founder of Shl.vc and Superhuman investor. Writes about founder mindset, product strategy, and early-stage trends.

🔗 Paul Graham
YC cofounder and OG of VC wisdom. Threads read like essays on building, scaling, and avoiding founder traps.

🔗 Sam Altman
CEO of OpenAI, ex-YC president. Rare but insightful posts that usually hint at bigger shifts.

🔗 NFX
Venture fund known for deep dives on network effects, pitch decks, and startup psychology.

🔗 Balaji Srinivasan
Ex-CTO of Coinbase, GP at a16z. Writes about crypto, future states, and alt-institutions — bold and contrarian.

🔗 Ben Tossell
Founder of Makerpad (acquired by Zapier). Focused on no-code, MVPs, and launching fast with minimal overhead.

🔗 Chris Messina
Invented the hashtag. Talks UX, product ecosystems, and remote team design — especially useful for early-stage.

🔗 Ben Horowitz
a16z cofounder. Mix of hard-earned wisdom, company case studies, and straight-up operator truth.

These aren’t just popular accounts — they set the tone for the whole early-stage world. Worth a follow if you build or invest.

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🤖 AI agents are now a real business — not just a demo

What started as experimental tools is turning into serious revenue. Five AI agent startups have crossed $100M in ARR: Anysphere, Glean, Mercor, Replit, and Lovable.

The agent market is exploding — from $5B to $13B in just a year.

🖱 42% of AI agent startups now operate at commercial scale
🖱 Revenue per employee is catching up with Big Tech
🖱 Valuations go as high as 127x revenue
🖱 Nearly half of the top players were founded in the last 3 years
🖱 Winners solve tasks with clear ROI — coding, support, ops

Next up: dominance will go to those with tight workflow integration, unique data, and high switching costs.

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🪙 Ramp raises $500M to scale its finance-focused AI agents

Ramp has secured $500M in fresh funding at a $22.5B valuation to expand its AI-driven financial automation tools. The round, led by Iconiq, comes as demand surges for agentic systems in corporate finance.

🖱 Ramp's AI agents automate tasks like expense compliance, procurement, and bookkeeping
🖱 Thousands of companies, including Quora, are already using them to replace entry-level accounting work
🖱 CEO: “We’re teaching software to think like people”
🖱 Concerns remain — 80% of high-automation firms cite privacy and security as major hurdles
🖱 Iconiq also leads Anthropic’s massive $170B valuation push

Ramp isn’t just digitizing finance — it’s trying to replace the grunt work entirely.

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📈 Meta doubles down on AI, but Reality Labs keeps bleeding

Meta will spend up to $72 billion on AI infrastructure this year — a $30B jump from 2024.

But while it fuels the compute arms race, its metaverse unit Reality Labs posted a $4.5B loss for Q2, adding to a staggering $70B in cumulative losses since 2020.

🖱 AI infra spend this year will reach $66B–$72B, up from $40B in 2024
🖱 Reality Labs lost $4.5B in Q2 alone — the worst quarterly result in its history
🖱 Since launch, the division has now burned over $70B chasing VR and AR ambitions
🖱 Meta’s total revenue rose, but AI infra costs and metaverse bets remain a drag

One side of Meta is building the future — the other is still paying for Zuck’s past vision.

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📊 Crypto Venture Weekly: July 28 – August 1, 2025

$322M raised across 26 projects this week, with capital flowing into stablecoin infra, decentralized compute, and RWA protocols.

Here’s what the top 10 are building 👇

🖱 RD Technologies ($40M, Matrixport, Hivemind, Immutable)
Stablecoin infrastructure provider behind HKDR, backed 1:1 by the Hong Kong dollar.

🖱 Billions ($30M, Coinbase, Polychain, Polygon)
Mobile-first identity network for verifying humans and AI across applications.

🖱 Stable ($28M, Bitfinex, Hack VC, KuCoin)
New L1 chain built for stablecoins — USDT used for gas.

🖱 Subzero Labs ($20M, Pantera, Coinbase, Mysten)
RISC-V-based blockchain for internet-scale decentralized applications.

🖱 Zodia Markets ($18.25M, Circle, Pharsalus)
Digital asset platform enabling institutional trading via stablecoin rails.

🖱 KAIO ($11M, Laser Digital, Brevan Howard)
New protocol for tokenizing and managing real-world assets.

🖱 Manifold Labs ($10.5M, OSS Capital, DCG)
Decentralized AI compute layer built on Targon and Bittensor networks.

🖱 STON.fi ($9.5M, Ribbit, CoinFund)
DEX and DeFi suite built natively on the TON blockchain.

🖱 Due ($7.3M, Speedinvest, Fabric, Semantic)
Cross-border payments platform with stablecoin and fiat rails in 80+ markets.

🖱 TACEO ($5.5M, Archetype, a16z CSX)
Privacy-preserving compute infra using ZK and MPC for encrypted data handling.

Investor interest continues to converge around programmable money, crypto x AI tooling, and modular infra for scale.

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🖌 Figma IPO: every VC's dream seed round

Figma’s IPO glow-up is making early investors look like prophets. Let’s count the returns.

🖱 Index Ventures:
$3.8M seed → $7.2B → 1,900×

🖱 Greylock Partners:
$14M → $6.7B → 480×

🖱 Kleiner Perkins:
$25M → $6B → 240×

🖱 Sequoia Capital:
$40M → $1.1B → 27×

🖱 a16z:
$50M → ~$1.5B → 30×

🖱 Durable Capital:
$200M → ~$1.4B → 7×

The craziest stat?
Index Ventures only put 1% of its fund into the seed — and now it’s returned 17.5× the entire fund from that single bet.

Sometimes one stroke really does paint the whole picture.

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💼 Luxury fatigue hits Gucci, Dior, and LV as sales drop in 2025

The owners of Gucci, Dior, and Louis Vuitton reported a 7–15% YoY sales drop in H1 2025. The decline is driven by global economic instability — and a growing sense of “luxury fatigue” among consumers.

🖱 Kering saw Gucci down 25% and YSL down 10%
🖱 LVMH confirmed weak demand in Japan, where tourist spending collapsed
🖱 China luxury demand dropped 18–20% in 2024
🖱 Bain reports online engagement with luxury brands fell 40% vs 2022
🖱 Gen Z demand dropped 7% — more buyers turn to secondhand and even replicas
🖱 LVMH's Loro Piana unit was hit with labor rights violations and placed under external management for a year

The luxury slowdown isn’t just cyclical — it’s cultural. A new generation is redefining what “status” means.

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🚛 Pitch deck vs. reality

Slides promise one thing — execution delivers another.

Remember when Elon’s “unbreakable” Cybertruck window shattered on stage?

Same thing happens in venture 👇

✅"CAC $1, LTV $1000"
❌"We’re hiring a PM and looking for our first users"

A great pitch is just a hypothesis.
What really matters is what happens after the check clears.

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⚡️ Musk offered $29B Tesla package — but only if he stays

Tesla’s board has proposed a new $29 billion stock compensation plan for Elon Musk — on one condition: he must stay in charge for at least two more years and hold the shares for five.

🖱 The plan reflects growing pressure from the AI talent war
🖱 Unlike his 2018 package, this one isn’t tied to market cap targets
🖱 For the first time, Musk is formally required to remain at Tesla
🖱 Shareholder vote scheduled for November
🖱 If Delaware’s Supreme Court upholds the previous $56B package rejection, this deal will be void

Tesla’s betting billions that keeping Musk is more valuable than chasing KPIs.

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🤖 85% of YC startups are now AI startups

Y Combinator’s latest batch is 85% AI — a sharp signal of where early-stage conviction is headed.

The gold rush isn’t over — it’s still accelerating.

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📉 Why predictions fail — and how great investors prepare instead

Your job isn’t to predict the future. It’s to be ready for it.

In venture, success doesn’t come from guessing right — it comes from building systems that thrive in uncertainty. The best investors don’t speculate. They prepare.

🖱 Winning comes from readiness, not foresight
🖱 Resilience is built on structured thinking and scenario planning

When the future is unclear, smart investors stay grounded:

🖱 They build systems for fast, objective opportunity analysis
🖱 They test assumptions constantly and act with clarity

⚡️ In venture and beyond, discipline beats prediction — every time.

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📈 Top 6 fresh venture deals

Here’s a snapshot of the week’s biggest venture rounds — and the markets they’re reshaping:

🖱 Blaxel — $7.3M seed
Agent-native infra platform without traditional cloud dependencies.
Backers: First Round Capital, Y Combinator

🖱 Hadrian — $260M Series C
Industrial AI startup automating manufacturing and defense supply chains.

🖱 Bedrock Robotics — $80M Seed + Series A
Autonomous systems for heavy construction equipment, backed by NVIDIA, Eclipse, 8VC.

🖱 Groq — $600M in progress ($6B valuation)
AI chipmaker nearing close of major raise led by Disruptive ($300M+).

🖱 Ramp — $500M Series E-2
Fintech automation giant hits $22.5B valuation.
Backers include ICONIQ, Founders Fund, GIC, Coatue

🖱 Anaconda — $150M+ Series C ($1.5B valuation)
AI & data science platform raises from Insight Partners, Mubadala.

AI infra, automation, and deeptech continue to dominate capital flows. From agent-native cloud to autonomous construction and vertical AI platforms — unique edge plays are pulling in the biggest checks.

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