Tags: venture capital

David Sacks announced the end of his 130‑day tenure as the Trump administration’s AI and crypto czar and said he will now serve as co‑chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). In the new role, Sacks will help steer the council’s work on AI, advanced semiconductors, quantum computing and nuclear power, while pushing the administration’s national AI framework. The move shifts him from a direct policy‑making position to a more advisory capacity alongside industry leaders such as Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison. Sacks also clarified that his recent podcast remarks on the Iran conflict were personal views, not official policy. Read more

OpenAI announced it will shut down its Sora video‑generation app and API, a move that also ends the high‑profile licensing partnership with Disney. Executives said the decision follows internal discussions about research priorities and resource allocation, noting that Sora required extensive compute power that limited other teams. The company reiterated its focus on core products such as ChatGPT, Codex and the AI browser, while hinting at a forthcoming “superapp” strategy. The announcement caught many employees by surprise and signals a shift away from experimental side projects toward practical adoption. Read more

Gimlet Labs, founded by former Pixie co‑founders including Stanford adjunct professor Zain Asgar, announced an $80 million Series A led by Menlo Ventures. The startup’s “multi‑silicon inference cloud” software lets AI workloads run simultaneously across CPUs, GPUs, and high‑memory systems, promising 3‑to‑10× faster inference at the same cost and power. Partnerships with major chip makers such as NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, ARM, Cerebras and d‑Matrix support the platform, which targets large model labs and data‑center operators. The round brings total funding to $92 million and backs a team of 30 employees. Read more

Helion, a fusion energy company backed by Sam Altman, is in early talks to supply electricity to OpenAI. The potential agreement could allocate a share of Helion's future output—estimated at several gigawatts by the early 2030s—to the AI firm. Helion’s approach uses magnetic conversion of fusion energy directly into electricity, a departure from traditional heat‑based methods. The company plans to scale rapidly, targeting hundreds of reactors that together could generate tens of gigawatts. Altman has stepped down from Helion’s board to facilitate the partnership, and Microsoft has already signed a similar power purchase agreement with Helion. Read more

Paris‑Milan venture firm 360 Capital has raised €85 million for a new deep‑tech vehicle supported by at least one major European defence prime. The fund, which adds to the firm’s €500 million‑plus asset base, targets dual‑use technologies at the intersection of software, hardware and national security. Backed by defence contractors seeking faster access to innovative startups, the vehicle aims to bridge Europe’s slow, fragmented procurement processes and provide portfolio companies with strategic procurement pathways. The move reflects a broader shift toward defence‑linked deep‑tech investing across the continent. Read more

AI‑focused companies captured a record share of venture capital, raising over $128 billion and accounting for 41 % of total funding. A handful of firms such as OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI secured multi‑billion‑dollar rounds, driving a K‑shaped market where capital is concentrated among a few high‑valuation startups. Newer venture funds that invested early in these AI ventures reported the strongest internal rate of return (IRR) in years, highlighting the rapid financial impact of the AI boom while underscoring the risk of a potentially over‑heated market. Read more