EverythingStartups Weekly

Welcome to everyone new here who signed up last week!

Let’s get into this week’s edition on what’s happening in startup & VC world + the main highlights. It was a MASSIVE week with lots of big news.

But first, you might find some of these resources helpful:

• 120+ Active Pre-Seed - Series A investors

• Venture Capital Trends August 2025

• 48 pre-seed accelerators

• Latest VC funds announced

• 350+ SaaS investors

• LPs investing in VC funds 

Partnership & collaboration opportunities. 

New Instagram account with more great startup & VC content.

Cheers,
Ivelina

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Important News + Data 🟣

What people are talking about…

• OpenAI becomes world’s most valuable private company at $500 billion, after employees and early investors sold $6.6 billion worth of stock to a group of global backers. It has now surpassed Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is valued at $456 billion.

• A new a16z report looks at which AI companies startups are actually paying for.

• Boost VC raised an $87 million fourth fund to back deep tech startups across space, bioscience, and crypto. Past funds delivered strong returns, with portfolio companies including Coinbase, Colossal Biosciences, and Radiant Nuclear.

• Thinking Machines Lab, a startup led by former OpenAI researchers including Mira Murati, unveiled its first product: Tinker. The tool automates the creation of custom frontier AI models, proving that the company is betting that fine-tuning powerful systems will define the next stage of AI development.

• AI now makes up 63.3% of all VC investment, far outpacing past hype cycles like fintech and crypto. Valuations keep climbing, pushing VCs toward earlier-stage AI deals and squeezing out smaller managers.

• The US has introduced a $100,000 H-1B visa fee and a salary-based lottery system, a move that could make it harder for American startups to hire global talent. The changes are already boosting Europe’s appeal, with companies reporting thousands of applications and governments launching new incentives to attract skilled workers.

🎤 What Happened in Venture in September 2025

Back with another monthly overview…

I’m back with the latest VC trends from September, and A LOT of capital is flowing right now, over $4 billion was raised by VC funds in September alone. 40+ new funds launched, the median fund size was $100M, and corporate venture made a comeback.

But the headline isn't the dollar amount, it's WHO raised and HOW they're deploying.

(btw, in the report the more precise numbers are slightly different since the data used is from 28 Aug-27 Sept 2025)

3 big VC trends from September:

1. CORPORATE VENTURE IS BACK

Sanofi: $625M because biotech VCs stopped writing checks

CoreWeave: Combining capital with compute resources

Robinhood: Filed for NYSE-listed fund giving retail access to private markets

2. HEALTHCARE SPECIALISTS DOMINATED

28% of all September funds focused on healthcare. Subspecialization is extreme - women's health, whole-person wellness, AI-driven biotech.

3. EUROPE’S SHARE IS GROWING

31% of funds were Europe-based, with new activity outside the usual hubs. The US still led at 46%, but capital is spreading.

And one more thing worth noting:

Standard Capital just closed a $425M inaugural fund and it is trying to reinvent Series A.

It was founded in 2025 by Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail, early OpenAI investor, longtime YC partner), Dalton Caldwell (YC managing partner), and Bryan Berg (early Stripe engineer).

Their focus is exclusively leading Series A rounds in post–product-market-fit companies. 

The twist is how they operate:

𝘍𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 & 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘴 → eliminating the weeks of negotiation that slow founders down.

𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳-𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 → no board seats, no legal fees, and founders set their own valuation and round size.

𝘘𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘺𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘴 → backing ~5 companies per batch, 4x per year.

𝘖𝘱𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 → no warm intro required, anyone can apply.

𝘈𝘐-𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 → using AI to streamline research, diligence, and memo writing.

What this means for:

Founders - Corporate VCs now offer compute, R&D access, and partnership opportunities traditional funds can't match so don't overlook them.

LPs - Development finance institutions and strategic corporates are building infrastructure traditional LPs ignore. 

Fund Managers - The general sentiment - that if you can't offer strategic resources beyond capital, you're competing on price alone. 

I compiled a 23-page report on September 2025 VC trends and patterns, check it out here.

New VC Funds Announced 🟣 

These new venture capital funds launched this past week…

• Essence VC – $41M for Early-stage Developer Tools and Infrastructure

• Archetype – $100M+ for Early-stage Blockchain and Crypto

• Untapped Capital – Launched Fund II for Pre-seed founders outside typical networks

• AZ-VC – Launched Fund II for post-revenue startups with proven product-market fit

• Touring Capital – $330M for AI-powered Software at Early-growth stage

• Sanofi Ventures – $625M for Biotech and Digital Health, focused on Immunology, Neurology, Rare Diseases, and Vaccines

• Evantic Capital – $400M for AI-powered companies across US, Europe, and Israel

• Expeditions – €100M+ for Security and Deep Tech, with €150M final close expected by end of 2025

• BECO Capital – $370M across Early-stage and Growth Funds, targeting Series B to pre-IPO

• Outlast Fund – €21M for B2B SaaS, Fintech, Digital Health, Cybersecurity across the Baltics and Nordics

• DFF Ventures – €50M for Early-stage startups in underdigitized industries, with €60M hard close expected in Q1 2026

• Boost VC – $87M for Deep Tech including Nuclear Energy, Genetics, and Space Travel

• Shorooq Partners – $100M Global AI Fund for AI and Deep Tech startups

• Breachway Capital – Launched a Growth Equity firm for B2B Software, AI, and Data companies at Series A+

• Concept Ventures – $88M dedicated to Pre-seed, with 50 new investments planned across Europe

Interesting Links 🟣

These caught my eye this week…

• NVIDIA, OpenAI, and the future of compute. Jensen Huang joins Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley on BG2 to discuss a $100B OpenAI partnership, the rise of AI factories, sovereign AI, and how accelerated computing is reshaping both global infrastructure and the American Dream.

• VC funds are finally returning capital. Carta’s Q2 data shows a sharp rise in DPI across vintages from 2017 to 2023, with 85% of 2017 funds now distributing and even 15% of 2023 funds already generating returns. Median TVPI and IRRs are trending up, while dry powder from older funds is nearly gone.

• Personal context search is the real SEO apocalypse. Eli Schwartz argues Google’s AI Mode could upend SEO with hyper-personalized results, making keywords irrelevant.

• Making AI write less like AI. Chris Silvestri argues that great AI-assisted writing comes from context engineering, not clever prompts, and shares a three-phase system any knowledge worker can apply.

• New investors are jumping into AI and megadeals. Crunchbase spotlights six firms from Maverick Silicon to Vanara Capital that are already leading nine-figure rounds and reshaping the venture landscape.

New Fund Highlight: Alt Capital 🟣

This fund is truly impressive because…

Europe's largest dedicated Pre-Seed fund just raised $88M in three weeks, backed by a remarkable vote of confidence: 70% of their own portfolio founders invested as LPs.

Concept Ventures closed Fund II at $88M with first close completed in just three weeks, expanding from their inaugural $65M fund raised in 2022.

Led by Founding Partner Reece Chowdhry, the fund targets Pre-Seed stage companies across the UK and Europe. Concept takes a people-first, sector-agnostic approach, focusing on exceptional founders with global ambitions before the wider market spots their potential.

Why it's notable:

• Exceptional track record and fundraising momentum. Fund I is a top 1% performer globally for its vintage, with 100% of portfolio companies successfully raising their next round. The oversubscribed $88M raise with 80% from US-based LPs demonstrates extraordinary cross-border investor confidence.

• Unmatched founder validation. Over 70% of portfolio founders, including ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski, invested as LPs in Fund II, a powerful endorsement of Concept's value-add and partnership approach that goes beyond capital.

• Strategic Pre-Seed specialization with proven results. Leading 90%+ of rounds with ~$1M checks across 50 companies provides meaningful ownership while reducing signaling risk. Portfolio companies have collectively raised over $450M since 2022, with standout investments including voice AI giant ElevenLabs and physics simulation AI VSim.

PS: Track new VC funds raised here.

Top Pre-Seed to Series A Funding Rounds This Week 🟣

Watch out for these…

• Lexroom, a Milan startup that helps law firms and corporate legal teams use AI to research cases, draft documents, and advise across different jurisdictions, raised a $19 million Series A round. Base10 Partners, Acurio Ventures, and View Different were part of the round.

• DataJoint, a Houston startup that helps life sciences and pharma researchers manage multimodal data and run AI workflows, raised a $4.9 million seed round. Nina Capital, Inoca Capital Partners, and Capital Factory were part of the deal.

• Confido Health, a New York startup that provides AI-powered voice agents to handle and document patient calls, raised a $10 million Series A round with Blume Ventures, Schema Ventures, Vicus Ventures, Together Fund, DeVC, and Medmountain Ventures joining.

• fan3, a London startup that helps artists and promoters curb ticket scalping and give verified fans priority access to live events, raised a $5 million round from Improbable.

• Tie, a Miami startup that helps e-commerce brands identify and convert anonymous website visitors into customers, raised a $10 million Series A round. Innovating Capital, Stage 2 Capital, and Hawke Ventures were part of the investors.