EverythingStartups Weekly

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Let’s get into this week’s edition on what’s happening in startup & VC world + the main highlights.

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• 120+ Active Pre-Seed - Series A investors

• Venture Capital Trends September 2025

• 48 pre-seed accelerators

• Latest VC funds announced

• 350+ SaaS investors

• LPs investing in VC funds 

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Important News + Data 🟣

What people are talking about…

• Andrew Tulloch, co-founder of Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab, has reportedly left the startup to join Meta. The move follows rumors that Mark Zuckerberg tried to acquire the AI company and later recruited several of its employees amid Meta’s push to strengthen its AI talent pool.

• VC legend Ron Conway quits Salesforce Foundation after Benioff’s National Guard comments.

• JPMorgan Chase launched a $1.5 trillion Security and Resiliency Initiative, a 10-year plan to finance and invest in industries tied to U.S. economic security. The bank will make up to $10 billion in direct equity and venture investments across sectors like advanced manufacturing, defense, energy resilience, and frontier technologies including AI and quantum computing.

• Goldman Sachs will acquire San Francisco-based Industry Ventures for $965 million. The deal, expected to close in early 2026, brings all 45 employees into Goldman’s asset management arm as the bank expands its presence in venture secondaries and private markets.

• DVC, the San Francisco venture capital firm founded by Marina Davidova and Nick Davidov, replaced its analysts with AI agents and 170 limited partners. The firm launched a $75 million fund to back Series A/B AI startups.

• MIT-alum brothers James and Anton Peraire-Bueno are on trial in New York for allegedly stealing $25 million in cryptocurrency in just 12 seconds. Prosecutors say they tricked Ethereum trading bots in a bait-and-switch scheme, while the brothers insist they ran a legitimate trading strategy using public data.

Hot rounds 🔥

• Deel raised $300 million Series E round at a $17.3 billion valuation from A-list fintech VC firm Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from existing investors like Coatue Management and General Catalyst.

• Campfire raised $65 million in a Series B round to redefine how finance works in the AI era. The round was co-led by Accel and Ribbit, with continued investment from Foundation Capital and Y Combinator, along with angel investors

• Oura raised $900 million in Series E funding at an $11 billion valuation led by Fidelity. The company has sold over 5.5 million rings and is expecting to surpass $1 billion in annual sales as demand for personalized health tech surges.

• Kalshi raised $300+ million at a $5 billion valuation in a round co-led by Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Paradigm, CapitalG, and Coinbase Ventures.

New VC Funds Announced 🟣 

These new venture capital funds launched this past week…

• Crystal Venture Partners – $33M for AI, Insurance, Risk Tech

• Origin Ventures – $140M for AI Infrastructure, AI Software, Frontier Tech

• Wave Function Ventures – $15M for Deep Tech, Aerospace, Robotics, Defense

• Creator Fund – $41M for Deep Tech, University Spinouts, Research Innovation

• Lisk – $15M for Web3, Payments, Identity, Supply Chain

• Notion Capital – $130M for B2B SaaS, Enterprise Software, Growth Stage

• Monterro – $2B for B2B Software, Nordic Tech, Growth Equity

• Ukraine Phoenix Tech Fund – $52M for Tech Startups, Software, Hardware

• Verne Capital – $102M for Defence Tech, Dual-Use, European Innovation

• Radical Ventures – $650M for AI, Foundational Models, Deep Learning

• Ascenta Capital – $325M for Biotech, Platform Tech, Healthcare

Learn more about each fund here.

Interesting Links 🟣

These caught my eye this week…

• Joshua Kushner plays by intuition. Colossus traces how the Thrive Capital founder turned instinct into empire, from backing Stripe and OpenAI to redefining what conviction looks like in venture. All in a story shaped by a family story of survival, reinvention, and quiet determination.

• AI won’t end work. Garry Tan from Y Combinator argues that AI isn’t replacing humans but redefining what we can do, showing through history and real companies how each wave of technology expands, rather than erases, human potential.

• Great investors know when to back off. Gil Dibner reflects on the balance between care and control in venture capital, showing that the strongest partnerships are built on trust, not interference.

• Inside Ray Dalio’s next chapter. From Bridgewater to the open sea, Ray Dalio joins Francine Lacqua aboard OceanX to talk about purpose, power, and the pursuit of radical transparency.

• The trillion-dollar mindset. Roelof Botha joins Jack Altman on Uncapped to talk about how Sequoia thinks about decision-making, paranoia, and cost as a competitive advantage. He also shares where he sees the next trillion-dollar markets emerging.

🎤 For the Founders: 11 fresh startup accelerators and programs

Founders, this one’s for you this week. I put together a list of the 11 latest accelerators, more info and application links over here.

1. 2048 Ventures - Pre-Seed Fast Track

2. Thrive Capital - Summer Fellowship 2026

3. Databricks - AI Accelerator Program

4. Snowflake - Startup Program

5. AI Explorer Program

6. Entrepreneurs First - “The Bridge” Residency for European founders in SF

7. WAVE Ventures x University of Michigan

8. Catalyst 2026 by Robin Hood Blue Ridge Labs

9. COMO Ventures x The Players Fund

10. Robert Gordon University Accelerator

11. Cure by Deerfield - Middle East Health Accelerator

New Fund Highlight: Maximum Frequency Ventures 🟣

This fund is truly impressive because…

Conviction in blockchain and crypto is back?! I feel like this is one of the rare Web3 funds out there launching now, and it’s worth taking a look at, especially since…

It was launched by four Aptos co-founders. Founded by Mo Shaikh, Neil Harris, Alexandre Tang, and Jerome Raynaud after scaling Aptos to a top-10 Layer 1 blockchain ($20B valuation, 200+ projects), MFV targets the gap that defined their own experience: raising $400M without a single crypto operator on the cap table.

The new $50M operator-led fund embeds with teams through 12-week sprints and stays until adoption takes hold, combining a founder residency program with early-stage investment.

Why it's notable:

• Operating muscle as product, not marketing. While most crypto funds write checks and wait for token events, MFV embeds operators who've built a top-10 blockchain themselves. This isn't advisory, it's hands-on work through structured sprints, recruiting help, and go-to-market execution until real adoption appears.

• Founder residency that ships companies, not decks. The program validates markets, ships MVPs, recruits teams, and guarantees your first check on exit. It's Y Combinator meets company-building studio, led by people who've actually scaled protocols to billions in valuation.

• Asia advantage at the infrastructure layer. With one-third of crypto's open-source developers in Asia and $130B in regional remittances annually, MFV's deep Asian relationships (exchanges, banks, partners proven at Aptos) give portfolio companies early distribution channels most Western funds can't access.

PS: Track new VC funds raised here.

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

Watch out for these…

• Alleviate Health, a startup using AI agents to recruit and screen patients for clinical trials, raised a $4.3 million seed round. Andreessen Horowitz led the deal, with Jack Altman also investing.

• LuxQuanta, a Barcelona startup developing quantum-safe encryption systems using CV-QKD, raised a $9.3 million Series A round led by Big Sur Ventures, with A&G, GMV, Wayra, EIC Fund, Corning, and GTD also participating.

• WellTheory, a New York startup that provides virtual care for autoimmune patients, raised a $14 million Series A round led by General Catalyst, with 7wire Ventures, Box Group, Ingeborg Investments, Up2 Opportunity Fund, and Accel also joining.

• Arbio, a four-year-old startup building an AI-native operating system for short-term rental property management and hospitality, raised a $36 million Series A round led by Eurazeo, with Open Ocean and Atlantic Labs also taking part.

• Clove, a London startup founded this year that offers AI-assisted financial advice through human advisers, raised a $14 million pre-seed round led by Accel, with Kindred Capital and Air Street Capital also investing.