EverythingStartups Weekly

Welcome to all the new visionaries here who signed up last week!

I’m off to Dubai this week for a few days and then to one my favorite summer places for European summer - Bansko. So, things might get a bit slower here, let’s see.

Also, remember to stay tuned for something new that will be great for both founders and investors, and that I’ll be launching in partnership with Katha VC.

Let’s get into this week’s edition on what’s happening in startup & VC world (new essays and interviews by big names and 2 new massive VC funds!) & the main highlights.

But first, check out these resources:

• 120+ Active Pre-Seed - Series A investors

• 48 pre-seed accelerators

• Latest VC funds announced

• 350+ SaaS investors

• LPs investing in VC funds

• Understanding founder vs VC investment memos

Partnership & collaboration opportunities. 

Cheers,
Ivelina

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Important News 🟣

• Anthropic kills its AI-generated “Claude Explains” blog after just one month. The reason? Mixed feedback and concerns about transparency.

• Felicis founder Aydin Senkut is celebrating his 20th year as an institutional early-stage investor by announcing the firm’s biggest fund yet: a $900 million Fund X.

• Meta is in talks to invest over $10B in Scale AI, in what could become its largest external AI deal to date. The companies are already partnering on a program called Defense Llama, a version of Meta’s Llama large language model intended for military use.

• Anysphere raises $900M at a $9.9B valuation, as Cursor, its AI-powered coding assistant, passes $500M in ARR.

• OpenAI hits $10B in annual recurring revenue, doubling from last year. ChatGPT products now serve 500M weekly users and 3M business clients.

• Y Combinator debuts its first spring batch with AI-heavy startups tackling mortgages, pharma, solopreneur ops, and SMS-native chatbots. This highlights a shift toward real-world, vertical applications.

Interesting Links 🟣

• The Generalist has been researching the story of the iconic Founders Fund and Peter Thiel over the past 18 months. Finally, he pulls back the curtain in a new four-part series covering Silicon Valley’s most controversial fund.

• Sam Altman’s brother, Jack Altman, sits with Marc Andreessen for a deep dive into VC and the current AI landscape.

• Tech leaders push back on 7-day workweek narrative. Investors praising grind culture face backlash from founders who say endurance, not exhaustion, builds great companies.

• Sam Altman says the takeoff has started. In his latest essay, the OpenAI CEO argues we are entering an era of abundant intelligence and energy, where AI accelerates science, reshapes work, and makes “idea guys” finally relevant.

• Tech angels are moving into indie film. After backing startups for a decade, one founder shares how storytelling became her next asset class.

• AI startups are growing faster than ever, with B2C apps now outpacing B2B in revenue. Median ARR hits $4.2M in 12 months as speed becomes the main advantage and rapid product updates are now center stage.

• Building in AI? Here are 29 top angels and VCs cutting checks at pre-seed to Series A in 2025. Names like Andrew Ng, Erica Brescia, Mark Suster, and Sarah Catanzaro are actively backing early-stage AI bets.

• Meet Europe’s VC mafias. A new analysis maps the firms spawning the next generation of investors. Seedcamp, Atomico, and Accel lead the pack, while others have fewer offspring than expected.

🎙️ Thoughts & Current Dialogue: SEO ➜ GEO

In case you missed it, a16z is all in on GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and considering the way things are going with SEO, it’s no shocker they’re hyping this up.

Their latest piece, dropped by partners Zach Cohen and Seema Amble, breaks down how search is flipping from old-school SEO to something totally new.

Forget grinding for top spots on Google with keywords and backlinks; it’s all about getting AI models like GPT-4o or Claude to name-drop your brand in their answers.

With AI search popping up everywhere, think Safari, Instagram, even Siri, people are asking longer questions (like 23 words on average) and diving deeper (6-minute sessions).

That means brands gotta make their content clear, punchy, and easy for AI to vibe with.

No more chasing page ranks, now it’s about “reference rates,” or how often your brand gets a shout-out by these models. Tools like Profound and Goodie are already helping brands track this, showing who’s getting love from AI and who’s not.

In a nutshell: Will AI models remembers your brand?

 
New VC Fund Highlight: Amplify Partners Raises $900M 🟣

Amplify Partners just dropped a massive $900M bomb, and if you’re a technical founder, you’re gonna wanna hear this.

Their latest move is all about doubling down on engineers and researchers across new funds: a $400M core fund for first checks, a $300M fund to grow their existing stars, and a fresh $200M digital bio fund.

Brownie points for:

🍪 Always-on support: Amplify’s “first call” vibe means they’re hyping you up before you even incorporate, with intros, advice, and hands-on help to nail your pitch.

 🍪 Technical cred: Their investors live for code and research, and they’ve been geeking out on AI and bio since before it was cool (hello, 2016 Recursion bet).

 🍪 Network flex: A 150+ founder crew, plus ties to Datadog, Fastly, and bio bigwigs like Chai Discovery, means serious connection juice.

 🍪 Track record: Early checks into Datadog, Fastly, dbt, and Runway show they can spot unicorns before they sprout horns.

But... Can Amplify keep the magic going?

Solo risk: Betting on bio’s a bold pivot, can they nail a whole new field with the same tech-founder playbook?

Market chaos: Even Amplify admits the funding world’s a mess right now so can their startups outlast the cash crunch?

Let’s see if their tech-nerd bet pays off.

PS: You can track all the latest new VC fund raises here.

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

RetroRate, a San Diego-based startup helping homebuyers and real estate agents access low-rate mortgages from sellers, raised a $2.2 million seed round. Swift Ventures, Eniac VC, and others participated in the round.

Maze, a London-based startup offering an AI-powered tool to detect and fix cloud security issues, raised a $25 million Series A round. Theory Ventures, Cherry Ventures, and Tapestry VC invested.

Nooks, a Crystal City, VA-based startup providing secure classified workspaces for government and defense clients, raised a $25 million Series A round. Zigg Capital, Upper90, and others backed the company.

Sintra, a Lithuanian startup offering AI assistants for small business owners on Gmail and Facebook, raised a $17 million seed round. Earlybird VC, Inovo, and Practica Capital participated.

Piston, a Cupertino-based mobility startup enabling QR-code fuel payments for fleet drivers, raised a $6.1 million seed round. Spark Capital, Bond, and Pear VC invested.