April 24th Newsletter

Author

Da Yu
April 24, 2026

As of close on April 23rd, 2026

This week’s headlines delivered a sharp mix of geopolitical tension, corporate reshuffling, and AI disruption. On the macro front, Trump extended the U.S.-Iran cease-fire at Pakistan’s request but kept the Hormuz naval blockade in place, leaving Tehran’s role in renewed talks uncertain as maritime tensions rise. Meanwhile, UPS, FedEx, and DHL began seeking refunds tied to invalidated IEEPA tariffs. In tech, Apple named hardware chief John Ternus as its next CEO, effective September 1, with Tim Cook moving to executive chairman, while Microsoft announced its first-ever voluntary buyouts for up to 7% of eligible U.S. employees amid AI-driven restructuring. Adobe and Netflix authorized a $25B stock buyback this week. On the consumer side, the Trump administration is nearing a Spirit Airlines rescue package worth up to $500 million, including warrants. In media, Warner Bros. investors approved Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion merger, pending U.S. and EU antitrust clearance. Finally, Deezer’s disclosure that 44% of daily uploads are now AI-generated.

Top 5 AI Highlights

[1] 💰 SpaceX secured an option to acquire AI coding startup Cursor for $60 billion or invest $10 billion, as xAI also explored a broader partnership with Cursor and Mistral to strengthen Elon Musk’s AI push ahead of a potential June IPO and rising coding-tool competition. More from NY Times and Business Insider.

[2] 💵 Amazon will invest up to $25B more in Anthropic, adding to $8B prior funding; the company committed $100B+ to AWS AI infrastructure, boosting Trainium chip demand and Claude capacity. Additionally, reports have emerged that the NSA is using Anthropic’s restricted Mythos cyber model for vulnerability scanning, despite a Pentagon dispute that labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk over access limitations. More on the Amazon investment on CNBC, details on the NSA and Mythos are on TechCrunch.

[3] 📈 AI chip startup Cerebras filed for an IPO after delaying its 2024 listing; the Nvidia rival is valued at $23 billion with $510 million in 2025 revenue amid major AWS and OpenAI deals. Read more on TechCrunch.

[4] 👷 Meta and CBRE launched LevelUp, a free four-week fiber technician training program run by CBRE that prepares workers for roles at Meta U.S. construction sites via its contractor network, supporting demand from 27 data centers that have created 30,000-plus construction and 5,000 permanent jobs. More from Meta.

[5] 🛠️ Mozilla says Firefox 150 patched 271 AI-discovered vulnerabilities using Anthropic’s Mythos Preview, highlighting both the near-term strain on developers and the urgent need to stay ahead of increasingly capable attackers. Details from Wired. 

✨Open Source AI Development

[1] 🐋DeepSeek launched V4 Flash and Pro, optimized for Huawei Ascend chips, touting open-source coding and reasoning gains, a 1M-token context window, and progress toward China’s AI chip self-reliance. Separately, DeepSeek is in talks with Tencent and Alibaba to raise outside capital for the first time. More from Bloomberg and The Information.

[2] Alibaba’s Qwen open-sourced Qwen3.6-27B, a dense multimodal model delivering flagship agentic coding, strong reasoning, simpler deployment, and benchmark gains over its 397B-parameter predecessor. More from Qwen.

[3] 🤖 Tencent launched Hy3 Preview, a 295B-parameter flagship open-source AI model led by ex-OpenAI researcher Yao Shunyu, prioritizing enterprise deployment and agentic performance over sheer scale in China’s intensifying AI race. More from Forbes.

[4] 🌙 Moonshot AI launched Kimi K2.6, an open-source model that rivals GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 4.6 on coding benchmarks, introducing “agent swarms” that coordinate up to 300 parallel sub-agents for long-horizon, multi-step autonomous tasks and full-stack development. More from Moonshot.

[5] 🧠 Xiaomi unveiled MiMo-V2.5-Pro beta, touting stronger long-horizon agentic coding, lower token costs, and benchmark gains, while signaling the MiMo-V2.5 series will soon be officially open-sourced. More from Xiaomi.

Founder’s Corner

ARR Range at the Time of Raise

Source: X

What We Read This Week

  • Reported by Reuters on SpaceX’s S1 filing: The summer IPO seeks a $1.75 trillion valuation and $75 billion raise, touting a $28.5 trillion TAM led by enterprise AI, despite xAI’s $6.4 billion loss and heavy capex. (Reuters) 

  • Cognition AI is discussing a raise at a $25 billion valuation, fueled by investor appetite after SpaceX’s Cursor bid, underscoring fierce AI-coding competition and enterprise demand for Devin. (Bloomberg)

  • Microsoft reportedly considered acquiring Cursor as it seeks to strengthen its AI coding position beyond GitHub Copilot, but declined to bid; SpaceX then secured its $60B deal, highlighting intensifying competition in AI developer tools. (CNBC)

  • TSMC plans to open an advanced chip packaging plant in Arizona by 2029, adding CoWoS and 3D-IC capacity critical for AI chips. The move eases U.S. supply bottlenecks and supports customers like Nvidia and Apple. (Reuters)

  • Vercel said hackers accessed some customer data before its recently disclosed April breach, indicating a broader, longer-running compromise; the company cited prior account takeovers and newly identified affected customers. (TechCrunch)

  • Google is scrambling to catch up in AI coding as rivals like Anthropic gain traction; internal politics, fragmented products, and competing teams have slowed execution, prompting efforts to unify coding tools under one strategy. (Bloomberg)

  • Jensen Huang forcefully defended Nvidia’s push to sell AI chips in China in a podcast with Dwarkesh Patel. (YouTube). 

  • China’s humanoid robots dominated a Beijing half-marathon, with “Lightning” finishing in 50 minutes and beating the (human) world record. Unlike last year’s failures, most robots completed the race, showcasing rapid progress in robotics and AI development. (CNBC)

  • Dylan Patel turned SemiAnalysis into an AI-industry power broker—250,000 subscribers, $100 million revenue, deep Nvidia influence, and growing scrutiny over blurred lines among journalism, consulting, and startup investing (The Information)

  • Forbes released their 2026 edition of the AI 50 List (Forbes)

AI Fundraising News (Apr 17 — Apr 23)

  • 10x Science: AI protein discovery company, raised a $4.8M seed round

  • AcuityMD: AI medtech sales automation company, raised an $80M Series C

  • Afresh: AI grocery ordering intelligence company, raised $34M

  • Alloy Therapeutics: AI drug development platform company, raised a $40M Series E

  • Archil: AI data access infrastructure company, raised an $11M Series A

  • Astor: AI investment advisory platform company, raised a $5M seed

  • Audrey AI: AI audit evidence automation company, raised $1.8M

  • Balerion: AI mortgage origination automation company, raised a $6M seed

  • Band: AI multi-agent interaction layer company, raised a $17M seed

  • BuildForever: AI email productivity company, raised a $9.5M seed

  • Capsule Security: AI agent runtime security company, raised a $7M seed

  • Cloneable: AI heavy industry automation company, raised a $4.6M seed

  • Cookiy AI: AI voice insights company, raised a $7M+ pre-seed

  • Copperhelm: AI cloud security company, raised a $7M seed round

  • Core Scientific: AI data center infrastructure company, raised $3.3B

  • Courier Health: AI biopharma patient experience company, raised a $50M Series B

  • CuspAI: AI materials discovery company, raised $200M+

  • DOJO AI: AI marketing automation company, raised a $6M seed

  • Eigen: AI relationship coordination company, raised a $15M seed

  • Era: AI hardware agent creation company, raised an $11M seed

  • Factory: AI coding agents company, raised $150M

  • Gravity: AI business intelligence automation company, raised $7M

  • InsightFinder AI: AI observability and diagnostics company, raised a $15M Series B

  • Kos.ai: AI invoice and contract review company, raised $12M

  • Loop: AI supply chain analytics company, raised a $95M Series C

  • Lua: AI agent workflow platform company, raised $5.8M

  • Mosaic: AI deal modeling automation company, raised an $18M Series A

  • NeoCognition: AI self-learning agents company, raised a $40M seed

  • Octen: AI agent web search API company, raised a $10M seed

  • Omni: AI enterprise data translation company, raised a $120M series C

  • Orkes: AI agentic workflow orchestration company, raised a $60M Series B

  • Outcraft AI: AI customer engagement agents company, raised a $2.4M pre-seed

  • Petual: AI audit automation platform company, raised a $20M pre-seed and seed

  • Project Prometheus: AI engineering simulation company, raised $10B

  • Qualitate: AI-native primary intelligence company, raised a $7M seed

  • Recursive Superintelligence: AI self-improving systems company, raised $500M+

  • Resolve AI: AI production incident response company, raised a $40M Series A extension

  • Schematik: AI hardware design automation company, raised a $4.6M pre-seed

  • Sooth Labs: AI geopolitical forecasting company, raised $50M

  • Spektr: AI compliance infrastructure company, raised a $20M Series A

  • Stendr: AI drone threat tracking company, raised $5.4M

  • Syenta: AI chip packaging technology company, raised $26M

  • Vast Data: AI data infrastructure company, raised a $1B Series F

  • Verda: AI cloud hyperscaler company, raised €100M