December 19th Newsletter

Author

Da Yu
December 19, 2025

We will be on Holiday break from next week until the week of January 5th. Thank you for your continued support. Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas Holiday and a great start to the new year!

As of close on December 18, 2025

Markets are showing dynamic shifts as US labor data signals a sluggish recovery, with November nonfarm payrolls rising just 64,000 (after falling 105,000 in October) and unemployment growing to 4.6%. In tech funding, Waymo is exploring a $15B+ round at a near $100B valuation, led by Alphabet, highlighting its leadership in fully driverless ride-hailing, while Databricks targets over $4B at a $134B valuation to expand AI, data offerings, and global hiring. Following up on last week’s news, SpaceX continues its IPO preparations with a Wall Street bake-off, eyeing a potential 2026 listing and a secondary share sale valuing the company near $800 billion. Warner rejected Paramount’s $108B hostile bid, calling its funding “illusory,” and reaffirmed its $72B Netflix deal as safer, fully financed, and superior for shareholders. Meanwhile, TikTok secured deals with Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX for a 45% stake in a new U.S. entity, aiming to avert a U.S. ban and shift data control while ByteDance retains 19.9%.

Our 2025 Year in Review is now live on our website. Check it out here.

Top 5 AI Highlights

[1] 🤝Amazon is negotiating a $10 billion investment in OpenAI, potentially pushing its valuation above $500 billion and integrating Amazon Trainium chips to support an upcoming IPO. Separately, OpenAI is reported to raise up to $100B at up to $830B valuation. Details on Reuters and WSJ.

[2] 📉 CoreWeave shares plunged 46% in six weeks as construction delays, heavy debt, failed merger talks, and short-seller criticism intensified investor fears of an AI infrastructure bubble. Read more on WSJ.

[3] ⭐ Google launched Gemini 3 Flash, a faster, lower-cost multimodal reasoning model now rolled out broadly across the Gemini app and Search AI Mode. Google positions Flash as near frontier quality, competitive with Gemini 3 Pro and OpenAI GPT 5.2 on public benchmarks, while improving latency and efficiency for consumer and enterprise scale usage. Details on Google.

[4] ☁️ Salesforce agreed to acquire agentic AI marketing firm Qualified, strengthening its B2B automation pipeline. Financial terms undisclosed; deal expected to close in Q1 FY2027. More info on Salesforce.

[5] 🤖 Chinese AI chip startup MetaX gained nearly eightfold on its Shanghai debut, raising $596 million despite 2024 losses, reflecting investor enthusiasm for China’s tech independence and valuing the company at $48 billion. Info on WSJ.

✨Open Source AI Development

[1] 🥑 Meta is pivoting from open-source Llama to a closed, monetizable AI model, codenamed Avocado, with Zuckerberg deeply involved, massive spending, and leadership reshuffles as it races rivals to profitable, superintelligent AI. See more on Bloomberg.

[2] 👁️ Nvidia launched its third-generation open-source Nemotron AI large language models, starting with the efficient Nemotron 3 Nano, aiming to compete with Chinese models while offering transparency, security, and enterprise customization. More on Reuters.

[3] ⚡ Xiaomi claims their newly-launched open-source MiMo-V2-Flash language model matches leading reasoning models, excels in long-context and software engineering benchmarks, and approaches GPT-5-High performance while remaining freely available under the MIT license. Info on Xiaomi.

Source: X

[4] 🗓️ Nvidia acquired SchedMD, the company behind the open-source computing workload scheduler Slurm, to strengthen its AI software ecosystem, bolster CUDA dominance, and support large-scale generative AI workloads amid intensifying competition; deal terms undisclosed. Details on Reuters.

[5] 🎥 The Allen Institute for AI launched Molmo 2, an open-source video understanding model that rivals Gemini 3 on grounding and tracking, aiming to prove that smaller open models can effectively serve enterprise video analysis needs. Find out more on VentureBeat.

Founder’s Corner

More Startups are Getting to Series A

Source: X

What We Read This Week

  • DoorDash launched Zesty, an AI-powered social app in SF and NYC, letting users discover and share restaurant recommendations via personalized chatbot search, expanding beyond food delivery. (TechCrunch)

  • Google is testing CC, a Gemini-powered email assistant delivering daily tasks, calendar, and update summaries to users’ inboxes; available to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. (TechCrunch) 

  • Notion launched a $300 million employee share sale at an $11 billion valuation, as AI-driven products now generate half of its $600 million ARR, fueling IPO preparations. (Forbes)

  • iRobot filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, handing control to Chinese supplier PICEA; equity will be wiped out after sales slumped from competition, supply-chain woes, and tariffs, sending shares down 75%. (Bloomberg)

  • PayPal filed regulatory applications to launch PayPal Bank, an FDIC-insured industrial bank offering loans and interest-bearing accounts to small businesses, expanding its lending capabilities nationwide. (Fox Business)

  • Trump Media announced a $6B merger with nuclear fusion startup TAE Technologies, sending shares up 35%, despite skepticism over commercial fusion viability, forming a 50–50 combined energy-media company. (ABC News)

  • Lightspeed Venture Partners raised a record $9B as AI-driven capital needs surge. Top VC firms dominate fundraising, backing costly AI startups like Anthropic amid soaring valuations despite broader venture funding slowing. (The New York Times)

AI Fundraising News (Dec 12 — Dec 18)

  • Adaptive Security: AI to simulate social engineering attacks, raised a $81M Series B

  • Ankar: LLM tools for patent application drafting, raised a $20M Series A

  • Arcads.ai: AI marketing videos platform, raised a $16M Seed

  • Armadin: AI hacking defense tools, raised a $24M Seed

  • Axion: AI tools for detecting manufacturing defects, raised a $37M Series B

  • Chai Discovery: AI-designed novel molecules platform, raised a $130M Series B

  • Codoxo: AI healthcare payment integrity software, raised a $35M Series C

  • Databricks: Data-analytics platform for enterprise AI, raised a $4B Series L

  • Drive Health: Agentic AI for clinical workflow automation, raised $15M

  • Echo: AI agents for secure Docker image creation, raised a $35M Series A

  • Edison: AI to automate scientific hypothesis generation, raised $70M

  • Ember LifeSciences: Cold chain logistics tech, raised a $16.5M Series A

  • Endra: AI for commercial building systems design, raised a $20M Seed

  • First Voyage: AI companion for habit building, raised a $2.5M Seed

  • HEN Technologies: AI fire suppression and prediction platform, raised a $20M Series A

  • Lovable: Vibe coding startup from Sweden, raised $330M

  • MEQ Solutions: AI to assess red-meat quality, raised a $15.3M Series A

  • Mindoo: AI front-desk agents for hospitals, raised a $5.9M Seed

  • Mirelo: AI sound effects generator for video, raised a $41M Seed

  • Mythic: Analog AI processors for in-memory computing, raised $125M

  • Nanit: AI-powered baby monitoring and sleep tracking, raised $50M

  • Navier: AI agents for hardware design, raised a $5.6M Seed

  • PolyAI: AI voice assistants for call centers, raised a $86M Series D

  • Salient: AI for automating loan servicing, raised $10M

  • Sequence: AI to automate B2B revenue ops, raised a $20M Series A

  • Solve Intelligence: Generative AI for IP and patent law, raised a $40M Series B

  • SuperCircle: AI reverse logistics for retail brands, raised a $24M+ Series A

  • Tebra: AI-enabled private healthcare practice tools, raised $250M

  • Valerie Health: AI front offices for physicians, raised a $30M Series A

  • Verisoul: AI fraud detection for bots and fake users, raised a $8.8M Series A

  • Wearlinq: AI cardiac monitor for arrhythmia detection, raised a $14M Series A

  • Wodan AI: Homomorphic encryption for AI processing, raised a $2.3M Preseed