July 3rd Newsletter

Author

Da Yu
July 03, 2025

As of close on July 2, 2025

Hope everyone has a great Fourth of July weekend! The S&P 500 hovered near record highs this week, fueled by strong tech earnings, economic resilience, and investors betting that Trump will delay the July 9 tariff hikes. Meanwhile, the Senate passed Trump’s sweeping tax and domestic bill in a 51 to 50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking ballot. Manufacturing remains under pressure with a fourth straight month of contraction, though job openings surged to 7.77 million in May, led by leisure and hospitality, with layoffs down and backlogs falling. In tech, Figma files for IPO. OpenAI, shifting toward high-end consulting, now offers ten-million-dollar-plus GPT-4 customization deals to clients like the Pentagon and Grab, a Palantir-style pivot aimed at enterprise growth. Google inks multibillion-dollar deal with Gates-backed Commonwealth Fusion Systems for 200MW of fusion energy by 2030s, marking the largest fusion purchase to date and a bold bet on clean tech.

Top 5 AI Highlights

[1] 🧠 Zuckerberg announces creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs. In a bold escalation of the AI talent war, Meta has expanded its poaching spree from OpenAI, hiring four more researchers: Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren. This comes in response to the underwhelming performance of Llama 4. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is now doubling down on building a world-class “superintelligence” unit. According to leaked internal messages obtained by Wired, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman accused Meta of using $100M signing bonuses, a claim that Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth acknowledged in part, though he clarified that the actual offer structure was more complex. More from TechCrunch and Wired.

[2] 📬 Grammarly is acquiring AI-native email app Superhuman in a major move to position email as the “central surface” in its agentic future. With Superhuman’s 94% AI usage rate and productivity metrics showing users respond to 72% more emails per hour, the acquisition gives Grammarly a proven platform to deploy AI agents at scale. CEO Shishir Mehrotra emphasized this as a step toward “AI that works where people work,” not siloed tools. This adds a key distribution channel for Grammarly’s agents and makes email a launchpad for AI orchestration. More from Grammarly.

[3] 🍎 Apple is reportedly exploring replacing its in-house Foundation Models with LLMs from OpenAI or Anthropic to power Siri. The company has asked both vendors to train cloud-compatible models, potentially signaling Apple’s quiet acknowledgment of falling behind in generative AI. Though Apple currently uses ChatGPT in limited Siri web queries, this full integration would be a major shift - and a concession that its 2026 Siri reboot plans may no longer be viable. More from Bloomberg.

[4] 🧱 Cloudflare launches pay-per-crawl model to curb AI data scraping. As lawsuits mount against OpenAI and Anthropic over unauthorized data use, Cloudflare has introduced a pay-per-crawl system to regulate how AI companies access website content. The move highlights growing backlash against how most foundational models have been pre-trained by scraping the public web, without compensation or consent. More from Microsoft.

[5] 🤖 Elon Musk’s xAI raises $10B to take on OpenAI and Anthropic. xAI, the AI startup founded by Elon Musk, has raised a combined $10 billion, split evenly between debt and equity. The funds will scale its Grok chatbot and expand its Colossus supercomputer, which already houses 200K GPUs in Memphis, with plans for a 1 million GPU facility underway. The raise follows xAI’s $6B round last year at a $50B valuation and includes an oversubscribed debt tranche backed by top global investors. Musk pitches Grok as a “maximally truth-seeking” and “anti-woke” alternative—but not without controversy. More from CNBC.

Founder’s Corner

Very pricey medians, but fewer and fewer rounds

Source: X

What We Read This Week

  • Oracle stock surged 4% after revealing a massive cloud deal expected to generate $30B annually by FY2028. Fueled by AI momentum, shares are up 33% YTD, reaching record highs. (CNBC)

  • Paramount agreed to pay $16M to settle Trump’s lawsuit alleging CBS edited a Kamala Harris interview to mislead voters, with funds going to Trump’s library and legal fees. (WSJ)

  • Lululemon sued Costco for allegedly selling $20 knockoffs of its $100+ Scuba hoodies, Define jackets, and ABC pants under the Kirkland label, accusing Costco of IP infringement and consumer confusion. (CNBC)

  • Del Monte Foods files for bankruptcy, secures $912.5 million DIP financing, and seeks a buyer amid fading canned-food demand and intensifying competition from private-labels. (CNN)

  • Netflix steps up unscripted push, partnering with Spotify, reviving Star Search, and launching new music contests to energize its ad-supported tier. (WSJ)

  • Sunnova urged dealers to keep selling solar panels despite worsening finances and looming bankruptcy, ultimately leaving them owed $347M. Dealers allege misleading reassurances and restrictive contracts trapped them financially. (WSJ)

AI M&A and Fundraising news (June 27 — July 2)

  • AKAIO: AI platform for product innovation and collaboration, raised a $5M Series A.

  • Audos: Helps entrepreneurs launch AI-driven businesses, raised $11.5M Seed.

  • Blank Metal: Monitors & tests AI applications in real time, raised a $3M Seed.

  • Bonfy.AI: Content-sharing protection across apps/devices, raised a $9.5M Seed.

  • Botpress: Montreal-based AI agent infrastructure platform, raised a $25M Series B

  • Bonx: Factory operations tracking software, raised an $8.6M Seed.

  • Campfire: AI-automated accounting and ERP tasks, raised a $35M Series A.

  • Centific: Data collection, labeling and testing services, raised a $60M Series A.

  • Claira: Legal document analysis for finance, raised a $7M round.

  • Clarify: AI CRM task automation for sales teams, raised a $15M Series A.

  • CoInvent AI: Custom AI travel itinerary builder, raised a $3M Seed.

  • Cosma: Autonomous underwater drone mapping platform, raised a $2.9M.

  • CRED: Predictive AI for enterprise decision-making, raised a $15M Seed.

  • Emerald AI: Data-center AI platform for energy management, raised $24.5M Seed

  • Genesis AI: Foundational model for robots, emerged from stealth, raised a $105M Seed.

  • Imagene AI: Precision cancer-diagnostics platform, raised a $23M Series B.

  • Insight Health: AI tools for patient intake & insurance verification, raised a $4.6M.

  • Jobright: AI job-seeker matching & applications automation, raised a $3.2M.

  • Kognitos: Business task automation AI, raised a $25M Series B.

  • Klutch AI: Construction AI assistant, raised an $8M Seed.

  • Levelpath: AI-native enterprise procurement software, raised a $55M Series B.

  • LogicFlo: AI agents for pharma & biotech research teams, raised a $2.7M Seed.

  • LuminX: Warehouse inventory automation with AI vision models, raised $5.5M Seed.

  • Mandolin: AI patient-clinical trial matching platform, raised a $40M.

  • NexusMD: AI doctor assistant for clinical administrative tasks, raised a $4.1M Seed.

  • North.Cloud: Real-time cloud cost-optimization AI, raised a $5M Series A.

  • Skarbe: AI sales assistant for revenue teams, raised a $600K Seed.

  • Serve First: AI-enhanced customer support software, raised a $6.3M.

  • Sitch: AI + human group matchmaking app, raised a $5M Seed.

  • Tailor: Modular ERP with AI agents, raised a $22M Series A.

  • Tacta Systems: Robotics & AI automation for manufacturers, raised a $64M Series A.

  • Waypoint AI: AI tool for automating software support issues, raised $3.1M Preseed.

  • xAI: Elon Musk’s AI startup building Grok platform and data infrastructure, raised $5B in debt alongside $5B equity.