May 29th Newsletter

Author

Da Yu
May 29, 2026

As of close on May 28th, 2026

Oil eased as a reported 60-day U.S.-Iran ceasefire extension MOU reduced Strait of Hormuz supply fears, with Brent at $93.71 and WTI at $88.90. Core PCE rose 3.3% annually and 0.2% month over month in April, keeping the Fed likely on hold as Q1 GDP was revised down to 1.6%. In tech, Groupon will cut up to 400 jobs, nearly 25% of staff, as restructuring supports its AI-native rebuild and lifts its full-year adjusted EBITDA outlook, while Wix plans to cut 1,000 roles, about 20% of staff, after its stock nearly halved, Q1 losses returned, and AI costs rose around Base44 growth. Micron crossed a $1 trillion market value as shares surged 19%, helped by UBS tripling its price target and AI-driven memory demand. EU regulators are also preparing a high-triple-digit-million-euro DMA fine against Google over search self-preferencing. On the consumer side, Disney’s Mandalorian and Grogu opened to $100 million domestically and $163 million globally, reviving Star Wars in theaters. Finally, AI is fueling cybersecurity hiring, with postings up 11%. 

Top 5 AI Highlights

[1] 💰 Anthropic raised $65B in Series H funding at a $965B post-money valuation, backed by major investors and hyperscalers, as Claude run-rate revenue surpassed $47B and the company expands compute through Amazon, Google, Broadcom, SpaceX, and chip partners to meet surging enterprise AI demand. More from Anthropic. 

[2] 🤖 Nvidia plans to invest $150B annually in Taiwan to make it an AI “epicenter,” underscoring Taiwan’s continued dominance in advanced chip packaging and AI server supply chains despite Trump’s push to reshore semiconductor manufacturing and potential looming U.S. chip tariffs. More from Ars Technica 

[3] 💻 Cognition raised over $1B at a $25B pre-money valuation, signaling strong VC confidence in Devin as annualized revenue reached $492M across major enterprises. See more on TechCrunch. 

[4] ⛪ Pope Leo XIV’s 42,300-word AI encyclical calls for regulation, worker retraining, child protections, and human control over weapons, following Vatican outreach from Meta, Google, Amazon, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Western diplomats seeking influence on the Church’s AI stance. More from the NY Times and Politico.

[5] 🛰️ SpaceX filing showed X ad revenue rose to $1.8B in 2025 from $1.7B, still below Twitter’s $4B in 2021, while X and Grok reached 6.3M paid subscribers, Grok generated 2B videos monthly, and Starlink scaled to 10.3M subscribers, increasing pressure on media and telecom players. More from Hollywood Reporters.

✨Open Source AI Development

[1] 🏷️ DeepSeek made its 75% V4 Pro price cut permanent, lowering API costs to about $0.0037 to $0.88 per 1M tokens, versus OpenAI GPT models at $0.75 to $5 input and $4.50 to $30 output per 1M tokens, and Anthropic Claude models at $1 to $5 input and $5 to $25 output per 1M tokens.  More from Reuters.

[2] 💸 Xiaomi cut MiMo-V2.5 API pricing by up to 99% for cached inputs, giving users 5–8x more tokens at the same price as its $100 Max plan jumps to 82B tokens, underscoring China’s push to make frontier AI dramatically cheaper for enterprise workloads. See more details on X.

[3] 🛠️  IBM / Artificial Analysis launched ITBench-AA on Hugging Face, an open benchmark for agentic enterprise IT / SRE tasks, with 59 Kubernetes incident-response tasks and an open-source Stirrup reference harness. Read more from Hugging Face.

[4] 🔬 Reflection AI partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy to provide customizable open-weight models for Genesis Mission, positioning its technology as the AI layer for U.S. National Labs. Details from Axios.

[5]⚡ NVIDIA launched Nemotron Labs Diffusion on Hugging Face, open diffusion language models using parallel token refinement, claiming up to 6.4x decoding efficiency versus autoregressive models. More on Hugging Face.

Founder’s Corner

Higher % of Capital Going to Hardware

Source: X

What We Read This Week

  • Meta may enter the public cloud market if AI data center overbuild creates excess capacity, with Zuckerberg saying cloud resale is “definitely on the table” as Meta faces investor pressure over its $125B–$145B 2026 AI capex plan and unclear AI monetization timeline. (Benzinga)

  • Qualcomm struck an AI data center chip deal with ByteDance, supplying millions of ASICs for agent software and sending shares up 8.3% to an intraday record. (Bloomberg)

  • Huawei says its new chip design approach could help it match 1.4 nanometer technology by 2031, narrowing the gap with TSMC and Intel despite US sanctions. (NikkeiAsia) 

  • SpaceX reportedly lifted Starlink drone connection pricing fivefold to $25,000, with the Pentagon agreeing, while a direct-to-cell Iran plan could cost $500M upfront plus $100M monthly, highlighting Musk’s defense leverage. (Reuters)

  • American Airlines will install SpaceX Starlink Wi-Fi on 500+ Airbus narrow-body jets starting next year, intensifying airline competition for faster free connectivity. (CNBC)

  • Amazon stopped an internal AI token-use leaderboard after concerns it encouraged “tokenmaxxing,” signaling Big Tech’s shift from aggressive AI adoption metrics toward ROI-driven usage discipline as rising agentic AI workloads push token costs higher (Business Insider)

  • Uber is weighing a higher Delivery Hero bid after a €38 per share approach valuing it above €11.5bn was rebuffed amid food delivery consolidation. (FT) 

  • ClickUp cut 22% of staff while rolling out 3,000 internal AI agents, aiming for a “100x org” and promising million-dollar salary bands for high-impact AI users. (TechCrunch)

  • Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called AI-linked layoff claims lazy, arguing AI is too new to explain prior cuts and urging leaders to present a balanced narrative. (Business Insider)

  • DuckDuckGo installs jumped up to 30.5% after Google’s AI Search overhaul, as users sought opt-out controls and privacy-focused alternatives. (TechCrunch)

  • DOJ charged a Google engineer with insider trading, alleging $1.2 million in Polymarket profits from confidential Search data, underscoring prediction market compliance risks and employer data governance. (TechCrunch)

  • Dropbox founder Drew Houston will step down after 19 years as CEO, handing leadership to Ashraf Alkarmi as the company targets AI growth. (LinkedIn) 

  • OpenAI hired ServiceNow CMO Colin Fleming to lead business marketing, signaling a stronger enterprise push as it expands beyond core products into broader commercial growth. (Adweek)

AI Fundraising news (May 22 — May 28)

  • Airis Labs: AI visual intelligence defense company, raised a $31M Series B

  • AllO: AI restaurant operations company, raised a $14M Series A

  • Anthropic: AI frontier model developer company, raised a $65B Series H

  • Arc: AI voice-ordering restaurant company, raised a $10.8M seed

  • Avrea: AI software deployment testing company, raised a $4.7M pre-seed

  • Baseten: AI inference infrastructure company, raised $1B

  • Byron: AI tax preparation agent company, raised a $6.5M seed

  • C2i Semiconductors: AI data center power delivery company, raised a $16.7M Series A

  • Canals: AI wholesale workflow automation company, raised a $35M Series A

  • Canyon Code: AI agent orchestration company, raised a $5M pre-seed

  • Capchase: AI B2B financing automation company, raised $26M

  • Certo: AI product compliance company, raised a $4M seed

  • Cognition: AI software engineering agent company, raised $1B+

  • Corgi: AI insurance platform company, raised a $106.0M Series B1

  • Cypher AI: AI biotech workflow automation company, raised a $2M seed

  • Daloopa: AI financial data structuring company, raised a $47M Series C

  • Farther: AI wealth management platform company, raised a $150M Series D

  • Foundation: AI agent authorization security company, raised $6.4M

  • Geordie AI: AI agent governance security company, raised a $30M Series A

  • Gray Swan: AI model security testing company, raised a $40M Series A

  • Groq: AI inference chip infrastructure company, raised $650M

  • Iconic: AI M&A advisory company, raised $6M

  • Inherent: AI scientific discovery systems company, raised a $50M seed

  • Kopa.ai: AI e-commerce automation company, raised a $2.3M seed

  • Lucis: AI metabolic health monitoring company, raised a $20M Series A

  • Mafer AI: AI specialty chemicals R&D infrastructure company, raised a $2.0M seed

  • Moment: AI trading automation company, raised a $78M Series C

  • NavigateAI: AI construction copilot company, raised a $25M seed

  • Olyzon: AI connected TV advertising company, raised a $10M Series A

  • OpenRouter: AI inference routing platform company, raised $113M

  • Orbital Industries: AI advanced materials design company, raised a $50M Series B

  • Pace: AI insurance back-office automation company, raised a $46M Series B

  • Pax: AI public safety software company, raised a $40M seed

  • Perceptic: AI drug development platform company, raised a $12M seed

  • Reactor: AI real-time video generation company, raised a $59M Series A

  • Rep AI: AI e-commerce retail platform company, raised $6.2M

  • RevEng.AI: AI software supply-chain security company, raised a $15M Series A

  • Saris: AI banking operations automation company, raised a $28.8M Series A

  • Slamcore: AI industrial vehicle tracking company, raised $14M

  • Sond: AI sleep coaching earbuds company, raised $7M

  • StackAI: AI no-code agent-building platform company, acquired by Asana for $75M

  • Suno: AI music generation company, in talks to raise $250M+

  • Tensormesh: AI inference optimization company, raised a $20M seed

  • The Path: AI-guided therapy and coaching company, raised a $14.3M seed

  • Trajectory: AI continual learning model company, raised a $15M seed

  • Triomics: AI oncology workflow automation company, raised a $22M Series B

  • Vêtir: AI styling and wardrobe management company, raised a $5.5M Series A

  • Waypoint Bio: AI cancer therapy design company, raised a $20M Series A