November 28th Newsletter

As the holiday season begins, consumer indicators remain strong, with the NRF projecting more than $1 trillion in seasonal spending and 187 million shoppers moving through the Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday window, while record Thanksgiving travel with over 31 million passengers adds pressure to an already stretched aviation system. Turning to macro and corporate performance, Eli Lilly reaches a landmark $1 trillion valuation on surging demand for Zepbound and Mounjaro, signaling continued investor appetite for category-defining health products. Shifting to tech, Apple is on track to overtake Samsung as the top global phone maker in 2025, and CharacterAI begins cutting off access for users under 18 as it phases out open-ended chat, adds stricter age assurance, and redirects minors toward structured and safer story-based experiences. Meanwhile, HP announces 4,000 to 6,000 job cuts as part of a broader AI-driven restructuring.  In the media and creator ecosystem, Warner Music settles with Suno and signs a licensing deal that accompanies the startup’s $250 million raise.

Top 5 AI Highlights

[1] 🤖 Anthropic unveils Claude Opus 4.5, its most capable, safe, and efficient model yet, outperforming humans in coding tests, excelling in reasoning, agent tasks, and now powering new tools across major cloud platforms. See more on Anthropic.

[2] 🔍 Sam Altman and Jony Ive unveiled a prototype for OpenAI’s first hardware, expected within two years, screen-free, smartphone-sized, with a minimalist, intuitive design focused on simplicity and playfulness. Separately, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns staff of “rough vibes” as Google’s AI gains a narrow lead over OpenAI’s latest models. More on The Verge and The Information.

[3] 💰 Reports that Meta may shift billions in AI spend to Google TPUs sent Alphabet’s shares up 4.4% to $332.71 on Tuesday, toward $3.8T to $4T, while Nvidia’s shares fell 3.9%, deepening a $750B slide. Details from The Information and Nvidia’s press release.

[4] 👷‍♂️ Amazon pledges $50B to expand U.S. government AI infrastructure from 2026, while cutting 1,800+ engineers in gaming, AI search, and ads—signaling major restructuring amid shifting AI priorities. See more Fox News.

[5] 🛡️ Trump launched the $50B “Genesis Mission” to harness U.S. federal data for AI innovation, aiming to cut discovery timelines and outpace China in biotech, quantum, fusion, and national security technologies. More from Reuters.

✨New Addition: Open Source AI Development

[1] 💰 China’s Moonshot AI is raising several hundred million dollars in a funding round valuing it near $4B, with investors including IDG Capital and Tencent; IPO plans are unconfirmed. More from WSJ.

[2] 📊 MIT × Hugging Face study finds Chinese-made open AI models now make up 17% of all downloads, edging past US-developed models at 15.8%. Reported by FT.

[3] 🌐 ChinaTalk interview reports that Zhipu’s GLM open-source models are gaining international traction, with growing global developer adoption driven by multilingual performance and active open-weight distribution. Details on Z.ai’s playbook

[4] 🖥️ Microsoft releases Fara-7B as an open small language model on Hugging Face and Microsoft Foundry, positioning it as an agent-focused model optimized for low-latency computer-use tasks. More from Microsoft.

Founder’s Corner

What We Read This Week

• Kalshi’s valuation soared to $11B after a $1B round led by Sequoia and CapitalG. With $50B in annualized volume, it’s racing Polymarket amid legal scrutiny over prediction markets. (TechCrunch)

• AI startup Sierra, co-founded by ex-Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor, hit $100M ARR in under 2 years. Valued at $10B, its enterprise AI agents automate customer service for firms like Discord and Cigna. (TechCrunch)

• GM halts $2.6B Indiana EV battery megafactory and cuts 3,400+ jobs amid rising costs, cooling demand, and subsidy shifts, signaling a slowdown in its electric vehicle expansion strategy. (MSN)

• Read on Bloomberg’s interview with AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li highlights her view of AI as a civilizational technology, her immigrant-to-innovator journey, and her push for responsible, human-centered development as spatial intelligence emerges. (BBG)

AI Fundraising News (Nov 21 — Nov 26)

• AI One: Helps enterprises extract context from data, raised a $7M Series A

• Arbiter: Using AI to automate healthcare admin tasks, raised $52M Seed

• Archetype: Builds AI to interpret sensor data, raised a $35M Series A

• Bedrock Data: Prevents data leakage with AI model access tracking, raised a $25M Series A

• Cassidy Bio: AI to design gene-editing therapies, raised $8M Seed

• Cerrion: Visual AI for factory production line issues, raised a $18M Series A

• Chargeflow: Automates chargeback disputes for merchants, raised a $25M Series A

• CoPlane: AI-native back-office software for enterprises, raised a $14M Seed

• Federato: AI-powered insurance lifecycle software, raised a $100M Series D

• Harmonic: Math-focused AI to improve reasoning, raised a $120M Series C

• Model ML: AI agents to automate investment banking grunt work, raised $75M

• MuchBetter.ai: AI-generated sales training conversations platform, raised $4.6M

• NestAI: Builds AI products for defense applications, raised $100M

• Numerai: Trades stocks using AI-driven freelance ideas, raised a $30M Series C

• Opti: AI-based identity risk and access analysis, raised a $20M Seed

• Sorcero: AI software for life sciences insights and adoption, raised a $42.5M Series B

• Tidalwave: Automates mortgage tasks like verification and underwriting, raised a $22M Series A

• Voio: Helps radiologists interpret scans and draft reports, raised $8.6M Seed