VCs Are Still Throwing Cash at AI

Welcome back apprentices! 👋

If you thought AI funding in 2024 might cool off, you were adorably mistaken. 

VCs poured $100 billion into AI startups — an 80% jump from 2023 — which means nearly one-third of ALL venture funding went straight into making AI even smarter (and possibly taking our jobs).

Some startups cashed in big time — OpenAI hit a $157B valuation, Databricks secured a $10B round, and xAI doubled its value to $50B faster than you can say "Elon tweet." Meanwhile, Silicon Valley turned into an AI gold rush, pulling in $90 billion, up from a mere $59B the year before.

And now? 2025 is picking up right where 2024 left off. AI startups are still raking in nine-figure rounds, proving that VCs are throwing cash at AI like it’s the last big thing before the singularity.

Let’s dive in!

In today's email

• AI Boom or Dot-Com Bust 2.0?

• AI Isn’t Always Right

• Anthropic to White House…

• AI Stocks Are Tanking (New)

• AI Startups Keep Cashing In

• Mistral’s AI OCR

• Apple’s Smart Home Hub Delayed 

• More Tools & Updates

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Quick News 

⚠️ The 2025 job market looks a little too much like 1999 — booming wages, low unemployment, and big bets on tech (hello, AI). But history says when investors get too excited, things tend to crash harder than a dial-up connection. If AI doesn’t deliver, we could be in for a dot-com sequel nobody asked for.

✏️ A Wharton study tested 19,800 AI prompts and found that AI is about as consistent as your WiFi during a storm. Formatting helps, but saying “please” can either boost accuracy by 60% or tank it completely — so much for AI appreciating good manners. Turns out, there’s no magic prompt — just trial, error, and a healthy dose of human oversight.

🏛️ Anthropic just submitted AI policy recommendations to the White House, calling for preserving the AI Safety Institute, strengthening national security evaluations, and restricting Nvidia H20 chip sales to China. The company also pushed for a massive 50-gigawatt energy buildout for AI data centers by 2027.

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AI STARTUPS 
Who Said the Hype Is Over? 

If you thought AI funding might slow down in 2025, think again — nine U.S. AI startups have already bagged $100M+ rounds, proving that VCs are still throwing money at AI like it’s a crypto bull run. 

The biggest haul so far? Anthropic’s $3.5 billion Series E, valuing the company at a casual $61.5 billion (because why not?). Other big winners include Together AI ($305M), Lambda ($480M), and Harvey ($300M), covering everything from AI model development and legal tech to healthcare AI and synthetic voices.

What’s the Deal? Despite market volatility and tech stock jitters, AI is still the hottest ticket in town. Investors are betting big on infrastructure, automation, and synthetic media, showing that even if the AI bubble pops someday, they’re determined to ride the wave first. 

Meanwhile, startups like Eudia and Abridge are proving that AI is eating everything — including the legal and healthcare industries.

MISTRAL 
AI OCR: Because No One Has Time to Read 2,000 Pages a Minute

Mistral just dropped Mistral OCR, an AI-powered document-slaying machine that can scan, read, and extract text, tables, and even complex equations at lightning speed — 2,000 pages per minute, to be exact. Designed to decode messy PDFs, legal documents, research papers, and archives, it doesn’t just recognize text — it actually understands document structures, making life easier for researchers, businesses drowning in compliance paperwork, and anyone still fighting with bad OCR software. 

Bonus: It’s multilingual and self-hostable, so your private docs don’t have to live on someone else’s cloud.

What’s the Deal? Businesses spend way too much time digging through documents, and this tech could automate research, customer service, and legal workflows overnight. With top-tier accuracy and AI-driven formatting, Mistral OCR is setting a new standard for document digitization — so maybe now, AI can finally figure out what’s inside that 100-page contract you never read.

APPLE 
Smart Home Hub Delayed — Siri Still Trying to Get Itself Together

Apple’s long-rumored smart home hub has been pushed back indefinitely, and the culprit? Siri’s AI upgrade is taking longer than expected. 

The hub, originally slated for March 2025, was supposed to feature a six-inch touchscreen, support video calls, and be mostly voice-controlled — but since Siri still struggles with basic commands like setting timers, Apple decided to hold off until it actually works.

What’s the Deal? While Google and Amazon continue dominating smart homes, Apple is stuck in the waiting room, trying to make Siri smarter. The company is already testing the device internally, but without its AI backbone fully functioning, it’s just a fancy screen that talks back… occasionally.

For now, Alexa and Google Assistant can relax knowing Siri is still trying to figure out the basics.

Tools & Updates

⚖️ The DOJ dropped its push to force Google to sell its AI investments (like its stake in Anthropic), but it’s still coming for Google’s search monopoly, pushing for a Chrome sell-off.

🎬 Prime Video just gave 12 movies and series AI-powered dubbing, blending AI with human touch to make global content sound less robotic. More shows, more languages, fewer cringe-worthy dubs — finally.

🏆 Andrew G. Barto and Richard S. Sutton just won the 2024 Turing Award for pioneering reinforcement learning (RL) — the tech behind AlphaGo, ChatGPT, and AI that actually learns from mistakes.

🦾 Johns Hopkins built a sensor-packed prosthetic hand that auto-adjusts its grip using AI-powered touch sensing. It can tell if it’s holding a plush toy or a coffee cup — no more accidental drops.

🤖 Aescape secured $83M to roll out 400 robotic massage tables, starting with 60 at Equinox gyms. With expansion plans into luxury hotels and pro sports, AI is now taking over wellness, one automated deep tissue massage at a time.

🚀 A Chinese startup just dropped Manus, an AI agent that works completely on its own — screening resumes, researching properties, coding, and even freelancing on Upwork (because apparently, robots need side hustles too).

Let's Chat About AI

This is all for today!

Replay to this email with your thoughts.

AI is more than just a buzzword. It’s a shift in how we live and work. And understanding it a bit better means you can make smarter choices about the tech you use every day.

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