Top Stories
OpenAI halted advanced cybersecurity training for Astra (its latest AI model) after tests showed it was approaching the company’s highest-risk threshold, prompting tighter safeguards and an update to its Preparedness Framework. — Axios
Harvey unveiled Tenet, its first proprietary legal AI model, trained from Moonshot’s open-source Kimi K3. The model aims to lower third-party costs and defend its turf as OpenAI and Anthropic move into the space. — Business Insider
Anthropic reportedly plans to issue super-voting shares to CEO Dario Amodei and other co-founders ahead of a potential fall IPO, preserving founder control as they enter public markets. — Bloomberg
Block released Berd, an Apache 2.0-licensed desktop workspace that unifies AI agents, models, files, projects, and automations while storing conversation history locally, offering developers a model-agnostic command center. — VentureBeat
OpenAI launched ChatGPT for Teens as the default for detected users aged 13 to 17, adding stricter safety protections, parental controls, quiet hours, and a Study Mode designed to guide rather than answer. — Bloomberg
Top Funding Announcements
Temporal — The workflow orchestration startup is discussing a roughly $500M round at a $12B-plus pre-money valuation to help developers run long-scale AI projects without crashes. No lead investor was disclosed. — Bloomberg
Relativity Networks — Raised $22M to bring hollow-core fiber, which transmits data 30% faster than conventional fiber, to data centers. — TechCrunch
Pinewood — The UK software group agreed to a £545M private equity takeover by Ridgeview, with its business focus and the buyer’s plans undisclosed. — Financial Times
Grounded — The Detroit startup raised a $5M round to expand its custom outfitting of electric and gas-powered vans for small businesses after pivoting away from van-life builds. — TechCrunch
Reach Capital — Closed a $265M fifth fund to invest $1M to $10M in roughly 50 pre-seed through Series A startups using AI to advance learning, health, and work. — TechCrunch
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This Week in Startups
Timestamps:
0:00 New Segment: "Enough Already!"
3:04 Anthropic's record-breaking IPO plans
9:27 Why it's "Springtime for Trump and M&A"
10:07 PayPal - Built for payments, growth, and agentic. Paypal Open, built for all business. Visit https://paypalopen.com to get started
15:28 Sami Khoreibi of Wisewell joins
16:58 Hiring a water sommelier
19:51 CLA - Innovation takes balance. CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors can help you get from startup to where you want to end up. Get started now at https://www.claconnect.com/withyou
28:28 The problems with tap and bottled water
30:02 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Get started for free at https://Odoo.com/twist
49:26 Puneet Puri of Gritt Robotics joins
54:03 Solar's version of "Moore's Law"
1:04:36 Are you using the Boomer emojis?
1:08:30 Why Jason loves the DJI Mic 3
1:11:04 Jason & Lon's streaming recommendations
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Today’s Fascinating Fact from Harmonic
Temporal co-founders Maxim Fateev and Samar Abbas were engineers building Amazon’s Simple Workflow Service, and dedicated to solving one specific problem. When a complex lengthy workflow times out due to a bug or simple error, is there any way for the system to pick up where it left off, rather than starting over from the beginning. Their current startup provides a “durable execution layer,” that allows long-term AI tasks to proceed without interrupt, even when something in the background goes sideways. Clients include heavy hitters like Stripe, OpenAI, Datadog, and Snapchat.
Try it yourself at harmonic.ai
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