Judge denies SBF's motion to dismiss charges, Nothing raises $96M

A federal SDNY judge has denied Sam Bankman-Fried's motion to dismiss most of the criminal charges he’s facing; the FTX founder is facing a max of 100+ years in prison - Link

Smartphone maker Nothing raised a $96M round led by Highland Europe ahead of the launch of its Phone (2); valuation was not disclosed - Link

Reka, an SF-based startup building LLMs that can be customized for specific businesses, raised $58M in funding co-led by DST Global and Radical Ventures; the company was started by former researchers from Google, DeepMind, and Meta - Link

Augmedics, a startup building an AR system for spinal surgery, raised an $82.5M Series D led by CPMG; the company’s AR platform was FDA-approved in 2019 - Link

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Zapier’s Mike Knoop joins Jason to discuss the early days of Zapier, before breaking down the evolution of app integrations and API usage (1:20). They dive into reducing friction for users, regulating AI, the limitations of present-day AI architecture, and more (43:06). - Link

WSJ sources: The White House is weighing new export restrictions on AI chips to China; the potential restrictions could impact Nvidia’s A800, a nerfed version of the company’s more powerful chips meant to comply with current restrictions - Link

Anzu, an Israel-based startup offering in-game ad tools for console, mobile, and PC games, raised a $48M Series B led by Emmis - Link

Investors from Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst, Lux Capital, and heads of Anduril, Palantir, and other defense tech startups sent an open letter to US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, suggesting the government’s military buying process is antiquated and has limited innovation in the space - Link

BI sources: Google killed its AR glasses project, called “Iris,” and will instead focus on building AR platforms to license out to headset makers - Link

This Week in Startups

E1769: Zapier Co-Founder Mike Knoop on category creation, API evolution & AI architecture

E1768: IRL to shut down after faking 19M users, ZIRP fraud, Databricks acquires MosaicML for $1.3B

E1767: Titan tragedy, Meta removes news in Canada + Elizabeth Yin at Angel Summit

E1766: StoneAlgo’s Devin Jones on “Zillow for diamonds” + Mar Hershenson on the art of picking

E1765: EyeRate CEO Ray Weisberg on scaling from $0 to $10M + Steve Jurvetson on disruptive tech

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