✨ Nuro Shifts Gears from Delivery Robots to Licensing Self-Driving Tech

Autonomous vehicle startup Nuro is pivoting away from its original delivery robot model to focus on licensing its self-driving technology to automotive OEMs, ride-hailing platforms, and commercial fleets.

🐍 Strategic Pivot: Once known for its compact, goods-only delivery robots, Nuro is now concentrating on autonomy software development as a scalable business model after halting manufacturing and undergoing multiple layoffs.

🧠 AI at the Core: Nuro is betting on AI-driven autonomy to extend its runway and commercialize its Level 4 driverless capabilities, already tested in California and Texas.

🫱 New Focus, Old Backers: The company just raised $106M in a Series E round, led by long-time institutional investors including T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Tiger Global, and Greylock.

While the new valuation sits lower than its 2021 peak, Nuro’s pivot positions it as a key player in the autonomy-as-a-service space—competing directly with startups like Wayve.

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🚨 Brinc Drones Brings Police Response Into the Sky

Seattle-based startup Brinc, founded by 25-year-old Blake Resnick, is redefining emergency response with drones designed for law enforcement and public safety use.

🚁 Emergency-Ready Drones: Brinc builds tactical drones capable of reaching emergency zones faster than patrol cars - equipped to break windows, deliver medical supplies, and provide real-time situational awareness.

⚙️ Deep Integration: A new strategic alliance with Motorola Solutions will embed Brinc drones into 911 call centers, allowing AI-approved dispatch of drones for select emergency calls.

🇺🇸 Made in the USA: As regulations tighten on Chinese drone manufacturers, Brinc joins a growing group of U.S. players like Skydio and Flock Safety offering domestically built alternatives.

💰Backed to Scale: With $75M in fresh funding led by Index Ventures and support from Motorola Solutions and Sam Altman, Brinc plans to expand both its product line and deployment footprint across police and public safety agencies.

Brinc is carving out a unique niche in the aerial response ecosystem—combining AI, autonomy, and urgent response capabilities in a maturing and competitive market.

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📞 Series Wants to Rethink Professional Networking with AI

Founded by Yale students Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow, Series is building an AI-powered social network that matches users via text to help them find cofounders, investors, or mentors—without the noise of likes and followers.

🧠 How It Works: Users chat with an AI “Friend” over iMessage or SMS about who they’re looking to meet. If both sides agree, the AI introduces them in a group text, simulating a warm intro.

✨ Gen Z First: Originally launched for student entrepreneurs, Series is now live at 500+ universities and plans to expand beyond campuses into wider professional circles.

💼 Business Model: Series is developing premium tiers for enterprise users, offering additional AI agents and customization.

💰Funding: The startup just raised $3.1M in pre-seed funding, led by Anne Lee Skates (ex-a16z), with support from Pear VC, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and Tim Draper’s fund.

Series is tapping into Gen Z’s appetite for authentic connections—replacing feeds and follows with personalized AI-driven introductions.

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💡NEye Systems Is Bringing Optical Chips to the AI Data Center Era

Berkeley-based NEye Systems is tackling one of the biggest bottlenecks in AI infrastructure — energy-hungry data transfers — with a radically new approach: programmable optical switches that use light instead of electricity.

🚀 The Tech: NEye is building photonic chips that let data centers rewire how AI processors communicate — dynamically, efficiently, and at scale.

🔋 Why It Matters: AI workloads are growing fast, but traditional interconnects are hitting limits on power efficiency and network scaling. NEye’s silicon-based optical circuits aim to fix both.

⚙️ Built for Hyperscalers: With working prototypes in hand and production samples coming in 2026, NEye is targeting hyperscale AI operators who want Google-grade performance — without building chips in-house.

🔗 Backed by Giants: With CapitalG, Microsoft M12, Nvidia, and Micron on board, NEye is poised to reshape how AI infrastructure is built — from energy-hungry racks to light-speed photonics.

As demand for compute skyrockets, NEye is betting that optical switching becomes a foundational layer for next-gen AI supercomputers.

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🤖 Jobandtalent Bets on AI Agents to Redefine Temp Work

Madrid-based Jobandtalent is doubling down on AI to reshape how temp work gets done. Known for matching workers with short-term roles in logistics, warehousing, and e-commerce, the platform is now building a fleet of AI agents to automate recruiting, shift planning, and attendance tracking.

🧠 AI-First Workforce: Jobandtalent is rolling out virtual agents — trained on millions of job shifts — to act as recruiters, account managers, and even attendance coaches across text, voice, and video.

👩‍💼 Meet Clara: Its first AI recruiter has already conducted 180K+ interviews and helped make over 7,000 hires in just a few months.

🇺🇸 U.S. Momentum: Now live in 10 countries, Jobandtalent is seeing its strongest growth in the U.S., with Q4 revenue up 27% YoY.

📉 Valuation Dip: The company raised €92M in a Series F at a €1.3B valuation — down from its €2.1B high in 2021 — but the focus is on expansion and product, not optics.

Jobandtalent is aiming to automate the backbone of temp staffing — without stripping away worker protections.

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🐾 Untamed Aims to Redefine Cat Food with Human-Grade Nutrition

London-based Untamed is shaking up the pet food market with its direct-to-consumer cat food brand focused on “pantry fresh” meals made with human-grade ingredients. Now feeding 80,000 cats across the UK each month, the company is on a mission to bring an ancestrally inspired diet to felines across Europe.

🍗 Whole Meat Only: Untamed meals are high in protein and mimic what cats would eat in the wild — strictly carnivorous, just like their ancestors.

📦 DTC Model: Delivered via subscription, the brand has shipped over 50 million meals since launch.

🌎 Big Market, Bigger Appetite: With over 12.5M cats in the UK alone and a €11.6B cat food market across the EU, Untamed is positioning itself at the premium end of a growing category.

💰 Backed by Food Vets: The startup just raised €11.6M from Coefficient Capital, Five Seasons Ventures, and Redrice to fuel expansion and scale operations.

Untamed isn’t just another pet food brand — it’s building a category around cat-first nutrition, rooted in nature and backed by science.

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🧠 Writer Launches ‘AI HQ’ to Power Agentic Workflows for the Enterprise

Enterprise AI startup Writer has unveiled AI HQ, a new platform designed to bring real-world results to generative AI by deploying autonomous agents that execute complex workflows across business systems.

💼 What It Does: AI HQ enables companies to build, deploy, and govern AI agents that handle tasks across tools like Salesforce, Workfront, and Snowflake. These agents can reason, take action, and evolve over time—offering more than just chatbot capabilities.

⚙️ Core Stack:
– Agent Builder for custom workflows
– Writer Home with 100+ pre-built agents
– Observability Suite to monitor agent behavior at scale

📈 Enterprise Uptake: Early adopters like Commvault and Marriott are integrating Writer’s agents into real ops—from marketing workflows to fund report generation.

🧪 Next-Gen AI: Writer is developing self-evolving models that learn from mistakes without retraining - currently in pilot, with full rollout expected later this year.

💰 Backed by top-tier investors (Salesforce Ventures, IBM, Adobe), Writer hit a $1.9B valuation after a $200M Series C and boasts a 160% net revenue retention rate.

As enterprises chase AI-native transformation, Writer is positioning itself not as a vendor, but as a partner—building the next foundation layer of enterprise software.

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🤖 OpenAI to Retire GPT-4 from ChatGPT, Replaced by GPT-4o

OpenAI will phase out GPT-4 from ChatGPT by April 30, replacing it fully with GPT-4o, the model currently used as default in the platform.

📌 Why it matters: GPT-4o reportedly outperforms GPT-4 across writing, coding, STEM, and conversational capabilities. It marks another leap in OpenAI’s model evolution, with better instruction-following and problem-solving performance.

🧪 API Access Stays: GPT-4 will still be available via OpenAI’s API, but not within ChatGPT itself.

🚨 What’s Next: Reverse-engineered findings suggest OpenAI may soon introduce a new model family including GPT-4.1 variants and updated “o” series models focused on reasoning, such as o3 and o4-mini.

OpenAI’s shift signals a firm move toward faster, more efficient models—while legal questions around GPT-4’s training data remain unresolved.

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🗣️ Klara Helps Companies Supercharge Frontline Skills Development

Paris-based startup Klara is building a platform to help companies radically improve how they onboard, upskill, and retain frontline employees — from factory floors to logistics hubs.

✨ What They Do: Klara provides digital tools that help structure and scale skills development across large operational teams. The platform enables faster onboarding, real-time performance tracking, and continuous upskilling tailored to non-desk workers.

📊 Measurable Impact: Companies using Klara report cutting onboarding time in half — from six months to three — while engaging both frontline staff and managers in long-term learning cycles.

🌎 Target Market: Retail, manufacturing, and logistics companies looking to boost productivity and employee retention among deskless workforces — a segment that represents 80% of the global workforce but gets just 1% of enterprise tech spend.

🚀 Backing & Expansion: Klara has just raised €10M in a round led by Endeit Capital to grow its team, expand product capabilities with AI features, and scale across Europe.

As the Future of Work shifts toward inclusive and data-driven workforce tools, Klara is positioning itself as the go-to platform for turning frontline teams into a strategic advantage.

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⚡️ Supercritical Solutions Reimagines Green Hydrogen with Ultra-Efficient Electrolysers

London-based Supercritical Solutions is building the next generation of green hydrogen tech—developing ultra-efficient electrolysers designed to make clean hydrogen production cost-competitive at scale.

💡 The Core Innovation: Unlike traditional systems, Supercritical’s electrolyser produces high-pressure hydrogen directly—eliminating the need for downstream compression, cutting energy loss, and slashing costs.

🌱 Sustainability Built-In: The tech avoids PFAS and rare materials like iridium, aiming to produce hydrogen for under £1/kg. It’s also designed to simplify transport and storage—two major bottlenecks in hydrogen adoption.

⚙️ Real-World Use: From reducing ammonia production costs by 21% with Scottish Power to powering green methanol for zero-emission shipping in Australia, Supercritical’s deployments are already proving the model.

💰 The company has just raised £14M (approx. $18M) in Series A funding from Shell Ventures, Toyota Ventures, and others to scale manufacturing and push into industrial markets like refineries and methanol synthesis.

Supercritical is positioning itself as a key enabler in the green hydrogen shift—targeting the hardest-to-decarbonize sectors with practical, scalable infrastructure.

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🚀 AI's Brightest Stars: The Most Watched Startups from Google Cloud Next 2025

At Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas, the spotlight wasn’t just on chips and models like Ironwood and Gemini 2.5 Flash—it was also on the rising AI startups now anchoring themselves in Google’s cloud ecosystem.

Here are the ones turning the most heads:

💡 Safe Superintelligence (SSI) – Founded by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, SSI is one of the most anticipated new ventures in AI safety. Now running on Google Cloud.

🧠 Anysphere – Creator of Cursor, the massively popular AI code editor. It’s a direct rival to GitHub Copilot and is reportedly valued at $10B. Uses Anthropic’s Claude via Google Cloud.

📖 Hebbia – A favorite in legaltech, Hebbia uses AI to search large documents. Recently raised $130M with backing from a16z, GV, Index, and Thiel. Powered by Google’s Gemini models.

👾 Magic – Building advanced frontier models for automating coding and research. Backed by Alphabet’s CapitalG and Eric Schmidt. Uses Google Cloud’s GPU infrastructure.

🤖 Physical Intelligence – Creating foundational software for robotics. Raised $400M from Sequoia, Bezos, Lux, Thrive, and more. Founded by former Google DeepMind researchers.

📞 Photoroom – Paris-based AI photo editing startup using Google’s Imagen 3 and Veo 2 for image and video generation. One of Europe’s standout AI players.

🗣Synthesia – Known for hyper-realistic AI avatars. Uses Google models and recently raised $180M at a $2.1B valuation, with GV as an investor.

🔺Google is also expanding its VC partner program, now including Lightspeed alongside Sequoia and Y Combinator. Startups in their portfolios can qualify for up to $150K in cloud credits and access to Google’s AI stack.

Google may still trail Microsoft in cloud AI dominance—but with this lineup of future unicorns, it's racing to close the gap.

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🔺 Parallel Systems Reinvents Short-Haul Freight with Autonomous Electric Rail

Los Angeles-based Parallel Systems is bringing fresh energy to freight with its autonomous, battery-electric rail technology—designed specifically for short-distance logistics on existing rail infrastructure.

⚡️ New Rail, Familiar Tracks: Unlike traditional trains, Parallel’s self-driving rail vehicles can attach/detach independently and operate at small scale, making rail viable for regional deliveries without relying on massive locomotives.

⚙️ Automation Advantage: The system allows for quicker braking, safer operations (no manual coupling), and seamless integration with today’s train control software—reducing both cost and complexity for shippers.

📍 Real-World Trials: Recently approved by the Federal Railroad Administration, Parallel is piloting its tech along a 160-mile route in Georgia between the Port of Savannah and major distribution hubs.

💰 The company has raised over $100M to date, including a $38M Series B led by Anthos Capital, to push toward a 2026 commercial launch.

By modernizing freight rail with electric autonomy, Parallel is betting on a more efficient, scalable future for goods movement—without laying a single new track.

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🎥 Visualskies lets filmmakers shoot VFX like it’s already real

London-based startup Visualskies is reinventing how CGI is filmed — letting camera crews see dragons, explosions, or virtual sets live in their monitors while shooting on location.

💡 Instead of guessing with a greenscreen, operators can now track and frame around digital elements as if they were physically present. The tech overlays graphics in real time and syncs with camera motion.

🎥Already used on Napoleon and Paddington in Peru, Visualskies helps avoid costly reshoots, missed shots, and awkward blocking — especially in large outdoor scenes where LED volumes can’t be used.

☑ Beyond VFX, the company also 3D-scans sets, locations, and actors for future-proof backups — a growing demand in productions with long post timelines or sudden reshoots.

As the UK film industry looks for its next growth edge, Visualskies offers a precision-first toolset for studios that want to blend virtual and physical filmmaking without compromise.

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💥 Jack & Elon vs. IP Laws: The Billionaire Rebellion

Jack Dorsey lit up X this weekend with a three-word post: “delete all IP law.” Elon Musk? He instantly co-signed.

Their anti-IP stance sparked a firestorm, especially as lawsuits pile up against AI firms accused of stealing content for training data.

🔥 What happened:

– Dorsey called to abolish IP laws entirely, claiming current systems only enrich gatekeepers.
– Musk backed him, consistent with his past takes like “patents are for the weak.”
– Critics slammed them for undermining creators and ignoring the value of copyright in their own empires.

💬 Why it matters:

This isn’t just billionaire banter. Musk already helped reshape policy under Trump. And with AI in legal hot water, this debate could soon move from X posts to Capitol Hill.

Dorsey and Musk aren’t just trolling. They're hinting at a vision of tech where data is free, and gatekeepers are gone—even if that means tossing creators under the bus.

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🚤 Blue Water Autonomy: Autonomous Naval Ships from Ex-Navy and Robotics Veterans

Boston-based Blue Water Autonomy is building AI-powered naval ships that can operate without a captain — aiming to redefine maritime operations for defense and commercial use.

Founded by ex-U.S. Navy personnel and engineers from Amazon Robotics and iRobot, the team combines deep robotics expertise with real-world military insight.

⚙️ What they’re building: Full-stack autonomy for 100-ton+ vessels, capable of long-range, uncrewed missions.

🔎 Real-world testing: Already trialing its autonomous test ship in saltwater just outside Boston.

🧠 Why it matters: While others retrofit autonomy into existing vessels, Blue Water is rethinking the ship from scratch — with autonomy at the core of the design.

💰 Backed by Eclipse, Riot, and Impatient Ventures with a $14M seed, the company plans to expand its engineering team and double down on real-world testing.

The battle for the autonomous sea is heating up — and Blue Water wants to lead the fleet.

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🚀 Blue Origin sends first all-female crew to space — Katy Perry among passengers

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin made headlines Monday with a successful New Shepard launch featuring the first all-female space crew since 1963, joining the space tourism race against SpaceX.

🎤Onboard:
Katy Perry, Gayle King, Kerianne Flynn, Lauren Sánchez, Amanda Nguyen, and Aisha Bowe.

💬 Why it matters:
Beyond celebrity appeal, the mission aimed to spotlight women in aerospace - a nod to history and a push for future visibility. That said, the $150K ticket price underscores continued criticism that space tourism remains a playground for the wealthy.

🗣️ Perry summed it up: “We have to protect our mother” — referring to Earth as seen from orbit.

Blue Origin now eyes a second New Glenn launch later this spring.

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⚙️ Conifer Reinvents the Hub Motor for the EV Era

Founded by ex-Lucid and Apple EV engineers, Conifer is taking aim at the overlooked electric motor — with a powerful, rare-earth-free “drop-in” alternative for small vehicles.

🔧 What they’ve built:

🔥A compact hub motor using ferrite magnets (no rare earths)

🔥Higher efficiency and power, half the size of comparable motors

🔥Fully drop-in — works with existing vehicle designs

⭕️ Target markets: From two- and three-wheel EVs to tractors and even HVAC systems. Conifer is already working with global customers and shipping motors later this year.

✨ Beyond tech: The team’s supply chain is designed for localization and automation, with ambitions to scale via microfactories — starting with one country and replicating as demand grows.

💰 Raised $20M in seed funding from True Ventures, MaC Ventures, MFV Partners, and others. True’s Rohit Sharma joins the board.

Conifer’s pitch is simple: “Swap the motor, get 10% more range - no redesign needed.”

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☀️ Enpal expands into full-stack home energy, betting on solar, storage, and trading

Berlin-based Enpal is evolving from a solar subscription startup into a comprehensive energy tech platform for European households. Its offering now spans solar panels, battery storage, EV chargers, heat pumps, and a forthcoming energy trading platform that could turn homes into micro power stations.

🚀 From solar-only to end-to-end
Founded in 2017, Enpal now enables homeowners to generate, store, and even sell renewable energy, aiming to decentralize power and reduce grid dependence.

📉 Navigating a volatile market
Revenue dipped slightly in 2024 (€860M vs €905M in 2023) amid inflation and shifting energy prices, but Enpal is doubling down on expansion with new capital and product rollouts.

⚔️ Growing competition
Players like 1Komma5° and Sweden’s Aira are racing into the same space, pushing all-in-one electrification for homes. Enpal’s edge? A mature ecosystem and deep integration across devices.

As Europe’s green energy transition accelerates, Enpal is positioning itself as the operating layer for electrified living — not just a solar company, but a decentralized utility.

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⚡️ Pacific Fusion reveals tech roadmap for high-gain inertial fusion

Pacific Fusion, the fusion energy startup that emerged with a $900M Series A last fall, is finally opening the hood on its technology. The company aims to outperform the National Ignition Facility by delivering 100x energy gain at one-tenth the cost — and now it’s showing how.

🧪 Magnetic compression, not lasers
Instead of NIF-style laser confinement, Pacific Fusion uses electromagnetic force to compress the fuel pellet. A burst of electricity generates a magnetic field that crushes the target shell in 100 nanoseconds.

⚡️ 2 terawatts in a blink
The system runs on 156 impedance-matched Marx generators (IMGs), each made up of 32 high-voltage stages and 320 capacitors. These precisely timed “bricks” deliver synchronized pulses to drive fusion at unprecedented efficiency.

⚙️ Progress and production
Prototypes of core components are already built. With that, the company unlocks the next tranche of its milestone-based $900M funding to start assembling the first full-scale IMG. If successful, they’ll replicate it 150+ times to complete the fusion system.

🔥 Fusion without the red tape
Thanks to the Advance Act of 2024, fusion now has its own regulatory path, distinct from nuclear fission. Pacific Fusion is working closely with regulators as the framework evolves.

With a decade-long target to commercial deployment, Pacific Fusion is betting that fast, high-gain inertial confinement can finally make fusion not just viable, but scalable.

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👍Phantom Neuro brings back natural movement for amputees — with a subdermal neural interface

Phantom Neuro is reimagining prosthetics by connecting directly to what the brain thinks is still there — phantom limbs.

Instead of brain implants or external rigs, Phantom’s implant reads nerve signals from under the skin and converts them into intuitive, real-time movement.

🧠 What they’ve built:
A thin, under-skin strip that interprets motor signals from residual nerves and sends them to prosthetic limbs — delivering 94% movement accuracy with minimal calibration.

⚙️ How it works:

🔥Reads “phantom limb” nerve activity

🔥10-minute calibration restores up to 85% of lost functionality

🔥Compatible with a wide range of prosthetic limbs

🔥Non-invasive compared to brain-machine interfaces

Already recognized with FDA Breakthrough Device + TAP status

🫱 Strategic traction:
Phantom is backed by leading prosthetics maker Ottobock, and counts Johns Hopkins and Intel among early supporters. Its tech could extend beyond amputees into robotics and AI movement modeling.

💰 Raised $19M from Ottobock, Breakout Ventures, Draper Associates, Time BioVentures, and others.

Phantom’s goal: Make prosthetic control feel human again — not futuristic, but familiar.

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