OpenAI cuts its current round from $30B to $20B, dropping its valuation from $1.4T to $1.25T.
Hackers steal $6.3B from Binance hot wallets, a heist tied to North Korea's TraderTraitor with $3B frozen.
Intel and Reddit shares each fall nearly 30% as AI spending doubts sink the Nasdaq 100 9.1% below its record.
Hackers drain $6.3bn from Binance hot wallets
Funding and deals
OpenAI. OpenAI cut its round to $20bn from $30bn at a $1.25tn valuation, with $11bn committed, mostly from UAE investors, to bridge its delayed IPO.
DeepSeek. DeepSeek's reported €14.2bn round is now 27% state-backed, up from 2%, with new investors CXMT and SMIC.
Kalshi. Kalshi closed a $1bn Series G led by Sequoia and Wellington at a $40bn valuation, up from $22bn in May and about ten times revenue.
Ubitium. Ubitium, a Düsseldorf semiconductor startup, raised a $14m seed round for a universal processor for physical AI.
Guest interviews
Jörn Chim Chow, CEO and co-founder of Ubitium. Ubitium builds a universal microprocessor for physical AI that merges AI with real-time signal processing, solving the complexity problem in modern embedded systems. He says European VCs ask about the risks first.
News
Hackers drain $6.3bn from Binance wallets. Attackers pulled about $6.3bn from Binance hot wallets on Thursday, mostly within 20 minutes, entering via a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop. Tether and Circle helped freeze about $3bn, and TRM Labs blames North Korea's TraderTraitor.
AI spending doubts sink Intel and Nasdaq. Intel fell almost 30% on Friday, with Amazon and Alphabet also selling off, and the Nasdaq 100 closed 9.1% below its record. Investors increasingly doubt the returns on the billions spent on AI.
Reddit falls 29% as Google AI cuts traffic. Reddit's stock fell 29% on Friday, its worst day since the 2024 IPO. CEO Steve Huffman blames Google's AI search, which costs the platform over 1m search visits a week, and Reddit is testing a login requirement.
Lenders pull back from AI data centre debt. AI cloud providers such as CoreWeave and Nebius are struggling to access bond markets, and NVIDIA is negotiating a guarantee for an Anthropic data centre.
Sold fashionette company files for insolvency. BCR Online Warenhandels, until weeks ago fashionette GmbH, filed at Offenbach court about three weeks after The Platform Group's Dominik Benner sold it to a Neubrandenburg turnaround investor. The brand rights stay with the insolvent company.
Otto Group rents Cereact robots for returns. The Otto Group will rent Cereact's AI robots to check returns in its Polish logistics hub, 10 first and later 25. The Stuttgart startup's robots need no per-product training, and it has raised $116m this year.
The Vienna startup's AI phone agents for small businesses reach $19m in annual recurring revenue, with $30m targeted by year end. CEO Daniel Kaynrath told TEDAI he wants notary requirements scrapped and employee equity taxed less.
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On this episode 2
Show 1
Fonio reaches $19m ARR on AI phone agents.
Deutsche Bank and EIB fund European space. Deutsche Bank and the European Investment Bank are mobilising €560m for companies across Europe's space supply chain, roughly half of it for Germany, after more than €1.3bn flowed into European space tech this year.