Friday! [Releases doves.] Hope you have a wonderful weekend. Before we sign off, a quick programming note: We're finalizing our upcoming StrictlyVC networking event in Palo Alto on the evening of December 3, and we've just added Mina Fahmi to the lineup. Fahmi is the co-founder and CEO of Sandbar, whose new AI ring has attracted True Ventures, which is notable given the firm's track record with connected devices like Fitbit, Peloton, and Ring. (Partner Kevin Rose also spent three years on the board of Oura, the smart ring that today controls roughly 80% of its market.) Fahmi founded Sandbar with Kirak Hong after the two met at CTRL-Labs, later acquired by Meta. They face stiff competition, so we'll ask Fahmi and True Ventures partner Toni Schneider —former CEO of WordPress parent Automattic — why this device might have staying power when so many others have not. More details coming soon. In the meantime, huge thanks to Playground Global for hosting us. Grab your seat here before — much like the doves! — they are gone. — CL | Top News | Meta announced today it will invest $600 billion over the next three years to expand its U.S. AI infrastructure, including massive new data centers in Louisiana and Texas and a $3.2 billion power project. SiliconANGLE has more here. | OpenAI has apparently been lobbying the Trump administration to expand the Chips Act’s 35% tax credit to cover AI infrastructure, a request that appears to contradict recent assurances from Sam Altman and CFO Sarah Friar that the company isn’t seeking government backing. Bloomberg has more here. | Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Roblox, accusing the gaming giant of misleading parents and enabling predators on its platform. TechCrunch has more here. | Seven families filed suit against OpenAI yesterday, alleging its chatbot encouraged suicides and delusions after the company rushed its GPT-4o model to market without adequate safety testing in order to beat rivals like Google. TechCrunch has more here. | | |
You can’t analyze performance if you can’t agree on the metrics. Revenue. ARR. NDR. Simple on paper until every founder, fund, and dashboard defines them differently. | Our Metric Dictionary is a comprehensive guide to startup metrics - their aliases, definitional nuances, and how they interconnect. Built by analysts who’ve decoded 20,000+ company updates. | Check out the Metric Dictionary. | | Rivian Gives RJ Scaringe a New Pay Package Worth Up to $5B |  | Image Credits: Haje Kamps / TechCrunch |
| By Sean O’Kane | Rivian has given its founder and CEO RJ Scaringe a new performance-based stock award that could ultimately be worth around $5 billion if all the underlying goals are met, according to a new filing. | Scaringe’s salary is also being doubled to $2 million per year, and he was given a 10% stake in Rivian’s newest spinout Mind Robotics, the filing shows. | The announcement comes just one day after Tesla shareholders voted to approve a compensation package for its CEO Elon Musk that could be worth $1 trillion — the largest in corporate history. | Unlike Musk’s pay package, Scaringe’s isn’t subject to a shareholder vote. The compensation committee on Rivian’s board of directors has canceled a similar-sized performance award given to Scaringe in 2021 as part of a company-wide equity incentive plan adopted that year. The new award is being issued under the same, already-approved 2021 equity incentive plan. | The committee decided to cancel the 2021 performance award in part because of the “unlikeliness” that Scaringe could reach the goals required. The 2021 award consisted of 20,355,946 stock options that vested in part based on stock price increases. Six years past the grant date, if Rivian’s share price passed $110, $150, $220, and $295, Scaringe would be able to purchase the stock options in corresponding tranches for just $21.72. | Rivian’s stock shot up to around $129 following its IPO in November 2021. But it fell to around $30 over the next six months, and has spent the last few years typically trading between $10 and $20. This has made it harder for Scaringe to access even part of the 2021 award, let alone the total value of around $6 billion, according to the company. (Scaringe was awarded another 6.8 million stock options that simply vest over time in the 2021 award that were not tied to performance, and the company says those have not been canceled.) | | | Massive Fundings | AAVantgarde Bio, a five-year-old Milan startup that develops AAV gene therapies for inherited retinal diseases, raised a $141 million Series B round. The round was co-led by Schroders Capital, Atlas Venture, and Forbion. Ophthalmology Times has more here. | EdgeCortix, a six-year-old Tokyo startup that develops energy-efficient AI processors for edge applications, raised a Series B round led by TDK Ventures, with CDIB Cross Border Innovation Fund II, Jane Street Global Trading, Yanmar Ventures, Pacific Bays Capital, NTT Finance Corporation, SiC Power, Aero X Ventures, SBI Investment, and Global Hands-On VC also piling on. The company has raised a total of $110+ million. More here. | NEOK Bio, a one-year-old Palo Alto startup that develops dual-targeting antibody-drug conjugates designed to improve the efficacy and safety of cancer treatments, raised a $75 million Series A round. ABL Bio was the deal lead. More here. | | Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings | Accipiter Biosciences, a two-year-old Seattle startup that designs de novo multifunctional protein therapeutics to treat complex diseases, raised a $12.7 million seed round. The deal was co-led by Takeda and Flying Fish Partners, with Columbus Venture Partners, Cercano Capital, Washington Research Foundation, Alexandria Investments, Pack Ventures, and Argonautic Ventures also pitching in. More here. | Amae Health, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that provides integrated, psychiatry-led treatment for serious mental illness using AI-driven data and wearables, raised a $25 million Series B round led by Altos Ventures, with Quiet Capital, Bling Capital, Cedars-Sinai Ventures, Healthier Capital, and 8VC also investing. The company has raised a total of $50+ million. Behavioral Health Business has more here. | Commonware, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that develops open-source software to help other companies launch and manage blockchains, raised a $25 million round led by Tempo. Fortune has more here. | Fastbreak AI, a three-year-old startup based in Charlotte, NC, that develops AI-powered scheduling software to optimize sports leagues’ travel and viewership, raised a $40 million Series A round co-led by Greycroft and GTMfund, with the NBA, NHL, and TMRW Sports also joining in. The company has raised a total of $50+ million. Sports Business Journal has more here. | | Smaller Fundings | Arx Research, a three-year-old Boulder startup that develops handheld EMV-certified point-of-sale devices letting merchants accept stablecoins and traditional card payments on one terminal, raised a $6.1 million seed round led by Castle Island Ventures, with Inflection, Placeholder, Seed Club Ventures, and 1kx also participating. More here. | Avallon, a one-year-old New York startup that builds AI agents to automate insurance claims operations, raised a $4.6 million seed round led by Frontline Ventures, with Y Combinator, 1984, Liquid2, and Booom also taking part. AlleyWatch has more here. | Terranova, a four-year-old Berkeley startup that builds autonomous robots to inject wood slurry underground to lift and stabilize flood-prone land, raised a $7 million seed round co-led by Congruent Ventures and Outlander, with GoAhead Ventures, Gothams, and Ponderosa also digging in. TechCrunch has more here. | | |
The Ultimate Guide to AI in VC & PE breaks down how firms like BlackRock and OpenAI are using AI to spot market signals earlier, accelerate research, and win competitive deals. 94% of investors say AI-augmented approaches will define private capital’s future, and those adopting them now are already seeing the results.
See what the next generation of investors is doing differently. | | New Funds | Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital is raising a second, larger fund to back nuclear fusion startups after its $250 million debut vehicle in 2022. TechCrunch has more here. | Section Partners, an 11-year-old Palo Alto VC firm that backs late-stage, venture-backed technology companies through structured and direct investments, raised $189 million across two new funds. More here. | Balnord, a VC firm based in Gdansk, Poland, that backs frontier and dual-use startups across the Baltic Sea region, raised its first fund in the amount of €70 million, with a final close of €100 million expected by mid 2026. Tech.eu has more here. | | People | In one of the most detailed post-mortems yet of the change in leadership at Sequoia, the Financial Times reports that Roelof Botha was ousted by top lieutenants amid internal clashes over AI strategy, management style, and governance. The Financial Times has more here. | Rivian has awarded CEO RJ Scaringe a new $5 billion performance-based stock award and doubled his salary, replacing an earlier grant deemed unattainable as the EV maker seeks to motivate leadership ahead of its next vehicle launch. TechCrunch has more here. | A Manhattan jury said it is struggling to reach a verdict in the trial of MIT-educated brothers James and Anton Peraire-Bueno, accused of using bots to steal $25 million in crypto in just 12 seconds. Business Insider has more here. | | Post-Its | | | Podcasts | We have not one but two episodes of StrictlyVC Download for your weekend listening pleasure, including recordings of our interviews with Roelof Botha (here) and Vinod Khosla (here) from last week’s TechCrunch Disrupt. | | Essential Reads | Major newsrooms are racing to adopt AI tools for data analysis, editing, and even story drafts, triggering newsroom resistance, union disputes, and ethical questions about whether automation will streamline journalism or erode it. The New York Times has more here. | A Columbia University study found that about a quarter of all Polymarket trades over the past three years were likely wash trades, raising fresh questions about the prediction market’s real liquidity and credibility. Bloomberg has more here. | Moonshot, a Beijing startup backed by Alibaba, unveiled its Kimi K2 Thinking model just four months after its last update, saying it surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT 5 on key benchmark tests involving autonomous task execution and tool use. CNBC has more here. | A major Oxford-led study found that many of the 445 benchmarks used t |
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