Brussels’ AI Act simplification plan, Nvidia’s Saudi GPU mega-deal, and Google’s upcoming AI coding agent.

Happy Thursday everyone!

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News 🗞️📰

• Pope Leo XIV names AI a primary challenge for humanity: In his first formal address to the College of Cardinals, the first American pontiff vowed to continue Pope Francis’ Vatican II reforms and Catholic social teaching while warning that artificial intelligence poses urgent threats to human dignity, justice and labor—as he made a pilgrimage to the Madonna sanctuary in Genazzano ahead of his papal tenure.
• Nvidia Secures Major AI Chip Deal with Saudi Arabia’s Humain: At the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced a multi-year contract to supply several hundred thousand advanced GPUs for Humain’s 500 MW AI data-center buildout, marking a significant expansion into the Middle East market.
• EC to simplify AI Act implementation, open to targeted amendments: The European Commission—through AI policy unit head Kilian Gross—plans to ease compliance with the AI Act and, if simplification proves insufficient after review, pursue targeted changes; a voluntary code of practice for general-purpose AI models like ChatGPT will be published ahead of the August 2 enforcement date.
• Google tests “AI Mode” button on its homepage: Google is piloting an “AI Mode” feature—powered by its Gemini model—directly beneath the main search bar (replacing “I’m Feeling Lucky”) via its Labs experimental program, aiming to drive user adoption of generative AI search amid competition from ChatGPT and Bing, with a wider rollout expected next year.
• Palantir CEO Alex Karp Criticizes Europe’s AI Ambitions: At the Riyadh forum, Karp praised Saudi and U.S. AI leadership while accusing Europe—despite its semiconductor strengths—of “giving up” on AI, attributing the continent’s lag to stringent regulations under the AI Act.
• Google Launches AI for Energy Accelerator in Europe & Israel: Google’s new accelerator will fund and mentor startups developing AI solutions for grid optimization, renewable forecasting, and energy efficiency, aiming to drive clean-energy innovation across 14 European countries and Israel.
• EU Member States Face Funding Shortages to Enforce AI Act: As the AI Act’s first enforcement phase begins, policy advisers warn that cash-strapped governments lack the resources for market surveillance, potentially hindering compliance checks on both domestic and foreign AI providers.
• Europe Poised to Lead in AI but Faces Talent Drain: Despite its strong research base, Europe struggles to retain AI talent as startups and academics relocate to the U.S., prompting calls for better funding, visa reforms, and pan-EU collaboration to keep brains at home.
• Google is developing a software AI agent ahead of its annual conference: Reuters reports that Alphabet has been demoing an AI assistant for software development—capable of coding, debugging, and documentation—to employees and external developers in advance of its I/O developer event.
• Zalando uses AI to speed up marketing campaigns, cut costs: Europe’s leading online fashion retailer is employing generative AI to produce product imagery and “digital twins” of models, enabling rapid response to fleeting social-media trends and reducing creative production costs.
• France’s Le Monde enters content partnership with AI startup Perplexity: The venerable newspaper will license its articles to Perplexity to improve the accuracy of its AI-driven answers, while leveraging Perplexity’s LLM technology to develop in-house AI products and new revenue lines.
• US FDA to deploy AI across all centers by June 30: Following a successful generative-AI pilot for scientific reviewers, the FDA announced it will integrate AI tools in every center immediately, with full operational deployment scheduled for June 30
• ECAI 2025 Conference invites research on next-gen AI: The 28th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, to be held June 23–25 in Bologna, will feature peer-reviewed presentations on embodied AI, ethical frameworks, and human–AI collaboration.

Funding 💼💸

• Somite AI secures $47M Series A to reinvent cell replacement therapy: Boston-based Somite AI, led by Founder and CEO Dr. @Micha Breakstone, has raised $47 million in a Series A round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from SciFi Ventures, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Fusion Fund, Ajinomoto Group Ventures, Pitango HealthTech, TechAviv, Harpoon Ventures, and angel investors including Dr. R. Martin Chavez and Fidji Simo, to advance its DeltaStem AI platform for scalable production of therapeutic cells enabling regenerative medicine applications such as treatments for Type 1 diabetes, orthopedic injuries, and muscular diseases.
• Optimal Dynamics raises $40M Series C to scale the decision layer of logistics: New York–based Optimal Dynamics, co-founded and led by CEO Sharn Lal, has secured $40 million in a Series C round led by Koch Disruptive Technologies, with participation from Cota Capital and Gryphon Investors, to expand its AI-driven platform that optimizes routing, truck assignment, and fleet utilization for large shippers, cutting costs and improving efficiency.
• Clarium Health raises $27M Series A to scale AI-powered supply chain resiliency: New York–based Clarium Health, founded and led by CEO Steve Liou , has raised $27 million in a Series A round led by Northzone, with backing from General Catalyst, Kaiser Permanente’s venture fund, and Yale New Haven Health, to scale Astra OS—its AI platform for predictive analytics and automated inventory management—strengthening supply-chain resiliency across leading health systems.
• Theom secures $20M Series A to redefine data governance for the gen-AI era: San José–based Theom, led by CEO Navindra Yadav , has closed a $20 million Series A round co-led by Wing Ventures, with strategic participation from Snowflake and Databricks, to advance its AI-driven data-security platform that automates discovery, classification, and governance of sensitive enterprise data.
• Fastino raises $17.5M seed round led by Khosla Ventures to launch task-specific language models: Palo Alto–based Fastino, co-founded and led by Ash Lewis , has raised $17.5 million in a seed round led by Khosla Ventures, with additional participation from Valor Equity Partners, former Docker CEO Scott Johnson, and Weights & Biases co-founders Lukas Biewald and Shawn Lewis , to refine its “ultra-light” TLM (task-specific language model) architecture that trains AI models on low-cost gaming GPUs for high performance and speed at a fraction of traditional training costs.
• Sett Raises $15 Million in Series A to Power Agentic AI for Mobile Gaming: Tel Aviv–based Sett, which provides an agentic AI platform for mobile game studios to automate marketing content and asset creation, secured $15 million in Series A led by Spark Capital, bringing its total capital to $27 million.
• Prosus Ventures Leads $13.5 Million Investment in Luzia to Accelerate AI Consumer Apps: Prosus Ventures anchored a $13.5 million round for Luzia, co-founded by Javier Andres Marin a fast-growing European consumer AI startup with 65 million users, to scale its personalized recommendation and conversational AI offerings across retail and e-commerce
• Ravio Raises $12 Million in Series A for Real-Time Compensation Benchmarking: London’s Ravio, offering AI-driven compensation analytics across 46 countries and 100+ roles, closed a $12 million Series A—led by Spark Capital, Blackbird, and Cherry Ventures—to help corporates optimize pay equity and talent retention.
• Humanly.io raises $7M Series A to accelerate AI recruiting: Seattle-based Humanly.io, founded by former Google and Slack engineers and led by CEO Prem Kumar , has secured $7 million in a Series A round led by Drive Capital, with backing from Y Combinator, Zeal Capital, Spark Growth Ventures, and angel investors including Tom Gonser , Lisa Brummel, and John Thimsen , to scale its conversational AI recruiting platform that schedules and screens over 250,000 candidates monthly, cutting time-to-hire from 44 to 5 days
• Uviquity emerges from stealth with $6.6M seed funding for Far-UVC semiconductor tech: Raleigh-based Uviquity, co-founded and led by CEO Scott Burroughs , has raised $6.6 million in a seed round led by Emerald Development Managers, with participation from AgFunder and MANN+HUMMEL, to advance its photonic semiconductor chips that emit Far-UVC light for continuous, safe air, water, and surface disinfection.
• Hyperbots secures $6.5M Series A for agentic finance and accounting AI: Dover-based Hyperbots, founded by Rajeev Pathak , Ram Jayaraman , and Niyati Chhaya , has raised $6.5 million in a Series A round co-led by Arkam Ventures and Athera Venture Partners, with backing from JSW Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Sunicon Ventures, and Darashaw & Company, to expand its AI-agent platform that automates invoicing, payments, and expense insights, and launch HyperLM, an LLM trained on financial data.
• MarvelX AI raises $6M seed to build an AI operating system for insurance: Amsterdam-based MarvelX AI, founded and led by Ali el Hassouni , has raised $6 million in a seed round led by EQT Ventures, with participation from Plug and Play Tech Center and executives from DeepMind, Plaid, Elastic, and Coinbase, to launch ClaimOS MaX—an agentic AI OS that integrates with legacy systems to automate claims processing and back-office workflows for insurers.
• Alice.Tech raises €4.2M seed round to personalize learning with AI: Copenhagen-based Alice.Tech, co-founded by Joakim Bultelius and Jens Ørngreen, has secured €4.2 million in a seed round led by Cherry Ventures, with backing from Heartcore Capital and angel investors, to scale its AI-driven personalized learning platform that tailors content and exercises to each student, boosting retention and exam performance.
• Jozu raises $4M seed round to scale enterprise AI orchestration: Toronto-based Jozu, founded by Brad Micklea , Jacob Fuss , and @Helen Cousar, has raised $4 million in a seed round led by HalfCourt Capital, with backing from Mozilla Ventures, Brightspark Ventures, AlleyCorp, Sentiero Ventures, and Union Bay Partners, to expand its enterprise AI orchestration platform for deployment, security, and monitoring of production ML models.
• Markopolo.ai raises $2M to build your AI marketing dream team: Sheridan, Wyoming–based Markopolo.ai, co-founded and led by Tasfia Tasbin and Rubaiyat Mostofa , has raised $2 million in a seed round led by Joa Capital, with participation from Team Ignite Partners and strategic angels, to develop its suite of AI marketing agents—Mark for media buying, Nabiq for conversational campaigns, and DeepDive for social listening—empowering consumer brands with integrated AI teammates.
• ThriveAI raises $1.2M pre-seed to launch AI-powered junior product manager: San Francisco–based ThriveAI, founded by Ishwar Dhanuka and Brian Ngo , has raised $1.2 million in a pre-seed round led by 500 Global, with participation from Iterative and Hustle Fund, to launch its multi-agent AI platform that acts as an autonomous “junior product manager”—handling data analysis, feedback synthesis, and competitive monitoring to accelerate workflow integration for product teams.
• Co-one bags €1M pre-Series A to power AI integration services: Tallinn-based Co-one, founded by Arman Kayhan and Mert Menekşe , has raised €1 million (US$1.11 million) in a pre-Series A round led by Superangel, with support from angel investors, to scale its AI integration solution—offering a data-labeling management dashboard and automated labeling services to optimize ML data preparation workflows.
• Nia raises £640K pre-seed to launch AI engineering teammates: London-based Nia, founded by Arlan Rakhmetzhanov , has secured £640,000 in a pre-seed round led by LocalGlobe, with backing from No Label Ventures, Andrena Ventures, Ventures Together, Eurasian Hub Ventures, and Artificial Societies, to expand its autonomous engineering agent platform—automating code exploration, contextual assistance, and multi-repo collaboration for modern developer teams.

M&A 💰

• VEEA® Announces Acquisition of AI-Enabled Smart Spaces Provider Crowdkeep: Veea Inc. has acquired substantially all of the technology of Crowdkeep, integrating its AI-enabled IoT smart-spaces platform into Veea’s Edge Platform in exchange for shares and other consideration; Crowdkeep CEO Helder Antunes will join Veea as Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer.
• GenAI.Works, The World’s Largest AI Community, Hits 12M Users; Acquires Hackmakers and Launches Education Platform: GenAI.Works, fresh off reaching 12 million users and 3 million newsletter subscribers, has acquired Hackmakers, the global hackathon network, to deepen community-driven AI innovation and launch a new education platform.
• Brinc launches Brinc Korea with acquisition of Next Stage Venture Studio: Brinc has acquired Seoul-based Next Stage Venture Studio—founded in 2024 by Jinho Bae , Jonathan Moore and two co-founders—to establish Brinc Korea and connect local startups with Brinc’s global capital, mentorship and corporate partnerships.
• ServiceNow acquires Data.World months after snatching up Moveworks: ServiceNow has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Data.World, the cloud-native data catalog and governance platform founded in 2015 that raised over $130 million from Alumni Ventures, Prologis Ventures and Shasta Ventures and was last valued at $350 million in its Series C; terms were not disclosed.
• J2 Reliance Joins Forces with Atombit to Lead the Next Generation of Applied Analytics, AI and Experience Intelligence: Atombit has acquired J2 Reliance, the London-based analytics and AI specialist founded by Damien Arnol , combining its scientific expertise with Atombit’s platform to expand Experience Intelligence solutions; terms were not disclosed.
• Atombit makes triple swoop backed by Palatine: Atombit, backed by Palatine Private Equity, has acquired DWise, the Bulgaria-based consumer intelligence and CX transformation consultancy, integrating its analytics and AI expertise into Atombit’s expanding Experience Intelligence offerings; terms were not disclosed.
• TrueAccord Accelerates Growth with Acquisition of Sentry Credit: TrueAccord has acquired Sentry Credit, the Everett, WA-based debt collection agency with over 30 years of service, integrating its first-party collection and litigation services to expand its digital-first debt collection platform; terms were not disclosed.
• SKAI Intelligence Acquires SESAME Digital: SKAI Intelligence has acquired SESAME Digital, the France-based digital commerce agency founded and led by Victoria Glanz , known for conversion-driven strategies and TikTok Shop partnerships with brands like Cartier and Dior, to bolster its European AI-powered content services and open new hubs in Paris, London and Madrid.

Interesting Reads 💡🤔

• Generative AI drives job growth and boosts firm productivity: A study by Mark Chen (Georgia State) and Joanna Wang (Peking University), analyzing over five million U.S. patents (2007–2023), finds that generative AI tools—language models, content-creation and recommendation systems—augment white-collar and creative roles, leading to higher hiring, productivity and firm value, while perception/motor-control AI displaces routine manual jobs without productivity gains; impacts vary with labor-market flexibility, underscoring the need for reskilling programs and adaptive policies.
• The Seed 40: The Best Women Early-Stage Investors of 2025: Business Insider’s fifth annual “Seed 40” highlights 40 leading women VCs—many active in AI—who collectively back trailblazing startups like Slack, Mercury, and Vanta, and who blend data-driven investment platforms with deep industry expertise to drive inclusive, high-impact deal flow.
• Axios Pro Rata: Stalling at Seed: Axios reports a record 46% of Q1 2025 seed deals structured as bridge rounds—founders delaying Series A amid market uncertainty—even as AI-powered data-center assets (like NRG’s $12 billion LS Power acquisition) underscore investor confidence in infrastructure to support AI growth.
• Bat VC Launches $100 Million Fund to Back US and Indian AI Startups: Bat VC, founded by former Yahoo and Twitter India executives, announced a $100 million second fund targeting early-stage AI, fintech, and enterprise ventures in the US and India, with checks of $3–5 million and LP talks underway with institutions and HNWIs.
• Why Your Next Funding Round May Hinge on Well-Managed Agentic AI: Crunchbase News analyzes that in early 2025 European VCs funneled $548 million into agentic AI startups—underscoring a shift from static GenAI tools to autonomous agents that strategize, act, and learn independently, and advising founders to demonstrate robust governance and human-in-the-loop controls.

Startups / Tools 🧰🛠️

• Pinecone: A vector database that makes it easy to build high-performance vector search applications. Developer-friendly, fully managed, and effortlessly scalable without infrastructure hassles.
• Coze: A next-generation AI application and chatbot development platform—build powerful LLM-powered bots without code and deploy them across channels with ready WebSDKs and APIs.
• Weights & Biases: The leading AI developer platform to train and fine-tune models, manage experiments through production, and track and evaluate AI applications with comprehensive tooling.
• Lummi: A free AI stock image platform offering 13,000+ royalty-free photos, illustrations, and 3D assets—each crafted and curated for all your creative projects.
• LogoFast: A free AI logo maker by ShipFast—create professional-quality logos in seconds with intuitive editing tools and no design skills needed.
• Trupeer: An AI-powered video and documentation platform that transforms screen recordings into polished product videos with AI-generated scripts, voiceovers, and visuals in minutes.
• n8n: An open-source workflow automation platform combining low-code ease and AI capabilities to automate complex processes and integrate with over 500 apps.
• Helicone AI: An open-source LLM observability and monitoring platform—providing logging, metrics, prompt management, and debugging tools to ship production-ready AI applications with confidence.
• MindPal: A platform to build and run AI agents and multi-agent workflows that automate complex processes and drive business outcomes—no coding required.
• Weaviate: An AI-native open-source vector database for storing and retrieving data objects and embeddings, seamlessly connecting to ML models to build scalable AI applications.
• Cartesia Sonic: An ultra-low-latency generative voice API powered by Cartesia’s next-gen state-space model—enabling real-time, high-quality voice experiences with instant voice cloning and expressive controls.
• Deepgram: An enterprise-grade Voice AI platform offering speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and speech-to-speech APIs—designed for real-time, accurate, and scalable voice applications.

NTV Highlights 🪩🎉

• Our First Investment: Nilo, the Revolutionary AI-Powered Game Engine Transforming Gaming: We’re proud to invest in Nilo, an AI-powered game engine led by visionary founder Nuno Leiria, whose 15+ years at Epic Games and work on Unreal Engine 5 and Fortnite set the stage for this breakthrough. Co-investors include a16z, Flex Capital, and business angel Logan Kilpatrick, as Nilo harnesses generative AI and natural language processing to make game development fast, accessible, and dynamic.
• We are actively looking for AI startups At Next Tier Ventures, we are actively looking for the next generation of AI startup founders ready to scale and create meaningful impact. Our investments range between $500K and $2M, accompanied by strategic support to help founders achieve their vision. If you’re building cutting-edge B2B AI solutions let’s connect 👉 http://apply.nexttier.vc

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