From Main Street Labs to Claude 4 & Food-Waste AI: Real-World Impact Unleashed

Happy Thursday everyone!

Welcome to AI Weekly Digest 📬 Your essential AI briefing, carefully curated by me, Rubén Colomer, AI Specialist and GP at Next Tier Ventures. Stay ahead of the curve with the latest AI breakthroughs, key funding news, innovative tools, thought-provoking reads, and the best AI job opportunities - it's all here!

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News 🗞️📰

• This Top VC Wants to Use Main Street America as an AI Lab: Andreessen Horowitz partner Alastair (Alex) Rampell proposes deploying AI pilots in small-town businesses—from diners to hardware stores—to gather real-world data, refine models on diverse use cases and demonstrate AI’s practical value beyond tech hubs.

• Anthropic unveils Claude 4 (Opus 4 & Sonnet 4): Anthropic’s next-gen models—Claude Opus 4 (world’s leading coding and long-task agent model) and Claude Sonnet 4 (cost-optimized upgrade with enhanced reasoning and steerability)—now support parallel tool use, extended thinking, memory via local files, and new API features (code execution, MCP connector, Files API, prompt caching), available on Anthropic API, AWS Bedrock and Google Vertex AI

• Google’s Veo 3 AI video generator is a slop monger’s dream: Post by Allison Johnson on The Verge: Veo 3—DeepMind’s newest text-to-video model—now autonomously generates realistic dialogue, sound effects and ambient audio from simple prompts, producing eerily convincing but potentially misleading clips and paving the way for low-effort mass-produced video content

• AI tool trial could save equivalent of 1.5m meals in food waste: UK pilot of Zest’s AI-driven real-time monitoring tool—used by Nestlé and others—cut edible waste by 87% in two weeks, could rescue 700 tonnes (1.5 million meals) and prevent 1,400 tonnes of CO₂, with plans to expand across the supply chain by next March

• Opera’s new AI browser promises to write code while you sleep: Opera Neon debuts as an “agentic browser” using cloud-based AI agents to research, build games, reports, code snippets and websites—even offline—and includes a chatbot interface plus automation tools for routine web tasks, arriving as a premium subscription (beta date TBD)

• German consortium in talks to build AI data centre: SAP, Deutsche Telekom, Ionos and retailer Schwarz are negotiating to build one of the EU’s five “AI gigafactories,” aiming to tap into a €20 billion funding pool to bolster Europe’s AI infrastructure despite challenges around chips, sites and power supply

• Google debuts Stitch for AI-driven UI design: Post by Taryn Plumb: Google Labs’ new “vibe coding” beta, Stitch, leverages Gemini 2.5 to generate HTML/CSS wireframes and templates from a single prompt—exportable to Figma—for rapid dashboard or app mockups; early users praise its speed and layout fidelity, though design polish and multi-screen flows still lag established tools.

• AI Weather Forecasts Explained: Bloomberg details how machine-learning models ingest satellite, radar and IoT data to improve short- and long-term forecasts, enable hyperlocal predictions, automate hazard alerts and optimize resource planning—while exploring challenges around data quality, computational cost and forecasting extremes.

• EU AI Act Enforcement Guidelines Refined for High-Risk Systems: Brussels clarifies compliance checkpoints for high-risk AI applications, focusing on transparency, human oversight, and post-market monitoring to protect end users.

• Everyone’s looking to get in on vibe coding — and Google is no different with Stitch, its follow-up to Jules: Taryn Plumb reports Google Labs’ beta Stitch—a “vibe coding” UI generator—uses Gemini 2.5 Flash or Pro to create HTML/CSS wireframes and templates from single prompts (exportable to Figma) for rapid app and dashboard prototyping, earning praise for speed and layout but critiqued for polish and multi-screen flows.

• EU and U.S. Launch Joint AI Safety Task Force: Regulators form the Transatlantic AI Safety Task Force to harmonize high-risk system standards, with guidelines due Q4 2025.

• Future of Filmmaking AI Panel at Cannes by American Pavilion: IndieWire reports that at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the American Pavilion hosted a “Future of Filmmaking” panel—featuring executives from Universal, Framestore and Runway ML—discussing AI-driven scriptwriting, virtual production and digital humans, and debating how studios can balance innovation with ethical use and creative authorship.

Funding 💼💸

• LM Arena raises $100M seed round led by a16z and UC Investments: LM Arena, founded in 2023 to crowdsource benchmarking and leaderboards for AI models used by OpenAI, Google and Anthropic—has secured $100 million in seed funding at a $600 million valuation, with participation from Lightspeed, Felicis and Kleiner Perkins.

• Legora secures $80M Series B at $675M valuation: Swedish-born legaltech Legora—co-founded and led by CEO Max Junestrand —offers a collaborative AI platform used daily by 250 firms across 20 markets to streamline research, drafting and collaboration, and has raised $80 million in a round co-led by ICONIQ Growth and General Catalyst with follow-on from Redpoint Ventures, Benchmark and Y Combinator.

• DataHub raises $35M Series B for AI context management: Open-source metadata startup DataHub—led by its co-founders and operated by Acryl Data Inc.—has closed a $35 million Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners (bringing total funding past $65 million) to accelerate its context management platform, which helps enterprises discover, observe and control the data that underpins AI models and agents for enhanced reliability and safety

• Pallet picks up $27M in Series B for AI supply-chain efficiency: Pallet—led by CEO Alex Graham —offers AI-powered decision tools that optimize fleet routing, inventory placement and load planning for logistics operators, and has raised $27 million in a Series B round co-led by Scale VP and Global Founders Capital to expand its platform across North America and Europe.

• This Y Combinator Startup Is Cashing In On The Feeding Frenzy For Audio AI Training Data: David AI, founded by Tomer C. and Ben Wiley , generates high-volume synthetic audio datasets for major tech firms, and has closed a $25 million Series A at over a $100 million valuation.

• Rhino Federated Computing raises $15M Series A: Dr Ittai Dayan Rhino Federated Computing—co-founded with Yuval Baror —provides a federated AI platform for regulated industries (healthcare, finance, biopharma) that enables collaborative model training without sharing raw data; it has secured $15 million in a round led by AlleyCorp, with return funding from LionBird, Fusion Fund, Arkin Digital Health, Qiming Venture Partners USA, Telus Global Ventures and Keren Maccabi, plus new investors Wilson’s Bird Capital, Frank Sica and Gaingels.

• Greenlite AI secures $15M Series A: Greenlite AI, led by CEO Will Lawrence , offers a regulatory-trusted AI agent platform that automates KYC, AML and sanctions compliance for banks and fintechs, and has raised $15 million in a round led by Greylock with participation from Thomson Reuters Ventures, Canvas Prime, Y Combinator and Timothy J. Mayopoulos .

• Yoodli secures $13.7M to power AI-driven sales roleplay: Seattle-based Yoodli—co-founded and led by CEO Varun Puri —offers a generative AI platform that analyzes speech and simulates conversational personas for sales-pitch practice, and has raised $13.7 million in a Series A round led by Neotribe with participation from Madrona Venture Group, Cercano Capital, AI2, Ascend and others..

• Ravical secures €7.3M Pre-Seed to deploy AI “Virtual Employees”: Ghent-based Ravical, led by CEO Joris Van Der Gucht , builds domain-trained AI agents that automate up to 80% of tasks in tax, legal, accounting and insurance firms; the startup has raised €7.3 million in a Lakestar-led round to expand its “productisation” platform across professional services.

• Miami startup Gail secures $8.2M seed to build the AI-powered brain of financial services: Miami-based Gail—co-founded and led by CEO Matthew Vega-Sanz—provides domain-trained AI copilots that handle millions of high-stakes interactions for banks and insurers, and has raised $8.2 million in a seed round co-led by HTwenty and Act One Ventures, with participation from Mangusta Capital, NextView Ventures and A15.

• Frinks AI raises $5.4M in Pre-Series A funding led by Prime Venture Partners: Frinks AI, the Bangalore-based vision-AI platform for manufacturing co-founded by Dharmgya Sharma (COO), Subhra. S. Bhattacherjee (CTO) and Aditya Agrawal (CEO), has secured $5.4 million in a Pre-Series A round led by Prime Venture Partners, with participation from Chiratae Ventures, Navam Capital and Ashok Atluri—to fuel global expansion, R&D and U.S. market entry.

• Maxiom Labs closes $2M seed round led by Conscious Ventures to launch AI health coach: Maxiom Labs, Inc.—the Palo Alto startup founded by Eric Michael Harr and team to build a human-centered AI coach for health and performance—has closed a $2 million seed round led by Conscious Ventures with strategic backing from Swiss genetics firm DNAthlete, aimed at accelerating platform deployment and clinical trials.

• Salestools AI secures €2M seed from GapMinder Fund II to scale autonomous sales agents: Bucharest-based Salestools AI—founded by Loredana Qvist 🙋‍♀️ and Jesper Qvist —has raised €2 million in a seed round led by GapMinder Fund II to expand its AI-powered digital SDR agents, build Romania’s largest AI research lab, and gear up for a U.S. market launch

M&A 💰

• OpenAI acquires io for $6.5 B to pioneer AI hardware: OpenAI, led by CEO Sam Altman, is buying io—a design studio co-founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive—for $6.5 billion in stock to integrate Ive and his team into a new unit tasked with creating a novel family of AI-powered devices debuting in 2026.

• Google acquires AI-driven UI startup Galileo AI: Google confirmed on May 20, 2025 that it has acquired Galileo AI, a startup developing AI-powered user-interface generation technology, with plans to embed Galileo’s rapid design-ideation tools across Google’s suite of products and platforms—financial terms were not disclosed.

• Why Salesforce plans to buy Informatica in an $8 billion AI deal: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is acquiring data-management pioneer Informatica—led by CEO Amit Walia—for $8 billion to embed Informatica’s AI-driven data integration and metadata intelligence into Salesforce’s Einstein platform.

• Zscaler acquires Red Canary for boost in AI-driven security operations: Zscaler, led by CEO Jay Chaudhry, is acquiring MDR specialist Red Canary—which boasts 99.6% detection accuracy and 10× faster investigations—to integrate AI-powered SOC capabilities into its Zero Trust platform and enhance threat intelligence and automation

• IgniteTech acquires Khoros to transform customer connections in the AI answer-engine era: Austin-based AI-first software provider IgniteTech announced on May 27, 2025 that it has acquired Khoros, a fellow Austin company known for its digital-first customer engagement platform, aiming to integrate Khoros’s community, social media, and messaging tools into IgniteTech’s AI-driven answer-engine offerings—terms of the deal were not disclosed.

• Photoroom buys GenerateBanners to power end-to-end GenAI ad creative: Paris-based AI photo-editing leader Photoroom acquired GenerateBanners on May 22, 2025—bringing on board its automated social-media and e-commerce image-generation tech—and will fold it into its new Visual Ads Automation product to offer brands a seamless, full-stack GenAI solution for large-scale ad creative workflows.

• Circus SE completes acquisition of agentic AI company FullyAI: Circus Group’s robotics arm, Circus SE, announced on May 21, 2025 that it has acquired FullyAI—the agentic AI startup powering real-time decision-making, predictive maintenance, and personalized user experiences for its CA-1 autonomous cooking robots—fully integrating the team and technology into its intelligence layer.

• Alation acquires Numbers Station to unlock a new era of agentic workflows: On May 20, 2025, data-intelligence leader Alation announced the acquisition of Numbers Station AI, a pioneer in building AI agents for data workflows; the deal will enable enterprises to rapidly deploy governed, context-aware agentic analytics applications across data and engineering teams.

• KARE PharmTech acquires Nuehee to expand digital obesity-care platform: Digital-health innovator KARE PharmTech announced on May 20, 2025 that it has acquired Nuehee—a care-delivery platform specializing in personalized obesity and wellness management—to broaden patient access to integrated, evidence-based weight-management services nationwide.

Interesting Reads 💡🤔

• Voice AI finds its first wins in B2B call centers and logistics: Post by Anna Piñol, Partner at NFX: Advances in sub-300 ms latency, LLM integration and plummeting API costs have unlocked practical voice AI—first flourishing in high-volume, low-complexity tasks like customer support and freight negotiations—where it delivers 10× better economics, serves as a wedge into broader workflow automation, and generates rich conversational data, with future frontiers in emotionally intelligent “soulful” companions and domain-specific voice apps.

• 25 Essential n8n Hacks to Boost Your Productivity in 2025: A curated list of advanced n8n workflow tips—from dynamic expressions and data pinning to version control and node annotations—designed to maximize automation efficiency and maintainable pipelines.

• How AI Is Giving Patients Perfect Vision: AI-powered imaging tools are now capable of detecting early signs of conditions such as diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration, enabling earlier interventions and dramatically improving patient outcomes.

• Where AI Can Reduce Risk and Cost in Audit Processes: Emerj’s podcast episode with Nathaniel Bell of Wells Fargo discusses how AI-driven continuous auditing, data quality checks, and system integration minimize manual effort, lower compliance costs, and improve risk management.

• British Airways Improves Punctuality with AI: British Airways invested £100 million in AI-driven systems—from real-time weather forecasting to intelligent gate allocation—and achieved a record 86 percent on-time performance at Heathrow in Q1 2025.

• Unlock the Power of Google AI Studio: Google AI Studio is a no-code/low-code platform for prototyping, training, and deploying multimodal Gemini models—covering text, code, images, and audio—with built-in data connectors and support for up to one million tokens of context.

• Artificial Intelligence in Cancer Diagnosis and Therapy Market Forecast 2023–2031: A comprehensive market report projecting growth from USD 285.9 M in 2022 to USD 1.37 B by 2031 (CAGR 19.2 %), covering trends in AI-driven diagnostics, therapeutic planning, and regulatory landscapes.

• Businesses Race to Adopt the Next Evolution – Agentic AI: The Australian Financial Review examines how autonomous AI systems—capable of reasoning, planning, and task execution—are being integrated across industries to redefine efficiency and innovation.

Startups / Tools 🧰🛠️

• LILT AI: LILT AI is an enterprise translation platform combining neural machine translation with human-in-the-loop review to deliver fast, scalable, and culturally accurate translations across text, speech, and video for 100+ languages.

• Texta: Texta is an AI-powered content generator that crafts SEO-friendly articles, blog posts, and reports on autopilot, offering customizable templates and scheduling features to keep your content pipeline full.

• Rezi: Rezi automates resume creation with AI-driven keyword optimization, formatting perfection, and content suggestions—helping job seekers build tailored, ATS-friendly CVs in minutes.

• SeamlessAI: SeamlessAI is a real-time B2B sales intelligence platform that uncovers accurate contact data, enriches lead profiles, and tracks buyer intent signals to fuel high-performance prospecting.

• Amie: Amie is an AI meeting assistant that automatically captures notes, summarizes key points, and generates action items and follow-up emails, streamlining your post-meeting workflows.

• Den: Den unifies chats, documents, and AI agents into a collaborative workspace—enabling teams to query data, automate tasks, and build custom workflows with conversational AI.

• Algebras AI: Algebras AI delivers instant, high-fidelity localization for web and video—with real-time translations, offline audio support, and AI-powered lipsync to streamline global content delivery.

• TelescopeAI: TelescopeAI is a unified digital transformation platform that layers AI-powered analytics over existing systems to surface strategic insights, predict trends, and guide enterprise decisions.

• Chance AI: Chance AI turns your camera into a visual intelligence engine—providing real-time object recognition, contextual insights, and actionable data from a single snapshot.

• Text Blaze: Text Blaze is a Chrome extension that expands custom snippets and templates across web apps—automating repetitive typing and boosting productivity with dynamic fields and macros.

• Gamma: Gamma is an AI design partner that instantly generates polished presentations, websites, and documents—automating layout, formatting, and visual assets so you can focus on content.

• Vizologi: Vizologi harnesses AI to generate unlimited business ideas, analyze markets and competitors, and automate comprehensive business plan creation with strategic insights and exportable templates.

NTV Highlights 🪩🎉

• Meetiq 2025 - June 3: Next Tier Ventures is proud to announce that Ruben Colomer, GP and co-founder of Next Tier Ventures, will deliver the main keynote, where he’ll discuss the urgent need for AI adoption in SMEs.

• WeInvest Event – June 4: Join WeInvest at La Nave in Madrid for an insightful panel discussion. Patricia Pastor, GP and co-founder of Next Tier Ventures, will be taking part in the session. Find all the details here

• Sit Down & Scale Up with AI – June 5, 2025: Don’t miss this 40-minute panel at Growth Camp in Madrid, where Patricia Pastor (GP & Co-Founder, Next Tier Ventures) joins experts to explore how AI can empower scale-ups to manage growth, boost revenue, and stay agile.

• South Summit 2025: The entire Next Tier Ventures team will be in Madrid participating in South Summit from June 4–6. If you’d like to grab a coffee with us, you can find us on South Summit app

• 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