Google’s Gemini Gems, xAI’s $10 B Raise & Lovable’s $150 M Growth Round

Happy Thursday everyone!

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News 🗞️📰

• Google integrates Gemini Gems AI assistants across Workspace apps: Google has integrated its customizable “Gems” chatbots—specialized Gemini AI assistants—directly into the Workspace side panel across Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, and Gmail, enabling users to access role-specific helpers (e.g., copywriter, coder, salesperson) without switching apps and to fine-tune them on uploaded files for context.

• xAI obtains permit to run 15 gas turbines for data center: Shelby County has granted Elon Musk’s xAI a permit to operate 15 methane-fired gas turbines at its Colossus data-center campus in Memphis—intended to power future Grok model training—despite local objections and legal challenges over potential nitrogen-oxide and formaldehyde emissions that critics say endanger a predominantly Black community.

• Meta trials proactive AI chatbots to initiate user conversations: Leaked “Project Omni” documents reveal Meta is training its AI Studio chatbots to proactively initiate follow-up messages—referencing previous conversations, adhering to positivity guidelines, and limiting outreach to users who’ve sent at least five messages—to boost engagement across Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

• Can AI visualise our dreams? This Dutch company is trying to do just that: Modem Works, an Amsterdam-based think tank, has released the open-source “Dream Recorder,” a DIY device that records users speaking their dreams upon waking and uses OpenAI and LumaLabs APIs to render them as “ultra-low definition” dreamscapes in any chosen visual style; the kit—including HDMI screen, 8 GB processor, microSD, and USB mic—costs about €285 to build and stores up to eight dream videos locally.

• Apple mulls leveraging Anthropic, OpenAI models to enhance Siri: Bloomberg reports Apple is exploring outsourcing Siri’s core intelligence to third-party LLMs from OpenAI or Anthropic—testing custom model deployments on its cloud infrastructure—marking a strategic pivot from solely in-house development to accelerate Siri’s AI capabilities.

• Perplexity unveils ‘Max’ plan at $200/month for power users: Perplexity Max, a new $200/month tier, offers unlimited access to Labs (spreadsheet and report generation), priority access to frontier models (OpenAI o3-pro, Claude Opus 4), early trials of its upcoming Comet AI browser, and priority support—targeted at power users and enterprises demanding “limitless AI productivity.”

• Cloudflare launches Pay Per Crawl marketplace for AI bots: Cloudflare’s new Pay Per Crawl marketplace and default AI-crawler blocking give content owners control to block, allow, or set micropayment fees for AI crawlers (using HTTP 402), turning data-scraping into a revenue stream for publishers.

• Cursor debuts web-based dashboard for AI-driven coding agents: Anysphere’s Cursor has released a browser-based app where users can dispatch natural-language tasks to background coding agents, monitor their progress, and merge fixes—expanding beyond its IDE to mobile and desktop for seamless AI-augmented development workflows.

• Google Classroom enriches learning with Gemini AI and NotebookLM: Google’s Education Suite now integrates Gemini-powered tools directly into Classroom (including a new Gemini tab for teachers) and makes NotebookLM available to students under 18—offering over 30 AI features (auto-quiz generation, interactive diagrams, AI-driven study guides) free to Workspace for Education users.

Funding 💼💸

• xAI raises $10 B to expand Colossus infrastructure and next-gen Grok: Morgan Stanley helped xAI secure $5 billion in debt and $5 billion in strategic equity—an oversubscribed financing to expand its Colossus supercomputer (200K GPUs) toward a million-GPU network and support development of next-gen Grok models.

• Lovable raises $150 M growth round to fuel AI-driven customer engagement: Swedish AI startup Lovable—founded by Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin —secured $150 million in a growth equity round led by Accel with participation from Creandum and 20VC to expand its AI-powered platform that lets users build full-stack web apps from simple prompts, driving the company toward a $2 billion valuation.

• Genesis AI launches with $105 M seed to build AI models for robots: Founded in December 2024 by Zhou Xian and Theophile Gervet , Genesis AI closed a $105 million seed round co-led by Eclipse Ventures and Khosla Ventures to develop a foundational robotics model trained on synthetic data from its proprietary physics engine—enabling automation of tasks from lab work to housekeeping across Silicon Valley and Paris offices

• Mozart AI empowers music composition with a copilot, raising $730K pre-seed: London’s Mozart AI—founded by Sundar Arvind (CEO), Arjun Khanna (CTO), Immanuel Rajadurai and Pascual Merita Torres —has secured $730,000 in pre-seed funding from EWOR, New Renaissance Ventures, Stefan Glaenzer and Atlantis Ventures to launch its “Music Copilot” DAW, which offers real-time AI suggestions for chord progressions, melodies, samples and effects while keeping artists fully in control of the creative process.

• Dexter Energy secures €23 M Series C to scale AI-driven power trading: Amsterdam’s Dexter Energy—founded in 2017 by Luuk Veeken , Hubert Penn and Fons de Leeuw—closed a €23 million Series C led by Alantra’s Klima fund (with Mirova, ETF Partners and Newion) to boost its AI-native forecasting and trade-optimization platform for renewable energy and battery assets across Europe.

• GetWhy adds $20 M to Series A to accelerate AI-driven consumer insights: Co-founded in 2011 by CEO Casper Henningsen , Copenhagen’s GetWhy landed an extra $20 million from PeakSpan Capital—extending its Series A to refine a generative-AI platform that transforms video interviews into actionable consumer insights ahead of a planned U.S. launch.

• Deeto secures $12.5 M Series A to redefine B2B buyer journeys: New York’s Deeto, co-founded by Eran Baron , Golan Raz and Yossi Gelman, closed $12.5 million from Jump Capital to power its AI-native Customer Voice engine—turning authentic feedback into personalized sales and marketing playbooks.

• Yaspa receives $12 M to fuel US expansion with instant open-banking payments: London’s Yaspa—co-founded by James Neville —secured $12 million from Discerning Capital to scale its AI-powered open-banking API, enabling real-time payments and identity verification for regulated merchants in Europe and the U.S.

• Audos raises $11.5 M in combined pre-seed and seed funding: Nueva York–based Audos—founded by Henrik Werdelin and Nicholas Thorne —secured $11.5 million in a combined Pre-Seed and Seed round led by True Ventures (with Offline Ventures, Bungalow Capital and angels Bjarke Ingels, Leila Zegna, Niklas Zennstrom and Mario Schlosser) to expand its AI-and-human support program that helps entrepreneurs turn expertise into scalable AI businesses.

• Klutch raises $8 M to bring AI coworkers to construction sites: Seattle’s Klutch—co-founded by CEO Xu Rui and Tanin Na Nakorn —secured $8 million in a seed round led by Bling Capital and Bain Capital Ventures to deploy its AI “coworkers” (Archie, Bob, Petra, Hailey) directly within WhatsApp, SMS and email, automating zoning reviews, site data capture, vendor scoring and warranty tasks for residential and commercial builders.

• Cerebrium raises $8.5 M seed to advance AI-driven knowledge management: Co‐founded by Michael Louis (CEO) and Jonathan Irwin (CTO) in Cape Town and now based in New York, Cerebrium secured $8.5 million in a seed round led by Gradient Ventures (with participation from Y Combinator, Authentic Ventures and strategic angels) to scale its serverless, multimodal AI infrastructure—powering real-time applications in voice, video, LLM fine-tuning and healthcare while charging clients only for compute time used.

• TuringDream raises €6 M seed round to democratize multi-agent AI workflows: Madrid’s TuringDream—co-founded by Juan Morán (CEO), Manuel Tarrasa (CTO) and jose moran (COO)—closed €6 million from Adara Ventures, HWK and Next Tier Ventures to develop its no-code, natural-language framework for creating and managing multi-agent applications.

• Rocketable raises $6.5 M seed to build autonomous SaaS operator: San Francisco’s Rocketable, founded by Alan Wells (CEO), secured $6.5 million from Rebel Fund and others to power its AI-driven platform that acquires and autonomously scales underperforming SaaS products.

• Peec AI raises €7 M seed to enhance AI-driven geospatial search: Berlin’s Peec AI—co-founded by Marius Meiners , Tobias Siwona and Daniel Drabo —captured €7 million led by Cherry Ventures to advance its AI-powered location analytics platform, enabling enterprises to query and visualize geospatial data via natural-language search.

• Argon AI bags $5.5 M seed to power AI workspaces for life sciences: San Francisco’s Argon AI, founded by Samy Danesh (CEO), raised $5.5 million from Crosslink Capital to launch its AI-native workspace platform—streamlining complex data workflows for life-sciences teams.

• Zango AI emerges from stealth with $4.8 M to revolutionize compliance with AI agents: Founded by Ritesh Singhania and Shashank Agarwal , Zango AI secured $4.8 million from Nexus Venture Partners—fueling its governance, risk and compliance platform that automates audit preparation and gap analysis for financial institutions.

• Metafide raises $3.275 M to launch SURGE, a gamified predictive trading platform: Miami’s Metafide, led by CEO Francis Speiser , closed $3.275 million from Payton Jonson and syndicate investors to develop SURGE—a competitive, AI-human hybrid platform crowdsourcing and ranking market predictions.

• Leapter secures €2 M pre-seed to redefine enterprise software with AI blueprints: Leapter—founded by Oliver Welte and Robert Werner —closed €2 million led by bm|t to launch its visual-first AI tool that converts business requirements into structured software blueprints.

• Cekura raises $2.4M seed to make AI conversations reliable: Founded by Sidhant Kabra , Shashij Gupta and Tarush Agarwal , Cekura secured $2.4 million from Y Combinator, Flex Capital, Hike Ventures, Kulveer Taggar, Pioneer Fund, Chris Smoak, Ooshma Garg, Richard Aberman, JJ Fliegelman, Decacorn, Alan Rutledge, Imagination Capital, Allport Capital and Ignite Ventures to launch its testing and observability layer that simulates thousands of synthetic calls or chats in minutes, pushing voice and chat AI agents through edge-case scenarios to catch failures before they reach end-users.

• Warmwind exits stealth with $1.5M seed to power autonomous cloud employees: Jena-based warmwind—co-founded by Richard Wieduwilt and Maximilian Schilling —has closed a €1.5 million seed round led by bm-t Beteiligungsmanagement Thüringen, BRT Ventures and a private backer to launch its Closed Beta AI operating system that automates repetitive office workflows via a visual interface, ensuring GDPR-compliant, on-prem and cloud deployments.

• Sworn raises $1.2M seed to bring biometric intelligence to public safety: Provo’s Sworn—founded by Sean Bair (CEO), Adam Safir (President) and Mark Dobbs (VP of Analytics)—closed $1.2 million from angel investors, including Milan Gandhi and Walt Pearson, to develop a wearable biometric platform that monitors officers’ physiological signals in real time, enhancing stress management and decision-making on the job.

M&A 💰

• Creach Family Holdings Acquires Freudenthal Home-Based Healthcare to Expand In-Home Care Services: Creach Family Holdings, LLC has acquired Freudenthal Home-Based Healthcare, the St. Joseph, Missouri–based provider of in-home assistance, skilled nursing and hospice services—bringing Joe Freudenthal’s team into CFH’s Home Health and Hospice group to broaden high-quality, personalized care delivery across the U.S.

• Grammarly acquires email startup Superhuman in AI platform push: Grammarly has acquired Superhuman, the AI-powered email client founded by CEO Rahul Vohra , in an undisclosed deal—integrating Superhuman’s 100-strong team and productivity-boosting AI into Grammarly’s suite as it pivots into an AI-driven workflow platform.

• Tenstorrent acquires Blue Cheetah Analog Design to enhance analog IP roadmap: Tenstorrent has acquired Blue Cheetah Analog Design, the Toronto-based startup specializing in highly-customized analog mixed-signal IP, to integrate its expertise into Tenstorrent’s chiplet and interconnect development efforts; financial terms were not disclosed.

• Concentric AI acquires data-security specialist Swift Security to safeguard GenAI workflows: Concentric AI has acquired Swift Security, the GenAI data-security startup that monitors and secures sensitive data within public AI applications like ChatGPT and Perplexity—bolstering Concentric’s platform with allow-or-block decisioning for PII, IP and financial data flowing through AI agents.

• Aceve accelerates European growth with entry into Benelux through acquisition of Brink Software: Aceve has acquired Brink Software, the Dutch cost-calculation SaaS leader for construction and skilled trades, to establish its Benelux presence and integrate Brink’s branded estimating solutions into Aceve’s European SaaS portfolio.

• Eudia acquires Johnson Hana International for $50 million to expand AI-powered legal services: Eudia has acquired Johnson Hana International—founded by brothers Dan and Alex Fox—the Irish alternative legal-services provider, in a $50 million transaction to integrate its expertise and strengthen Eudia’s augmented-intelligence platform for Fortune 500 legal teams.

• Clio Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire vLex for US$1 Billion: Clio will acquire vLex, the global AI-powered legal-research platform, in a US$1 billion cash-and-stock deal to embed vLex’s comprehensive global law data into Clio’s legal-tech suite.

• Alphanome.AI acquires Datai2i to launch Alphanome India and expand AI venture creation: Alphanome.AI has acquired Datai2i, the India-based industrial AI-solutions specialist, to establish Alphanome India and bolster its venture-studio platform for automating AI-driven innovation; terms were not disclosed.

• OpenAI acquires AI recommendation startup Crossing Minds to strengthen personalization capabilities: OpenAI has acqui-hired the Crossing Minds team, the e-commerce AI recommendation specialist, to integrate its machine-learning expertise into ChatGPT and other OpenAI products amid fierce AI talent competition.

• Nvidia’s deal to buy Canadian AI startup CentML could top US$400 million: Nvidia has acquired CentML, the Toronto-based model-optimization software company, in a transaction valued at over $400 million—including earn-outs—to integrate its compiler technology and engineering team into Nvidia’s AI software stack.

Interesting Reads 💡🤔

• 4 Expert Tips for Writing Effective AI Prompts: Experts recommend specifying the AI’s role and context, defining clear objectives and constraints, providing illustrative examples, and iteratively refining your prompt based on the model’s responses to ensure accuracy, relevance, and the desired style of output.

• People Are Using AI Chatbots to Guide Their Psychedelic Trips: As psychedelic therapy apps experiment with AI, users are taking high doses of LSD and psilocybin while interacting with chatbots like Alterd’s “chat with your mind” to act as tripsitters—offering personalized emotional support, reflective prompts, and playlists based on journal entries, though experts warn of hallucinations, lack of human attunement, and safety risks when machines replace trained therapists.

• Getting Started with Agent Communication Protocol (ACP): Build a Weather Agent with Python: This hands-on tutorial shows you how to implement the Agent Communication Protocol in Python to spin up a weather-reporting AI agent—defining distinct roles, orchestrating JSON-based message exchanges, integrating a public weather API, and coordinating data-fetcher, parser, and responder agents.

• AI Integration: How to Bring AI into Your Workflows: Zapier lays out a six-stage framework to embed AI—such as ChatGPT, Claude, or custom models—into everyday processes, covering pilot projects, governance, tool selection, and scaling so non-ML teams can automate support-ticket triage, draft SEO briefs, and transform documents.

• Could Google’s Veo 3 Be the Start of Playable World Models?: TechCrunch explores whether Google’s Veo 3—capable of physics-aware video generation with synchronized audio—represents a first step toward real-time, interactive world models for gaming, assessing its shift from cinematic demos to agent-driven simulations.

• How AI companies are secretly collecting training data from the web (and why it matters): ZDNet explains that many AI firms deploy hidden crawlers and scrapers across news sites, blogs, forums, and social media—often ignoring robots.txt—harvesting vast amounts of text, images, and code without consent. Content creators face bandwidth spikes, inflated hosting costs, and lack of attribution, while downstream LLMs risk hallucinations and misinformation due to unverified sources.

• Are AI subscriptions worth it? Most people don’t seem to think so, according to this study: ZDNet’s latest analysis shows that while premium AI plans promise longer context windows and priority access, the majority of users stick with free tiers—finding them sufficient for everyday tasks like drafting emails, summarizing articles, and brainstorming ideas—suggesting that subscription fatigue may slow paid AI adoption.

• ChatGPT Glossary: 52 AI Terms Everyone Should Know: CNET’s comprehensive glossary decodes 52 fundamental AI terms—ranging from “tokens” and “embeddings” to “hallucinations” and “retrieval-augmented generation”—equipping investors, entrepreneurs, and corporate leaders with the precise vocabulary needed to evaluate LLM-based strategies, assess technical roadmaps, and align on product requirements.

Startups / Tools 🧰🛠️

• Kling AI: A next-generation AI creative studio offering text-to-image, video generation, and live video chat with AI avatars powered by proprietary large multimodal models for high-fidelity visuals and real-time interaction.

• The Fusebase: A B2B SaaS platform providing secure, branded AI-powered workspaces and portals that let internal teams and external partners collaborate via embedded AI assistants directly within documents and workflows.

• Scale Donovan: Scale AI’s mission-specific agent platform for the public sector—rapidly deploy RAG-powered agents to ingest and analyze large volumes of structured and unstructured data for faster decision-making.

• Flick AI Social Media Manager: An AI-driven toolkit that automates social media strategy, content planning, caption writing, hashtag research, scheduling, and performance analytics to maintain a consistent, high-impact brand presence.

• Zeda.io: A Voice-of-Customer product discovery platform that transforms qualitative feedback into actionable insights—automating feature ideation, PRD generation, and release notes to drive customer-centric roadmaps.

• Rely.io: An internal developer portal that consolidates service health metrics, embeds best-practice templates, and provides an AI assistant for querying engineering data from a single pane of glass.

• Trupeer.ai: Transforms simple screen recordings into polished product videos, tutorials, and documentation with AI-powered editing, templating, and branding in just minutes.

• Craft.do: An award-winning, cross-platform document editor and note-taking app that syncs across devices, supports Markdown and Apple Pencil, and offers on-device AI to organize, plan, and write—even offline.

• Flux1 AI: An open-source, Apache-licensed text-to-image generator with multiple model tiers (Schnell, Dev, Pro, Ultra) producing photorealistic to stylized visuals at up to 2 MP resolution via web UI or API.

• Granola.ai: An AI-powered notepad that captures meeting audio, transcribes and organizes notes, highlights decisions and action items, and generates concise summaries to eliminate post-meeting chaos.

• Success.ai: A B2B lead generation and cold-email platform offering access to 700 M+ verified contacts, automated email warm-up, a unified inbox, and AI-driven personalization to boost outreach.

• Avoma: An end-to-end AI meeting assistant that records and transcribes conversations in real time, auto-generates smart notes, chapter markers, follow-up emails, and automates CRM data entry.

NTV Highlights 🪩🎉

• 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