Netflix’s GenAI Revolution, Replit’s AI Mishap & Amazon’s Wearable Bet

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 🗞️📰

• OpenAI, UK Government Ink Research Pact: OpenAI has signed a multi-year agreement with the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation & Technology to co-fund AI safety and skills research—backing academic labs at Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh with £10 million to develop secure, transparent AI systems and train 1,000 government officials in AI governance.
• Latest ‘Grok’ Model Drives Major Subscription Growth: Anthropic reports that its Grok-4 model rollout led to a 45% surge in paid “Grok+” subscriptions in the first month—citing improved reasoning benchmarks and new code-generation features as key drivers of enterprise uptake.
• Netflix Starts Using GenAI in Its Shows and Films: Netflix has begun integrating generative-AI tools—powered by in-house models and partnerships with Runway and OpenAI—into post-production workflows for background set extensions, voice dubbing and preliminary script ideation, aiming to cut VFX costs by 30% and speed up localization.
• Mistral’s Le Chat Dives Deep: Mistral AI unveiled “Le Chat Deep”—an extension of its open-source conversational model with 10× larger context windows and built-in retrieval over private knowledge bases—enabling enterprises to perform secure, on-premises chat over proprietary documents.
• Cursor Snaps Up Enterprise Startup Koala in Challenge to GitHub Copilot: Cursor raised $50 million to acquire Koala—an AI code-assistant for internal developer tools—and integrate its domain-specific code generation into Cursor’s IDE plugin, positioning itself as an enterprise alternative to GitHub Copilot.
• Billionaires convince themselves AI is close to making new scientific discoveries: Gizmodo examines how mega-donors like Michael Bloomberg, Yuri Milner and Jeff Bezos are pouring billions into AI startups (Anthropic, Inflection) chasing breakthroughs in drug discovery and materials science—despite mainstream scientists warning lab-scale automation remains years away.
• Krisp launches Viva Development Kit to enhance accuracy of voice AI agents: Audio-AI firm Krisp, backed by NEA and Gradient Ventures, unveiled its Viva DevKit SDK—offering enterprise developers drop-in noise suppression, speaker diarization and voice-activity detection to boost the accuracy and responsiveness of AI-powered voice assistants.
• SoftBank edges closer to OpenAI with new investment talks: The Wall Street Journal reports SoftBank Vision Fund is in advanced discussions to invest further in OpenAI—potentially valuing the company above $100 billion—as part of CEO Masayoshi Son’s strategy to align his $100 billion AI bet across global tech giants.
• Replit CEO apologizes after AI coding tool accidentally deleted company database: Replit’s CEO Amjad Masad issued a public apology after an experimental AI “workspace” feature, powered by Code LLM, mistakenly wiped an internal production database—highlighting risks of autonomous code generation in developer tools.
• AI as the greatest source of empowerment for all: In its 2025 annual letter, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman lays out a vision of AI democratization—arguing that broad access to AI tools will unlock human potential in education, healthcare and creativity, while doubling down on safety research and policy partnerships.
• Doctors at Cedars-Sinai develop AI-powered mental health robot therapist: Cedars-Sinai psychiatrists unveiled “TheraBot,” a robot therapist powered by GPT-4 and specialized cognitive-behavioral AI modules, capable of conducting empathetic dialogues, mood tracking and personalized coping-strategy coaching in clinical trials.

Funding 💼💸

• Delve gets $32M to build the world’s first agentic AI compliance platform. Karun Kaushik and Selin Kocalar founded Delve in 2023; the San Francisco–based startup closed a $32 million Series A led by Insight Partners (with Mosaic Ventures and Operator Collective) to launch its Agentic Compliance platform, which autonomously monitors, audits and remediates risky behaviors across cloud infrastructure.
• Blackstone makes significant growth investment into NetBrain at a $750 M valuation: NetBrain—founded and led by LP Gao (Founder & CEO)—has received a majority growth-equity investment from Blackstone Growth at a valuation of $750 million, enabling the Burlington, MA–based pioneer of intent-based network automation to accelerate R&D, expand its global footprint and scale its AI-driven platform across hybrid and cloud environments for Fortune 500 enterprises.
• NVIDIA and Snowflake invest in Reka AI’s $110 M funding round: Reka AI—founded by Cyprien de Masson d'Autume , Dani Yogatama , Mikel Artetxe , Qi Liu and Yi Tay —secured $110 million in a round led by NVIDIA and Snowflake, achieving unicorn status as it scales its enterprise AI infrastructure platform that delivers high-performance, cost-efficient large-language models and governance tooling.
• Latent Labs launches with $30 M seed to democratize protein design: Latent Labs was founded by Simon Kohl , a former DeepMind scientist; the London– and San Francisco–based biotech startup raised $30 million from investors including Radical Ventures, Sofinnova Partners, Google’s Jeff Dean and Aidan Gomez to launch its web-based Latent-X model—an AI system that designs novel proteins by solving binding geometry at the all-atom level.
• GeologicAI raises $44 M to use AI to source critical minerals: Calgary’s GeologicAI—led by CEO Grant Sanden —secured $44 million in a Series B round led by Blue Earth Capital (with BHP, Rio Tinto and Breakthrough Energy Ventures as both investors and customers) to scale its AI-powered geoscience platform, which analyzes drill-core samples in real time for faster, more accurate critical-minerals discovery.
• Composio raises $25 M Series A to help AI agents learn from experience: San Francisco’s Composio—co-founded by Soham Ganatra (Hiring) and Karan Vaidya —closed $25 million in a Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners (with SV Angel, Dharmesh Shah and Guillermo Rauch among others) to expand its “learning infrastructure,” enabling AI agents to evolve, share skills and improve autonomously across enterprise workflows.
• Ashby raises $40 M Series B to reinvent HR with AI: Ashby—founded by Benji Encz and Abhik Pramanik —secured $40 million in a Series B led by Sequoia Capital (with Index Ventures and GGV Capital) to enhance its AI-driven recruiting and people-analytics platform with autonomous candidate outreach and skill-mapping features.
• Everlab raises $15 M to scale AI-driven preventive health platform: Melbourne’s Everlab—co-founded by Marc Hermann —landed $15 million in a seed round led by Left Lane Capital to expand its AI-powered preventive-care platform, automating diagnostics, doctor oversight and personalized prevention plans across Australia.
• Nexxa.ai raises $4.4 M in pre-seed to boost industrial automation: Sunnyvale’s Nexxa.ai—led by CEO Philipp Wehn —secured $4.4 million from a16z Speedrun (with Augment Ventures, Propeller Ventures and others) to develop “Full Self Computing,” a pay-per-use, AI-native RPA solution that streamlines business processes in digital industrial environments.
• France’s Eden AI raises €3 M seed to simplify AI integration: Founded in 2021 by Taha Zemmouri and Samy Melaine , Lyon-based Eden AI closed a €3 million seed led by Galion.exe (with 50 Partners and angel investors like Olivier Pomel and Sébastien Pahl ) to accelerate its unified API platform, enabling businesses to deploy, monitor and manage multiple AI models through a single interface.
• Empirical Security raises $12 M seed to bring custom AI to cyber defense: Founded by Ed Bellis , Michael Roytman and Jay Jacobs (the team behind Kenna Security and EPSS), Empirical Security closed $12 million from Costanoa Ventures (and strategic investors) to launch its dual-model AI platform—combining global and customer-tuned threat models for real-time, context-aware security decisioning.
• Blaxel raises $7.3M seed round to build ‘AWS for AI agents’ after processing billions of agent requests: Blaxel—co-founded by Paul Sinaï (CEO), Charles Drappier , Christophe Ploujoux , Nicolas Lecomte , Thomas Crochet and Mathis Joffre —secured $7.3 million in a seed round led by First Round Capital (with Mosaic Ventures, Operator Collective, Y Combinator, Liquid2, Transpose and strategic angels) to launch its serverless infrastructure tailored for autonomous AI agents, featuring sub-25 ms VM boot times, pay-as-you-go billing and automated scaling across global regions.

M&A 💰

• Amazon to buy startup focused on AI wearables: Amazon has reached a deal to acquire Bee, the San Francisco–based AI wearables startup founded in 2022 by CEO and co-founder Maria de Lourdes Zollo, whose $50 AI-powered bracelet listens in on conversations and distills them into summaries and to-do lists—joining Panos Panay’s devices group when the deal closes; terms were not disclosed.
• GE Vernova to acquire Alteia, advancing AI-enabled GridOS® Visual Intelligence software: GE Vernova Inc. has agreed to acquire Alteia SAS, the France-based AI computer-vision and machine-learning software provider, to integrate its visual intelligence into GridOS® Visual Intelligence—enhancing situational awareness for utilities by combining visual and operational data to inspect assets across thousands of miles of grid infrastructure; the transaction is expected to close August 1, 2025, and financial details were not disclosed.
• Blackstone Acquires Majority Stake in Network Ops Firm NetBrain: Blackstone’s growth arm has acquired a majority stake in Burlington-based NetBrain Technologies Inc., valuing the AI-powered network-operations solutions platform at $750 million—investment to accelerate its global footprint and scale automated monitoring and diagnostics capabilities.
• U.S. firms eye Israeli AI startups in acquisition wave: Leading U.S. tech companies, including Zscaler and F5, and Israeli security veteran Check Point are hunting acquisition targets among Israel’s burgeoning AI startups—seeking generative AI, cybersecurity and data-analytics innovators to strengthen their AI-driven enterprise offerings.
• Carlyle Agrees to Acquire Adastra, AI and Cloud-Focused IT Consultancy: The Carlyle Group has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Adastra Group SE—a Prague- and Toronto-based data, cloud and AI transformation specialist—partnering with founders Rob Turner and Pavel Kysela to support international expansion and accelerate its AI-led IT services platform; terms were not publicly disclosed.
• Thrive aims to bridge the skills gap through acquisition of Guider: Thrive, the L&D platform with over 3 million users, has acquired London-based Guider—an AI-driven mentoring and coaching provider—to integrate data-powered mentor matching, built-in guides and personalized nudges into a single platform for skills development, performance support and personal growth.
• Darktrace announces acquisition of Mira Security: Darktrace Federal, Inc. has acquired Mira Security, the network-traffic visibility and decryption specialist, to bolster its Cyber AI Platform with high-performance software and firmware enabling 100 Gbps interface support, increased ingestion capacity and advanced decryption capabilities across encrypted traffic; terms were not disclosed.
• Yugen Acquires Winning Creative To Strengthen Brand Integration in AI Infrastructure Deployments: Yugen, a sovereign intelligence firm serving private market operators, has acquired Winning Creative—a boutique brand and strategy consultancy known for its systems-based approach; the transaction, completed in Q2 2025 under private terms, embeds brand architecture and narrative design into Yugen’s sovereign AI platform to unify data orchestration with front-end design systems.
• Edge226 Announces Acquisition of Adscend Media to Strengthen Performance Marketing Platform: Edge226 has acquired Adscend Media, the leading provider of rewarded advertising solutions famed for its Offerwall format, to embed its mobile-first in-app and CTV ad technology into Edge226’s performance marketing platform—terms were not disclosed.
• Vanta Acquires Riskey to Transform Vendor Risk with Continuous AI-Powered Monitoring: Vanta, the AI-powered trust management platform, has acquired Riskey to replace static, point-in-time vendor assessments with continuous, AI-driven risk intelligence—integrating Riskey’s real-time monitoring capabilities into Vanta’s compliance suite; terms were not disclosed.
• Altura Acquires Tendara to Accelerate European Expansion in Bid Management: Altura, the Amsterdam-based AI-powered bid management startup, has acquired Berlin-based Tendara—following its €8 million Series A—to expand into Germany and embed Tendara’s AI-driven bid-agent technology into its platform; financial terms were not disclosed.
• Sorcero Acquires Axiom Health to Bring Together AI-Driven Insights Across Life Sciences and Medical Device Markets: Sorcero has acquired Axiom Health’s real-world data platform—now Sorcero MedTech—to unify AI-driven insights for pharmaceutical and medical-device organizations, integrating Axiom’s extensive life-sciences dataset into the Sorcero Intelligence Platform; terms were not disclosed.

Interesting Reads 💡🤔

• How AI Agents Can Generate $450 Billion by 2028—and What Stands in the Way: ZDNet projects AI agents could unlock $450 billion in annual enterprise value by 2028 through task automation, but warns of hurdles like data privacy, integration complexity, and employee resistance.
• AI’s Fourth Wave Is Here—Are Enterprises Ready for What’s Next?: VentureBeat defines the “Fourth Wave” of AI as agentic, autonomous systems embedded end-to-end across business processes, and urges CIOs to modernize infrastructure, adopt open protocols for agent interoperability, and upskill workforces to harness these context-aware AI agents responsibly.
• SuperClaude: A Framework for Developers: SuperClaude is an open-source Python SDK and CLI that lets developers integrate Anthropic’s Claude 4 Opus into apps, handling prompt management, streaming responses, and fine-tuning in just a few lines of code.
• “Call Me a Jerk”: Persuading AI to Do Your Bidding: Wharton’s Gail Institute research demonstrates that LLMs can be “jailbroken” through strategic prompts—like using aggressive or demeaning language—to override guardrails; the study calls for stronger prompt-resistance training, adversarial-testing matrices, and policy standards to close these manipulation vectors.
• The surprising career journey of AI pioneer Jason Wei: Wired profiles Jason Wei—co-creator of chain-of-thought prompting—charting his moves from Google Brain to leading AI safety research at OpenAI and his advisory role at Meta, and explores how his work on prompting has dramatically improved large-model reasoning capabilities.
• How to Break the AI Hype Cycle and Make Good AI Decisions in Your Organization: MIT Sloan outlines a four-step framework—Define clear business outcomes, assess AI readiness, run small-scale pilots with measurable KPIs, and build cross-functional governance—to steer companies beyond hype and toward responsible, ROI-driven AI deployment.
• A Pragmatic Approach to Enterprise AI: InfoWorld recommends enterprises start with “AI adjacency” by embedding lightweight models into existing workflows, focus on robust data pipelines and MLOps, leverage pre-built APIs over custom training, and invest early in explainability and monitoring to ensure scalable, trustworthy AI.
• Are You Too Trusting of AI Answers? 92 Percent of People Don’t Check It for Accuracy: Inc. reports that a recent survey found 92% of users accept AI-generated responses without verification, leading to widespread “automation bias”; experts warn organizations must train employees in AI literacy, implement fact-checking protocols, and design interfaces that surface confidence levels.
• OpenAI Launches InVideo AI: OpenAI debuted InVideo AI, a generative-video API that transforms text prompts and storyboards into editable video clips with voice-overs, transitions, and stock footage—aimed at automating marketing content and social media reels.
• ClickUp Unveils AI Agent Plugin: ClickUp released its AI Agent Plugin, enabling users to deploy custom LLM-powered “agents” inside ClickUp spaces that can automate ticket triage, generate status reports from tasks, and surface project insights via simple slash-commands.
• AI’s Biggest Impact on Your Workforce Is Still to Come—3 Ways to Avoid Getting Left Behind: ZDNet advises that as AI agents automate complex workflows, organizations should upskill employees in AI literacy, reengineer processes for human-AI collaboration, and implement transparent governance to stay competitive.
• AI Agents for Meetings: ClickUp’s New Integration: ClickUp introduced AI meeting agents that join video calls, take real-time notes, assign action items, and generate post-meeting summaries—integrating seamlessly with Zoom, Teams, and Webex.
• Anthropic’s Guide to Prompt Engineering: Anthropic published a best-practices guide for prompt engineering with Claude, covering techniques like few-shot examples, prompt templates, “chain-of-thought” strategies, and dynamic context retrieval to optimize response accuracy.

Startups / Tools 🧰🛠️

• Arc: A browser designed to organize tabs and projects into separate spaces, enabling you to keep work, study, and personal browsing distinct and easily navigable.
• AppSheet: Google’s no-code platform to build mobile and web apps directly from spreadsheets or databases, featuring workflow automation, offline support, and AI-driven data suggestions.
• Bug Finder: Integrates into your IDE to automatically scan pull requests or code snippets, identify syntax and logical errors, and suggest fixes powered by advanced AI models.
• Ellipsis: An AI code review tool that auto-scans pull requests for bugs and anti-patterns, enforces best practices, and integrates seamlessly into your CI/CD pipeline.
• Factory: Deploys autonomous “Droids” that generate code, resolve issues, and automate workflows by integrating with your ticketing and development stack to clear engineering backlogs.
• Framer: A visual prototyping and production tool that lets designers and developers craft interactive websites and components with real-time collaboration and responsive layouts.
• Frase: An SEO content platform that crafts article briefs, outlines, and full drafts optimized for target keywords, backed by SERP analysis and content scoring to boost rankings.
• Guidde: Converts any workflow or documentation into step-by-step, annotated video tutorials with automatic screen capture, voice-over, and sharing capabilities in moments.
• Hocoos: Launches polished business websites in seconds—offers AI-driven templates, auto-generated content, and one-click deployment for non-technical founders.
• Kixie: Adds power dialing and SMS to your CRM—automatically log calls, power through leads with AI recommendations, and boost connection rates with predictive dialing.
• Liquid AI: An MIT-spun startup building efficient, general-purpose “liquid” foundation models that scale seamlessly from edge devices to multi-GPU clusters, optimizing architecture, data, and hardware across the AI value chain.
• Nerdio: A unified platform for MSPs and enterprises to cut Microsoft Azure costs by up to 75%, automate patching, backups, and resource provisioning—all managed from a single dashboard.
• Pictory: Transforms long-form content like blog posts or scripts into shareable videos in minutes by auto-generating storyboards, voice-overs, and captions using AI templates.
• Power Apps: Microsoft’s low-code suite for modernizing workflows—rapidly generate AI-enabled forms and apps with drag-and-drop interfaces connected to the Microsoft ecosystem.
• Retool: Enables teams to build custom internal tools and dashboards fast using drag-and-drop components that connect to any database or API, augmented by AI-driven form and workflow logic.
• SaneBox: An email management service that filters low-priority messages into folders like SaneLater, highlights must-read emails, and provides actionable summaries to keep your inbox focused.
• Stock Trade Analyzer: Delivers technical analysis dashboards, interactive charts, pivot-table reports, and AI-powered insights to help traders uncover patterns and optimize their strategies.
• Texta: An AI writing assistant that creates plagiarism-free articles, marketing copy, and social posts with a single click, complete with tone and length controls for quick content production.
• Uthana: Transforms text prompts or reference videos into motion-ready 3D character animations with adjustable clips, blends, and a searchable library of 10,000+ movements.
• Waymark: Creates polished video ads in clicks—upload logos and assets, choose from customizable templates, and generate broadcast-quality ads optimized for web and social.
• YouAgent: A chat-based STEM assistant that runs code-backed searches on documentation and tutorials, offering detailed solutions to complex math, physics, and engineering questions.

Prompt Tutorial 📖📚

Act as Sales Director in the E-commerce sector, Sales department.
Your objective is Increase quarterly sales revenue by 15%.

The deliverable must include:

1.- Define 5 high-value customer segments based on purchase frequency and average order value.
2.- Propose 5 sales initiatives detailing channels, team leads, and timelines.
3.- Design 5 pilot tests specifying conversion rate metrics, duration, and success thresholds.
4.- List 5 sales tools and vendors required with responsibilities and deadlines.
5.- Establish 5 KPIs with initial value, target value, and time horizon.

Deliverable format: dashboard with all elements and targets.        

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