Anduril lines up for more funding, Shein loses some sheen amid tariff talks, and "Big Balls" is back
1/ Anduril is raisinganother $2.5B at a $28B valuation—doubling in just 6 months. Founders Fund is leading the round. Defense tech money ispouring in. 💰🚀 (Forbes)2/ Meanwhile, OpenAI is closing in on a$40B investment led by SoftBank, valuing the company at$300B. That’s almost the size of Nestlé or ExxonMobil. 🤯 (NYT)3/ On the wilder side of AI… Safe Superintelligence (led by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever) is reportedly raising at a$20B valuation—with no product or revenue. 🚨 (Reuters)4/ Big funding rounds keep rolling:X-energy (nuclear tech) raised$700M from Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund.Tidal Vision (crab-shell tech?!) snagged$140M.Rapyd (payments) is looking for$300M at adown-round valuation. 📉5/ Remember when Google promised it wouldn’t build AI weapons? Yeah… about that. Itdeleted the pledge. AI legend Andrew Ng isthrilled about it. (TechCrunch)6/ Shein’s IPO might take a25% valuation cut thanks to U.S. tariff fears. Fast fashion + geopolitics = 💸🔪 (PYMNTS)7/ Meanwhile, DOGE’s most chaotic personalities areback in the news:“Big Balls” Coristine got fired from his internship for leaking company info.Marko Elez (of “Normalize Indian hate” fame) is beingrehired by Musk. (CNBC)8/ Layoffs continue:Sprinklr is cutting 500 jobs (~15% of staff). Tech is still feeling the burn. (TechCrunch)9/Meta allegedly torrented81.7 TB of pirated books to train its AI. That’s aninsane amount of data. (Ars Technica)10/ Detour: Did you know “boneless wings” aren’t wings? Super Bowl Sunday is coming, and 1.47B wings will be eaten. Just… think about it. 🍗🏈11/ Speaking of the Super Bowl,Miami Heat’s Pat Riley is cashing in on “Three-Peat” if the Chiefs win. Trademarking is a long game. 🏆12/ Pickleball fans: The High Roller paddle is getting aSuper Bowl ad thanks to Michelob. The sport keeps leveling up. 🎾🏆