News linked to both this project and an event.
According to Reuters, AI data center optical interconnect company iPronics announced the completion of a $125 million Series B financing round, co-led by Maverick Silicon and Light Street Capital, with participation from NVIDIA, Triatomic Capital, Bosch Ventures, Catalight Capital, the European Innovation Council Fund, and others, bringing the company's total funding to $177 million. iPronics primarily provides rack-mounted optical switching equipment for AI infrastructure. Through its programmable optical layer, it enables AI clusters to dynamically adjust network connections in real time according to training and inference workloads. The new capital will be used to scale operations and accelerate commercial deployment.
Odaily News According to reports, venture capitalist Josh Kushner has seen his wealth grow significantly this year, driven by early investments in star tech companies like OpenAI and SpaceX. The asset scale of his firm, Thrive Capital, has also nearly doubled as a result of betting on the wave of artificial intelligence.It is reported that Josh Kushner's wealth has grown nearly threefold this year, placing him among the billionaires' circle. As the founder of Thrive Capital, he previously earned substantial returns by investing in companies such as Instagram, Spotify, and OpenAI, and has become one of the most successful venture capitalists in Silicon Valley in recent years.On August 12, news broke that the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers were being sold to former Disney CEO Bob Iger and Josh Kushner at a record valuation of $12.5 billion. However, Josh Kushner did not mention the Lakers deal on social media that day, instead celebrating another AI-related investment move. On the same day, Thrive Holdings, founded by Josh Kushner in 2025, completed a $2 billion funding round with investors including SoftBank, reaching a company valuation of $12.5 billion. The firm aims to acquire traditional service companies and leverage AI technology to drive business transformation.Josh Kushner said: "We are incredibly fortunate to be building during such a profound era of innovation."Over the past few months, Josh Kushner has frequently appeared at core events in the tech and capital circles. Not only has he continued to bet on the AI industry through Thrive Capital, but he has also maintained close ties with OpenAI executives. In July this year, he attended the wedding of Taylor Swift and NFL star Travis Kelce, and later participated in the annual Sun Valley billionaire conference in the U.S., where he was photographed alongside OpenAI President Greg Brockman.Market observers believe that as the AI investment boom continues, venture capital firms holding key AI assets like OpenAI are becoming some of the biggest beneficiaries. Josh Kushner, through his early bets on the AI ecosystem, has achieved massive wealth growth. (Forbes)
According to Reuters, chip design startup Velaura AI announced the completion of a $110 million Series A financing round, with a post-money valuation exceeding $1 billion. This round was led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from Capricorn Investment Group and existing investors Samsung Catalyst Fund, StepStone Group, and Maverick Silicon.
GPU market data infrastructure company Silicon Data announced the completion of the first closing of its $30.5 million Series A financing round, led by Valor Atreides AI Fund, with participation from CME Ventures, DRW, Samsung Next, VanEck, Jump Trading, Wintermute, and others. The funds will be used for GPU benchmark pricing, performance measurement, institutional and alternative data, as well as derivatives, insurance, and credit market risk infrastructure.
Odaily News: GPU market data infrastructure company Silicon Data has announced the first closing of its $30.5 million Series A funding round, led by Valor Atreides AI Fund, with participation from CME Ventures, DRW, Samsung Next, VanEck, Jump Trading, Wintermute, and others. The funds will be used for GPU benchmark pricing, performance measurement, institutional and alternative data, as well as risk infrastructure for derivatives, insurance, and credit markets.Silicon Data currently collects data from approximately 100 GPU rental platforms across more than 40 countries worldwide, processing over 150,000 verified price records daily. CME Group plans to adopt Silicon Data's benchmarks as the reference price for its proposed cash-settled GPU futures contracts, pending regulatory approval.
According to Korean media Asiae, six top Silicon Valley VC firms, including Sequoia Capital, a16z, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and NEA, announced the signing of a strategic investment cooperation memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the South Korean National Pension Service (NPS), planning to jointly explore investment opportunities, share investment information, and strengthen their global venture capital layout. Additionally, with the South Korean government accelerating policies to attract overseas venture capital, coupled with the launch of the 200 trillion won "National Growth Fund," the market expects the Korean venture capital sector to see simultaneous inflows of policy funds, private capital, and overseas capital, with strategic industries such as AI and semiconductors expected to receive more investment. However, industry insiders warn that if a large amount of capital concentrates on a few popular enterprises, it may push up corporate valuations and create bubbles, potentially facing valuation correction pressure during future IPO and M&A exits, affecting fund return rates.
Silicon Valley AI startup Higgsfield AI is in talks for a new funding round, planning to raise between $300 million and $500 million, with a target pre-money valuation of $5 billion. If completed at the target valuation, this would represent a more than fourfold increase from the company's approximately $1.3 billion valuation in January 2026. Higgsfield’s total funding to date has reached $138 million, with investors including Accel, Menlo Ventures, and other institutions. It is reported that the scale of this latest funding round will be approximately three times larger than the company's total previous fundraising amount. (Cryptobriefing)
John Wang, Head of Crypto Business at prediction market platform Kalshi, stated on X that it is widely believed Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was a "top-tier venture capitalist" who successfully invested in star projects like Anthropic and Cursor. However, Wang argued this narrative is inaccurate. The real "core figure" driving these investment strategies and early resource allocation was actually "AI stock guru" Leopold Aschenbrenner, not SBF himself.Analysis suggests that this remark has sparked discussion within the crypto and venture capital circles, once again bringing the attribution of SBF's influence on early-stage investments in Silicon Valley and the crypto industry into the spotlight. It is reported that the AI fund Situational Awareness, founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, has grown to over $20 billion in scale, with quantitative giant Jane Street making a rare capital injection. Situational Awareness has achieved a year-to-date return rate of 270% and cumulative returns exceeding 1,000% since its inception. Equity bets on Anthropic have contributed the most successful returns, accounting for one-fifth of its assets. Beyond public markets, Situational Awareness also co-led an investment round in AI chip company MatX with Jane Street and participated in the latest funding round of AI cloud computing provider Fluidstack.