News linked to both this project and an event.
According to Tech Funding News, AMD CEO Lisa Su announced at London Tech Week that the company will invest up to £2 billion in UK AI infrastructure over the next five years, covering national supercomputing infrastructure development and university research collaborations. Meanwhile, AMD is partnering with Oriole Networks—a startup spun out from University College London (UCL)—to deploy the world’s first large-scale, all-photonic network AI system under the UK government’s £50 million ARIA Inference Scaling Lab initiative. This system integrates Oriole’s PRISM photonic networking platform with AMD Instinct GPUs and EPYC CPUs; by completely eliminating electronic switches from the network core, it reduces core network energy consumption by 81% and cuts GPU idle time from 60% to under 1%.
Helion, a nuclear fusion energy startup backed by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, has announced the completion of a $465 million funding round, led by Thrive Capital. The post-investment valuation has reached $15.5 billion, nearly three times its previous valuation of $543 million. It is reported that the company is dedicated to developing nuclear fusion technology to power data centers and other customers. However, it has yet to prove the feasibility of its technology in actual electricity production. Investors remain highly confident in its potential, and this round of funding will be used to accelerate technology development and commercial advancement. (The Information)
Odaily Startup Incubator Y Combinator will hold its first-ever interview session specifically for fintech and crypto startups in New York City, aiming to support more companies in this sector. The interviews will be held offline on May 21st. Selected startups will join the Summer 2026 batch and receive a standard investment of $500,000. Chosen projects can opt to receive funding in the form of USDC stablecoins. To date, Y Combinator has invested in over 150 crypto and fintech companies, including Coinbase, OpenSea, and Kalshi.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Parallel Web Systems—an AI startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal—has raised $100 million in its Series B funding round, led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, and Khosla Ventures. The company’s valuation has risen to $2 billion, bringing its total funding to $230 million. Parallel focuses on building web search infrastructure for AI agents, supporting in-depth research use cases such as investment research, insurance claims processing, and government contract analysis. Over 100,000 developers are already using its platform, with customers including legal AI company Harvey. Proceeds from this round will be used to expand the sales team and strengthen R&D efforts.
According to Sarah Wolf’s own post on X, her nearly five-year tenure at Coinbase is coming to an end. She joined Coinbase in 2023 as its first Builder Marketer and co-founded Base with Jesse Pollak, driving its growth into a leading global blockchain ecosystem with a builder community spanning over 52 countries. During her time at Coinbase, she led several landmark initiatives, including Onchain Summer—a collaboration with Adidas and Coca-Cola—integrating USDC payments into Shopify, and launching BaseCamp, the flagship builder summit. After leaving Coinbase, Sarah Wolf will join Anthropic as Head of Startup Marketing, focusing on supporting the startup ecosystem building around Claude. She has invited founders and builders currently developing with Claude to reach out to her.
On-chain lending platform Votre has raised $3.75 million in seed funding, led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator, with participation from MaC Venture Capital, Druid Ventures, and angel investors from Goldman Sachs, Harvard University, and OrangeDAO. Founded in 2025, Votre operates a non-custodial crypto lending platform on Coinbase’s Base Layer 2 network, enabling users to borrow USD—settled the same day—using Bitcoin as collateral, with loan sizes ranging from approximately $25,000 to $5 million. The funds will be used to scale technical infrastructure, increase platform capacity, enhance liquidity management tools, and strengthen risk and compliance systems.