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ChatGPT Shops for You, Black Forest Labs Eyes $4B, & Cerebras Secures $1.1B

AI shopping agents, billion-dollar hardware, and a European AI lab raising big with Meta ties.

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Traded: Venture Capital
September 30, 2025

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Your dose of daily dealflow, essential VC & tech trends to know. The biggest moves in venture, all in one place. Celebrating startups, founders, and funders.

🧑‍🍳 Let’s get right into it…

🛍️ OpenAI launches a shopping agent, putting pressure on Amazon and Google’s e-commerce dominance.

🖼️ Black Forest Labs in talks to raise $200M–$300M at a $4B valuation, and partners with Meta.

💰 Cerebras Systems secures $1.1B to fuel the AI hardware race.

🚀 Rebellions raises $250M from Arm and Samsung Ventures for its AI chips.

🌐 Flying Tulip grabs a massive $200M Seed to build a full-stack onchain exchange.

🎵 Spotify CEO Daniel Ek steps down after nearly two decades leading the streaming giant.

🧑‍🚀 Top 3 Deals You Can’t Miss

1️⃣ Cerebras Systems – $1.1B growth round, scaling its frontier AI compute hardware ambitions.

2️⃣ Rebellions – $250M raise at $1.4B valuation, led by Arm & Samsung Ventures.

3️⃣ Black Forest Labs – in talks for $200M–$300M at a $4B valuation, building AI image models with Meta.

🧠 Dopamine Dealflow

🌳 Series B+ & Growth

  • Cerebras Systems (Sunnyvale, CA) – $1.1B growth; AI compute hardware scale-up.

  • Rebellions (Seoul, Korea) – $250M; led by Arm & Samsung Ventures; AI chips.

  • Viamericas (Coral Gables, FL) – $113.6M; remittance & money transfers.

  • Eve (San Francisco, CA) – $103M Series B; AI platform for plaintiff law firms.

  • Firehawk Aerospace (Dallas, TX) – $60M; hybrid rocket propulsion.

  • Vibe.co (New York, NY) – $50M Series B; CTV ad platform.

  • Alvys (Solana Beach, CA) – $40M Series B; AI-powered TMS for freight.

  • Leo Cancer Care (Middleton, WI) – $40M; upright radiotherapy devices.

  • Yup (Jakarta, Indonesia) – $32M Series C-1; digital banking.

  • Alex (San Francisco, CA) – $20M; AI agents for interviews.

🚀 Series A

  • Lexroom (Milan, Italy) – $19M Series A; gen-AI for legal workflows.

  • Zania (San Francisco, CA) – $18M Series A; agentic AI for security GRC.

  • Umony (London, UK) – $15M Series A; AI comms compliance for FS.

  • Qovery (Paris, France) – $13M Series A; automates DevOps.

  • Neura Health (New York, NY) – $11.4M Series A; virtual neurology clinic.

  • Reveni (Madrid, Spain) – €7.5M Series A; logistics dashboard.

🌱 Seed & Early Rounds

  • Flying Tulip (Global/Onchain) – $200M Seed; Brevan Howard Digital, Susquehanna Crypto, CoinFund; onchain exchange.

  • Gain (Tel Aviv, Israel) – $12M Seed; AI employees for hire.

  • True Labs (Hong Kong) – $10M Seed; AI-first decentralized exchange.

  • NoBACZ Healthcare (Cambridge, UK) – £4.8M; livestock wound care.

  • Hospitable (San Francisco, CA) – $1.5M; property management SaaS.

  • FLIZpay (Berlin, Germany) – $1M Pre-Seed; mobile payments.

  • Aspyr Living (Fort Lauderdale, FL) – $250K (of $3M Seed); natural lifestyle products.

  • Joiner (Vilnius, Lithuania) – €500K Angel; social friend-making app.

🤝 Strategic, M&A & Undisclosed

  • Fiserv (Milwaukee, WI) acquired StoneCastle Cash Management (NYC); insured deposit platform.

  • Natus Medical (Middleton, WI) bought minority of Holberg EEG (Bergen, Norway); AI EEG interpretation.

  • ActiveComply (Orlando, FL) – undisclosed investment from Level Equity; digital comms compliance.

  • Aarvik Therapeutics (Hayward, CA) – undisclosed Series Seed 2; ADC oncology.

  • Black Forest Labs (Germany) – in talks to raise $200M–$300M at $4B valuation; AI image partner to Meta.

  • Toyota launched Woven Capital Fund II; strategic CVC expansion.

💸 VC Funds Raised & Raising

Founders: Want to be featured on @tradedvc? → traded.co/submit/vc

📚 Read of the Day

🛒 ChatGPT Kicks Off the Era of AI Shopping Agents

Chatbots are no longer just answering questions — they’re buying on your behalf.

OpenAI just launched a shopping system powered by ChatGPT that can automatically search, compare, and purchase items for users — a move set to fundamentally change e-commerce. Instead of browsing manually, users can hand over their intent and let the agent handle transactions. Analysts say this could rival Amazon and Google in online retail.

🧑‍🍳 The Product Pitch

The system goes beyond recommendations: it acts as a fully autonomous shopping agent, making purchase decisions and completing checkouts based on user prompts.

🚀 The Strategy

By embedding commerce into AI chat, OpenAI positions ChatGPT as not just a productivity tool but also a direct competitor in retail infrastructure — potentially reducing reliance on Amazon search or Google Shopping ads.

💡 Why It Matters

For founders: the agentic era is here. Shopping, bookings, and transactions are being re-routed from web interfaces to conversational AI. For investors: this could open new moats around payments, trust, and personalization, while shaking incumbents that rely on ad-driven discovery.

📰 News You Don’t Want To Miss

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OVER AND OUT, BACK TO THE GRIND ⚙️

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