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OpenAI Bags $8.3B, Raising Your Series A is Harder Than Ever, and Wall Street’s $100B Blockchain Blitz

OpenAI Bags $8.3B, Raising Your Series A is Harder Than Ever, and Wall Street’s $100B Blockchain Blitz

From the Series A squeeze to AI’s $400B economic takeover and Wall Street’s blockchain binge, headlines reveal the new rulebook for building—and backing—venture giants.

Traded: Venture Capital
August 05, 2025

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…

📉 Series A is harder than ever. It used to take a startup 1.5 years to raise Series A. Now it takes 2.5. And only 1 in 10 startups even make it. Investors want real revenue and proof that your business works before they invest; no more funding on vibes.
💰 AI is holding up the U.S. economy. Big Tech is spending almost $400 billion this year on AI—data centers, chips, servers, all of it. That spending is boosting the economy more than anything else right now. AI isn’t just cool, it’s crucial.
🏗️ Data centers are the new factories. The AI boom is being called the next Industrial Revolution. Instead of factories, we’re building huge data centers. But there’s a downside—energy use is exploding, and people are worried about jobs and sustainability.
🔗 Banks are all-in on blockchain. Big banks have put over $100 billion into blockchain tech since 2020. They're building the future of money—things like digital dollars, faster payments, and safer ways to store assets.

🧠 Dopamine Dealflow

💰 Massive Rounds (€50M+ / $50M+)

OpenAI (San Francisco, CA) – $8.3 B megaround led by Dragoneer Investment Group with participation from Blackstone, TPG, Fidelity, Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, Altimeter, D1 Capital, Tiger Global, Thrive Capital, and others to fuel frontier AI infrastructure.
Anaconda (Austin, TX) – $150 M+ Series C led by Insight Partners and Mubadala Capital to scale its open‑source AI platform globally.

🌱Seed & Series A ($10M–$30M)

Subzero Labs (San Fransciso, CA) – $20 M seed led by Pantera Capital with Coinbase Ventures, Fabric, Mysten Labs, Susquehanna, and Variant, building the developer-first Rialo blockchain stack.
OpenMind (Silicon Valley, CA) – $20 M round led by Pantera Capital, with Ribbit, Coinbase Ventures, and Pebblebed, to build a cross-platform OS for humanoid robots.
Streamline AI (Burlingame, CA) – $8.6 M Series A led by Blumberg Capital with Tribeca Venture Partners, Acronym, Great Oaks, and Scribble to automate legal intake and matter management.
STAN (Singapore) – $8.5 M equity raise backed by Google AI Futures Fund, Bandai Namco, Square Enix, Aptos Labs, General Catalyst, and GFR Fund to build a social gaming platform connecting gamers and creators.

🤝 Strategic & Growth Investments

Bhindi AI (Singapore) – $4 M pre‑seed led by Cyber Fund with angels. Developer of an agentic “everything app” for automating workflows via AI.
Cavelo (Kitchener, Canada) – CAD $5 M seed extension led by Inovia Capital with Graphite Ventures, MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund & angels to enhance attack surface management.
Comp AI (San Francisco, CA) – $2.6 M pre‑seed from OSS Capital, Grand Ventures, with angels like David Cramer and Ben Tossell to automate compliance certification via AI.
Ceedar (Victoria, Canada) – $200 K angel round led by Metalab Ventures to automate bookkeeping for digital service businesses.
Zettabyte (Taipei, Taiwan) – Strategic investment (undisclosed) from Lam Capital, Foxconn, Pegatron, and Wistron to develop its Zsuite AI data center orchestration software.
Kriptown (Paris, France) – Undisclosed investment from CACEIS to support tokenized SME exchange and blockchain-based market infrastructure.
Approov Limited (Edinburgh, UK) – £5 M Series A led by Maven Capital with Souter Investments, Lanza techVentures & Scottish Enterprise to scale mobile API attestation security.
Clarametyx Biosciences (Columbus, OH) – Upsized Series A tranche from existing investors to accelerate immune-enabling therapies for respiratory diseases following FDA Fast Track & QIDP designations.
PhnyX Lab (Seoul, South Korea) – $4 M seed led by SK Networks with angels including Aidan Gomez and Illia Polosukhin to build GenAI tooling for life sciences operations.
Delta Development Team (Tucson, AZ) – Strategic Series A3 via U.S. Air Force TACFI non‑dilutive capital and regional angels to modernize prehospital blood logistics systems.
Doughlicious® (London, UK) – $5 M growth round led by Rich Products Ventures & The Angel Group to scale gluten‑free frozen cookie‑dough gelato internationally.

💸 VC Funds Raised & Raising

PGIM raised $4.2B for its second middle-market private credit fund, expanding its private debt strategy under Prudential Financial.
Lexington Partners is nearing its $4B target for its sixth co-investment fund, continuing its push into secondaries and direct investments.
Silversmith Capital Partners closed $1.7B for its fifth fund to back high-growth companies across tech and healthcare.

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📚 Read of the Day

🧠 Zuckerberg drops manifesto: Meta’s plan to build safe, open superintelligence

Mark Zuckerberg just outlined Meta’s long-term roadmap for creating artificial general intelligence — and he’s making a bet no other tech giant dares: build it in the open.

Why it matters:
While rivals race to lock down AGI, Meta is promising transparency, safety, and open science. This could flip the entire AI race — and position Meta as the ethical AI superpower.

The big unlock:
Zuck’s plan includes multi-agent training, scalable oversight, and long-horizon reasoning. And unlike OpenAI, Meta is committing to open-sourcing much of its progress, putting pressure on the rest of the field.

Big picture:
This is more than a product roadmap — it’s a philosophical stand. If Meta succeeds, it could change who builds AGI, how it’s governed, and whether the future of intelligence belongs to the public or a few closed labs.