🧠 Dopamine Dealflow

💰 Massive Rounds (€50M+ / $50M+)

• Chai Discovery (San Francisco, CA) – $70M Series A led by Menlo Ventures’ Anthology Fund, with Thrive, OpenAI, Fred Ehrsam, and more to accelerate computational drug discovery.

• Rillet (San Francisco, CA) – $70M Series B co-led by a16z and ICONIQ for its AI-native ERP for modern finance teams.

• Small Door Veterinary (New York, NY) – $55M split between $35M equity led by Valspring and $20M in debt from Bridge Bank to grow premium vet care.

• Stavtar Solutions (Toronto, Canada) – $55M Series A from Elephant to scale SaaS for complex expense management.

📈 Mid-Sized Rounds ($40M–$49M)

• GeoWealth (Chicago, IL) – $38M Series C led by Apollo, with participation from BlackRock and JPMorgan, to expand its UMA asset management platform

🌱Early-Stage & Emerging (<$30M)

• DISA Technologies (Houston, TX) – $30M Series A2 led by Evok Innovations for its uranium remediation and mineral recovery tech.

• Prophet Security (Palo Alto, CA) – $30M Series A led by Accel to build agentic AI for security operations.

• NG.CASH (São Paulo, Brazil) – $26.5M Series B led by NEA with a16z and Monashees to grow AI-powered fintech tools.

• Tavily (New York, NY) – $20M Series A led by Insight Partners to bring compliant AI agents to the web.

• Retension Pharmaceuticals (Philadelphia, PA) – $15M Series B to advance hypertension therapies.

• MAUI Imaging (Denver, CO) – $14M Series D led by Acertara to launch next-gen ultrasound tech.

• Docyt (San Jose, CA) – $12M pre-Series B led by Pivot Investment Partners to scale AI-powered accounting automation.

• Quartr (Stockholm, Sweden) – $10M from Altos Ventures and others to open up public market narratives.

• Elion (New York, NY) – $9.3M Seed led by NEA to power AI-driven healthcare research.

• FloVision Solutions (Amsterdam, Netherlands) – $8.7M Series A led by Insight Partners to optimize food production with AI analytics.

• Runloop (San Francisco, CA) – $7M Seed led by The General Partnership to build infra for AI coding agents.

• Wattch (Atlanta, GA) – $6M Seed led by Spero Ventures to scale its solar and battery Energy Management Systems.

• Lava Payments (New York, NY) – $5.8M Seed led by Lerer Hippeau to develop wallets for the agent-native economy.

• Menos AI (San Francisco, CA) – $5.2M Seed to launch Sonαr, its AI-native investment assistant for hedge funds.

• Work-ID (Zurich, Switzerland) – €4.2M from Swiss Commercial Association & others for digital skills passports and labor market transparency.

• AlterEco Pulp (Venice, Italy) – €3.5M Seed led by Eureka! Fund I to scale sustainable pulp-based packaging.

• Tracelight (London, UK) – $3.6M Seed led by Chalfen Ventures to simplify financial modeling with AI.

• Solidec (Austin, TX) – $2M+ pre-Seed led by New Climate Ventures to reimagine chemical manufacturing with clean tech.

• Bayes Market (London, UK) – $2M strategic investment to build decentralized prediction infrastructure.

• Better Nature (London, UK) – €1.2M from angels to scale clean-label tempeh products for the health-conscious food market.

• Faba (Milan, Italy) – €4.5M led by CDP Venture Capital to expand its screen-free kids’ audio entertainment in Spain.

🤝 Strategic & Growth Investments

• Guzman Energy (Denver, CO) – $80M revolving credit facility from BciCapital, UMB Bank & InBank to expand wholesale power across the Western U.S.

• Positive Development (Irvine, CA) – $51.5M Series C co-led by aMoon and B Capital to expand autism therapy programs.

• Teramount (Jerusalem, Israel) – $50M led by Koch Disruptive Tech to scale chip-to-fiber interconnects for AI and data centers.

• Lorikeet (Sydney, Australia) – $35M Series A led by QED to build AI-powered customer concierges.

• Multibeam (Santa Clara, CA) – $31M Series B from UMC Capital and others to evolve e-beam lithography tech.

• Dfinitiv (San Francisco, CA) – Undisclosed strategic investment from United Airlines Ventures to scale loyalty commerce infrastructure.

• Ingentis (Nuremberg, Germany) – Undisclosed investment from Carlyle to expand its org design and analytics platform.

• Nomi Health (Orem, UT) – Undisclosed strategic investment from Inspirit Equity to expand its real-time healthcare platform.

• L.A.B. Golf (Eugene, OR) – Undisclosed investment from L Catterton to scale its direct-to-consumer putter tech brand.

• Yarbo (New York, NY) – Undisclosed Series B+ new capital from robotics & AI leaders to scale autonomous yard robot platform.

💸 VC Funds Raised & Raising

• TPG raised $4.8B for its sixth growth fund and $1.3B for its second GP-led vehicle.

• Germany’s Deutschlandfonds is launching a $115B investment fund to secure strategic sectors including defense, energy, and raw materials.

• Ares Management is close to raising $3B for its third infrastructure secondaries fund.

• MGX is considering raising $25B in external capital to continue building out its AI infra empire from Abu Dhabi.

• Aperture Investors is looking to raise $1B for its new asset-backed finance (ABF) fund, with initial capital from Generali.

• OnePrime secured $305M for its third flagship fund targeting secondaries in data infra, fintech, robotics, and more.

• Painswick Capital raised $1.5B for its debut MM secondaries fund.

• Prelude Growth Partners raised $600M for its third growth equity fund.

• AirTree Ventures received backing for a $420M fund from U.S. LPs including MetLife and Harvard.

• Brookfield is launching a dedicated strategy focused on developing AI infrastructure.

• Blue Earth Capital registered a second EM secondaries fund.

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

📚 Read of the Day

“OpenAI is Her.” - Sam Altman

GPT-5 Goes Live for Everyone
On August 7, 2025, OpenAI officially released GPT-5, its most advanced AI model yet, now available to all ChatGPT users—free and paid alike.

• Major upgrade: Described by CEO Sam Altman as far smarter, faster, and more reliable, offering responses at a PhD-level of accuracy.

• Seamless experience: GPT-5 uses an automatic router that intelligently selects the best reasoning mode for each query, eliminating the need for users to manually pick model versions.

• Developer tiers: Available in three variants—standard GPT-5, mini, and nano—with free users subject to usage caps.

• Enhanced capabilities: Excels in coding and multi-step tasks, performs strongly on benchmarks like SWE-Bench and Aider Polyglot, and even admits when it can’t fulfill a request—boosting trust and usability.

OpenAI Nears $500 Billion Valuation in Share Sale Talks
Simultaneously, OpenAI is in advanced discussions to conduct a secondary share sale, potentially valuing the company at an eye-watering $500 billion—a substantial leap from its previous $300 billion valuation.

• The deal would enable current and former employees to cash out and attract fresh investor interest.

• This valuation would elevate OpenAI to the status of the most valuable private tech company, surpassing SpaceX.

• Analysts view this as a bold endorsement of AI’s market momentum, aligning OpenAI with top-performing public tech stocks and reflecting investors’ aggressive bullishness amid fears of an AI bubble.

Why it matters:
This dual milestone—GPT-5's wide availability and an impending $500 billion valuation—signals a powerful convergence: OpenAI is not only pushing the boundaries of accessible, high-caliber AI but also cementing its financial and strategic dominance in the tech world.

📰 News You Don’t Want To Miss

🤖 GPT-5 Goes Live for Everyone

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☁️ OpenAI models now run natively on AWS

💸 Italy approves $15.5B subsidy package for chip & AI firms

📉 “Tea” app for men exposed user IDs & driver's licenses

🔍 Google denies AI search features are killing site traffic

🧠 Microsoft raids DeepMind as AI talent wars heat up