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OpenAI Sells $6B of Stock at a $500B Valuation, Soho House Goes Private in $2.7B Deal, & Workday Acquires Flowise to Build AI Agents

OpenAI Sells $6B of Stock at a $500B Valuation, Soho House Goes Private in $2.7B Deal, & Workday Acquires Flowise to Build AI Agents

EdgeCortix’s $100M Series B, and fintech dips as global investments drop 18% — more capital moves shaping today’s landscape:

Traded: Venture Capital
August 18, 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.

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🧑‍🍳 Let’s get right into it…

🏠 Soho House to Be Taken Private in $2.7 Billion Deal — Members-only club operator agrees to go private in a landmark transaction, aiming for a reset of its business model.
🤖 OpenAI sells $6B in employee stock at a $500B valuation — Thrive, SoftBank, and Dragoneer scoop up shares, making OpenAI the world’s most valuable startup while fueling Sam Altman’s trillion-dollar AI ambitions.
🛠 Workday acquires Flowise to build AI agents — The HR and finance software giant expands its AI-first strategy with the acquisition of Flowise, aiming to integrate agentic capabilities into enterprise workflows.
🏦 Winklevoss twins’ crypto exchange Gemini files for IPO — The Bitcoin billionaires bring their exchange to public markets in a bold move, testing investor appetite amid shifting crypto sentiment.
🕵️ IVIX secures $60M Series B — AI-powered financial-crime detection startup raises to expand its threat prevention and analytics capabilities.
♻ Clean Growth Fund raises £49M first close toward £150M target — UK-based climate-tech VC fund aims to champion early-stage innovations in decarbonization, waste, agrifood, buildings, energy systems, and mobility.
🌍 Norrsken unveils €57M “Evolve” fund for impact startups — Stockholm-based impact ecosystem expands its mission with seed investments (~€250K per startup) and scale-up support across biotech, renewable energy, robotics, energy transition tools, and more.
⚡ EdgeCortix completes $100M Series B — U.S.-based fabless semiconductor company scaling AI inference chips optimized for edge computing and defense applications.

🧠 Dopamine Dealflow

🌱Seed & Early Rounds

Hyperbeat – $5.2M Seed for yield infra on Hyperliquid DEX. Co-led by ether.Fi Ventures and Electric Capital with Coinbase Ventures, Anchorage Digital, and others.
Prefer (Singapore) – $4.2M Seed for sustainable coffee and cocoa flavors via fermentation. Backed by At One Ventures, Chancery Hill, and Forge Ventures.
Genow (Darmstadt, Germany) – €1.65M Seed for enterprise knowledge management. Led by High-Tech Gründerfonds with BMH and angels.
Meshed (London, UK) – £950K Pre-Seed for AI-compliant digital insurance brokerage for SMEs. Led by Haatch with Aviva (via Founders Factory), Exponential Science Foundation, and angels.
Treasy (London, UK) – $1.1M Seed for treasury management SaaS. Led by APY Ventures with Tera Portfolio.
Sports Impact Technologies (Dublin, Ireland) – €650K Pre-Seed for head impact detection wearables. Backed by Enterprise Ireland and private investors.
Uspacy (Tallinn, Estonia) – €420K Pre-Seed for SMB digital workspace SaaS. Raised from Startup Wise Guys, Ukrainian angels, and €170K+ in grants (incl. Google for Startups).
HaloNinjas (Glasgow, Scotland) – Undisclosed raise from Start Something

🚀 Series A

Cache (New York, NY) – $12.5M Series A for modern exchange funds. Led by First Round Capital.
TeamLinkt (Saskatoon, Canada) – $6M+ Series A for sports management SaaS. Led by Growth Street Partners.

🌳 Series B+ & Growth

Brightspeed (Charlotte, NC) – $1.65B to expand its fiber network across 20 states, following a $575M bond and $3.7B previously raised. Backed by major institutional investors.
Anocca (Södertälje, Sweden) – $46M (SEK 440M) to advance VIDAR-1, a TCR-T therapy for pancreatic cancer. Led by Mellby Gård with AMF, Ramsbury, and others.
Goals (Tokyo, Japan) – ¥1.33B (~$9M) Pre-Series B for AI-driven food service support tools. Backed by WiL, Serverworks Capital, ALL STAR SAAS FUND, Angel Bridge, and Mizuho Capital.

💸 VC Funds Raised & Raising

Bain Capital raised $1B+ for its latest middle-market credit fund.
Energize Capital raised $430M for a new fund targeting early-stage climate tech startups.

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📚 Read of the Day

OpenAI Staffers to Sell $6B in Stock at $500B Valuation 💰 🤖

Current and former OpenAI employees are cashing in, lining up a $6 billion secondary share sale to SoftBank, Thrive Capital, and Dragoneer. The deal would value the ChatGPT maker at a jaw-dropping $500 billion—catapulting it past Elon Musk’s SpaceX as the world’s most valuable startup.

The SoftBank Double-Down

This isn’t SoftBank’s first dance. Masayoshi Son’s empire has already poured billions into OpenAI, including a $1B employee share buy at a $300B valuation. Now it’s leading a fresh $40B funding round (at $300B) and scooping up employee shares at $500B. Call it hedging—or just betting big on Altman’s vision.

Why Employees Care

For OpenAI’s talent pool, the sale is more than a payday—it’s a pressure valve. With Meta luring away engineers with monster salaries, letting insiders liquidate stock helps keep top researchers on board without forcing an IPO. Only staff with at least two years’ tenure get a slice.

Sam Altman’s Trillion-Dollar Dreams

At a press sit-down, Altman doubled down on the long game: trillions in infrastructure spend to fuel AI’s future. “You should expect economists to wring their hands and say, ‘This is so crazy, it’s so reckless,’” he quipped. “And we’ll just be like, ‘Let us do our thing.’”

Why It Matters

With GPT-5 live, revenue expected to triple to $12.7B this year, and employees turning stock into cash, OpenAI is rewriting the startup playbook. Forget unicorns—this is dragon territory.

👉 Read The Whole Story Here