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Venture Capital & Investment

Notion Capital Secures $130M to Fuel European Tech Growth

Notion Capital has raised a $130 million growth fund to address the shortage of growth capital in Europe, particularly for companies seeking follow-on investments.

The fund, Growth Opps III, is nearly double the size of its predecessor and will invest both in and outside of Notion Capital's existing portfolio, focusing on sectors like defense, supply chain logistics, and AI applications.

Notion Capital aims to support European companies in response to decreased investment from U.S. VCs, focusing on the application layer of AI rather than infrastructure.

The firm's strategy involves leveraging its early-stage reach to identify promising companies and offering flexible investment sizes, with recent deals including Upvest, Kraken (Octopus Energy spinoff), and Nelly.

Stephanie Opdam and Jessica Bartos will lead the growth strategy, bringing external expertise to the firm.

The fund, denominated in euros and based in Luxembourg, has secured investments from institutions across Europe, the U.K., MENA, and the U.S., bringing Notion Capital's total assets under management to over $1 billion.

Automotive

Faraday Future's LA Headquarters Hit by Electric SUV Fire and Explosion

A Faraday Future electric SUV caught fire at the company's Los Angeles headquarters, causing an explosion that damaged the building. The fire was extinguished in 40 minutes with no reported injuries. The building has been red-tagged by the city's Department of Building and Safety, indicating potential structural damage.

The fire occurred at a sensitive time for Faraday Future, as its lease on the headquarters is uncertain. The company had previously sold and leased back the building and faced eviction proceedings earlier in 2024. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

The FF91 SUV involved in the fire was on display in the office space. Faraday Future first unveiled the FF91 SUV in 2017. Recently company started building the first few production SUVs in 2023. The company is now promoting a more affordable electric van that it appears to be importing from China, and is also trying to spin up a crypto-focused business. Earlier this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission sent so-called “Wells Notices” to FaradayFuture and its founder Jia Yueting.

Artificial Intelligence

DeepSeek's Sparse Attention Model Reduces API Costs

DeepSeek has released a new experimental model, V3.2-exp, featuring DeepSeek Sparse Attention, designed to lower inference costs for long-context operations. The model prioritizes specific excerpts from the context window using a "lightning indexer" and selects tokens with a "fine-grained token selection system."

Preliminary tests suggest that the price of API calls could be reduced by as much as half in long-context situations. The model is open-weight and available on Hugging Face for third-party testing.

DeepSeek, based in China, previously made waves with its R1 model, trained using reinforcement learning at a lower cost than its American competitors. The new sparse attention approach aims to reduce inference costs and could provide valuable insights for other AI providers.

AI-Powered App Development

Anything AI: Revolutionizing App Development with Comprehensive Infrastructure and $100M Valuation

Anything, a vibe coding startup co-founded by ex-Google employees Dhruv Amin and Marcus Lowe, has secured an $11 million funding round at a $100 million valuation, led by Footwork.

Anything aims to provide a complete suite of tools, including databases, storage, and payment functionality, enabling non-technical users to build and launch functional web and mobile applications.

The company's initial traction has been impressive, reaching $2 million in annualized run rate within just two weeks. Users have already built functional apps, some of which are generating revenue.

Anything differentiates itself by building its infrastructure in-house, unlike competitors that rely on third-party databases like Supabase.

Other startups like Mocha and Rork are also focusing on providing comprehensive backend tools for app development, indicating a growing trend in the market.

Venture Capital

Lobster Capital's YC-Only Investment Strategy: A French VC's Success Story

Gabriel Jarrosson, a French engineer, built Lobster Capital with a unique strategy: investing exclusively in Y Combinator (YC) companies. Starting with a YouTube channel sharing his investment journey, Jarrosson's approach led to managing over $12 million in assets. He believes YC's track record of producing successful companies justifies focusing solely on its alumni. Lobster Capital's debut fund surpassed its target, backing nearly 30 startups in SaaS, fintech, and AI. Jarrosson leverages content creation and community engagement to gain access to YC deals, citing the accelerator's high success rate in producing unicorns.

Artificial Intelligence & App Development

Anything AI Secures $11M Funding at $100M Valuation to Simplify App Development

Anything, an AI-powered app builder, has raised $11 million at a $100 million valuation. Co-founded by ex-Google employees Dhruv Amin and Marcus Lowe, Anything aims to simplify web and mobile app development for non-technical users by providing all necessary tools, including databases, storage, and payment functionality. The company reached $2 million in annualized run rate within two weeks of launch. Unlike competitors that rely on third-party databases, Anything builds its infrastructure in-house. The platform already supports functional apps in the App Store, with some generating revenue.

Artificial Intelligence

Claude Sonnet 4.5: Anthropic's New Frontier in AI Coding

Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 4.5, a new frontier AI model, excelling in coding benchmarks. It aims to enable developers to build 'production-ready' applications. Available through the Claude API and chatbot, its pricing mirrors Claude Sonnet 4: $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens.

Reportedly, Apple and Meta are already utilizing Claude AI models internally. Claude Sonnet 4.5 showcases industry-leading performance on coding benchmarks and can autonomously code for extended periods, handling tasks such as standing up database services and performing SOC 2 audits. Early reviews from Cursor and Windsurf CEOs praise its coding performance and potential.

Additionally, Anthropic is launching the Claude Agent SDK, the infrastructure behind Claude Code, to aid developers in creating their own agents. A research preview, 'Imagine with Claude,' allows Max subscribers to witness real-time software generation. This launch occurs less than two months after Claude Opus 4.1.

Artificial Intelligence

AI Startup ComplexChaos Aims to Bridge Divides and Foster Cooperation in Negotiations

ComplexChaos, founded by Tomy Lorsch and Maya Ben Dror, is developing AI-powered tools to help groups reach consensus faster and more effectively. Their tool, incorporating Google's Habermas Machine and OpenAI's ChatGPT, facilitates cooperation by generating questions, defining goals, and summarizing documents. A trial with young delegates from nine African nations preparing for climate negotiations showed a 60% reduction in coordination time and a high rate of participants gaining new perspectives. ComplexChaos envisions its tool being used in climate negotiations, corporate strategic planning, and other complex challenges to simplify processes and promote cooperation.

AI and Search Technology

Brave Enhances AI Search with Detailed Answers and Privacy Focus

Brave has introduced a new feature, AskBrave, to its AI-powered search suite, offering detailed answers to user queries. This complements their existing AIAnswers feature, which provides summarized responses. AskBrave delivers report-like answers with links, videos, and image carousels, similar to ChatGPT or Perplexity. Users can also engage with an AI chatbot for follow-up questions or format conversions.

Brave emphasizes privacy by encrypting user chats and deleting them after 24 hours of inactivity. The company utilizes its own API for grounding search results and ensuring accuracy. This update positions Brave alongside Google in the AI-powered search space, but with a strong focus on user privacy.