TLDR FOUNDERS 2025-07-16

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MIRA MURATI'S THINKING MACHINES LAB RAISES $2B AT $12B VALUATION

With no revenue or products, the former OpenAI CTO's startup landed one of the largest seed rounds ever from Andreessen Horowitz, Nvidia, and others. Two-thirds of the team are former OpenAI employees.

COGNITION ACQUIRES WINDSURF

Cognition scooped up Windsurf's remaining 250-person team and $82 million ARR business after Google's $2.4 billion reverse-acquihire cherry-picked only the leadership, leaving employees behind without payouts. The acquisition gives Cognition both AI coding agents and IDE capabilities to compete with Cursor's $500 million ARR, and restores Windsurf's access to Claude models that Anthropic had cut off amid rumors of an OpenAI acquisition.

VOXTRAL: MISTRAL'S OPEN-SOURCE AUDIO MODEL

Mistral's Voxtral is the company's first open-source audio model suite. It features a 24B parameter model for large-scale use and a 3B variant for edge deployment.

EMAILS FOR HUMANS

People in the 1200s would think email is magic - instant messages to anyone, anywhere. What do we use it for? Work messages, ads, and password resets. We should send more thoughtful emails to strangers. Bad emails ask for general life advice or "30 minutes to Zoom." Good ones are specific - share an interesting essay, ask one focused question, or just say hello. Email B beats Email A because it's honest, specific, and includes something useful. Most people send zero cold emails to interesting strangers. Maybe you should send more.

DESIGN PARTNERSHIPS IN VERTICAL AI

Vertical AI founders gathered to share what works. Getting design partners? Just ask for advice - executives love giving it. The sweet spot is 5-10 partners, mixing cold and warm contacts. Pick big names in your field (Turner in construction turns heads). Be picky with early partners because they become your first referrals.

FROM MEMO TO MOVEMENT

Shopify's CEO told everyone to use AI. What happened next surprised them. Support staff, not engineers, became the biggest power users. The company gives everyone unlimited access to expensive models - no budgets, no limits. One person spent $10K in a month, and nobody blinked. It is hiring more interns because students already work with AI naturally. The wildest part? A sales rep built a tool in Cursor that changed how they sell. AI revealed that their whole process was backwards.

NIA

10x your coding agent context.

EXPLORIUM MCP

Explorium MCP is a data integration tool that connects live B2B company and contact data to AI agents, apps, and workflows.

CIRO

Ciro is an AI-powered prospecting tool that builds, enriches, and scores contact lists, syncing them to CRMs or CSVs.

BUILD, SELL, UNDERSTAND

Every startup job boils down to three things: building the product, selling to customers, or understanding what to do next. Engineers build, salespeople sell, analysts understand. Some roles blend them (growth does building plus selling). Here's what most people miss: everyone eventually becomes a seller. Managing, recruiting, and working cross-functionally all require convincing people.

UNIFY RAISES $40M TO TURN GROWTH INTO A SCIENCE

Unify just raised a $40M Series B from Battery, OpenAI, Thrive, Emergence, and others. The company is building an AI-powered system of action for go-to-market teams. It helps teams reach the right customers at the right time, with AI agents that research prospects, write personalized outbound, and act on intent data. It has grown 8x in the last year. Its customers include Airwallex, Perplexity, and Cursor.

NEUROTECH IS HAVING ITS 2017 AI MOMENT

Neurotech in 2025 mirrors AI's 2017 moment: high potential, low mainstream awareness, and a tight insider community. This post highlights a new market map detailing competing approaches, top projects, and tradeoffs to demystify the space.

SEQUOIA WANTS IT HARD

Two 23-year-olds thought they had Sequoia in the bag after pitching Roelof Botha at a Starbucks.

THE MAGIC MINIMUM FOR AI AGENTS

Good software used to need daily use - the toothbrush test.

DEQUITY

Private equity firms can't sell their companies and return cash to investors - the worst drought since 2009.