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A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders
Power in Numbers
June 19, 2026
Welcome to PIN’d - our weekly newsletter where we pin (lol, bear with us) the most important tech/startup news of the week for aspiring angels, vc’s, startup investors, founders, etc. Expect a new weekly roundup from us every Friday morning!
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📰 This week’s best news
The biggest news this week: SpaceX exercised its previously disclosed option to acquire Anysphere, the company behind AI coding tool Cursor, in an all-stock deal valued at $60 billion, the largest acquisition in developer tooling history. The deal comes just four days after SpaceX's record-breaking Nasdaq IPO, and the two companies have already been jointly training a model on xAI's Colossus infrastructure set to ship inside both Cursor and Grok.
A San Francisco startup best known for its AI-generation software is making a bizarre leap into medical imaging, and trying to says it hopes draw curiosity-seekers into its new spa to get scanned.
Relativity Space—a rocket maker acquired by former Google executive chair Eric Schmidt last year after stumbling on the path to orbit—might just beat SpaceX to Mars.
PayPal Ventures is taking a break. Five sources told Fortune that the corporate venture arm, which was founded in 2016, will be winding down operations. A company spokesperson confirmed the news to TechCrunch, albeit with a nuanced statement:
The Trump administration signaled it is open to negotiations with Anthropic after ordering the company last week to suspend access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all foreign nationals over national security concerns about a jailbreak vulnerability. White House science advisor David Sacks said the order was issued "reluctantly" and that the administration hopes Anthropic remediates the problem so the models can go back into general release.
OpenAI's net loss widened from $5 billion in 2024 to $39 billion in 2025, though the majority was driven by one-time non-cash accounting charges tied to its restructuring into a for-profit company. Excluding those items, the operating loss was $8 billion, against $2 billion in monthly revenue as of March.
SpaceX (SPCX) stock tumbled more than 6% on Thursday after breaking a three-day winning streak for the first time since the company's public debut.
The early Chinese backers of AI startup Manus are planning to buy the company back from Meta at the US$2 billion price that the Facebook parent paid. The reported move comes months after China ordered Meta to unwind its acquisition of Manus, amid Beijing’s tightening scrutiny of US investment in Chinese startups developing advanced AI technologies.
💰 Funding announcement highlights
Andera raised $37M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company develops AI software that automates internal audit workflows, including evidence collection, control testing, and workpaper generation.
Bland raised $50M Series C led by Dell Technologies Capital, with HubSpot Ventures, Archerman, Tribeca, and existing investors participating. The company develops proprietary voice AI models that automate long enterprise phone calls and customer interactions.
Ent Security raised a $100M Seed round led by Decibel Partners, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Crosspoint Capital Partners, Craft Ventures, Shield Capital, Felicis, and In-Q-Tel. The company develops software that prevents risky actions by employees and AI agents before they occur.
Nox Metals raised $11.5M Seed led by Hyperion, with participation from Y Combinator, Palmer Luckey, Jared Friedman, RoboStrategy, Operator Collective, DTX, and Alumni Ventures. The company supplies industrial metals to U.S. manufacturers across defense, automotive, and aerospace sectors.
Probably raised $9M Seed from Andreessen Horowitz. The company develops tools that reduce AI hallucinations by validating model outputs against deterministic systems before results are delivered to users.
📚 Interesting reads of the week
In his latest essay, Paul Graham's latest essay challenges one of the most common assumptions people have about extreme wealth (and does the math).
Marc Andreessen and Michael McGuinness argue that SpaceX's mission statement, "scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe," is either the most ridiculous thing a serious company has ever written, or the most honest. A long read, but one of the more ambitious pieces of investment writing you'll see this year.
Sequoia Managing Partner Alfred Lin on why you make the most money when you're right and contrarian, and why even Warren Buffett's playbook has limits. Includes a quietly provocative take on what the Magnificent 7 might look like a decade from now.
Two Princeton researchers go through every major story about AI-driven software engineering layoffs, and find the same thing every time. A methodical takedown of one of the most repeated narratives in tech right now.
Cursor CEO Michael Truell addressed the SpaceX deal in a post on X, calling it "a meaningful step on our path to build the best place to code with AI." The acquisition is notable in part because Cursor was previously a major customer of Anthropic, routing significant token spend to Claude, revenue that will now be at risk as SpaceX pushes to route those calls through its own xAI models.
InfraRed 100 honors 100 transformative companies in cloud infrastructure. These trailblazers have set new benchmarks for reliability, scalability, security, and innovation, enabling businesses to thrive in a cloud era and ushering a new paradigm of building applications.
Wired shares an in-depth piece on more than 200 of the world's elites registered for a retreat whose agenda runs from panels on cult-building to prepping for World War III, amongst other things.
The SF Standard obtained details of a private Signal chat where Silicon Valley's wealthiest, including Sergey Brin, Marc Andreessen, Michael Moritz, Chris Larsen, Garry Tan, Patrick Collison, and Ron Conway, coordinated strategy to defeat California's proposed Billionaire Tax Act, a one-time 5% levy on net worth above $1 billion heading for the November ballot. The anti-tax coalition has now raised more than $100 million, mostly from Brin, who has since moved to Nevada to avoid the tax.
📌 Tweet of the week
💼 Who’s hiring in VC?
Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.
lvlUp Ventures is looking for a Head of Startup Sourcing & Community
a16z is looking for a Partner 16, Software Engineer, Backend, ASG
Bessemer Venture Partners is looking for an Associate, AI & Data Infrastructure
Stride Ventures is looking for a Investment Associate
Creative Destruction Lab is looking for a Venture Manager
