- PIN'd
- Posts
- PIN
PIN
A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders
Power in Numbers
July 10, 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!
If you’re receiving this, it’s because you’ve signed up for our waitlist and/or for newsletter updates.
Got a friend that wants to learn more or stay up to date on angel investing/VC? Help us spread the word and forward this email to them ;)
Subscribe here.
📰 This week’s best news
B Capital, an investment firm backed by Facebook cofounder, Eduardo Saverin, has raised $500 million for its early stage venture capital fund, Ascent Fund III, amid investor confidence in AI startups.
After losing roughly $1 trillion in market value in less than two months, Nvidia Corp.'s stock is the cheapest it's been since before the AI boom kicked off and sent the shares into the stratosphere.
OpenAI unveiled its newest family of models on Thursday, introducing a set of heavyweight programs into an increasingly crowded field of AI offerings. GPT-5.6 comes in three variants: Sol (considered its workhorse), Terra (a more intermediate option), and Luna (its budget-friendly option).
Chinese AI companies have made inroads globally by giving their models away for free. Now Beijing is weighing whether to stop them. Chinese authorities have held talks with Alibaba, ByteDance, and Z.ai about whether to restrict foreign access to their most advanced models, including ones not yet released.
Figma, the cloud-based design and collaboration platform, has acquired the team behind AI-powered coding platform Bud, formerly known as Orchids. Announcing the move, Bud co-founder and chief executive Kevin Lu said the company saw Figma as a natural place to develop the next generation of AI-powered product creation tools.
The humanoid robotics market is awash in money right now, and this startup is going public via a SPAC rather than raising another private round. The proceeds will help it ramp up production at its 70,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Salem, Oregon, and fulfill an existing pipeline of customer orders.
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is raising about $10 billion, in its first outside funding round that will value the rocket company at $130 billion. Bezos is set to contribute $2 billion into the round, along with about $4 billion from hedge fund Coatue Management, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the details are private.
💰 Funding announcement highlights
Bespoke Labs raised $40M across seed and Series A, with 8VC leading the seed and Wing VC leading the Series A, and Mayfield and The House Fund participating. The company builds realistic company-like environments for training, evaluating, and improving AI agents on long-running business tasks.
Kaon AI raised $60M from B Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Goodwater Capital, and DCM Ventures. The company develops AI entertainment apps that let users create personalized interactive story worlds and characters.
Oratomic raised $300M Series A led by Khosla Ventures, with Bezos Expeditions, Index Ventures, General Catalyst, Lowercarbon Capital, Bain Capital, Formation 8, and Nebular participating. The company develops quantum computing technology focused on running Shor’s algorithm at scale.
Agave raised $15M Series A led by Accel, with Y Combinator participating. The company automates accounting, invoice processing, expense management, vendor compliance, and financial reporting for construction contractors.
Bidbus raised $15M Series A led by Ibex Investors, with Mucker Capital, FJ Labs, Motley Fool Ventures, Data Point Capital, Walter Ventures, and Yossi Levi participating. The company operates a digital marketplace where dealerships compete to buy consumers’ used cars.
📚 Interesting reads of the week
Even before OpenAI and Anthropic go public, they are distorting home sales in the San Francisco Bay Area, as people race to buy and sellers ask for stock instead of cash.
Nobody knows what skill to learn right now. AI? Coding? Marketing? Am I wasting my time if I go to school while everyone else is vibe coding apps they’ll never get traction on? Do I start a YouTube channel? What about a Substack? Should I even try getting a job? Or should I build my own thing? Well, there is one skill that will never go out of style.
As AI disrupts traditional career paths, these college students are skipping corporate internships for San Francisco hacker houses and incubators.
North American venture investment hit all-time highs in the first half of 2026, driven by late-stage megarounds for AI industry leaders, Crunchbase data shows. If that introductory sentence sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same storyline we reported for the first quarter, when OpenAI drove investment to stratospheric heights with the largest venture round of all time.
A collection of blog posts written by founders who have sold their company, incredibly helpful for other entrepreneurs hoping to sell a business.
Every July, Sun Valley becomes the center of the billionaire universe for a week. They are the heads of Hollywood studios, big tech companies, cable and streaming networks, sports leagues, investment firms, and AI startups, many among the world’s wealthiest and most influential people.
📌 Tweet of the week
💼 Who’s hiring in VC?
Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.
Speedinvest is looking for a Capital Formation Operations Manager
Minfon Group is looking for a Venture Partner
Pitchdrive is looking for a Startup Scout
Techstars is looking for an Operations Associate
IDB Lab is looking for a Senior Associate
