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A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Power in Numbers
December 26, 2025

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

Nvidia buying AI chip startup Groq’s assets for about $20 billion in its largest deal on record

Nvidia has agreed to buy assets from Groq, a designer of high-performance artificial intelligence accelerator chips, for $20 billion in cash, according to Alex Davis, CEO of Disruptive, which led the startup’s latest financing round in September.

PS: Our SPAC King, Chamath, also just had one of the biggest VC wins in history.

Thiel-backed bank set to double valuation to $4.35 billion

A Silicon Valley-focused bank backed by Peter Thiel is raising $350 million in a deal that would more than double its valuation. The startup is positioning itself as a new home for crypto, tech, and defense firms after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Recent regulatory approvals are accelerating its push into the mainstream financial system.

Marissa Mayer’s new startup Dazzle raises $8M led by Forerunner’s Kirsten Green

Marissa Mayer is back with a new AI startup after shutting down her previous company. Dazzle has raised $8 million in seed funding, betting on a new generation of consumer-focused AI assistants. The round, led by a top consumer investor, signals renewed confidence in consumer AI after an enterprise-first wave.

Ex-Splunk execs’ startup Resolve AI hits $1B valuation with Series A

Resolve AI has reached a $1 billion headline valuation in a Series A round led by Lightspeed. The startup is building an autonomous AI system that replaces manual site reliability work in complex software environments. Investors are backing the team’s deep enterprise roots and betting on automation as cloud systems grow harder to manage.

Crunchbase predicts: IPOs picked up in 2025 and the outlook for 2026 is even more optimistic

The IPO market for new technology listings picked up in 2025. So far this year, at least 23 U.S.-based companies have listed above $1 billion in value, compared to nine in 2024, per an analysis of Crunchbase data.

💰 Funding announcement highlights

Truemed, an Austin, Texas-based telehealth marketplace, raised a $34 million Series A round. Andreessen Horowitz led the deal, with Bessemer Venture Partners, Long Journey Ventures, BoxGroup, and Trust Ventures also participating.

Feanix, an Asheville, North Carolina-based agricultural genomics and farm management platform, raised a $5.3 million seed round. Initialized Capital led the funding, with Overwater Ventures, General Catalyst, and Collab Fund also joining.

Tin Can, a Seattle, Washington-based startup building a screen-free and text-free landline phone for kids, raised a $12 million seed round. Greylock led the round, with Lateralus Holdings and existing investors also contributing.

Enlightra, a Lausanne, Switzerland-based company developing technology to accelerate communication between AI chips, raised a $15 million funding round. Investors included Y Combinator, Runa Capital, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Protocol Labs, and others.

Nirvana, a San Francisco-based AI-powered commercial insurer, raised a $100 million Series D round. Valor Equity Partners led the deal, with Lightspeed Venture Partners and General Catalyst also participating.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

12 predictions for 2026

12 venture capital and tech predictions for the upcoming year! Could 2026 become a record year for liquidity?

My biggest fear in investing now: the $100,000,000 ARR slowdown

More startups are hitting $50M to $100M ARR faster than ever, then suddenly slowing down. Jason Lemkin argues the old SaaS playbook no longer works as IPO expectations rise and growth decelerates earlier. To break through, companies must go multi-product sooner and tap into real AI budgets, not optional add-ons.

Sam Altman on OpenAI’s plan to win, AI personalization, infrastructure math, and the inevitable IPO

Sam Altman lays out how OpenAI plans to stay ahead as competition intensifies. He argues that winning will come from product stickiness, deep personalization, and massive investment in compute, not just better models. The conversation also touches on enterprise growth, AI devices, and why an IPO feels inevitable, even if not imminent.

a16z State of Consumer AI 2025 report

Consumer AI adoption surged in 2025, but usage and spending remain highly concentrated around a single assistant. ChatGPT still dominates scale and retention, while Google’s Gemini is gaining momentum with viral models and faster paid growth. The report claims the next breakout will come from focused consumer experiences, not general-purpose assistants.

Brex: 50 fastest-growing software vendors of 2025

Real customer spend shows AI has crossed from experiment to infrastructure. Coding tools and AI-native platforms are growing fastest, led by vendors embedded directly in daily workflows. The data suggests the winners are not better models, but tools that help teams build, ship, and move faster.