PIN

A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Author

Power in Numbers
September 12, 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

OpenAI today confirmed that it has signed an agreement to purchase computing infrastructure worth $300 billion from Oracle Corp. over a period of roughly five years, as part of its previously announced Project Stargate data center building initiative.

CoreWeave, one of the year’s hottest VC-backed IPOs, is the latest AI player to set up a corporate venture capital arm. The publicly traded AI infrastructure provider on Tuesday said its newly minted CoreWeave Ventures would back founders in various sectors with ties to AI and LLM utilities. The company plans to invest from its own balance sheet into startups across all stages, with an emphasis on seed and Series A deals.

ElevenLabs is offering employees a $100 million liquidity event at a $6.6 billion valuation, led by Sequoia and Iconiq Growth. The fast-growing voice AI firm now serves enterprise clients like Cisco, Adobe, and Nvidia, with revenue on track to top $300 million this year. The move highlights how tender offers are becoming a key tool to retain talent in the competitive AI market.

Cognition raised over $400 million at a $10.2 billion valuation just weeks after buying rival Windsurf. The deal more than doubled revenue and brought in big-name customers like Goldman Sachs, Dell, and Mercado Libre. Backers include Founders Fund, Bain Capital, and others, showing confidence in AI coding tools.

Klarna’s IPO pops, raising $1.4B, with Sequoia as the biggest winner

It’s been a long road for the 20-year-old fintech Klarna to make it to an IPO. But on Wednesday, the company successfully landed on the New York Stock Exchange, having raised $1.4 billion, largely for its existing investors, rather than itself.

Replit hits $3B valuation on $150M annualized revenue

Replit has raised a $250 million round, valuing the company at $3 billion. Unlike other fast-growing vibe coders, Replit has not been running to VCs every few months, though we’ll see if that changes. Its last raise was in 2023 when it raised about $100 million that valued the company at $1.16 billion post-money. Replit has now raised a total of about $478 million, PitchBook estimates.

💰 Funding announcement highlights

Koah, a one-year-old San Francisco startup that helps developers of AI apps make money by placing ads inside chat interactions, raised a $5 million seed. Forerunner led the deal, with South Park Commons also joining.

Rainforest, a startup providing software companies with tools to embed and manage digital payments within their platforms, raised a $29 million Series B round. Matrix Partners and Infinity Ventures co-led the investment, with Accel and Tech Square Ventures also contributing.

Databricks, a San Francisco company whose software lets companies combine and analyze large amounts of data to build AI applications and manage business databases, raised a $1 billion Series K. Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, MGX, Thrive Capital, and WCM Investment Management co-lead the round.

Reflection AI, a San Francisco startup that is developing artificial intelligence tools for coding, is close to raising about $1 billion at a valuation of up to $5.5 billion. Nvidia, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Conviction Partners, and DST Global are investing.

Interaction, a startup building an AI assistant called Poke that is integrated into messaging apps like iMessage, raised a $15 million round. General Catalyst, with Village Global, Earlybird VC, and angel backers were part of the deal.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

Author Suzy Welch’s 10-10-10 framework asks one simple question: how will this choice feel in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years? It’s a way to cut through instant gratification and make decisions that align with long-term goals. This tool helps prioritize what really matters in health, relationships, and work.

Big venture funds may look powerful, but the numbers often don’t add up. As Rex Woodbury explains, ownership and outliers drive real returns, not massive fund size. Smaller, emerging managers are often better positioned to deliver venture-scale outcomes while mega-funds risk sliding toward private equity returns.

Founders often treat their startups as extensions of themselves, but that attachment can cloud judgment. Burak Buyukdemir warns that clinging to features, valuations, or old roadmaps makes pivots harder and feedback feel personal. The lesson: love the work, but measure by results.

Ramp’s latest analysis finds a measurable rise in Saturday corporate card spend among San Francisco tech workers, a signal that the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six-day-a-week “996” schedule is no longer just anecdote. The Saturday surge wasn’t present in prior years, is far stronger in SF than in other hubs, and extends beyond software into multiple sectors.

The Cloud 100 has crossed $1.1 trillion in combined value, marking a 36% jump from last year and its first trillion-dollar milestone. AI companies now represent 42% of the list’s worth, with OpenAI and Anthropic leading the pack. The report highlights how AI is accelerating growth, shrinking time to $100M ARR, and fueling an unprecedented talent war across the industry.

There’s been great interest in what Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab is building with its $2 billion in seed funding and the all-star team of former OpenAI researchers who have joined the lab. In a blog post published on Wednesday, Murati’s research lab gave the world its first look into one of its projects: creating AI models with reproducible responses.

💪Tech mafia of the week

Highlights:

💰 Most money raised: Monday.com

🤑 Total money raised by the Wix Mafia: $840 million

Weekly Tech Mafia Leaderboard

The Wix alumni has built some amazing companies. This tech mafia group takes the 80th spot on our leaderboard, with 34 companies founded and $840 million raised.

PS: Are you a Wix alum interested in getting your community together to invest in the community (and earn carry/other benefits along the way)? Or are you a member of another community that you think would make for an amazing startup investment community?

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📌 PIN tweet of the week

💼 Who’s hiring in VC?

Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.

Lightbank is looking for a Growth Equity Investor

Team8 is looking for a Head of Investor Relations

Apex Capital is looking for a New Ventures Manager

Griffin Gaming Partners is looking for an Investor Relations Analyst

Montauk Climate is looking for a Head of IR

📌 PinPoint - Get paid to refer your friends to great jobs

Want to earn thousands of dollars for referring candidates to top companies? Sign up to PinPoint.

📠 Fun fact of the week

Samsung started as a grocery store in 1938 before entering electronics.