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A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders
Power in Numbers
March 13, 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
Nvidia is backing Mira Murati's stealth AI startup Thinking Machines Lab with a "significant investment" as part of a multiyear strategic partnership. The deal also includes a commitment from Thinking Machines to deploy at least one gigawatt of Nvidia's upcoming Vera Rubin systems.
General Catalyst is in early talks to raise around $10 billion spread across multiple vehicles, including growth and early-stage venture funds. The firm already manages over $40 billion in assets, and the new raise would push it ahead of most US venture firms by size. Once a classic VC, General Catalyst has been expanding aggressively into financial services, health care, and AI.
Meta snapped up Moltbook, the Reddit-like platform where AI agents talk to each other, folding it into Meta Superintelligence Labs. The platform went viral for all the wrong reasons: it was so poorly secured that humans could impersonate AI agents and post content designed to freak people out.
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund is wrapping up its fourth growth fund at $6 billion, less than a year after closing its previous $4.6 billion growth vehicle. Demand from outside investors exceeded capacity, and about $1.5 billion is coming from the firm's own partners. The fund isn't limited to follow-ons either. Last month Founders Fund co-led a $30 billion round into Anthropic, making it a rare dual investor in both leading AI labs.
Anthropic is taking the federal government to court over what it calls illegal retaliation. The lawsuit claims the Trump administration blacklisted the company after it refused to let the Pentagon use Claude for surveilling U.S. citizens and controlling autonomous weapons. A second filing challenges the supply-chain risk designation on constitutional grounds. Anthropic says the judiciary is now its last resort.
Two heavy hitters from tech and venture are joining forces. Sequoia partner Ravi Gupta and former Meta Chief Revenue Officer John Hegeman are building a new holding company targeting at least $1 billion. No details on investment focus have been shared yet.
💰 Funding announcement highlights
Juicebox, a startup that operates an AI recruiting platform designed to identify and reach job candidates before they apply, raised an $80 million Series B at an $850 million valuation led by DST Global. Additional investors included Sequoia, Coatue, Y Combinator, NFDG, and Verified Capital.
AgentMail, a startup that provides an email platform designed for AI agents, raised a $6 million seed round led by General Catalyst. Additional investors included Y Combinator, Phosphor Capital, and Paul Graham.
Anchr, a startup that deploys AI agents to automate operational workflows for wholesale food distributors across purchasing, inventory, and invoicing, raised a $5.8 million seed round. Investors included Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun, Anterra Capital, Offline Ventures, and Long Journey Ventures.
Cotool, a startup that runs an agent-based platform allowing cybersecurity teams to create AI agents that share context across detection, investigation, and response workflows, raised a $7.4 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Additional investors included Y Combinator, WndrCo, and Homebrew.
Cylake, a startup developing an AI-powered hardware security system designed to protect sensitive data for governments and defense contractors that cannot move data to the cloud, raised a $45 million seed round led by Greylock.
📚 Interesting reads of the week
Chinese companies now control over 90% of global humanoid robot sales, backed by decades of manufacturing policy, AI investment, and strong demand from state-owned enterprises. The U.S. approach is different: fewer units, but stronger hardware and software fundamentals.
Blue Origin's original stock option plan expired last month for hundreds of long-tenured employees, leaving them with nothing after a decade of work. The plan had a fatal flaw: options could only be exercised at a liquidity event, which never came, and automatically expired after 10 years.
As AI reasoning becomes widely accessible, the real competitive advantage shifts to whoever controls the context fed into these models. Engineer Alfonso de la Rocha argues that the next value layer in software won't be captured by chip makers or frontier labs, but by the tools that provide agents with the right connections, data, and runtime environment.
OpenAI's record-breaking funding round looks very different when you read the SEC filings. Of the $110 billion headline, the first real cash, $25 billion combined from Amazon and SoftBank, only hits the bank in late March and April 2026.
Raising money is a sales game, and the first step is making sure investors can instantly understand who you are and why you're worth betting on. Here is a break down on the hierarchy of founder status in Silicon Valley and how to build credibility if you're not already on VCs' radar.
Anthropic researchers built a new framework to track how AI is actually affecting jobs, not just theoretically. The key finding: AI is far from reaching its potential, with real-world usage covering only a fraction of what's technically possible.
New York has quietly become one of the most competitive startup cities in the world. Carta's latest data on $70B+ invested in 2025 puts NYC at number one in fintech and consumer, number two overall, and in the top two across AI, SaaS, biotech, and healthtech.
📌 Tweet of the week
💼 Who’s hiring in VC?
Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.
Visa Ventures is looking for a Senior VC Manager.
Robinhood Ventures is looking for a VC Lead.
Voy Ventures is looking for a Senior VC Associate.
Mercato Partners is looking for a VC Associate.
Micron Ventures is looking for a Senior VC Manager.
