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A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders
Power in Numbers
May 15, 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
Early-stage venture firm A* on Tuesday announced a $450 million Fund III. The firm takes a generalist approach, backing companies across categories such as AI applications, fintech, healthcare, and security.
It was the kind of debut that makes Wall Street stop mid-sentence. CEO Andrew Feldman, who co-founded Cerebras roughly a decade ago from a conviction that the AI industry needed an entirely new class of chip, now holds a stake worth approximately $3.2 billion. His technology chief and co-founder Sean Lie owns shares valued at $1.7 billion. In a single trading session, the fruits of a decade of white-knuckle innovation became undeniable.
The Cerebras Systems IPO was a smash hit on Thursday, generating billions for itself, its founders, and its major investors. Among the big winners is major shareholder Benchmark, which owns 9.5% of the company. One of the firm’s general partners, Eric Vishria, has been a Cerebras board member since 2016, the year the AI chipmaker was founded, having co-led its $25 million Series A round.
The Wall Street Journal reported that more than 600 current and former OpenAI employees sold a combined $6.6 billion in shares during an October 2025 tender offer, with 75 of them walking away with the maximum allowed amount of $30 million each.
Nvidia has committed more than $40 billion to AI equity investments in the first five months of 2026, anchored by a $30 billion stake in OpenAI. Beyond OpenAI, the chipmaker announced seven multi-billion-dollar deals in publicly traded companies. Critics have raised concerns about the circular nature of some deals, where Nvidia invests in companies that in turn buy its chips.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified in the ongoing Musk v. Altman trial in Oakland, becoming the third tech billionaire to take the witness stand in as many weeks. Nadella testified that Elon Musk never raised concerns about Microsoft's $13 billion investment in OpenAI despite the two having each other's phone numbers.
Forbes published its eighth annual AI 50 list, highlighting a clear shift in the AI race: success is no longer just about building the most powerful model, but about who controls it, how it's used, and what it costs to deploy.
Just two months after listing its first venture fund on the NYSE, Robinhood has filed confidentially for a second, RVII, which will expand its mandate to include growth-stage and early-stage startups in addition to the late-stage companies held by its debut fund.
💰 Funding announcement highlights
Isomorphic Labs raised $2.1B led by Thrive Capital, with MGX, Temasek, CapitalG, Google Ventures, and Alphabet participating. The London company, spun out of Google DeepMind, uses AI for drug discovery.
Roadrunner raised $27M across seed and Series A financing, with Kleiner Perkins leading the seed and Founders Fund leading the Series A. The San Francisco company helps teams manage product configuration, pricing, and sales quote generation for complex enterprise deals.
Anduril raised $5B Series H co-led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, with Founders Fund and Lux Capital participating, at a $61B post-money valuation. The Costa Mesa company builds autonomous defense systems, drones, submarines, aircraft, and military surveillance technology.
Greenboard raised $15.5M Series A led by Base10 Partners, with Y Combinator, General Catalyst, Commerce Ventures, Transpose Platform, Liquid2 Ventures, and Kulveer Taggar participating. The New York company automates securities compliance workflows for financial institutions.
Origin Lab raised $8M seed led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with SV Angel, Eniac, Seven Stars, FPV, Kevin Lin, and Kyle Vogt participating. The San Francisco company turns licensed video game worlds into structured training data for multimodal AI models.
📚 Interesting reads of the week
Naval argues that the best salespeople don't sell; they lead, stay credible, and feed their obsessions. His take on why charisma is just confidence plus love, and what "good deal or no deal" means in the age of nonlinear returns.
Most AI users are getting 10–20% more productive, not the 2–10x everyone is promising. This engineer breaks down the hidden organizational and behavioral failures that keep getting in the way, and what actually needs to change.
A rare, deep profile of the competitive math champion and "nerd emperor" behind Cognition, one of the fastest-growing companies in business history. Worth reading just for how he thinks about agents, competition, and what comes next.
A first-hand account from someone who just returned from their first trip to China. Raw, unfiltered observations on how Chinese biotech actually works, and why the asset-flipping playbook that worked in 2022 is quietly becoming obsolete.
A short but sharp argument that we've returned to an era of individual leverage, but now everyone has an Iron Man suit. Midjourney running at $500M in revenue with fewer than 100 employees is just the beginning.
A CFO's honest self-assessment framework for whether your company has truly changed how it works with AI or just added a few tools and called it transformation. Most teams are still in the early stages, even when it doesn't feel that way.
📌 Tweet of the week
💼 Who’s hiring in VC?
Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.
Energy Impact Partners is looking for an Associate.
TempoCap is looking for an Analyst.
Paladin Capital Group is looking for a Senior Associate.
Temasek is looking for an Associate.
Galaxy is looking for an Investor.
