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A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders
Power in Numbers
January 30, 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
Defense tech giant Anduril is launching a high-stakes autonomous drone racing competition to scout for top-tier engineering talent. Unlike traditional races, participants must write software that allows drones to navigate complex courses entirely on their own. Winners will walk away with a share of a $500,000 prize pool and a fast-tracked offer to join the company.
A new open-source AI assistant has taken the developer world by storm by promising to be a proactive digital employee. Unlike traditional chatbots, this tool runs locally on your hardware and connects directly to your favorite messaging apps to execute real-world tasks. The project recently rebranded to Moltbot following trademark pressure from Anthropic and a chaotic encounter with crypto scammers.
SpaceX is exploring deals with other companies helmed by serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, leaving investors working through permutations between space, autonomous driving and artificial intelligence to analyze which combination makes the most sense.
SoftBank is in discussions to invest an additional $30 billion into OpenAI as part of a massive new funding round. This capital injection could value the ChatGPT creator at approximately $830 billion and follows a multi-billion dollar bet made by the Japanese conglomerate just last month. CEO Masayoshi Son is reportedly aggressive about the move, pivoting his firm’s strategy to go all in on the artificial intelligence race.
Investors are flooding Asian markets with capital as a wave of high-profile IPOs revitalizes the region. This sudden surge is driven by a mix of optimistic growth forecasts and a new generation of tech companies ready to go public. Analysts say the scale of the current equity rally is surprising even the most seasoned market observers. For now, the momentum shows no signs of slowing down as global funds look for alternatives to saturated Western markets.
💰 Funding announcement highlights
Concourse, a New York startup building AI agents for corporate finance teams, raised a $12 million Series A round led by Standard Capital, with Andreessen Horowitz, CRV, and Y Combinator also participating.
Phia, a New York startup offering an AI shopping app that surfaces resale and alternative products, raised a $35 million Series A round led by Notable Capital, with Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins joining the round.
Pace, a New York startup using agentic AI to automate document-heavy insurance operations, raised a $10 million Series A round led by Sequoia Capital.
Standard Nuclear, a Oak Ridge, Tennessee-based startup producing TRISO nuclear fuel, raised a $140 million Series A round with participation from existing investor Andreessen Horowitz.
Inferact, a Bay Area startup building infrastructure to run large language models more efficiently, raised a $150 million seed round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with Sequoia Capital also investing.
Former Stripe engineering leader Will Larson reveals how the company mastered "lighthouse hiring" to scale its world-class team. The strategy focuses on recruiting one highly-connected individual to serve as a beacon that attracts subsequent high-quality talent at a much faster velocity.
The acquisition of Brex by Capital One for $5.15 billion has sparked a heated debate over whether a massive exit can still be labeled a failure.
The creation of new unicorns accelerated at the end of 2025, marking the strongest quarter for billion-dollar valuations in over three years.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warns that humanity is entering a turbulent rite of passage as we approach the era of powerful AI. He describes the coming technology as a "country of geniuses in a datacenter" that could arrive as soon as 2027 and reshape global power dynamics.
Venture-backed companies are increasingly turning to acquisitions to stay competitive in a crowded market. With the bar for an IPO rising significantly, many founders are choosing to sell to well-funded "private rocket ships" instead of going it alone.
Mental health professionals are reporting a disturbing rise in cases where AI chatbots exacerbate or trigger full-on delusions and psychosis in patients. While developers claim these incidents are rare, the sheer scale of the user base means hundreds of thousands of people may be at risk of psychological harm.
📌 PinPoint - Weekly Startup Job Opportunities
Chai Discovery is hiring a Software Engineer, Infrastructure
Unconv.ai is hiring a Member of Technical Staff - AI Algorithms
Fal is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer
Gradium is hiring a Research Scientist (Speech AI)
PermitFlow is hiring an Enterprise Business Development Representative
You can earn thousands of dollars for referring candidates to top companies. Sign up to PinPoint.
📌 Tweet of the week
💼 Who’s hiring in VC?
Looking to get into VC? Below are this week’s curated VC job openings.
Reciprocal Ventures is looking for a VC Associate
First Round Capital is looking for a VC Investor
Equal Ventures is looking for a VC Principal
Entrepreneur First is looking for an Ops Associate
500 Global is looking for an Investment Associate
