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A newsletter for communities, investors, angels, and founders

Power in Numbers
February 20, 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

Thrive raises $10B as its LPs anticipate mega-IPO windfall

Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital just closed its largest fund ever at over $10 billion, double its previous raise, and the timing is no accident. The firm holds early stakes in both SpaceX and OpenAI, two of the most anticipated public listings of 2026. With Databricks, Stripe, Anduril, and Monzo also in the pipeline, Thrive's IPO calendar reads like a who's who of the most valuable private companies on earth.

Austrian creator of viral OpenClaw joins OpenAI to build "next generation" of AI agents

Peter Steinberger, the developer behind OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent platform that went viral, is joining OpenAI to build an AI agent simple enough for anyone to use. Rather than turning OpenClaw into a startup, he is transitioning it into a foundation to keep it open source. Sam Altman personally praised the move, signaling that personal AI agents are quickly becoming central to OpenAI's roadmap.

Benchmark hires Jack Altman, sees recent AI bets surge

Jack Altman is shutting down his solo venture firm Alt Capital to join Benchmark as a general partner, just two years after striking out on his own. The move brings the brother of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman into one of Silicon Valley's most storied firms, which has quietly been delivering standout returns on its AI bets. Benchmark's 2020 fund is now worth more than ten times what investors put in.

Billionaire Peter Thiel's tech firm Palantir announces a move to Miami

Palantir is packing its bags again, this time leaving Denver for Miami in what is becoming a familiar tech industry migration story. The data and defense contractor, which racked up over a billion dollars in federal contracts in 2025, joins a growing list of billionaire-backed firms planting flags in South Florida. Peter Thiel already moved his investment firm there late last year, and names like Zuckerberg, Page, and Brin have all been spotted buying property nearby.

Kavak secures $300 million in a16z-led funding round

Latin America's leading used-car platform just landed a major vote of confidence, with Andreessen Horowitz leading a $300 million round, its largest-ever bet in the region. Kavak had previously peaked at an $8.7 billion valuation before hitting turbulence, but a period of restructuring brought it back to profitability in December. Its fintech arm, now issuing loans at a $600 million annualized rate, has become a serious growth engine.

Against the tide: Databricks-backer Battery Ventures closes $3.25B fund

While much of the venture world is struggling to raise fresh capital, Battery Ventures closed a $3.25 billion fund in just four months, with 80% coming from existing backers. The Boston-based firm, which counts Databricks, Coinbase, and Shopify among its past bets, has returned over $10 billion to investors in the last five years alone. Rather than fearing AI disruption, Battery is leaning into it, targeting software, infrastructure, developer tools, and cybersecurity.

Dragonfly raises $650M for crypto venture fund IV

Dragonfly Capital just closed its fourth crypto fund at $650 million, blowing past its original $500 million target. The firm is betting big on blockchain infrastructure, DeFi, stablecoins, and tokenized real-world assets. Notably, Dragonfly has a track record of raising during downturns and timing it well.

Etsy sells cecondhand clothing marketplace Depop to eBay for $1.2B

Etsy is offloading Depop to eBay for $1.2 billion, nearly five years after buying it for $1.62 billion. The Gen Z favorite resale app had been growing fast, hitting $1 billion in gross merchandise sales in 2025, but it no longer fits Etsy's refocused strategy. For eBay, it's a direct bet on the booming secondhand fashion market. Another acquisition, another pivot.

💰 Funding announcement highlights

Seamflow, a London-based AI software startup serving the testing, inspection, and certification industry, raised $4.5 million in seed funding. Northzone and Initialized Capital led the round, with Garry Tan also joining.

Temporal, a Bellevue-based platform helping developers build reliable applications, raised $300 million in Series D funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures, also participating.

Render, a cloud platform for app developers, raised $100 million in Series C-1 funding. Georgian led the round, joined by existing investors Addition, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and 01 Advisors.

Avantos, a New York City-based startup building an AI operating system for client onboarding and servicing at financial institutions, raised $25 million in Series A funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round.

Moab, a startup building an operating system for equipment rental and dealership businesses, raised $16 million across seed and Series A rounds. Elad Gil led both rounds, joined by Ironspring Ventures and angel investors.

📚 Interesting reads of the week

We need more angel investors

Startup ecosystems do not stall because of a lack of conferences or think pieces, they stall because not enough people are writing early checks. Angel investors are the first link in the chain: without them, founders never reach the stage where VCs are even relevant. Research backs it up too, angel-backed companies are significantly more likely to survive, hire, and exit the startup phase.

When to raise VC

Venture capital is a financing tool, not a finish line, and confusing the two is costing founders years of their lives. The core issue is return expectations: angels can celebrate a 5 to 10x outcome, while VC funds need 50x just to make the math work. That single constraint quietly rules out entire categories of perfectly good businesses. If your market does not support hypergrowth, no amount of deck reworking will change that.

The dark side of building in public

Growing a newsletter to 15,000 subscribers in under three months sounds like a dream, but Alex McCann is here to share what the highlight reel leaves out. Building in public means the criticism is public too, ranging from privilege-shaming to accusations of grifting to dismissals over age and experience. McCann's honest take: none of those attacks come with a manual, and the self-doubt they trigger is real.

Entire industries are now decided in less than 2 years

AI is collapsing the timeline for market dominance from decades to months. The startup that becomes the industry default no longer needs years of slow trust-building, it needs two things done in parallel: land one influential whale customer and own the AI narrative in its sector. Each one feeds the other in a flywheel that locks out competitors fast. The window to claim that default slot is open right now, but not for long.

PE is no longer coming to the rescue. And that probably means no one will.

For a decade, building a solid SaaS company to $20M ARR was basically a guaranteed PE exit. That playbook is dead. Despite record M&A volumes in 2025, the gains went almost entirely to AI-driven hypergrowth stories and massive consolidation plays, leaving plain vanilla SaaS companies with no buyers in sight. If you cannot show genuine AI-driven acceleration or a hot category tailwind, the exit you were counting on is no longer coming.

You've been kicked out of the arena, you just don't know it yet

Product leader Claire Vo has a blunt message for established software companies: you are already losing to AI-native startups, you just cannot see it yet. The tell is simple: if your company cannot ship, fix, or decide anything in a single day, you are already out of the game. While incumbents debate AI budget allocations and slap chatbots onto old products, leaner startups are rebuilding your core product for a fraction of the price.

Top 10 startups now control record 51.8% of total unicorn value

The unicorn market has never been this unequal. According to PitchBook's latest report, the top 10 US startups by valuation now account for more than half of the entire unicorn market's value, up from just 18.5% in 2022. Meanwhile, over one in four unicorns have quietly slipped below the $1 billion mark since their last funding round. The gap between AI darlings and everyone else keeps widening.