Foreword

Early-stage fund led by @deckelly. Investor @Starcloud_ @AikidoSecurity @fyxerai @Sorare @IsembardGroup @withdelphi

[Gabriella @GabriellaHach]

So excited to share that @Dessn_ai has raised $6m, led @pietrobezza , with participation from @betaworks , N49P, and a few other amazing partners and angels.

@eminimnim and I started the company 2 years ago
with one conviction: the future of product development wouldn’t happen in disconnected mockups or recreated environments. It would happen directly in production.

Today, Dessn is the only product that enables an entire team to design and prototype directly in prod — visually, collaboratively, and in one click.

[Ali @AliHabbabeh]

Habibis, @xomarket just closed a $6M seed to build permissionless conviction markets anyone can spin up a Yes/No market on any belief in seconds.
Led by @20vcFund and @picuscap , with @cbventures, and others along with 30+ angels including @patcummins30
Prediction markets cracked this open. We're opening the rest.

[Joseph Cohen @josephcohen]

We designed Olto to be the ultimate bike lane vehicle. Two passengers. 40 miles of range. Cargo capacity. Theft proof. No license, no registration, no insurance. $3,495, about a quarter of what the average used car costs. Bike-lane legal in 50 states.

Olto is now shipping nationwide. To celebrate, we’re launching our Spring Campaign featuring ~100 New Yorkers from all walks of life. It goes live today around NYC and on the internet.

We’re very excited for Olto to be in the world and for all kinds of people to make it a part of their lives. Oh the places you will go.

[Sarah Tavel @sarahtavel]

When I first met @paulscherer I was struck by his intellect, values, and vision for how technology can help bring people together in a time of extreme hyper-personalization.

I've long believed one of the most important consumer opportunities in AI would be something that felt like a friend. But most of what I saw created more loneliness, not less.

Paul’s vision for @eigenhq is the first in this category that felt truly different. This was something our team needed to be a part of, and @Benchmark is proud to partner with Paul on this journey.

More here in Fortune (link below):

[Peter Fenton @peterfenton]

I've only felt this a handful of times in a first meeting — TheFacebook (2005), Twitter (2007), Instagram (2010), SnapChat (2011). Meeting @paulscherer hit me the same way -- wow, then inevitability

[paul @paulscherer]

I’m honored to share that @eigenhq has raised $15M from @Benchmark to build a mutual friend that’ll help us belong and grow, together.

[a16z @a16z]

GitButler is redesigning the version control experience for you and your agents. We're very excited to lead their Series A.

In this conversation, GitButler CEO Scott Chacon joins a16z GP Matt Bornstein to discuss:

- Why Scott came back to version control after GitHub
- Why Git's UI has barely changed since 2005
- How GitButler is building version control designed natively for agentic coding
- Why AI makes communication a more valuable skill for developers

00:00 Intro
01:11 Why Scott came back to version control after GitHub
06:18 How Git was actually built
11:32 Designing GitButler's CLI for agents
18:05 Parallel branches: How GitButler handles multi-agent workflows
23:33 What happens to GitHub in an agentic world
27:00 Code review needs a rethink: PRs, commit messages, and what comes next
32:19 Writing and communication as the new developer superpower

@chacon @BornsteinMatt

[GitButler @gitbutler]

We’ve raised $17M to build what comes after Git

https://t.co/pchDWOczRO

[Philip Johnston @PhilipJohnston]

I am super excited to share that @Starcloud_ has raised a $170M Series A at a $1.1bn valuation to fuel our development of data centers in space 🚀

The round comes after the successful deployment of our first satellite, Starcould-1, a few months ago, which had the first @NVIDIA H100 on board and was the first to train an LLM in space. The funds will be used to develop our third satellite, which aims to be cost-competitive with Earth-based data centers in terms of AI inference cost.

The round was led by @Benchmark and @EQT Ventures, and we are excited to welcome Benchmark GP, @Chetanp Puttagunta, to our board. We are also excited to welcome other new investors, including the world's largest infrastructure fund, @Macquarie Capital, @SevenSevenSix 7️⃣7️⃣6️⃣, Manhattan West, Adjacent, Carya, GSBackers, and Harpoon.

We are very grateful for the continued support of existing investors, including @NFX, @NebularVC, @YCombinator, @FUSE_VC, @Soma_Capital, 3Capital Partners, Wyld VC, Tiny VC, and Taurus Ventures.

Onwards!

[Finn Murphy @FinnMurphy12]

Starcloud just raised $170,000,000 at a $1.1 billion valuation led by Benchmark & EQT because investors are finally realising there is only one solution to the AI energy crisis.

Fortuitously for the 5th Episode of Forecast 2050 I sat down with my friend, @Starcloud_ CEO @PhilipJohnston to discuss how this future plays out.

I wrote the biggest check out of Nebular in my first year of the firm back in December 2023 to lead Starcloud's pre-seed. It’s been quite the ride since then. @ezrafeilden & @AdiOltean also the heros and visionaries creating this category of space data centres.

On the Forecast we speak about Philip’s ambitions - and his greatest concerns - for the next 25 years.
We discuss:

Why the Space GPU Skeptics are Wrong
The 2050 Space Economy: Asteroid Mining, Moon Resorts, and Mars as the Next America
How Elon’s @Tesla_Optimus Will Colonize the Universe
The Hard Problem of Consciousness is Crackable
Avoiding a Calamitous Event in the Near Future

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:59 Why the Space GPU Skeptics are Wrong
03:12 Elon Will Bring Launch Costs Down with Starship
06:50 The 2050 Space Economy: Moon Hotels, Asteroid Mining & Manufacturing
16:37 The 2050 Martian Colony: A Stepping Stone for Exploring the Universe
26:32 The Kardashev Scale of Civilization
28:44 We Live in a Simulation: The Fermi Paradox & The Great Filter
34:52 Cracking the Hard Problem of Consciousness
37:46 There is a Calamitous Event Waiting for Us
39:04 Mars is the Next America

Thanks to @wavebyvento, @vento_ventures, and @dwarkesh_sp for permission to use some snippets for this interview! + big big ups to some of the gang that invested on the journey early like @pmoe, @deckelly, @arcurn, @Varungupta, @caffeinatedcap, @beller, @ncsh @jamiecuffe - long Starcloud 🙏

[Alexander Fitzgerald @AFitzgerald1992]

Today @IsembardGroup announces our $50m Series A. More factories, more engineers, more countries. If not now, when...

🇬🇧🇺🇸🇩🇪🇫🇷🇺🇦

[Rebecca Kaden @rebeccakaden]

We are in a moment of massive manufacturing need and @IsembardGroup sits right at the intersection of 3 happening simultaneously and quickly:

1/ A massively and quickly increasing demand for fast, flexible, and local manufacturing around aerospace, defense, and robotics.

2/ Increasing labor displacement fueling a resurgence in an SMB economy and individuals' desires to own their own destinies/run their own businesses.

3/ Agentic operating systems allowing for fast set ups, networked management, better results, and demand distribution.

@IsembardGroup's franchise model and capital efficient approach is allowing incredibly fast scaling, with 25 factories by the end of this year across the US and Europe. @AFitzgerald1992 and his team are well on the path to delivering components 10x faster and 50% cheaper than current suppliers.

We are thrilled to lead their $50M Series A @usv as they create the dominant decentralized manufacturing network.

[Madeline Lawrence @madelinelawren]

How do you reconcile two incompatible velocities: continuous development and human validation?
It's easy. You don't.

Every software release widens the gap between what ships and what gets tested. We need a new model.

[Madeline Lawrence @madelinelawren]

software now secures itself

[TechCrunch @TechCrunch]

Complyance raises $20M to help companies manage risk and compliance https://t.co/9tar7dZcYX

[BottleCapAI @BottleCapAI]

🚨Excited to share we’ve raised a $7.5M seed to build efficient, architecture-first LLMs, and ship real products on top of them.
Our first app is live on iOS today.

[Soleio @soleio]

Grateful for this conversation with @daraladje and the @withdelphi team.

We went deep on design culture, SPEED, intuition, and what it means to build enduring products and companies.

The convo doesn’t end when the podcast does, so talk to me via the link below.

[Apoorva Govind @Appyg99]

Imagine an apparel brand with 80,000 products trying to generate video ads for each of them!

It's humanly impossible for large e-commerce businesses generate video ads at scale today.

Excited to announce @BesteverAI Commerce today that solves this.

[Infinite Machine @infinitemachine]

We’re proud to share that Olto was named one of @TIME's Best Inventions of 2025.

With Olto, we set out to make something fun, useful, and beautiful—and we’re delighted to see it recognized so early in its journey. Deliveries are starting very soon!

[dec kelly @deckelly]

Congrats @daraladje & @samspelsberg 🔥

Building the future of human knowledge transfer, one mind at a time.