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Some LPs expressed reservations: “These firms are brands, and if their brand gets associated with bad ideas, that’s something we have to evaluate,” said Ethan Samson, managing principal at Meketa Investment Group, which advises institutions on investments in venture funds.

Scoop - perplexity is set to raise $500 million at a $9bn valuation led by IVP. more details to come wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-sta…

Asked Chairman Smith what he thinks about changes to carried interest. Smith: “I’m going to deliver on the president’s priorities.”

Early OpenAI backer Khosla Ventures aims to raise about $3.5 billion for its next seed, venture and growth funds, per a person familiar with the plans. The firm, founded by Vinod Khosla, also has Keith Rabois back on the team wsj.com/articles/khosl… via The Wall Street Journal

NEW w/ Cory Weinberg: OpenAI is doubling down on its application business. Execs have spoken with investors about three classes of future agent launches, ranging from $2K to $20K/month to do tasks like automating coding and PhD-level research: theinformation.com/articles/opena…

In an ironic twist, I was greeted not by a robot, but by a human with a hand-drawn map of the conference floor when I arrived at #HumanX2025. And that paper map is exactly what I needed at the moment.

Scoop: Andreessen Horowitz is planning to raise $750 million for its next venture fund to back life-science and healthcare startups, according to people familiar with the situation. That’s half the size of its 2022 bio fund wsj.com/articles/andre…

Worthwhile read from WSJ's Yuliya Chernova: News Services Like Voice of America Helped Save My Family "Hearing the truth from Western news broadcasts helped spare my family from the worst consequences of the Chernobyl disaster." wsj.com/world/europe/n…

I wrote an essay about how Western radio broadcasts like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty & Voice of America gave my family the information they needed to take me out of the Chernobyl radiation danger zone in 1986 wsj.com/world/europe/n…

Scoop: Brian O’Malley, a former managing partner at venture firm Forerunner, is looking to raise a $100 million fund for consumer deals, a sector that has fallen out of favor with VCs wsj.com/articles/consu…

Venture deal activity dropped 24% last week compared with the average for the prior 13 weeks, according to CB Insights, suggesting a fast reaction to macroeconomic changes wsj.com/articles/pro-t… via The Wall Street Journal

Stopped by Matt Turck ‘s #DataDrivenNYC. Matt: Have you seen cases where companies aren’t hiring because of AI tools? George Sivulka: I think we are running out of time... (A few minutes ago he was talking about infinite “AI employees”)

OpenRouter, which directs AI prompts to various LLMs based on cost, speed, and other factors, raised $40M at a valuation of about $500M (Yuliya Chernova / Wall Street Journal) wsj.com/articles/openr… techmeme.com/250625/p11#a25… x.com/Techmeme/statu…

.OpenRouter , a startup that helps developers sort through the “Cambrian explosion of AI models” raises $40M led by Menlo Ventures and a16z. Yuliya Chernova captured the big idea here... "Openrouter's intelligence will help developers…use the right model, for the right query, at

Sources: Menlo Ventures targets ~$1.5B for new funds to invest in AI ventures, including $650M for early-stage startups, and $850M for later-stage companies (Yuliya Chernova / Wall Street Journal) wsj.com/articles/menlo… techmeme.com/250629/p21#a25… x.com/Techmeme/statu…

Anthropic investor Menlo Ventures is raising $1.5 billion for its next set of funds, a source says wsj.com/articles/menlo…

I’ve joined AIX Ventures as a General Partner, working on investing in deep AI startups. Looking forward to working with founders on solving hard problems in AI and seeing products come out of that!  Thank you Yuliya Chernova at The Wall Street Journal for covering the news: wsj.com/articles/ai-re…

Wonderful, a Tel Aviv startup, has raised $34 million to build AI customer-support agents for businesses in non-English speaking countries. Find exclusive details on valuation, revenue & business plan at the link. wsj.com/articles/wonde… via The Wall Street Journal

SCOOP on the tender offer for LPs in Nat Friedman & Daniel Gross's NFDG funds. Meta is offering to buy up to 49% of the holdings at face value - quite unusual at a time when secondaries are done at steep discounts. Meta won't have info rights in portcos wsj.com/articles/meta-…

Meta is buying into the NFDG fund at net asset value, a sweet deal for LPs in a market where many are hurting for liquidity.