Inside the $100 B AI Investment Boom: Billionaire-Backed TWG, EU Gigafactories & Record Q1 Deals
Artificial Intelligence news nº 68/2025
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News 🗞️📰
Billionaire duo Tull and Walter launch $15 billion AI investment initiative: Thomas Tull and Mark Walter have pooled $40 billion of personal assets into a new TWG Global venture targeting AI‑driven acquisitions across financial services, sports, and defense, with an initial $10 billion preferred equity commitment from Mubadala and early projects including an xAI–Palantir analytics platform for Guggenheim entities.
Elon Musk’s xAI joins TWG Global, Palantir for AI push in financial sector: xAI will integrate its Grok LLMs and Colossus supercomputer with Palantir’s analytics tools under the TWG Global venture to build AI‑powered solutions for financial services and insurance clients.
Abu Dhabi artificial intelligence group G42 to expand in US: State‑backed G42 has incorporated “G42 USA” in Delaware and is rolling out its cloud arm Core42, part of the UAE’s $1.4 trillion, 10‑year U.S. investment framework, following its $335 million stake in Cerebras.
Global venture funding slowed in April, despite strong AI showing: April 2025 saw $23 billion in venture funding—flat YoY and down from March’s $68 billion—even as AI deals remained robust, underscoring a cautious market mood.
Inside InvestAI — Europe’s ambitious $20 billion plan to build AI gigafactories: The EU’s InvestAI initiative will channel €20 billion into “AI gigafactories” for model training across multiple member states, part of a €200 billion public‑private effort to secure sovereign AI capabilities.
EU sails past deadline to tame AI models amid vocal US opposition: Brussels missed its May 2 voluntary code‑of‑practice deadline for advanced AI models after intense lobbying by the U.S. administration, highlighting a fraught regulatory tug‑of‑war.
AI Fund closes oversubscribed $190 million Fund II to co‑found AI companies: Andrew Ng’s venture studio raised $190 million in an oversubscribed second fund, partnering with corporate LPs to co‑build startups from idea to launch using deep AI expertise.
AI funding surges to record highs of $66.6 billion in Q1 2025: Q1 2025 saw $66.6 billion across 1,134 AI deals, driven by mega‑rounds like OpenAI’s $40 billion and Anthropic’s $3.5 billion, marking a new quarterly peak.
Visa partners with major AI developers to power agent‑led purchases: Visa, led by Chief Product & Strategy Officer Jack Forestell, is teaming with Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity, Mistral, IBM, Stripe and Samsung to connect AI “agents” to its payments network so they can automatically set budgets, shop and pay with Visa cards—pilot projects began on April 30, 2025, with broader rollout slated for next year.
EY CEO says AI won't decrease its 400,000‑person workforce — but it might help it double in size: At the Milken Institute Global Conference, EY’s CEO Janet Truncale argued that AI will boost productivity across its 400,000 employees—enabling the firm to grow its headcount rather than shrink it—by automating routine tasks and allowing staff to focus on higher‑value work; the company has already deployed 150 AI agents internally to assist its 80,000 tax professionals with data collection and compliance
One of AI’s biggest investors just belittled AI: Andreessen Horowitz co‑founder Marc Andreessen publicly asserted that AI will never beat human intuition and creativity in venture capital, calling VC “timeless art”—even as a recent SAP survey found 75% of C‑suite execs trust AI for business advice and critics argue that AI could democratize deal‑flow by surfacing under‑the‑radar founders .
‘No AI Agents Are Allowed.’ EU Bans Use of AI Assistants in Virtual Meetings: In a presentation by the European Commission, meeting etiquette now explicitly prohibits AI agents from joining online sessions—reflecting growing concerns among EU policymakers about autonomous tools recording or acting on sensitive corporate discussions without human oversight.
Funding 💼💸
Skillvue raises $6.3M to build AI-driven skills assessment agents: Italian HR tech startup Skillvue, led by CEO Nicolò Mazzocchi, has secured $6.3 million in a round led by 360 Capital with participation from Italian Founders Fund, 14Peaks Capital and Orbita Verticale to advance its AI-powered Skills Assessment Agents platform, helping companies map, measure and develop talent faster and more affordably than traditional assessments.
Recraft raises $30M Series B after its stealth “red_panda” model outperforms DALL‑E and Midjourney: San Francisco-based Recraft, led by CEO Anna Veronika Dorogush, builds proprietary AI image‑generation models optimized for brand‑ready assets and has secured $30 million in a round led by Accel with participation from Khosla Ventures and Madrona.
Diio secures $2.5M seed round led by Base10 Partners: Chilean AI‑native sales assistant diio, led by CEO Paolo Colonnello, has raised $2.5 million in a seed round—led by Base10 Partners—to scale its operations and refine its AI‑powered assistant, which analyzes meetings, calls and messages to deliver actionable insights that boost deal closures and reduce churn.
Hilo (formerly Aktiia) raises $42M Series B: Hilo, led by CEO Raghav “Rags” Gupta, develops AI‑powered cuffless blood pressure monitoring devices and analytics, and has secured $42 million in an oversubscribed Series B round led by Earlybird Health and Wellington Partners with participation from Kfund, naturalX Health Ventures, redalpine, Khosla Ventures, Molten Ventures, Translink Capital and Verve Ventures.
Kalent secures $1M pre‑seed led by Kima Ventures: Kalent is an AI‑powered hiring agent founded by CEO Edouard Vaudour that scans over 1 billion profiles, engages top talent via WhatsApp, LinkedIn and email, confirms availability and schedules interviews directly into calendars, and has raised $1 million from Kima Ventures to scale infrastructure, refine candidate engagement strategies and expand into new markets.
Cast AI raises $108M Series C to optimize cloud compute for AI and Kubernetes workloads: Miami‑based Cast AI, led by CEO and co‑founder Yuri Frayman, has secured $108 million in a Series C round co‑led by G2 Venture Partners and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with participation from Aglaé Ventures, Hedosophia, Cota Capital, Vintage Investment Partners, Creandum and Uncorrelated Ventures, to advance its automated platform that dynamically manages GPUs, CPUs and memory usage for AI, Kubernetes and other cloud workloads
Rogo secures $50M Series B for AI‑powered investment banker: New York‑based Rogo, founded and led by CEO Gabriel Stengel, develops an AI “analyst” that automates financial research and deal analysis on Wall Street, and has raised $50 million in a Series B round led by Thrive Capital with participation from J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners, Tiger Global and Positive Sum Ventures.
Plenful secures $50M Series B to scale AI workflow automation in healthcare: San Francisco–based Plenful, led by founder and CEO Joy Liu, has raised $50 million in a Series B round co‑led by Mitchell Rales (Danaher co‑founder) and Arena Holdings, with participation from Notable Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, TQ Ventures and Susa/Kivu Ventures, to accelerate its AI‑powered platform that automates complex healthcare workflows, reduces administrative burden and deepens adoption across leading health systems.
Supio secures $60M Series B led by Sapphire Ventures: Seattle‑based Supio, led by CEO and co‑founder Jerry Zhou, delivers an AI‑powered platform automating data collection and analysis for legal teams, and has raised $60 million in a round led by Sapphire Ventures with participation from Mayfield and Thomson Reuters Ventures to drive growth, hiring and the expansion of its Seattle headquarters
Etiq AI secures €900K seed round led by GapMinder VC: London-based Etiq AI, led by CEO Iris Anson and co‑founded with Raluca Crisan, has raised €900 K in a seed round—led by GapMinder VC (following a £1 million InnovateUK grant)—to advance its Data Science Copilot, an AI platform that automates testing, debugging and root-cause analysis of machine learning pipelines.
M&A 💰
OpenAI agrees to buy Windsurf for about $3 billion: OpenAI has agreed to acquire Windsurf, an AI‑assisted coding tool formerly known as Codeium, for approximately $3 billion, in what would become its largest deal to date; the move follows Windsurf’s recent funding talks at a $3 billion valuation and is intended to deepen ChatGPT’s software development capabilities amid intensifying competition.
Palo Alto Networks acquires Protect AI for $500M+: CEO Nikesh Arora’s Palo Alto Networks acquires Seattle‑based AI security startup Protect AI, led by CEO Ian Swanson, in a deal valued at over $500 million—integrating Protect AI’s end‑to‑end ML pipeline monitoring and threat defenses into Palo Alto’s Prisma AIRS AI‑native security platform to guard against model manipulation, prompt injection, data poisoning and supply‑chain vulnerabilities
Faircraft acquires strategic assets of VitroLabs: Paris-based cultivated‑leather pioneer Faircraft announced on May 6, 2025 that it has acquired the strategic assets of U.S. competitor VitroLabs—including over 30 proprietary biotech patents and ten years of foundational R&D—to accelerate its industrial‑scale production and secure a leading position in the in vitro leather market.
Anduril to acquire Ireland’s Klas to bolster AI warfare systems: Anduril Industries announced it will acquire Klas, an Irish provider of rugged edge‑computing hardware and autonomous surveillance solutions, pending regulatory approval, to integrate Klas’s tactical‑edge compute and communications products into Anduril’s autonomous defense portfolio.
BGM Group acquires HM Management for $41.7 million in stock: BGM Group will acquire HM Management and its subsidiaries Beijing Shuda Technology and New Media Star Technology by issuing 16,663,427 Class A shares at $2.50 each—valuing the transaction at $41.7 million—with the deal expected to close in Q2 2025, subject to customary conditions.
Revelio Labs acquires Salary Board to boost global compensation insights: Revelio Labs has acquired Salary Board, a compensation‑analytics startup, to integrate its global benchmarking capabilities into Revelio’s workforce‑intelligence platform, enhancing data‑driven insights for HR teams worldwide.
Board Intelligence acquires Competent Boards, expanding its governance platform: Board Intelligence announced the acquisition of Competent Boards, combining its AI‑powered governance software with Competent Boards’ consulting, education, and sustainability expertise to strengthen its board development and advisory services as part of its ongoing growth strategy.
Pythian acquires Rittman Mead to enhance Oracle and multi‑cloud capabilities: Pythian has acquired Rittman Mead to deepen its Oracle services portfolio, expand its European footprint, and bolster its Oracle Database@Google Cloud offerings—enabling accelerated modernization and multi‑cloud solutions for its clients.
Earnix acquires Zelros to transform insurers’ business performance with Generative AI: Earnix signed a definitive agreement to acquire Zelros, a generative AI specialist for insurers and banks, aiming to integrate predictive, generative, and agentic AI into risk decisioning, personalization, and claims workflows to drive improved pricing, underwriting, and overall operational performance.
Goldman Sachs‑backed Splice acquires Spitfire Audio for approx. $50 million: Splice, backed by Goldman Sachs, has agreed to acquire UK‑based Spitfire Audio for around $50 million; the deal brings Spitfire’s high‑end orchestral sample library into Splice’s AI‑driven music creation ecosystem, enhancing its platform for over 600,000 subscribers.
Celerant acquires Saledock for global expansion in retail tech: Celerant announced the acquisition of Saledock, a commerce‑automation startup, to accelerate its global expansion and integrate Saledock’s e‑commerce workflow solutions into Celerant’s retail‑technology platform.
Interesting Reads 💡🤔
A Survey of AI Agent Protocols: This April 2025 Arxiv paper reviews the emerging standards for communication between AI agents, classifying protocols into four categories—message‑passing, publish‑subscribe, HTTP‑based, and peer‑to‑peer—then evaluates them on scalability, latency, security, and fault tolerance. The authors highlight challenges in interoperability, propose a unified framework for benchmarking, and outline research directions for robust, cross‑platform agent ecosystems .
Five Actions for Boards to Consider in the Era of Generative AI: This Deloitte AI Institute report recommends that boards establish dedicated AI oversight subcommittees, cultivate AI fluency among directors and executives, integrate generative AI risk into existing governance and risk frameworks, recruit board members with AI expertise, and engage stakeholders across the organization to ensure responsible generative AI adoption and mitigate associated risks
Best AI Blogs & Experts to Follow in 2025: A Medium roundup of the top ten AI thought leaders and publications for 2025, including Hugging Face Blog, The Gradient, Wired AI, Andrej Karpathy’s newsletter, OpenAI Blog, and practitioner voices like Michael Nielsen and Chris Olah. Each entry lists their focus—research deep dives, engineering tutorials, ethical discourse—and why they matter for staying on the cutting edge .
8 Ways I Use Microsoft’s Copilot Vision AI to Save Time on My Phone and PC: The article outlines eight practical tips for leveraging Copilot Vision AI on mobile devices and in Microsoft Edge, including using real‑time object recognition via camera feed, summarizing entire web pages without scrolling, analyzing documents and images on the fly, engaging in voice‑driven dialogues with customizable voices, and maintaining privacy by ensuring no user content is stored post‑session
Want Better AI Images? I Tried Midjourney 7 and It Blew Me Away — Here’s Why: A ZDNet review finds Midjourney 7 delivers “ridiculously good” image realism, with enhanced texture synthesis, light‑ray effects, and nuanced facial expressions that surpass V6. The author praises its Turbo and Draft modes for rapid iteration, while noting a steeper prompt‑engineering curve and new personalization profiles required for fine‑tuning .
Data vs. Algorithms: How Hidden Forces Powered Bletchley Park, Google and GPT: Jonathan Boice argues that major breakthroughs—from wartime codebreaking at Bletchley Park to Google’s PageRank and today’s generative models—depend equally on abundant, high‑quality data and novel algorithms. He traces how organizational factors (investment, collaboration networks) shape data availability, and predicts future gains will come from data‑efficient learning and open data ecosystems .
Fraud Detection in Financial Transactions Using Scala Collections — A Practical Guide: Developer_Indian demonstrates using Scala’s immutable collections and functional operators (map, filter, groupBy) to flag anomalous patterns in streaming credit‑card data. The guide covers sliding‑window analyses, threshold‑based filters, and grouping high‑frequency transactions per account, with code snippets showing how to generate alerts in real time, leveraging Scala’s concurrency for scalable throughput .
Why Most Startups Fail — And How AI Can Change That: The David Hirschfeld Interview: In this Tekyz Blog podcast recap, veteran founder David Hirschfeld compares the AI revolution to a “100‑foot rogue wave,” urging startups to adopt his “Launch First” methodology: rigorous market validation via AI‑powered surveys and pre‑sales before product development. He explains how generative AI can automate customer‑need analysis, accelerate prototyping, and reduce validation costs, while sharing bold predictions on AI’s role in transportation and digital manufacturing .
Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Are Focusing AI Power on Tools to Make Employees More Efficient: Both banks now emphasize internal generative AI over customer‑facing use cases. BoA’s “Erica for Employees” assistant is used by 90%+ of staff to handle IT/HR queries, cutting help‑desk calls by half, with plans to extend to broader knowledge support, while Morgan Stanley’s GPT‑4‑powered “Assistant” and “Debrief” tools let advisors summarize meetings and search documents; leadership training and intuitive UX are key to adoption, with strict controls to prevent hallucinations .
Tested iPhone AI Voice Assistants; Here’s the Best One: 9to5Mac compares Siri, ChatGPT, and Perplexity as iPhone voice assistants. While Siri excels at device integrations, it lags in conversational context. Perplexity offers real‑time info but is slower. ChatGPT leads on complex question answering and follow‑ups. The author advises using Siri for on‑device actions and mapping ChatGPT to the Action Button for richer AI interactions .
B2B Leaders: How to Turn GenAI Possibilities into Reality: Forrester outlines a roadmap for B2B executives: align GenAI initiatives to clear revenue and efficiency metrics, form cross‑functional AI strategy teams, prioritize pilot use cases with defined KPIs, invest in scalable data and model governance platforms, and establish continuous governance to manage risks and scale successes—early adopters see 10–20% boosts in productivity and sales impact .
Startups / Tools 🧰🛠️
Parakeet: NVIDIA’s open‑source NeMo ASR models for high‑quality, real‑time speech transcription, featuring variants with 0.6B and 1.1B parameters optimized for diverse audio environments
Higgsfield Effects: Cinematic VFX pack for video creators—23 built‑in, studio‑grade effects (e.g. Thunder God, Disintegration, Bullet Time) that apply directly to generated video without 3D pipelines
Recraft Advanced Style Control: AI artboard for designers, letting you mix prebuilt and custom styles with precise visual controls on an infinite canvas, maintain brand consistency, and share styles across your team
Windsurf Wave 8: The latest major update to Windsurf’s AI‑powered coding IDE (formerly Codeium), introducing enterprise features—team dashboards, automated code reviews, and an enhanced knowledge base—for large‑scale development
DoNotPay: Your AI consumer champion for contesting fees, canceling subscriptions, generating legal documents, and navigating bureaucracy with simple chatbot commands
Durable AI: All‑in‑one small‑business AI that builds a fully functional, SEO‑optimized website in 30 seconds from a few details, complete with hosting, content, and marketing tools
Translate.Video: One‑click AI video localization for 75+ languages—auto‑dubbing, captions, and transcription with voice cloning and synced subtitles
IdeaApe: Social listening tool that mines Reddit and other forums to surface opinions, pain points, and trends in a ChatGPT‑style interface for instant market insights
FindAMeal: AI‑driven restaurant recommender that aggregates reviews (Google, Yelp, Foursquare, social) plus your taste preferences into natural‑language dining suggestions near you
Dash: (Beta) Your AI workflow agent—connects to all your apps, retains context, and executes tasks in a single chat interface, eliminating tool‑switching.
Ithy AI: Multimodal research aggregator that pulls together answers from top AI models (GPT‑4, Gemini, Grok) into one coherent, interactive HTML report with charts and media
Listen Labs: Autonomous AI research platform that runs large‑scale interviews/surveys, analyzes responses, and delivers customer insights in hours, not weeks .
Ravenna: Slack‑first internal helpdesk that turns messages into tickets, automates IT/ops requests, and uses AI to surface answers from past interactions
Elf Labs: Next‑gen family entertainment platform combining 5G, AR/VR, games, and interactive stories around iconic characters, backed by major telecom investors .
Chromox: AI video creator that turns text prompts and images into cinematic‑quality videos, offering multiple generative styles—from hyper‑realistic to stylized animations .
Taskade AI: Unified productivity suite with AI‑powered task lists, mind maps, meeting agendas, chat, and workflow automation, plus custom AI agents across projects .
RegieAI: AI‑native sales engagement platform that automates lead discovery, crafts personalized outreach sequences, and integrates with CRMs for scalable pipeline growth .
NTV Highlights 🪩🎉
Our First Investment: Nilo, the Revolutionary AI-Powered Game Engine Transforming Gaming: We’re proud to invest in Nilo, an AI-powered game engine led by visionary founder Nuno Leiria, whose 15+ years at Epic Games and work on Unreal Engine 5 and Fortnite set the stage for this breakthrough. Co-investors include a16z, Flex Capital, and business angel Logan Kilpatrick, as Nilo harnesses generative AI and natural language processing to make game development fast, accessible, and dynamic.
We are actively looking for AI startups
At Next Tier Ventures, we are actively looking for the next generation of AI startup founders ready to scale and create meaningful impact. Our investments range between $500K and $2M, accompanied by strategic support to help founders achieve their vision.
If you’re building cutting-edge B2B AI solutions let’s connect 👉
http://apply.nexttier.vc
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