Tech and startups: 17th June 2025

• Scale AI secured a massive $14.3 billion investment from Meta (techcrunch.com), with CEO Alexandr Wang departing to join Meta and lead a new AI lab focused on artificial general intelligence (siliconangle.com).

• Multiverse Computing raised $215 million for its CompactifAI technology that reduces LLM sizes by up to 95% and cuts AI inference costs (techcrunch.com), representing a 5x valuation jump to over $500 million (news.crunchbase.com).

• Sam Altman predicts AI systems will yield novel insights in 2026 (techcrunch.com), while Mistral AI launched Europe's first reasoning model called Magistral (siliconrepublic.com).

• Space startups are increasingly pivoting to defense applications, driving innovation in optical communications and Earth observation (thenextweb.com), with multiple companies like Muon Space ($90M), Quantum Space ($40M), and Voyager ($383M IPO) securing significant funding (spacenews.com).

• Cleantech funding is on track for a weak year with investment expected to drop 46% to $8.7 billion (news.crunchbase.com), while food tech funding fell to $6 billion but M&A activity surged to nearly $4 billion (news.crunchbase.com).

• Disney star Bridgit Mendler left entertainment to co-found Northwood Space, tackling satellite data transmission challenges (arstechnica.com), highlighting the trend of high-profile career pivots into deep tech.

• OnePlus announced the Nord 5 smartphone with Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 along with four other products at an upcoming July event (theverge.com), while Google's Beam technology debuted in the $25,000 HP Dimension for immersive video conferencing (engadget.com).

• An entrepreneur was denied entry to London Tech Week with her eight-month-old baby, raising concerns about inclusion in tech events (theguardian.com), highlighting ongoing challenges around workplace flexibility and parent-friendly policies in the industry.

Saying the quiet part out loud (mostlymetrics.com, 2025-06-14). CJ Gustafson challenges the tech-centric narrative, highlighting the success of traditional businesses like an HVAC parts supplier while discussing SaaS metrics and the realities of business operations in his podcast, Run the Numbers

Jacob Will Work For You (putanumonit.com, 2025-06-11). Jacob details his transition from fintech to an independent generalist, emphasizing skills in AI, strategic product management, and a desire to solve unconventional business problems, leveraging experiences at Axiom and Nasdaq

Taylor Otwell — The (Quite Entrepreneurial) Creator of Laravel (thebootstrappedfounder.com, 2025-06-11). Taylor Otwell discusses the evolution of Laravel, the PHP framework he created, and its growth into a profitable business ecosystem, featuring tools like Laravel Cloud for developers

Working on databases from prison: How I got here, part 2. (turso.tech, 2025-06-16). Preston Thorpe chronicles his journey from prison to becoming a software engineer at Turso, contributing to Project Limbo, a rewrite of SQLite, fueled by his passion for programming and open-source projects

Things I’m Learning as a Solopreneur Starting Up Again (hboon.com, 2025-06-16). Hwee-Boon Yar shares insights on solopreneurship, emphasizing the importance of investing in time-saving tools like Claude Max for Claude Code and automation tools like Render to reach sustainable income swiftly

Why Hard Tech Portfolios Should Be Concentrated (alsoblogposts.com, 2025-06-12). Hard Tech investing requires concentrated portfolios, focusing on teams with unique skills, as outcomes are path-dependent. Traditional diversification methods overlook talent bottlenecks critical for success, emphasizing execution over randomness

🎧🍌 How to Skip Your Seed, Pre-Seed Lessons Building Afore to $500M+ AUM | Anamitra Banerji (thespl.it, 2025-06-12). Anamitra Banerji discusses investing before product launch, strategies for Series A fundraising, insights from his time at Twitter, the impact of AI on venture capital, and Afore's innovative pre-seed program

Conway’s Law Is Dying (unmitigatedrisk.com, 2025-06-16). Conway's Law suggests organizations reflect their structure in their products, but AI is enabling solo founders to outpace traditional companies burdened by bureaucracy, forcing a re-evaluation of efficiency and operational models

I'm Doing a Little Consulting (overreacted.io, 2025-06-11). After a brief hiatus, a former Meta engineer offers consulting on UI engineering, primarily focusing on React and React Native, while reflecting on his experiences at Bluesky and the current evolution of software engineering

Week 24, 2025 - Connections and Sheets (peterszasz.com, 2025-06-13). Péter Szász explores the importance of in-person communication, efficiency in remote teams, and the challenges of performance management while discussing Google Sheets integration with large language models

Engineering maturity, cloud vs on-prem, and CTOs 💡 (refactoring.fm, 2025-06-16). Engineering maturity progresses through Transparency, Intent, and Speed. The complexities of cloud vs on-premise infrastructure include physical and virtual layers, while a CTO must prioritize their role on the executive team

Resume-driven Development (newsletter.cote.io, 2025-06-11). Resume-driven development (RDD) poses organizational risks through misaligned incentives, leading developers to choose trendy technologies for personal career advancement rather than long-term strategies, impacting software maintainability and alignment with business needs

QFM067: Engineering Leadership Reading List May 2025 (matthewsinclair.medium.com/qfm067-engineering-leadership-reading-list-may-2025-ac3cdd4fdf0d, 2025-06-11). Explore key insights on engineering leadership, including decision-making styles, team management principles, burnout prevention strategies, and the concept of 'docs as code' for improving collaboration and efficiency in tech environments

Turning my MCP content into a blog post on Platform Engineering (adrianco.medium.com/turning-my-mcp-content-into-a-blog-post-on-platform-engineering-7f083ba1e78b, 2025-06-13). Adrian Cockcroft leverages Cursor to create a Model Context Protocol server, summarizing platform engineering insights, principles, and trends through curated content, including blog posts and talks on cloud-native architecture and sustainability

Notes on code, text, and war. Week 1: Believing in text (zverok.space, 2025-06-11). Exploring the metaphor of writing texts in software development emphasizes the importance of clarity and experience, while addressing the role of LLMs and ongoing conflicts, revealing deep connections between code and culture

Six months in (johanronsse.be, 2025-06-10). Johan Ronsse reflects on six months of Obra Studio, highlighting collaborations with freelancers, the successful development of a Craft CMS-powered website, and plans for growth amid a challenging design landscape

The Cult of Hard Mode: Why Simplicity Offends Tech Elites (joanwestenberg.com, 2025-06-11). The article explores how tech founders often eschew simplicity for complexity, favoring elaborate systems like Notion and automation over straightforward tools like Apple Notes or Airtable, equating difficulty with status

Re: The Cult of Hard Mode (takeonrules.com, 2025-06-14). Jeremy Friesen reflects on the dichotomy of hard and simple modes in technology, discussing tools like Emacs and Denote while exploring the complexities of Kubernetes interviews and the value of purposeful simplicity

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 (baty.net, 2025-06-10). Baty discusses the challenges of trusting AI, introduces his homeopathic software, addresses recent critiques of AI, and shares updates on his Hugo template for journal entries

The CEO’s Guide to Choosing the Right Tech Stack (sergiolema.dev, 2025-06-16). Choosing a tech stack involves prioritizing team familiarity with tools like Node.js, considering market talent availability, and ensuring suitability for the product to accelerate delivery without falling for trendy technologies

The Case for Software Craftsmanship in the Era of Vibes (zed.dev, 2025-06-12). Nathan Sobo advocates for a higher standard of software quality in an age of abundant code production, emphasizing system design, taking ownership of user experiences, and the integration of AI tools like LLMs to build better software

Speed, Cost, Quality, Choose 2 = Pragmatism, Passion, or Perfectionism (meiert.com, 2025-06-11). Explores the project management triangle of speed, cost, and quality, categorizing outcomes as pragmatism, passion, or perfectionism, and emphasizes the balance between these choices based on organizational values

35 years of product design wisdom from Apple, Disney, Pinterest and beyond | Bob Baxley (lennysnewsletter.com, 2025-06-12). Bob Baxley shares insights from 35 years in product design, emphasizing team dynamics, design principles, and the moral obligations of designers using software as a creative medium

Interview with Petr Kaplunovich, Director of Design at Stackpoint, ex-Google, MIT (uxdesign.cc, 2025-06-13). Petr Kaplunovich discusses his design journey, strategies for tackling B2B challenges, and how he leverages AI tools like Cursor for prototyping while shaping product vision at Stackpoint

The Last Discipline: A Design Engineers Manifesto (stackdiver.com, 2025-06-11). Design Engineers blend user empathy and engineering pragmatism, enabling them to bridge the gap between development and design while emphasizing speed and integrated thinking in an era dominated by AI technologies

Why Software Projects Fail: A Technical Director’s Lessons Learned (flyingwhilebuilding.com, 2025-06-13). After a decade of software development, common failure patterns include unclear requirements and poor planning. Techniques like weekly demos and the T-shirt method can mitigate risks and improve project outcomes

AI-assisted coding for teams that can't get away with vibes (simonwillison.net, 2025-06-10). AI tools enhance coding efficiency, but expertise is crucial for optimal results; teams should focus on foundational practices like testing, CI/CD, and clear feature definitions to leverage AI effectively

Coding agents have crossed a chasm (blog.singleton.io, 2025-06-14). Coding agents have evolved from basic autocomplete to powerful tools like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex, enhancing productivity through autonomous coding, debugging assistance, and collaborative real-time programming

Agents Are Your Mech Suit (den.dev, 2025-06-11). AI agents are revolutionizing software development by augmenting developers’ capabilities, enhancing productivity, and enabling rapid prototyping like never before, while emphasizing the importance of deep domain expertise in tech-driven projects

rqlite development: the Agents are here (philipotoole.com, 2025-06-11). rqlite's development process has evolved with the integration of language models, enhancing coding efficiency, allowing for rapid feedback, and enabling the assignment of tasks to AI agents for bug fixes and feature development

A persona-based approach to AI-assisted software development (humanwhocodes.com, 2025-06-11). Utilizing AI-assisted programming with distinct personas like product manager, architect, and implementer, enhances productivity and efficiency by streamlining complex software development tasks through specialized tools like GPT-4.1 and Gemini 2.5 Pro

Agentic Coding Recommendations (lucumr.pocoo.org, 2025-06-12). Armin Ronacher shares his agentic coding practices using Claude Code, Docker for development environments, Go for backend projects, and emphasizes simplicity, stability, observability, and smart parallelization for improved coding efficiency

The Cursor Story: How Shipping Velocity Became an Existential Advantage (tushardadlani.com, 2025-06-11). Cursor evolved from a basic code editor to an AI development environment in 27 months by prioritizing shipping velocity over perfection, leveraging tools like VSCodium, and embracing user feedback in real-time

Going full send on vibe coding (elliotblackburn.com, 2025-06-12). An experienced software engineer explores vibe coding using Zed and GitHub Copilot to create a web app for file uploads, navigating challenges with interactivity and file handling along the way

Vibecoding’s allure: the inventor and the fiend (matthewbilyeu.com, 2025-06-14). Exploring vibecoding and its resurgence in software development, highlighting agentic AI's role, technical approaches like generative AI, and the shifting landscape of software engineering towards curation and faster prototyping

Premature closure and the role of Senior Engineer in the world of AI (shayon.dev, 2025-06-12). Explores premature closure in software development when using AI coding assistants, emphasizing the importance of not settling for first suggestions, and promoting thorough exploration of solutions in complex engineering tasks

The Hidden AI Arms Race (blog.strom.com, 2025-06-11). AI tools are rapidly displacing traditional productivity software, with platforms like Claude and Anthropic enhancing user interfaces and capabilities, leading to shifts in behavior and interaction models for tasks like scheduling and data processing

My Aha! Moment with AI (viget.com, 2025-06-12). Tommy Ball shares his transformative experience with AI tools like Perplexity and Fathom, highlighting their impact on productivity and project management amidst the evolving digital landscape in 2025

Disruption and Denial (svpg.com, 2025-06-15). Marty Cagan discusses the denial surrounding disruptive technologies like AI, emphasizing the need for new approaches in product development compared to traditional methods and the significance of intelligent products in the market

Ridiculous Swings (with AI) (rich.blog, 2025-06-16). Rich Tabor discusses how the advent of AI tools like Claude is changing the landscape of idea exploration, allowing for rapid prototyping and a shift towards embracing unconventional ideas without significant costs

Pt 2: Scaling an AI Native Company (kermankohli.substack.com, 2025-06-10). Kerman Kohli discusses building companies using AI agents, introducing concepts like Agent Job Descriptions (AJDs) and various tools such as Zapier, n8n, and custom coding for effective scaling and complexity management