Tech and startups: 15th July 2025

• Global venture funding surged to $91 billion in Q2 2025, with AI securing 45% of all funding and North America leading with $145 billion in H1 2025. Accel and General Catalyst topped the most active investor rankings.

• RealSense completed its spinout from Intel with $50 million in Series A funding, focusing on stereoscopic imaging technology for robotics and autonomous machines.

• AWS is set to launch an agentic AI marketplace with Anthropic next week, while AWS Bedrock chief Atul Deo discusses the platform's focus on cost-effective AI and multi-agent collaboration.

• The IPO market anticipates a significant recovery in 2025 with Firefly Aerospace filing to go public, joining the trend of space companies utilizing traditional public markets for funding.

• Hugging Face launched Reachy Mini, a $299 open-source robot that could disrupt the robotics industry by democratizing AI development and opened up orders for developers.

• OpenAI delayed the release of its open model again for further safety testing amid competitive landscape with new AI models.

• Jack Dorsey released Sun Day, a sunlight-tracking app for vitamin D monitoring, and launched Bitchat, a decentralized offline messaging app that works without internet access.

• Notable funding rounds include ServiceUp's $55M Series B for vehicle repair management, Augmentus's $11M for no-code robot programming, and Japan's Interstellar securing $62 million in Series F for rocket development.

Code review in the age of AI: Why developers will always own the merge button (github​.blog). Exploring AI-assisted code reviews with GitHub Copilot, emphasizing developer accountability and the integration of AI for enhanced collaboration and efficiency

Next Gen Data Processing at Massive Scale At Pinterest With Moka (Part 1 of 2) (medium​.com/pinterest-engineering). Pinterest's Big Data Platform team transitions from Hadoop to Kubernetes-based architecture, introducing Moka to optimize Spark workloads and enhance data processing efficiency

How we built it: Jurisdiction resolution for Stripe Tax (stripe​.com). Stripe introduces a jurisdiction resolution system (JRS) for accurate tax calculations amid complex US taxation landscapes using GIS and bounding box algorithms

I’m Writing a New Book! (zwischenzugs​.com). Announcing 'Follow the Money', a new book aiming to guide engineers and managers in navigating the financial challenges of tech transformation

June 2025 Earnings (tropianhs​.com). Freelancer Antonio Tropiano shares June 2025 earnings, side projects, product launches, and insights on freelancing and self-publishing while navigating life in Moscow

Speaker Spotlight – Tom Scott (datasciencefestival​.com). Tom Scott, CEO of Streambased, discusses his journey in tech, insights on success, startup challenges, and future predictions for AI and data management

Who (the heck) Am I? (agileotter​.blogspot​.com). Tim Ottinger shares his extensive experience in software development, Agile practices, TDD, CI/CD, Lean flow, and coaching across global organizations

Get a free 100 Giftcard + other important Updates (artificialintelligencemadesimple​.substack​.com). Free $100 gift card incentive for readers; updates on Iqidis' fundraising, growth, and investor seeking technical cofounder for project Alfred

There is no golden path anymore: Engineering practices are being rewritten (stackoverflow​.blog). Ben Matthews and Loïc Houssier discuss navigating evolving engineering practices, aligned autonomy, and leadership in technology-driven environments on Leaders of Code podcast

A viral tweet is not a business plan (idiallo​.com). A software developer's experience illustrates the complexities of forming a business from a viral tweet promoting support for Black businesses amid differing views and challenges

Complexity disclosure, top-down vibe coding, and taking notes 💡 (refactoring​.fm). Complexity disclosure, top-down coding, and effective note-taking with tools like Convex, Next.js, Readwise, and ideas from Guillermo Rauch

A RedMonk Conversation: Daniel Roe on Vercel’s NuxtLabs Acquisition (redmonk​.com). Daniel Roe discusses Vercel's acquisition of NuxtLabs, Nuxt framework's independence, strategic growth and commitment to open-source values in web development

Howler pitches and an old EV4AI proposal (angadh​.com). Proposal for Howler, an AI-driven social media platform, insights on privilege, and the vision for Space HQ at Queen Mary University

Things I learned from 5 years at Vercel (leerob​.com). Lessons from five years at Vercel: work-life boundaries, rapid execution, team ownership, effective leadership, and the importance of adaptability

Building stronger engineering teams with aligned autonomy (stackoverflow​.blog). Aligning autonomy in engineering teams promotes innovation, enhances productivity, and establishes a shared mission to adapt quickly to business challenges

What is a Principal Engineer at Amazon? With Steve Huynh (newsletter​.pragmaticengineer​.com). Steve Huynh discusses the challenges of becoming a Principal Engineer at Amazon, highlighting culture, scaling issues, and the significance of latency in engineering

Performance mirror - a tool for radical self-inquiry (vtorosyan​.github​.io). Vardan Torosyan introduces 'performance mirror', a self-inquiry tool aiming to enhance radical self-awareness in performance management for leaders

From tool knowledge to fundamentals (spatialists​.ch). Expert generalists combine deep discipline knowledge with broad expertise, breaking down organizational silos that hinder innovation in tech fields like DevOps and Data Engineering

On Building Crossabble (quaxio​.com). Alok Menghrajani discusses developing Crossabble, a web-based word puzzle, detailing challenges faced with virtual keyboard implementation, user privacy, and game functionality across devices

What Good is a Problem – Part 1 (belowwaterlevel​.com). Explores the evolution of value in software, emphasizing the importance of problem definition and the thinking process over speed and breadth of solutions

What exactly I am building now a days.. (madanbhintade​.substack​.com). Exploration of modern tech stacks and AI capabilities for building products, including Next.js, n8n, and Vercel's AI SDK

One Hour and Eight Minutes: Building a Receipt Scanner with the Weirdest Tech Stack Imaginable (dspn​.substack​.com). Experimenting with an unusual tech stack—FastAPI, HTMX, LlamaBot, and Notion—to build a receipt scanning app in just over an hour

Building a SaaS Product: The Hidden 80% That Nobody Talks About (brettgfitzgerald​.com). Brett Fitzgerald discusses the overlooked infrastructure in SaaS development, covering user management, hosting, payment processing, and tools like Fly.io and Lemon Squeezy

Measuring the actual impact of AI coding (changelog​.com). Abi Noda discusses AI coding tools' productivity impact, Jevons paradox, enterprise tools, development budgets, and AI agents in Changelog & Friends Episode #101

Personal Notes on The Principal Engineer in The Agentic Era (compositecode​.blog). Exploration of Principal Engineer's role in AI-driven software development, focusing on agentic systems, coding challenges, and project outcomes

The power of the Unix philosophy for LLM agentic tools (blog​.korny​.info). Exploring the Unix philosophy's impact on LLM tools like Claude Code, highlighting command-line efficiency vs IDE complexity in software development

A Little Scree About AI and the Hard Parts of Product Development (jrothman​.com). Explores AI's limitations in product development, emphasizing collaboration, flow efficiency, and the challenges posed by LLMs in effective team workflows

AI Tools now a days...I leverage. (madanbhintade​.substack​.com). Leveraging AI tools for product development, rapid prototyping, and concept building, including ChatGPT, Vercel, and Bubble for improved efficiency

🔗 Building Faster with AI (kyleolivo​.github​.io). Exploring the evolution of agentic developer tooling in software engineering, focusing on enhanced coding efficiency and the impact of Claude Code

You don’t start a platform, you earn the right to become one (ventureinsecurity​.net). Founders must earn the right to build platforms in cybersecurity, progressing through four key stages from niche solutions to mega platforms

Developer Platform: Build and Ownership (medium​.com/wix-engineering). Wix's DevEx team transitions to a Developer Experience Platform, emphasizing self-service tools, continuous deployment, ownership, and fostering a productive engineering culture

Platform Engineering Won’t Save You (aviator​.co). Platform engineering is more about product management and developer experience than just tool adoption, emphasizing the importance of usability and feedback

The Apex Architect: Why Single-Vision Projects Will Dominate Open Source (seuros​.com). Single-maintainer projects like SQLite, curl, and Rails will reshape open source by eliminating committee-driven constraints and fostering innovation

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