Tech and startups: 26th August 2025

• Eight Sleep raised $100M Series D to expand AI-powered sleep tech while Overhaul secured $105M Series C for AI-driven logistics risk management, showing strong investor appetite for AI-enabled hardware and B2B solutions.

• The IPO market window is reopening with a convoy-like cadence expected rather than a stampede, with startup exits gaining steam in 2025 as AI-driven growth and increased private-to-public market confidence drive billion-dollar exits.

• Masayoshi Son's SoftBank made $11B in AI bets over 2 weeks and committed $2B to Intel, signaling massive institutional capital flowing into AI infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing.

• Cohere released Command A Reasoning, a 111B parameter enterprise-focused LLM supporting 23 languages, while various companies deployed AI agents(23)(28) for workflow automation, showing AI moving from invention to practical enterprise applications.

• Secondary market demand continues to outpace supply as LPs and GPs seek liquidity for private company stakes, with deal structures hinging on ROFR and drag-along rights amid examples from OpenAI and other unicorns.

• Private company mergers are rising to create scale, with lessons focusing on industrial logic, customer workflow integration, and stakeholder alignment as AI-driven automation becomes increasingly important in M&A.

• Functionize raised $41M for AI-driven software testing with natural language test generation, while Neurovalens secured £6M for FDA-approved sleep devices, highlighting continued investor interest in AI-powered development tools and medtech.

• Boxabl's financials look concerning with $3.5B SPAC valuation against $402K quarterly revenue, serving as a cautionary tale about valuation-revenue mismatches in the current market.

How I Wrote Code That Allocates Cash Account Interest Daily as a Wealthfront Intern (eng​.wealthfront​.com). Wealthfront intern details daily cash account interest allocation by category, design docs, test-driven development, Modern Java training, mentorship, and beta release to employees

Celebrating Impact: Voices of Long-Tenured Gusties (engineering​.gusto​.com). Long-tenured Gusties share experiences at Gusto: 5–10 years, solving payroll/HR challenges, customer-centric impact, engineering culture, mentorship, and memorable moments

The AI-Native Engineer: How Salesforce’s Next Generation is Redefining Software Development (engineering​.salesforce​.com). AI-native practices at Salesforce: hiring shifts, bi-directional mentorship, RAG/LLMs, prompt techniques, Cursor, PRizm, Investigation Agent, Slack-driven knowledge sharing, Agentforce adoption, metrics on PR velocity and AI-generated code

Who will maintain the future? Rethinking open source leadership for a new generation (github​.blog). Gen Z-focused open source leadership framework: Mountain of Engagement, Sam persona, TikTok/Discord discovery, mobile-first onboarding, sandboxed contrib, named roles, mentorship, paid time, and governance examples from Rust, TensorFlow, FreeCodeCamp, Kubernetes

How we built a high quality Q&A assistant (medium​.com/airtable-eng). Airtable Omni Q&A: LLM-driven multi-step reasoning, contextual schema exploration, planning and replanning, hybrid search with RAG, inline citations, token-efficient ID encoding, eval suites, and production-scale latency/ cost optimizations

Founder Raises $8.5M For Viral AI Agent That Lets Anyone Build An App (peopleofcolorintech​.com). Create raises $8.5M led by Bessemer Venture Partners to back Anything, a viral AI agent enabling anyone to build apps; platform handles hosting, databases, payments, App Store submission

Back to San Francisco, and a few other things. (youngmoney​.co). Back to San Francisco, Creator Fund investment in Jonathan Katz-Moses, MCP tools (model context protocol), AI-integration theses, travel blogs, Waymo dating show, Latino Dave Ramsey concept, and niche finance ideas

VT Netzwelt Powers Innovation at Udyamotsav 2025 (vtnetzwelt​.com). VT Netzwelt author Nitin Jain presents Agile E-commerce with Lean Canvas at Udyamotsav 2025, guiding founders on customer definition, MVP prioritization, pricing, and avoiding unnecessary features

Angel Investment: Voluna (jtangovc​.com). Harvard Business School alumnus Al Strange, Voluna drones, AI, and lunar/mining research; Jo Tango’s family angel program invests in Voluna; ties to rockets, satellites, Stanford, UW–Madison

Don Valentine: The Original Hard Tech Solo GP? (alsoblogposts​.com). Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia, emerges as an early hardware-focused investor, leveraging Fairchild Semiconductor ties to build Sequoia with a $5M fund, shaping hard tech venture origins

Who Hasn't Changed? (forwardthinking​.substack​.com). Arizona-born founder recounts expanding from local tech to global networks via Jason Calacanis’ accelerator, Seedscout, and Snowball portfolio tracker; defies stereotype of unchanged locals

Do not disrespect the fractal (zeux​.io). Fractal software design: micro, regular, and macro decisions shape quality; avoiding LLM-only outsourcing; importance of hands-on problem solving and cross-layer validation in teams and projects

The great developer speed-up, with Joel Becker of METR (complexsystemspodcast​.com). METR's Joel Becker analyzes AI tooling, measuring 'human time to complete' tasks, revealing productivity gaps; discusses AI evaluation, coding assistants, agents, and economic implications

ML for SWEs 64: What AI really means for software engineering jobs (mlforswes​.com). AI's impact on software engineering: coders vs. software engineers, production-grade code vs. engineering, context engineering, prompt strategies, ARIA learning, LLM evaluation, and real-world tool adoption metrics

Coding is deciding (benmccormick​.org). Nested decisions in software: architecture, infrastructure, and syntax; LLMs vs traditional tooling; Vibe coding, tab-complete like Copilot/Cursor, Claude code; governance of feature development with agents

OpenAI Head of Product (Integrity) on the Future of AI Agents, PM, and AI threats (news​.aakashg​.com). Jake Brill, OpenAI Head of Integrity Product, on AI agents transforming PM roles, integrity across GPT-5 launch, identity/financial/safety systems, agent-first products and the future of AI threats

Essential Reading for Agentic Engineers - August 2025 (steipete​.me). Five essential perspectives cut through AI hype: developer evolution stages, junior skill loss, reality of 10x productivity, platform disruption, and MCP server pitfalls for AI-assisted software

Have your experts as a backup in the new AI world (helloanselm​.com). AI-assisted software development vs. human accountability: pilots in autopilot-era coding, lead engineers, Agile Masters, freelancers, org structure, product idea-to-market, quality, time, budget, review AI results, ownership when things go wrong

Sequoia Backs Zed's Vision for Collaborative Coding (zed​.dev). Sequoia leads $32M Series B for Zed's DeltaDB, operation-level version control, CRDTs, real-time collaboration in IDE, integration with Git, permalinks, AI agent integration

Partnering with Zed: The AI-Powered Code Editor Built from Scratch (sequoiacap​.com). Sequoia leads Series B for Zed, a Rust-based high-performance, collaborative IDE built from scratch, praised for speed, lightweight design, extensibility, DeltaDB-powered AI collaboration, and adoption by 150K monthly developers

DeltaDB From Zed (the Code Editor) (shapeof​.com). DeltaDB from Zed explores DeltaDB, an operation-level version control system using CRDTs to track real-time changes, integrate with Git, and enable AI-assisted collaboration within Zed and Rust-based tooling

Joining Inngest (thelinell​.com). Linell Bonnette leaves SBLive to join Inngest, a Go-native workflow orchestration platform; discusses open source code, Go learning curve, and multiple SDKs for synchronous and asynchronous jobs

I use AI agents to code, but I’m not a “vibe coder” (birchtree​.me). AI agents like Cursor assist coding workflows for a PM/designer, enabling rapid code generation, iterative prompts, direct edits, and a shift from prototype to shipping product

Software Engineering in times of AI (lambdabytes​.io). AI coding with Claude Code accelerates learning feedback loops; project: Angular UI, Rust backend, Ethereum smart contract; focus on specs, dialogue, testing; critique of outsourcing thinking

Vibe Coding's Hype for non-developers is over (cendyne​.dev). Critical take on non-technical hype around AI coding aids like Claude Code and Cursor, highlighting real-world limits, production risk, pricing shifts, and the enduring value of human software developers

My development team costs $41.73 a month (philipotoole​.com). Copilot contributes to rqlite as a major, cheap development assistant; O'Toole analyzes the economics of software with $41.73/month cost, comparing human vs. AI coding, project context, and growth

Just One More Prompt (steipete​.me). Peter Steinberger reflects on AI addiction, extreme work culture, and personal burnout in a Claude Code Anonymous talk, citing 80+ hour weeks, FOMO, and tools like VibeTunnel

My experience creating software with LLM coding agents (blog​.efitz​.net). Experiences using Claude Code, Roo Code, Grok, ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Studio; VS Code plugins; context-driven prompts; pay-as-you-go pricing; local hosting with Ollama/LM Studio; cost tracking; context/docus; 200k+ lines of code; emphasis on creation over coding

Coding in the Age of AI: What You Need to Know (haktansuren​.com). AI as a sidekick for developers, not a lead programmer; guidance on SPA reliability, production readiness, Kubernetes, microservices, CI/CD; AI mentoring for juniors; senior DevOps ownership; code generation, testing, and security cautions with enterprise-grade cloud apps

My favorite developer productivity research method that nobody uses (surfingcomplexity​.blog). Flow state, experience sampling, case studies, developer productivity, Csikszentmihalyi, Suzanne Prescott, pagers, journals, DORA metrics, incident analysis, Slack, in-the-moment data

What Chip Design Can Learn from Supersonic Jets (viksnewsletter​.com). Boom Supersonic’s 50-engineer XB-1 approach and mkBoom platform show how embedding software, cross-functional teams, in-house toolchains, AI, and joyful iteration could transform chip design and EDA interfaces

Why do software developers love complexity? (kyrylo​.org). Why do software developers love complexity? Marketing hype, social proof, and status; complexity as a puzzle, legacy debt, team dynamics, and the tension between cat vs. catzilla in tooling choices

Some recent project milestones (markjgsmith​.com). Zod-based DTOs, shared public entities, linting/typechecking with pre-commit hooks, secure devcontainers, React security contexts, backlog/workflow with Gemini, React router/queries, /me endpoints, weekly sprint planning, end-to-end data integrity, API response standardization, OAuth 2.0 RFC 6749 compliance, and admin user search features

A New Week and A New Role (chriswiegman​.com). Engineering Manager role at Fingerprint in a remote, open-source focused company; returning to roots, working under Dav Glass, after on-site Chicago stint

10 years of engineering at Nubank: Lessons from scaling to 122+ million customers (building​.nubank​.com). Lucas Cavalcant, Distinguished Software Engineer, speaks on Nubank’s 10-year engineering journey: from Clojure and Datomic on AWS to Docker, Kubernetes, microservices, core banking, sharding, and international expansion

10 years of engineering at Nubank: Lessons from scaling to 110+ million customers (building​.nubank​.com). Nubank engineering journey from Clojure and Datomic on AWS, to Docker, Kubernetes, microservices and Core Banking; leadership paths, guilds, scalability, Pix, AI, and work-life balance insights

My experience with Amazon Kendra (skerritt​.blog). Monzo hackathon uses AWS Kendra to index documentation across Notion, Dropbox, Google Drive, Slack and GitHub; Terraform deployment, DEV vs ENTERPRISE editions, and practical search solution

Glue teams vs back-office teams (newsletter​.posthog​.com). Glue teams cut horizontally across features like auth, billing, SDK quality across 10 platforms; back-office teams own data infra and developer tools, but risk detaching from customer impact

Interesting learning resources - August 2025 (roundcrisis​.com). Scaling ProTime: from feature teams to domain-owned teams; denotational vs operational explanations of programming concepts; Event Storming, C4, Risk Storming; walking skeletons; Iteration Zero; architecture learning backlog; conflict-intelligent leadership

Beliefs (blog​.separateconcerns​.com). Beliefs list since 2017, BELIEFS.md, care about work over time, Why did the robot do that?, Transformative innovations from technologists, B2B product knowledge/value, AI embodied, AGI not required for AI revolution with robotics, added 2020 and 2025 notes

Thoughts & Links 12 (blog​.separateconcerns​.com). Assorted thoughts on AI, future of software jobs, LLMs, Go for agents, policy of transience, BitTorrent copyright, Go interfaces, breaking rules, product vs code roles, and short feedback loops

One of a kind (manton​.org). Steve Wozniak, early Apple, a Cupertino lunch with a laser pointer moment, Woz’s wealth philosophy, VC era critique, Micro.blog, Anil Dash reflections, leadership humanity

The Currents of a Founder (thebootstrappedfounder​.com). Founder perspectives on currents: technology rapids, commoditization, attention undertow, social media mirage, and work-life whirlpool shaping Podscan and bootstrapped ventures

When Slack Went Down All The Time; AI is Learning to Lie in Order to Win; Your Org Chart is About Power Centers; and +++ [link blog] (hunterwalk​.com). Slack reliability crisis, AI learning to lie to win, org design as power centers, Molly Graham essays on org design, compensation simplicity, and startup culture notes

An Alternative to our Inevitable Faceless Mega Corporate Dominated Cyberpunk Dystopian Future. (dethstrobe​.com). Tech workers should form employee-owned cooperatives, implementing XP (extreme programming), flat structures, reciprocal mentorship, transparent compensation, rotating CEO pair, lean startup pilots, and knowledge sharing to prevent burnout and silos

Three Months at Handshake! (keith​.is). Three months at Handshake reveal a fit problem: a thoughtful engineer confronts a 12-year-old Ruby monolith, move-fast growth culture, and the value of documenting decisions and team alignment

The people who are surprised by the rise of the Silicon Valley alt-right are the people who weren't paying attention to Silicon Valley (observationalepidemiology​.blogspot​.com). West Coast Stat Views analyzes the pre-Trump rise of Silicon Valley conservatism, detailing figures like Gilder, Buckley, Malone and Borsook, and linking techno-optimism to anti-expert sentiment and ivermectin/hydroxychloroquine pseudoscience

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