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Fusion just cleared $7.1B in private funding , which means 'always 30 years away' is now a cap table entry.
Elsewhere, Meta is deploying AI to manage its AI-era lawsuits, which is either elegant or ironic depending on your legal exposure. We've also got ChatGPT's new middle-tier plan, AR glasses back from the dead, and a reminder that your best cognitive infrastructure still runs on a 30-minute walk.
Happy Saturday! The week's highlights are below.
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Six bullets of updates
🤖 OpenAI now offers a $100/month ChatGPT plan, bridging the gap for users who wanted more power without the $200 jump.
🤳 Wellness influencers’ AI “twins” now offer round-the-clock advice and product pitches to 500k+ followers on Onix’s new platform.
💰 UK startup triples ARR and lands €5.7M to expand its AI-driven CX platform worldwide.
📡 Unlimited mobile + Starlink-powered home internet now bundled in one bill, access up to 3 networks and satellite internet.
👓 After a 3-year pause, Snap teams up with Qualcomm to finally bring new AR glasses closer to launch
🚀 Startups pulled in over $1B, led by a $400M chip design surge, showcasing investor confidence across deep tech despite no mega-deals this week.
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Fusion Startups Raising Over $100M Dominate $7.1B Funding
Photo by Ayanda Kunene on Unsplash
Fusion has finally graduated from “always 30 years away” joke to cap table reality. Fusion startups have pulled in $7.1B so far, and most of that is concentrated in a small club of companies raising nine- and ten-figure rounds.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Helion, Pacific Fusion, TAE and a few peers now function as de facto fusion index bets, each with a distinct physics stack but similar financing logic: huge checks, milestone-based tranching, and timelines that look more like biotech than SaaS. Capital is underwriting trillion‑dollar upside with power‑law ownership from day one.
The current fusion funding leaderboard shows how fast deeptech is consolidating: category kings get mega-rounds, everyone else fights for scraps and niche angles (components, isotopes, waste). In this market, the real moat isn’t just IP; it’s convincing capital that the reactor, not just the science, will clear commercial breakeven.
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The comeback of a forgotten device
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Tech moves fast, but you're still playing catch-up?
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🩺 Startups run on your stamina: 30+ min walks, 3x/week, and an hour tech‑free before bed keep you sharp.
🛡️ 2026 roundup: 10 SOC 2 platforms to streamline audits; compare features to stay audit-ready fast and skip manual chaos.
🎓 Lithuania schools founders early: teens 14–19 build real startups on prime-time TV with live pitches.
🛂 With 70% of AI grads intl, founders should plan visa portfolios and early green cards to avoid $100k H‑1B hits.
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Meta Deploys AI to Tackle Social Media Lawsuits
Meta’s answer to AI-fueled lawsuits is, predictably, more AI. The company is deploying AI in litigation to sift discovery, pattern-match claims, and game out settlement versus trial as social-media cases pile up and recent verdicts reset the risk curve.
This isn’t about cash; Meta can afford to fight. It’s about whether a constant drumbeat of youth-harm, privacy, and addictiveness cases creates a long legal overhang that caps multiples even in an AI boom.
The real message to product companies: once engagement loops are algorithmic, every UX choice becomes evidence. Building systems that log and explain those choices is cheaper than retrofitting defenses when courts start reading product telemetry like discovery.
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Startup Events and Deadlines
Crash Course in Financial Modeling | April 16 | Webinar
How to Find your Startup Valuation | April 23 | Webinar
Curinos FinTech Incubator | April 20 | Apply
Y Combinator, Summer 2026 | May 04 | Apply✦