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Walmart just crossed the $1T line, AI bots are eating a quarter of the internet, and investors are back to paying espresso-strength premiums for growth.
Today’s theme: scale wins, discipline matters, and not all “AI momentum” is created equal.
Let’s get into it.
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Ten bullets of updates
🛒 Walmart tops $1T valuation for the first time as online sales surge 22% and wealthier shoppers flock in.
🗣️ Prime members can now access Alexa’s improved AI skills on any device, with free mobile and web access for all.
🧑💼 Uber taps Balaji Krishnamurthy as CFO, succeeding Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah, amid AV project growth and $37B in gross bookings. AV project growth and $37B in gross bookings.
💸 SNAK Venture Partners wraps a $50M debut fund to back digitizing marketplaces, with Pritzker Group as anchor.
🧬 Biograph’s co-founder and longevity doctor Peter Attia quietly exits his own startup after a year out of stealth.
🤖 AI bots now make up nearly a quarter of web traffic, forcing publishers to ramp up defenses against unwanted scraping.
🌊 New funding will let swarms of robots map ocean depths far beyond satellite reach, as Apeiron Labs raises $29M.
🦷 Linda AI secures €2.6M to help dental clinics automate front-desk workflows with smarter AI tools.
⚖️ New AI legal tools trigger a sharp drop in sector stocks, with some falling over 10% after disruption fears hit legal tech providers.
💸 Climbing expenses and stricter lending are prompting 62% of owners to prioritize resilience over growth heading into 2025.
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AI Money Is Back
T. Schneider / Shutterstock.com
ElevenLabs’ valuation more than tripled in 12 months after it raised a $500M led by Sequoia at an $11B valuation. Sequoia partner Andrew Reed joins the board. ARR ended 2025 near $330M; ~33x ARR. AI premiums still run on espresso.
Fresh cash points to expansion (India, Japan, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico) and a push beyond voice into agents and video. Upside: creator workflows and enterprise CX bots. Risks: model commoditization, deepfake policy drag, and GPU-heavy unit economics. Read-through: late-stage AI risk appetite is back; expect bundling and pricing power if growth holds—otherwise diligence will probe revenue quality and gross margins.
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Why Unprofitable Startups Are Popular (Again)
💡 Investors want startups to lose money again.
After 2023 punished unprofitable companies, the script has flipped. In this episode, Caya breaks down why profitability suddenly matters less — and how AI has reshaped fundraising so that more money is flowing to fewer startups.
We explain the current funding cycle, why milestones matter more than burn right now, how seed and pre-seed rounds quietly ballooned into old-school Series A sizes, and what founders actually need to optimize for if they plan to raise again.
If you’re fundraising this year, this video is about knowing which currency investors care about — and when that inevitably changes.
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🚩 Not all capital is equal; learn to spot misaligned investors early before 1 bad term sheet bankrupts you.
🚀 Altman channels Xerox PARC, saying shipping fast beats lab purism despite safety flak and a $1B Disney tie-up.
🧘 5 quick steps can calm stress fast: reset your mood in minutes and refocus on what matters, with zero fluff.
Financial Modeling Bootcamp for Startup Founders
Leveraging over 12 years of hands-on startup experience, our CEO, Caya, created a practical financial modeling bootcamp for startup founders.
The course helps founders develop clear, investor-ready projections, better understand their fundraising needs, and track the core KPIs used to guide day-to-day and strategic decisions.
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PayPal Appoints Enrique Lores as New CEO Amid Leadership Shift
Credit: Photo by Muhammad Asyfaul on Unsplash
Payments musical chairs: Jamie Miller steps in as interim until March 1 as HP’s Enrique Lores takes the helm.
The board cited a pace of change problem, and shares slid ~18% on the handoff plus soft Q4 and a cautious 2026 outlook.
Likely playbook: back-to-basics on branded checkout, better Braintree unit economics, tighter spend, and harder Venmo monetization. If execution improves, margins and TPV mix recover; if not, expect a sharper portfolio review and stricter capital discipline.
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Startup Events and Deadlines
Startup Funding Rounds in the AI Era | Today! | Webinar
How to Pitch an AI Company to Investors l Feb 12 l Webinar
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