Sponsored by
✦
AI just ate venture's lunch, and ordered seconds. 41% of last year's $128B went to AI startups, with the top ten percent of companies capturing half the capital. Meanwhile, Palantir's hosting developer conferences that feel like defense-flavored MLM rallies, pitching battlefield AI and treating neutrality as a technical debt.
Somewhere in between, Apple quietly billed AI firms nearly a billion dollars just for ecosystem access, which is either the cleanest GTM in history or a masterclass in doing nothing at scale.
Happy Saturday.
-😎
✦
Six bullets of updates
🚚 Amazon scoops up robotics startup Rivr to boost its delivery automation tech portfolio in its latest logistics move.
🍏 Apple quietly made nearly $1B by charging AI firms to access its ecosystem as the AI gatekeeper.
🛰️ Over 50,000 satellites could soon turn orbit into a massive, high-energy compute hub with Project Sunrise by Blue Origin.
🧠 China's biggest brain chip firm says it is 3 years behind Neuralink in first human trials.
📱 Amazon eyes a smartphone comeback with partners like HMD a decade after its fire phone flop.
🔆 Tesla moves to buy $2.9B in solar gear from China, aiming to boost renewable projects at scale worldwide.
✦
AI Startup Venture Funding Hits Record Share and Drives Industry Returns
Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash
AI just ate venture’s lunch. On Carta, AI startups took 41% of $128B last year: a new high. They posted record AI share.
Capital isn’t broad, it’s tall: the top decile soaked up half the dollars, a K-shaped market where kings get crowns and everyone else gets vibes. As Carta notes, ten percent captured half.
Whales did the hauling: xAI pulled $20B in January, OpenAI banked $110B in February, and Anthropic raised $30B at a $380B valuation. IPO teases for 2026 are the promised exit ramp, if the window actually opens.
Meanwhile, performance looks better on paper. Post-ChatGPT vintages show stronger IRR, younger funds posted IRR, but that’s markup math plus brutal compute costs. Translation: fewer bets, bigger checks, outcomes still TBD.
✦
How to Scale a Startup Team
When you start a company there is really no guide, handbook on how to scale your team.
All companies are different, all companies need to scale differently- but most importantly with startups, things move so fast that your scale strategy needs to be that flexible.
✦
You Can't Automate Good Judgement
AI promises speed and efficiency, but it’s leaving many leaders feeling more overwhelmed than ever.
The real problem isn’t technology.
It’s the pressure to do more with less — without losing what makes your leadership effective.
BELAY created the free resource 5 Traits AI Can’t Replace & Why They Matter More Than Ever to help leaders pinpoint where AI can help and where human judgment is still essential.
At BELAY, we help leaders accomplish more by matching them with top-tier, U.S.-based Executive Assistants who bring the discernment, foresight, and relational intelligence that AI can’t replicate.
That way, you can focus on vision. Not systems.
✦
🧘 In AI chaos, leaders gain an edge with inner mastery; the one skill that amplifies every decision, daily.
🤖 Local SEO goes AI: 3 moves. Structured pages, consistent listings, fresh reviews to earn answer-box visibility.
🧪 YC bought billboards to win a saltwater disposal deal by influencing a single, high‑stakes chemical buyer .
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.
✦
Palantir Showcases Military-Focused AI Advances at Developer Conference
Palantir’s dev conference reads like a multi-level marketing retreat for militarized AI, except the product is battlefield overmatch, not vitamin powder. Karp and Sankar are selling a world where the only ethical constraint on AI in war is winning it.
Behind the theatrics, the model is working. Commercial revenue is compounding triple digits while government still grows 60%, powered by GenAI that turns “forward deployed engineers” into force-multipliers for customers building on the stack. The company is pitching battlefield-first narrative as a feature, not a PR risk.
That stance is doing segmentation for free. By recasting AI as ordnance, Palantir drives away values-mismatched prospects and digs in with a smaller set of high-commitment buyers. For founders, the uncomfortable lesson is simple: in an AI-saturated market, doctrine is part of the product. Palantir is turning controversy into filter and, for now, into growth.
✦
Startup Events and Deadlines
How to Find your Startup Valuation l March 25 l Webinar
Startup Funding Rounds in the AI Era l March 31 l Webinar