Binance, a crypto exchange whose founder, Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, is seeking a presidential pardon, has reportedly been speaking to representatives of President Donald Trump's family about a Trump family investment in Binance. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

OpenAI has formally requested that the Trump administration permit "American AI models’ ability to learn from copyrighted material." CNBC has more here. 

Speaking of OpenAI, the megacap startup also proposed that the U.S. government ban "PRC-produced" AI models like DeepSeek. TechCrunch has more here. 

According to a report in The Information, Oracle is a leading contender to help run TikTok, but TikTok's owner, ByteDance, wants to maintain a stake in the social media platform despite a U.S. law to the contrary. The New York Post has more here. 

A media outlet just used freedom of information laws to obtain the ChatGPT records of Peter Kyle, the UK's technology secretary, in what is believed to be a world-first use of such legislation.

Observations from ingesting 10,000+ private company quarterly updates:

• Metrics aren’t called the same. Net Dollar Retention had 18 different names.

• Last quarter’s ARR is routinely restated this quarter. Always downwards. Never acknowledged.

• Monthly numbers sometimes add up to quarterly numbers. Not very often.

No wonder analyzing your portfolio is so painful! See how we’ve solved it >>

By Maxwell Zeff & Charles Rollet

One of Silicon Valley’s most storied startup accelerators, Y Combinator, held its Winter 2025 Demo Day on Wednesday, showcasing what its latest batch of 160 startups are cooking up. Some of Silicon Valley’s most successful startups — including Stripe, Airbnb, and Reddit — started out in a YC batch.

Today, YC’s newer startups are focused on building the next big thing in AI. In this batch, we noticed a surprising number of startups creating tools to enhance other companies’ AI agents. Rather than building their own AI agents, these startups are building support tools. There’s no shortage of companies building AI agent tools today, but these managed to stick out from the crowd.

There are some honorable mentions that didn’t quite make this list, but still managed to catch our attention. There’s Optifye, a startup that’s building software to manage factory workers and was embroiled in a social controversy a few weeks ago. There’s also Artificial Societies, which runs AI simulations to test how well your LinkedIn posts will do in a simulated version of your network.

YC has always accepted some eye-catching companies, but here are the startups we think are worth paying attention to in YC W25.

More here.

Flock Safety, an eight-year-old Atlanta startup that provides public safety products like automated license plate recognition cameras and a gunshot detection system, raised a fresh $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation. The deal was led by Bedrock Capital, with previous investors Andreessen Horowitz, GreenOaks, Meritech Capital, Matrix Partners, and Y Combinator also weighing in. TechCrunch has more here. 

Insilico Medicine, an 11-year-old Hong Kong company whose AI-powered drug discovery software analyzes biological and chemical data to identify promising drug candidates, raised a $110 million Series E round led by Value Partners, with previous investors Warburg Pincus and Qiming Venture Partners also participating. More here.

Lumafield, a six-year-old startup based in Cambridge, MA, that develops industrial X-ray CT scanners and software that allows engineers to see inside manufactured parts and products in 3D, raised a $75 million Series C round led by IVP, with additional participation from G2 Venture Partners and Wellington Management as well as previous investors Spark Capital, DCVC, Kleiner Perkins, Lux Capital, and Matter Venture Partners. Axios has more here.

Omni, a three-year-old San Francisco startup whose business intelligence and embedded analytics platform enables even non-technical users to analyze data, create visualizations, and build reports, raised a $69 million Series B round led by ICONIQ Growth, with Theory Ventures, First Round Capital, Redpoint Ventures, GV, and Snowflake Ventures also chiming in. TechCrunch has more here. 

Blackwall, a six-year-old Tallinn startup that helps hosting providers and businesses safeguard their websites by filtering harmful traffic and preventing attacks, raised a $49.2 million Series B round led by Dawn Capital and including previous investor MMC Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Bria, a two-year-old Tel Aviv and New York startup that enables digital content platforms, creative agencies, e-commerce companies, and digital asset management platforms to create and modify images while ensuring all content is legally licensed, raised a $40 million Series B round led by Red Dot Capital, with Maor Investment, Entrée Capital, GFT Ventures, Intel Capital, and IN Venture also investing. The company has raised a total of approximately $65 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Fixated, a two-year-old Los Angeles startup that helps online creators grow their brands and reach wider audiences through services like content strategy, production, audience development, and brand partnerships, raised a $12.8 million round. Eldridge Industries was the deal lead. More here.

Augmenta, a seven-year-old Toronto startup that automates the design of electrical systems, enabling contractors and engineers to create detailed, code-compliant plans more quickly and accurately, raised a $10 million seed round led by Prelude Ventures, with Montage Ventures also stepping up. The company has raised a total of $25.6 million. BetaKit has more here.

Breaker, a two-year-old Sydney and Austin startup that enables operators to communicate with robots using natural language commands over standard push-to-talk radios, raised a $1.26 million pre-seed round led by Main Sequence. More here. 

Flowww, an 18-year-old Madrid company that helps businesses in aesthetic medicine, beauty, and healthcare with appointment scheduling, digital invoicing, stock management, automated marketing, and data analytics, raised a $4.3 million Series A round co-led by Swanlaab Venture Factory and Bonsai Partners, with Sabadell Venture Capital also taking part. Silicon Canals has more here.

nunu.ai, a three-year-old San Francisco startup that develops artificial intelligence agents that play and test video games to assist game developers in identifying bugs and improving gameplay, raised a $6 million seed round co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and TIRTA Ventures, with Y Combinator also contributing. The company has raised a total of $8 million. VentureBeat has more here.

Onyx, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that has built an open-source AI platform that integrates with applications such as Salesforce and GitHub and helps companies quickly find and access information across various internal tools and documents, raised a $10 million seed round co-led by Khosla Ventures and First Round Capital, with Y Combinator and Gokul Rajaram also pitching in. TechCrunch has more here.

Wolf Games, a one-year-old Los Angeles startup that creates interactive crime investigation games using artificial intelligence, raised a $4 million seed round from Dick Wolf, Jimmy Iovine, and Paul Wachter. TechCrunch has more here.

Affinity spoke to Lauren MacDonald, Principal at Sozo Ventures, about the firm’s successful CRM implementation. The outcome? This comprehensive yet simple-to-follow checklist, covering every step from pre-implementation planning to ways you can maximize CRM adoption and business impact. With MacDonald’s best practices spread throughout the checklist, this is your essential companion to launching a new CRM in your firm. Download the checklist now.

Peak.ai, a 10-year-old company based in Manchester, England, that uses AI to help businesses optimize their inventory management and pricing strategies, has been acquired by UIPath (NYSE: PATH), a 20-year-old New York and Romanian company that uses AI-powered bots to help businesses automate repetitive tasks like data entry, document processing. Terms were not disclosed. Peak.ai has raised a total of $121 million from investors such as SoftBank, Octopus, MMC, and OurCrowd. TechCrunch has more here. 

MoonPay, a seven-year-old crypto company that enables users to buy, sell, and swap cryptocurrencies using various payment methods, has purchased Iron, a one-year-old Berlin startup that provides API-based infrastructure to facilitate stablecoin transactions for businesses, for at least $100 million. The Block has more here. 

The Wall Street Journal profiles former VC and new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, whose VC firm, Walden International, accounted for more than 40% of the Chinese semiconductor deals involving U.S. venture investors from from 2017-20. More here. 

Tesla chair Robyn Denholm has moved out of her role as operating partner at Australia's biggest venture capital fund, Blackbird VC, Reuters reports. Tesla didn't respond to the outlet's request for a comment, while Blackbird gave no further details.

An arbitrator may have ordered former Facebook employee Sarah Wynn-Williams to stop talking about her best-selling book, Careless People, but Wynn-Williams isn't backing down. Business Insider has more here. 

The consumer genetics testing company 23andMe has laid off 40% of its workforce and shuttered its drug development business. The Wall Street Journal has more here. 

Waymo is learning what many of you already know: San Francisco loves handing out parking tickets.

Etsy and Ebay are just two of the e-commerce companies that are abandoning the Amazon playbook and trying to use social media tactics to sell their merch. The Wall Street Journal has more here. 

The trailer for F1 starring Brad Pitt just dropped, and it turns out that's really Pitt driving 180 mph down the straightaways.

Speaking of trailers, the new trailer for the seventh season of Black Mirror is out, and apparently, the series will revisit some of its past shows. 

The best week of the year to sell your house is coming up fast.

Bluesky quickly sold out of this shirt, (but we're thinking they'll restock the item).

For just under $250,000, you can hang out with George and Amal Clooney in Lake Como and enjoy dinners with world-class chefs, scenic boat trips, and live music.