We're about one week from our (sold-out) London event on May 21 and four weeks from our Washington, D.C. event on the night of Tuesday, June 11, where we'll have sensational speakers, including FTC Chair Lina Khan, AI researcher Helen Toner, famed founder-investor Steve Case and Humane AI founders Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri in one of their first-ever stage appearances. We'll also have plenty of networking and summery cocktails, so if you live in or near Washington, do join us for a memorable evening.:)

OpenAI announced a new LLM this morning called GPT-4o that can handle text, speech, and video, including responding with voice answers in “a range of different emotive styles” (including singing). CEO Sam Altman posted clips from a presentation today at the company's San Francisco office. TechCrunch has more here. 

Artificial intelligence is hitting the global labor market "like a tsunami" International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Monday, per Reuters. AI is likely to impact 60% of jobs in advanced economies and 40% of jobs around the world in the next two years, Georgieva told an event in Zurich.

SoftBank announced a $4.6 billion gain on its Vision Fund, driven in large part by its huge stake in the chip design firm Arm. CNBC has more here. 

Shares of the video game retailer GameStop surged 74% today as speculation grew that Keith Gill, the meme-man known as "Roaring Kitty" who drove GameStop's previous rally, was back. 

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By Kirsten Korosec

Kyle Vogt, the former founder and CEO of self-driving car company Cruise, has a new VC-backed robotics startup focused on household chores.

Vogt announced Monday that the new startup, called the Bot Company, has raised $150 million from former GitHub CEO and investor Nat Friedman, Pioneer founder and investor Daniel Gross, Spark Capital general partner Nabeel Hyatt, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, Stripe co-founder John Collison and Quiet Capital.

Vogt founded the startup with Paril Jain, who led the AI tech team at Tesla, and former Cruise software engineer Luke Holoubek.

“We’re building bots that do chores so you don’t have to. Everyone is busy. Bots can help,” Vogt wrote on the social media platform X. “So many things compete for our time — commutes, longer working hours, and the complexities of modern life. Our team has spent years building robots (including the self-driving kind) that give people some of that time back, and we’re taking that a step further with this company.”

More here.

Ajax Therapeutics, a five-year-old startup based in New York and Cambridge, MA, that uses computational chemistry and structure-based drug discovery technologies to develop new drugs for blood cancers, raised a $95 million Series C round led by Goldman Sachs, with Eli Lilly, Vivo Capital, RA Capital Management, and Point72 as well as previous investors EcoR1 Capital, Boxer Capital, Schrödinger, and Inning One Ventures also piling on. BioPharma Dive has more here.

The Bot Company, a San Francisco startup founded this year by the cofounder of Cruise that aims to build robots that can clean your house, raised a $150 million round at a $550 million post-money valuation. Major investors included Spark Capital and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman. Forbes has more here. 

Meesho, a nine-year-old Bangalore startup that facilitates online selling via social media platforms, especially WhatsApp, raised a $275 million round that is likely to exceed $500 million with secondary transactions, according to TechCrunch, which has more here.

May Health, a seven-year-old Paris startup that is developing a treatment to restore ovulation without the need for hormones, raised a $25 million Series B round co-led by Bpifrance and Trill Impact, with Avestria Ventures, Kidron Capital Assets, and previous investor Sofinnova Partners also pitching in. More here.

Pepper, a five-year-old New York startup whose platform is designed to simplify how restaurants order supplies from multiple suppliers, raised a $30 million Series B round led by ICONIQ Growth, with Harmony Partners and previous investors Index Ventures, Greylock, and Imaginary also anteing up. The company has raised a total of approximately $60 million. TechCrunch has more here. 

Butter, a four-year-old San Francisco startup that uses machine learning to help subscription-based businesses recover lost revenue due to failed transactions, raised a $10 million at a $135 million valuation. Atomic and Norwest Venture Partners co-led the deal. The company has raised a total of $40 million. Axios has more here.

ChainML, a two-year-old Bay Area startup that is building a decentralized framework for autonomous AI agents, raised a $6.2 million seed extension round led by Hack VC, with Foresight Ventures, Inception Capital, HTX Ventures, Figment Capital, Hypersphere Ventures, and Alumni Ventures also joining in. The Block has more here. 

GoodDay Software, a one-year-old Austin startup that has developed a retail operating system that integrates directly into Shopify, raised a $6 million seed round. Investors included FirstMark, Ridge Ventures, and Flex Capital. More here.

Sagetap, a five-year-old San Francisco startup that provides a platform where technology buyers can explore and interact with emerging B2B SaaS startups without revealing their identity until they choose to engage further, raised a $6.8 million seed round led by NFX, with Uncorrelated Ventures and Emergent Ventures also taking part. VentureBeat has more here.

Tiney.co, a six-year-old London startup that provides a platform to help people start and manage their own childcare businesses from home, raised a $9 million Series A round led by Mustard Seed Partners, with additional participation from PortfioLion, Sparkmind, and Rubio. EU-Startups has more here.

Zeal, a UK startup that offers a self-custodial cryptocurrency wallet that manages digital assets across all Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible networks, raised a $2 million from Gnosis. Tech.eu has more here.

Does your startup have a solution for Responsible AI deployment in the banking sector? Ally is excited to announce the launch of the Ally Innovation Challenge – Responsible AI. Ally is seeking market-ready, US-based startups specializing in AI infrastructure that can assist in building robust, scalable platforms for responsible AI development and deployment. Selected startups will have opportunities for mentoring and potential collaboration with senior experts from the financial services company behind the nation’s largest all-digital bank. Learn more about it here and submit your application by June 17th! Terms and conditions apply - see website for full details. 

Terri Burns, who was formerly GV's youngest partner, is starting her own fim, Type Capital, to invest in pre-seed and seed deals in areas such as digital consumer and AI. TechCrunch has more here. 

Accel has closed on $650 million in capital commitments to back startups from seed to Series A across the U.K., the Continent and Israel. The fund is the eighth of its kind for Accel since it first put down roots in London in 2000. TechCrunch has more here.

SquareSpace is going private, thanks to a $6.9 billion all-cash bid from Permira, a private equity firm. Reuters has more here. 

Uber is buying Delivery Hero SE’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan for $950 million, shoring up its control of a key Asian market as it seeks to expand in the region, reports Bloomberg. Uber, whose meal delivery business outperformed globally during the most recent quarter, aims to complete the all-cash deal by the first half of 2025, adds the outlet.

Shein, a Chinese fast-fashion ecommerce site, is reportedly targeting a London listing in light of problems it's had in going public in the U.S. Reuters has more here.  

Raspberry Pi, a 22-year-old UK company that designs and manufactures affordable, credit-card-sized computers for educational, hobbyist, and professional use, plans to go public on the London Stock Exchange later this month at a $625+ million valuation.

Elon Musk is using X to woo right-wing leaders in order to benefit his businesses, posits The New York Times, which has more here.  

Melinda French Gates is resigning from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to focus her philanthropic work on women and girls. 

A California judge has once again refused billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla's request to ban people from his beach. 

Marques Brownlee, Walt Mossberg, and Kara Swisher talk tech reviews.

In a new report, the market intelligence firm Gartner predicts that efforts by search engines like Google to generate AI answers to common questions could reduce search engine traffic for Web publishers by 25-40%.

Despite spending billions to acquire U.S. customers (including spending heavily on TV ads for this year's Super Bowl), the shopping app Temu is apparently shifting its focus to Europe in light of TikTok's troubles. The WSJ has more here. 

Hackers are preventing Christie's from selling an estimated $840 million worth of art online. In fact, the auction house just postponed a watch auction scheduled to take place today because of a cyberattack.

“It doesn’t matter who claims to be calling: If you didn’t initiate the contact, hang up.”

If in an addled state you ever wondered if the universe wasn't just one giant hall of mirrors, you might be right. 

Saudi Arabia is looking to hire a cheetah manager for its ambitious new Neom development. 

Deciphering "mom" texts.

A California town in San Diego County is for sale for just $6.6 million.