35 VC Jobs & Anthropic, NVIDIA, and Microsoft Mega Deal

Anthropic locked in a three-way mega-partnership with Microsoft and Nvidia: Microsoft will supply US$30 billion of Azure compute, while Nvidia and Microsoft invest a combined US$15 billion into Anthropic. This creates a tight loop between model development (Anthropic), cloud distribution (Microsoft), and hardware acceleration (Nvidia), and marks Microsoft’s clearest move yet to diversify beyond OpenAI.

Last week, we covered the story of SoftBank selling its full stake in NVIDIA, this week, Peter Thiel’s fund, Thiel Macro, sells off its full stake (537k shares worth over $100M) in Q3, intensifying the jitters surrounding the chipmaker, and stock market volatility ahead of its earnings.

California passes new laws regulating AI and protections for minors
The state of California adopted a suite of laws aiming at protecting minors online and regulating AI systems, signaling increased platform liability and higher user-safety obligations.

Why it matters: US state-level regulation is creeping in and may influence national policy and global tech companies.

What to watch: How platforms respond (changes in product architecture), and whether this raises compliance costs for startup SaaS/AI models targetting US markets.

Layoffs continue in full force, with Verizon planning to cut around 15,000 jobs in the US (15% of total workforce), Synopsys announced layoofs of over 2,000 employees (10% of total workforce) after the acquisition of Ansys, and Amazon has started its 30K layoffs, with 660 jobs in NYC alone.

United Arab Emirates advances “urban air mobility” regulatory framework. The UAE’s Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA), Transport & Authority (TII) and General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) are running simulation-driven pilots for autonomous flying taxis and drone delivery zones.

Why it matters: This moves seriously toward regulated commercial deployment of air-mobility tech rather than just sandbox experiments.

What to watch: Licensing, insurance/risk models and local manufacturing of the vehicles in the GCC.

Sonder files bankruptcy as residents given less than 24 hours to vacate the premises. This is one of the sad stories and risks of Venture backed companies, especially asset heavy, with Wework succumbing to the same reality a couple of years back, the hybrid AirBnb x Hotel broke off the relationship with Marriott before filing for bankruptcy, goes to show that sometimes, even the fanciest of partnerships is not enough to stay relevant.

And just like that Jeff Bezos is back! unwilling to cede the next trillion dollar market to others, and maybe thinking that $AMZN ( ▲ 1.1% ) ’s AI efforts are too slow or bureaucratic, Jeff has reportedly left the comfort of the boardroom to directly steer “Project Prometheus” that raised $6.2 billion in funding, signaling a high stakes competitive move to recapture the operational urgency of a startup.

Cursor | US$2.3 billion | Series D
Cursor’s Anysphere raised a massive Series D at a ~US$29.3 billion valuation to scale Cursor, its AI-native coding platform, making it the largest VC deal of the week.

Chaos Industries | US$510 million | Series D
Chaos Industries secured a US$510 million round to accelerate deployment of its counter-drone radar and defence-tech systems amid heightened global defence spending.

Ramp | US$300 million | Series We don’t know anymore
After raising $200M in June at a $16B valuation, $500M in July at a $22.5B valuation. Spend Management giant Ramp raises $300M at a staggering $32 BILLION valuation, bringing their total funding for 2025 to $1 billion. Led by Lightspeed. They’re cooking something and investors love it.

Gopuff | US$250 million | Growth Equity
Gopuff added US$250 million in fresh financing to shore up expansion of its instant-delivery infrastructure and improve unit economics across key markets.

SKIMS | US$225 million | Growth Round
You can love her, you can hate her, but Kim Kardashian has been killing it since Kris made her famous. SKIMS raised US$225 million at a $5 billion dollar valuation to expand its global D2C apparel footprint and invest in new product lines.