Tech Stocks Take a Major Hit

Tech Stocks Take a Major Hit

Nasdaq plunges on the heels of a major Intel miss, Blackstone says Anthropic may have to deal with a junk credit rating after its IPO, and Halloween candy trivia

Holy bloodbath. What a way to end the week! Before you sign off for the weekend, two things. First, the newest episode of StrictlyVC Download is out, featuring our conversation with Flock CEO Garrett Langley. A lot people are upset about this technology, but is the issue Flock itself, how law enforcement uses it, or the lack of rules governing it? Give it a listen and tell us know what you think.

Second, a reminder that Founder Summit is happening in Boston next Wednesday, November 4. If you’re a first-time founder, you’ll learn how much traction you need right now before you raise, how to build a brand on a shoestring budget, and a lot more. Use this link (versus visit the site directly) for 30% off.

Have a great weekend, all. See you back here Monday. 🍻

Top News

Tech stocks were hammered Friday as investors grew more skeptical about the enormous sums being spent on AI, sending the Nasdaq Composite down 2.9%. Intel plunged 29% in its worst day since the 1970s, Amazon fell 1.4% after an earnings miss, Nvidia dropped 4%, Broadcom sank more than 5%, and Qualcomm tumbled 11%, while Alphabet extended losses after plunging more than 12% Thursday. CNBC has more here.

Blackstone has told investors that Anthropic may receive a high-yield or “junk” credit rating after its IPO rather than the investment-grade rating previously expected, potentially raising the AI company’s borrowing costs and narrowing the pool of investors able to finance its planned infrastructure spending. The Financial Times has more here.

North Korean hackers are being blamed for stealing at least $6.3 billion in crypto from Binance after compromising an engineer’s laptop, in what researchers are calling the largest crypto theft on record; Binance says roughly $3 billion has since been frozen and that user funds remain safe. TechCrunch has more here.

OpenAI has secured roughly $11 billion in commitments for its latest financing – less than half of the $30 billion it initially targeted – at a $1.25 trillion valuation versus the $1.4 trillion it had hoped for. The company is now aiming to raise up to $20 billion as investor enthusiasm for the AI boom cools. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

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Pile-Ins, Payouts, and Pacing Pressure: The Investors Behind the VCs Open Up

By Connie Loizos

The limited partners who provide the capital to venture firms — the “money behind the money” — are feeling great right now. They’re in uncharted territory in many ways, but also potentially exceedingly lucrative territory.

Normally, LPs typically spread their bets across many firms to diversify their own portfolios. They write checks to emerging managers and established ones, to generalist firms and specialists. The goal is a strong return, but also to minimize risk.

That’s the typical playbook. But typical is out the window. OpenAI and Anthropic’s valuations have shot up so quickly that nearly everyone has piled into the same two companies on the way up, often inside the same venture firm, despite the longstanding venture convention of avoiding investments that conflict with one another. No one is complaining, either. The LPs I speak with seem unbothered by this big gamble, given the potential returns; they’re expecting a bonanza.

But they do see danger ahead, even if they describe this as a “yellow light” situation, and they’re uneasy about how quickly VCs are coming back to raise new funds.

I talked about all of it recently with Beezer Clarkson of LGT Capital Partners, a Zurich-based diversified asset manager, and Amit Bhatti of TrueBridge, a Chapel Hill firm that focuses solely on venture. This conversation has been edited for length.

These are strange days — exciting but also scary. How are you feeling about your roles right now, and your place in this startup ecosystem?

Beezer Clarkson: It’s very busy, but I wouldn’t say it’s scary. There’s a lot of change and a lot of variables at play. I love venture, so I find the chaos fun. I’ve been doing this for a couple of decades, so seeing the cycles makes it less scary. You appreciate that these things happen, and that we should enjoy the upside, because sometimes there’s downside, and the up is a lot more fun than the down.

Massive Fundings

&Truth, a Palo Alto startup founded this year that develops tools that mathematically verify whether legacy and AI-generated code meets specified safety, security, and correctness requirements, raised a $70 million seed round. The New York Times has more here.

Baseten, a seven-year-old San Francisco startup that provides infrastructure for businesses to run AI models, is reportedly set to raise about $2 billion in a round led by previous investor Sands Capital, with separate tranches valuing the company at $26 billion and $30 billion. Bloomberg has more here.

Powerlattice, a three-year-old startup based in Vancouver, WA, that makes chiplets that deliver power inside AI processor packages to reduce energy loss, has sold $86 million of a planned $111 million private financing, according to an SEC filing. GeekWire has more here.

Setara Biosciences, a San Diego startup founded this year that develops small-molecule treatments targeting the genetic causes of rare neurological and neuromuscular diseases, raised a $90 million Series A round. Investors included Jazz Pharmaceuticals as well as previous investors Deerfield Management, Canaan, Droia Ventures, EcoR1, Euclidean Capital, and Regeneron Ventures. Fierce Biotech has more here.

Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings

Allox, a three-year-old Barcelona startup that combines genetics, experimental biology, and AI to identify protein sites that can be targeted with small-molecule drugs, raised a $10.5 million seed round led by Asabys, with CDTI and Institut Català de Finances also stepping up. European Biotechnology has more here.

Braid, a three-year-old startup based in The Hague, Netherlands, that lets enterprises embed branded SIM and eSIM connectivity into their products through a single connection to hundreds of carriers, raised a $38 million Series A round led by Octopus Ventures, with KPN Ventures also digging in. EU-Startups has more here.

Ravical, a one-year-old startup based in Ghent, Belgium, that uses AI to turn accounting and tax firms' expertise into standardized workflows across their client bases, raised a $17 million seed round led by MMC Ventures, with Shapers as well as previous investors Lakestar and Pitchdrive also investing. The company has raised a total of $25 million. Tech.eu has more here.

Smaller Fundings

CareLumi, a one-year-old Chicago startup that automates clinician credentialing and licensing and checks AI-driven healthcare workflows for errors and compliance violations, raised a $2.5 million pre-seed round led by Izou Partners, with Fifth Star Funds, LongJump Ventures, WellForge, SCS Innovations, University of Chicago Booth, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, and Chicago Early Growth Ventures also stepping up. More here.

Crux Labs, a New York startup founded this year that develops software that tests and improves AI agents using standards learned from companies' subject-matter experts, raised a $6+ million round co-led by Benchstrength and Misneach, with Analog Ventures and Pareto Holdings also taking stakes. Tech Funding News has more here.

FinMaq, a 12-year-old Bogotá company that provides machinery and equipment financing to small businesses and independent workers with limited formal credit histories, raised a $6.5 million Series A round led by Accion, with additional support from Mundi Ventures, ALIVE Ventures, and 30N Ventures. The SaaS News has more here.

Neuron Industries, a startup founded this year based in Gardena, CA, that develops industrial controllers that let engineers describe machine behavior in plain English and generate readable control code, raised a $10 million seed round co-led by FCVC and Obvious Ventures, with Y Combinator, Thin Line Capital, Zee Prime Capital, and Founder Factor also anteing up. More here.

Wrapped Health, a one-year-old startup based in Washington, DC, that integrates with electronic health records so clinicians can send patients product recommendations and purchasing options, raised a $2.1 million pre-seed round co-led by Lightbank and Arteria Capital. The SaaS News has more here.

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New Funds

25madison Ventures, the early-stage venture arm of eight-year-old New York investment platform 25madison, disclosed plans to raise up to $50 million for 25Madison Ventures Fund II, with $0 reported sold so far. The firm invests from pre-seed through Series A in B2B software and healthcare. The SEC filing has more here.

Exits

Salesforce agreed to acquire Rune Technologies, a two-year-old defense software company based in Arlington, VA, that uses AI to help U.S. and allied military units forecast supply needs, allocate resources, and manage logistics in environments with limited or no connectivity. The company was founded by former Anduril leaders David Tuttle and Peter Goldsborough. Terms were not disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

Going Public

Aspen Neuroscience, an eight-year-old San Diego biotech developing a personalized cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease, raised $140.6 million in its IPO by selling roughly 9.4 million shares at $15 apiece; the stock opened at $14.70 and was trading at $11.93 Friday afternoon, down 20.7% from its IPO price. Aspen raised a total of $330+ million from investors such as OrbiMed, ARCH Venture Partners, Frazier Life Sciences, Revelation Partners, GV, Section 32, Medical Excellence Capital, and S32. BioPharma Dive has more here.

People

Binance cofounder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao asked Elon Musk to “please stop” trolling him on X after hackers stole as much as $6.3 billion from Binance, reminding Musk that Binance’s $500 million investment in the Twitter takeover left it holding SpaceX shares now worth more than $1 billion. Business Insider has more here.

Theranos whistleblower Tyler Shultz is warning that the AI boom creates fertile ground for fraud because investors may struggle to distinguish genuinely novel technology from thin “ChatGPT wrappers,” arguing that the industry risks forgetting the due-diligence lessons exposed by Theranos. TechCrunch has more here.

Pope Leo XIV is pushing back against calls to grant AI systems rights or legal personhood, arguing that “machines are tools, not persons” and warning that treating them otherwise could obscure human responsibility when AI causes harm; he also reiterated his call to “disarm” AI and keep decisions involving human life and the use of force under human control. His post on X is here, and Futurism has more here.

Cisco president Jeetu Patel is giving 27-year-old former startup founder Padmanabhan “Paddy” Krishnamurthy four weeks and unlimited AI tokens to prove that he can rewrite 98% of the company’s legacy code within 24 months. Fortune has more here.

Post-Its

Essential Reads

DoorDash says third-party AI agents including Muse, Instinct, and Fo have generated only “several hundred” orders on its platform so far, a tiny fraction of the roughly 3 million deliveries the company completes each day, suggesting agent-driven commerce remains nascent despite the hype. TechCrunch has more here.

Pro-regulation AI PACs have outspent pro-industry groups in the 2026 midterms, according to Puck, with safety-oriented groups spending about $40 million versus $36 million for Leading the Future’s network as industry-backed groups pulled back from many competitive races and shifted toward coalition-building. Puck has more here.

As AI-generated “slop” floods social feeds, luxury brands including Prada, Hermès, and Ralph Lauren are increasingly emphasizing handmade art, traditional craftsmanship, and explicitly non-AI production in their advertising as a way to signal taste and authenticity. Fast Company has more here.

Detours

Here’s a little Halloween candy trivia for you: candy corn and a surprising number of other classic sweets, including jelly beans, Milk Duds, Junior Mints, Whoppers, Lemonheads, and Sugar Babies, contain confectioner’s glaze — shellac made from resin secreted by female lac bugs as they feed on tree sap.

Speaking of Halloween, here’s how to build a toilet paper cannon.

Brain Rot

Retail Therapy

Brabus and Swedish electric-watersports company Awake have teamed up on the Shadow Carve, a $20,490 limited-edition eFoil with an 8.2 kW electric drivetrain, a top speed of 28 mph, up to two hours of ride time, and a 2,000-lumen red lighting system beneath the board.

Oh My Hours, a new iOS app aimed at curbing phone addiction, takes a deliberately blunt approach: spend too much time in an app you’ve designated as a distraction, and the entire hour gets blacked out as “lost,” creating a stark visual record of how much of your life has disappeared into scrolling.

Tips (the non-pecuniary kind)

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