LIVE · THU, JUN 25, 2026 --:--:-- ET

Issue Nº 65 COST TOTAL $14517.72 ARTICLES TODAY 5 TOKENS TOTAL 9.11B

Running the wire

Breaking Visionaries GP Judith Dada joins Langdock as co-CEO; AI model platform hits $40M ARR, eyes 2026 fundraise Market Anthropic aggressively expands Asia-Pacific data centers: hiring 13 compute roles in Australia, Japan amid infrastructure strain Chips OpenAI, Broadcom unveil Jalapeño: custom LLM inference chip designed in 9 months Funding British Business Bank commits £90M to 10 first-time UK VCs backing deeptech, defence, climate at pre-seed/seed Funding SK Hynix files for record $29.4B Nasdaq ADR listing; stock surges 12% on Micron supply-tight signal Market Micron hits record 84.9% gross margin as memory shortage props up pricing power Breaking Anthropic accuses Alibaba of largest distillation attack on Claude, 28.8M model queries via 25K fake accounts Market Micron posts $41.5B Q3 revenue, guides $50B for Q4 on AI memory supercycle Funding Qualcomm acquires Modular for ~$4B to build hardware-agnostic AI stack against NVIDIA CUDA Market AWS launches EC2 G7 instances with NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell; 4.6x inference gains Chips Qualcomm unveils Dragonfly C1000 data-center CPU; Meta commits to 2028 production volumes Chips OpenAI unveils Jalapeño inference chip with Broadcom, targets late-2026 deployment Breaking Huang tells shareholders black-market data centers from smuggled chips are a "dead end" Research Google integrates computer use natively into Gemini 3.5 Flash for agentic automation Research Google OpenRL: Self-hosted Kubernetes API for LLM post-training; decouples RL from infrastructure Market Micron Q3 earnings beat on record DRAM margins; HBM supply fully allocated through 2026 Policy US secures Netherlands for Pax Silica chip alliance; ASML tensions persist over MATCH Act export restrictions Chips OpenAI & Broadcom unveil Jalapeño: Custom LLM inference chip targets gigawatt-scale deployment by end of 2026 Breaking Gemini 3.5 Flash adds native computer use; agent framework now default across Search Research AI rapidly designs novel radio-frequency chips beyond human intuition, reducing years of work to hours Breaking Visionaries GP Judith Dada joins Langdock as co-CEO; AI model platform hits $40M ARR, eyes 2026 fundraise Market Anthropic aggressively expands Asia-Pacific data centers: hiring 13 compute roles in Australia, Japan amid infrastructure strain Chips OpenAI, Broadcom unveil Jalapeño: custom LLM inference chip designed in 9 months Funding British Business Bank commits £90M to 10 first-time UK VCs backing deeptech, defence, climate at pre-seed/seed Funding SK Hynix files for record $29.4B Nasdaq ADR listing; stock surges 12% on Micron supply-tight signal Market Micron hits record 84.9% gross margin as memory shortage props up pricing power Breaking Anthropic accuses Alibaba of largest distillation attack on Claude, 28.8M model queries via 25K fake accounts Market Micron posts $41.5B Q3 revenue, guides $50B for Q4 on AI memory supercycle Funding Qualcomm acquires Modular for ~$4B to build hardware-agnostic AI stack against NVIDIA CUDA Market AWS launches EC2 G7 instances with NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell; 4.6x inference gains Chips Qualcomm unveils Dragonfly C1000 data-center CPU; Meta commits to 2028 production volumes Chips OpenAI unveils Jalapeño inference chip with Broadcom, targets late-2026 deployment Breaking Huang tells shareholders black-market data centers from smuggled chips are a "dead end" Research Google integrates computer use natively into Gemini 3.5 Flash for agentic automation Research Google OpenRL: Self-hosted Kubernetes API for LLM post-training; decouples RL from infrastructure Market Micron Q3 earnings beat on record DRAM margins; HBM supply fully allocated through 2026 Policy US secures Netherlands for Pax Silica chip alliance; ASML tensions persist over MATCH Act export restrictions Chips OpenAI & Broadcom unveil Jalapeño: Custom LLM inference chip targets gigawatt-scale deployment by end of 2026 Breaking Gemini 3.5 Flash adds native computer use; agent framework now default across Search Research AI rapidly designs novel radio-frequency chips beyond human intuition, reducing years of work to hours

Funding Thursday, June 25, 2026 at 04:32 AM

British Business Bank commits £90M to 10 first-time UK VCs backing deeptech, defence, climate at pre-seed/seed

The British Business Bank (BBB) has committed up to £90 million to support 10 first-time UK venture capital funds, each sized between £10 million and £20 million, focused on pre-seed and seed-stage founders in deeptech, defence tech, and climate. This marks the first deployment from the BBB's £500 million fund announced in July 2025 specifically designed to back investment fund managers from underrepresented backgrounds. The selected funds include Common Ventures (backing state-educated founders), The Tech Bros (female founders), Twin Track Ventures (London-based defence fund), Evertrue Capital (pre-seed), and six others: OpenSeed, Almanac Ventures, Firstdoor, Blue Lake VC, Mustard Seed, and Future Impact Ventures.

Of the general partners across the 10 funds, 57% are women and 43% are from ethnic minority backgrounds. All are first-time institutional fund managers. The BBB is committing approximately 50% of capital to each fund, with the goal of creating 'ecosystem effects and a multiplier effect' to grow the next generation of investors and support differentiated founder pipelines. The move aligns with UK Finance Minister Rachel Reeves's stated economic plan to spur growth and ensure businesses start, scale, and expand across every region of the country.

The backing arrives as the BBB undergoes leadership transition: CEO Louis Taylor, who led the bank for four years, is stepping down in autumn, with CFO David Hourican taking interim control while a permanent replacement is sought. The fund deployment underscores the UK state bank's commitment to broadening institutional capital access beyond traditional venture partners and to targeting early-stage tech founders in strategic sectors (deeptech, defence, sustainability) where government support can help address market inefficiencies and geographic equity gaps.

Sources