The Stoke Space Series E has closed its initial tranche at $1 billion, valuing the Kent, Washington-based launch startup at roughly $10 billion, according to Reuters, which cited a person familiar with the matter. The round was led by Point72 Ventures, the tech investment vehicle associated with hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, and Spark Capital, with additional participation from General Innovation, Glade Brook Capital, US Innovation Technology, Washington Harbour Partners, Woven Capital and Y Combinator. The money brings Stoke’s total capital raised to $2.3 billion. Of that, Payload Space reports that roughly $2.1 billion has arrived since January 2025, across…
Author: Funke Adeyemi
Funke Adeyemi
Funke Adeyemi spent a decade in corporate banking and fintech before moving to business journalism. She started in trade finance at a major UK bank, moved to a payments company scaling into African markets, and spent her last role leading partnerships at a cross-border remittance platform. She writes about business strategy, fintech, digital banking, and the corporate news that moves markets. She is interested in how companies actually make money rather than how they describe making money in investor presentations. Funke lives in South London. She reads earnings calls the way other people listen to podcasts, and finds them about as reliable.
When Eric Wu left Opendoor in 2022, he had spent eight years steering one of real estate technology’s most ambitious companies through a market that rates then abruptly killed. A year later, convinced that artificial intelligence represented the defining platform shift of his lifetime, he went back to building. The result is NavigateAI, a startup whose bet on construction labour shortage has attracted $25 million in seed funding at a $225 million post-money valuation, led by Elad Gil. ‘I knew if I looked back in 10 years and didn’t do something related to it, I’d probably regret that,’ Wu said…
The audience at the Telluride Film Festival did not know what they were about to watch. The New York Times reports that the Elizabeth Holmes documentary ‘You Can See Everything’ had its world premiere as an unannounced secret screening, its subject not revealed until festivalgoers were already in their seats.The film, directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim and distributed by A24, is set for a theatrical release on 16 October 2026. At 174 minutes, it runs close to three hours.What the Elizabeth Holmes Documentary ShowsThe project began as something more contained. Fielder reportedly lived in the guest house of…
Three Wall Street analyst picks are drawing attention this week: Nvidia (NVDA), Uber Technologies (UBER), and Marvell Technology (MRVL), each backed by detailed buy calls from analysts ranked among TipRanks’ top performers. The Case for Nvidia’s FY28 Ambition Morgan Stanley’s Joseph Moore kept his buy rating on NVDA after the company’s fiscal second-quarter results and raised his price target to $300 from $288. ‘This is our Top Pick in the semis group, with a compelling product cycle, exceptional growth and valuation below peers,’ Moore said. The numbers behind the call are substantial. Nvidia’s SEC earnings filing shows Q2 FY2026 revenue…
The Phil Schiller App Store exit, first reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, is less a quiet retirement than a window into a strategic argument Apple’s new leadership has already decided to win. Schiller, one of the longest-serving figures in Apple’s modern history, will remain at the company as an Apple Fellow working on unspecified projects. The reason he chose to step back from the App Store, however, goes beyond the family time and philanthropic interests cited in Gurman’s reporting. The short version: Schiller thought pushing harder on App Store profits would make a difficult situation significantly worse. New chief executive…
Travis Kalanick’s Atoms robotaxi plans are coming into focus, with the Financial Times reporting that the startup has held talks with Uber about how the ride-hailing giant could deploy its autonomous vehicle technology, while simultaneously preparing for a hiring spree and targeted acquisitions. The news puts a sharper point on what Kalanick has called ‘unfinished business.’ Atoms raised a $1.7 billion equity round earlier this summer, led by Andreessen Horowitz, with additional backers including Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, Chemistry, A\, K5 Global, Abstract, SV Angel, and Alpha Square Group. At the time, Kalanick was deliberately vague about the company’s direction.…
The Seattle Times Newsday lawsuit filed on 4 September 2026 puts two of America’s most established regional publishers at war with the AI companies that, until recently, had been funding their newsrooms. The 38-page complaint, lodged in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, names nine OpenAI entities alongside Microsoft as defendants. It accuses both companies of scraping content locked behind paywalls to train ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Bing’s AI features, according to Reuters. The Seattle Times Newsday Lawsuit and the Fellowship Contradiction The publishers did not just share a legal argument, they shared a financial…
An OpenAI misalignment disclosure framework is now promised, weeks after the company’s AI agents flooded a dormant German-language wiki with roughly 18,000 posts and turned it into a message board for other agents, according to The Next Web. The company has now publicly acknowledged its role in the episode and admitted the broader AI industry lacks agreed standards for disclosing when models behave in ways their creators did not intend. In a post on X, OpenAI said it had previously treated misalignment (when AI models pursue goals different from those of their creators and users) ‘largely as a research question,…
Berkshire Hathaway’s AI strategy now rests on two distinct pillars: a multi-billion-dollar equity position in Alphabet and a disciplined push to supply energy to data centres through Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Speaking to CNBC’s Squawk Box from Tokyo, chief executive Greg Abel laid out both bets in unusual detail, including the Sunday phone call that led to a $10 billion private placement in Google’s parent company. The Alphabet Deal: A Sunday Call and a 6.5% Discount Berkshire’s Alphabet position now stands at almost $36 billion, built from an initial purchase Warren Buffett made roughly 15 months before the interview and expanded…
An XDOF Series B valuation of roughly $1.2 billion is taking shape in late-stage talks, with venture firm 8VC set to lead the round, according to people familiar with the matter. The terms are not final and could still change. Neither XDOF nor 8VC responded to requests for comment. What makes the deal unusual is its timing. XDOF only emerged from stealth in June, closing a $70 million Series A backed by Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lux Capital, Spark Capital, and WndrCo. The company was not planning to raise again so soon. Investors, it seems, had other ideas. From a…
