Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Sources: SoftBank invites more banks to join its $40B loan backing its OpenAI investment, requiring them to commit ~$5B each; SoftBank has already invested $30B (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
Sources: SoftBank invites more banks to join its $40B loan backing its OpenAI investment, requiring them to commit ~$5B each; SoftBank has already invested $30B  —  More banks are being invited to join SoftBank Group Corp.'s $40 billion loan backing its investment in US tech giant OpenAI …

ByteDance launches its Seedance 2.0 video model to enterprise clients in 100+ countries, excluding the US amid legal disputes, after a February launch in China (Juro Osawa/The Information)

Juro Osawa / The Information:
ByteDance launches its Seedance 2.0 video model to enterprise clients in 100+ countries, excluding the US amid legal disputes, after a February launch in China  —  ByteDance's cloud computing unit has made the company's Seedance 2. AI video generation model available globally to enterprise customers …

PitchBook: US growth and late-stage venture funds raised $23.6B YTD, up from $7.4B in 2025 and above the totals for any of the past 12 years, amid the AI boom (Yuliya Chernova/Wall Street Journal)

Yuliya Chernova / Wall Street Journal:
PitchBook: US growth and late-stage venture funds raised $23.6B YTD, up from $7.4B in 2025 and above the totals for any of the past 12 years, amid the AI boom  —  U.S.-based growth and late-stage venture funds raised a record $23.6 billion this year so far, according to PitchBook

Q&A with ElevenLabs co-founder Mati Staniszewski on how audio models work, the company's business model, the conversational Turing Test, voice agents, and more (John Collison/Cheeky Pint)

John Collison / Cheeky Pint:
Q&A with ElevenLabs co-founder Mati Staniszewski on how audio models work, the company's business model, the conversational Turing Test, voice agents, and more  —  Mati Staniszewski is the co-founder of ElevenLabs, the research company making audio accessible across languages and voices.

Asia's startup funding rose 93% YoY to $27.4B in Q1, the highest quarterly total in 3+ years, with Chinese startups raising $16.5B and Indian startups $3.8B (Joanna Glasner/Crunchbase News)

Joanna Glasner / Crunchbase News:
Asia's startup funding rose 93% YoY to $27.4B in Q1, the highest quarterly total in 3+ years, with Chinese startups raising $16.5B and Indian startups $3.8B  —  Asia's startup funding swung higher in the first quarter of this year, boosted by a rebound in Chinese venture investment.