Saudi Arabia and the UAE are *also* reportedly buying up thousands of high-performance Nvidia chips

The $900,000 AI job is here.

Testimony from Sam Bankman-Fried’s trusted inner circle will be used to convict him, prosecutors said today.

Michael Burry, the famous "Big Short" hedge fund manager best known for predicting the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, has bet close to $1.6 billion on a stock market crash, loading up on put options against the U.S. stock market. 😬 More here.

It's a circle-of-life moment for a lot of founders: Startups are dying, and VCs aren't saving them.

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Anthropic, the two-year-old San Francisco startup founded by OpenAI vets that says it's building an AI system to enable corporations to manage tasks, including searching, generating answers, automating workflows, coding, and processing text in natural conversations, raised a $100 million from SK Telecom. The company has raised a total of $1.5 billion. TechCrunch has more here.

Caelux, a nine-year-old startup based in Pasadena, Ca., that claims it can improve the performance of any new crystalline silicon module, potentially making solar energy more cost-effective, raised a $12 million Series A round led by Temasek, with Reliance New Energy, Khosla Ventures, Mitsui Fudosan, and Fine Structure Ventures also taking part. More here.

11x AI, a one-year-old London startup that aims to create AI personae that can handle repetitive tasks, raised a $2 million pre-seed round. Project A Ventures was the lead investor, with participation from the scout funds of Sequoia, Accel, and Atomic as well as NoLabel Ventures and Tiny VC. Tech.eu has more here.

Altos Radar, a California startup founded this year that aims to replace lidar with 4D millimeter wave radar, raised a $3.5 million round. Investors included ZhenFund, Monad Ventures, and Yifan Li (founder and CEO of Hesai, a major lidar manufacturer). TechCrunch has more here.

AssetCool, a seven-year-old UK startup that has developed a durable photonic materials-based coating in order to cool down overhead power lines, raised a $2.85 million Series A round led by Northern Gritstone, with previous investor Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund also contributing. Tech.eu has more here.

Braid, a San Francisco startup that offers tools for social media creators, raised a $6.8 million seed round. Andreessen Horowitz and Initialized Capital co-led the deal. BuiltinSF has more here.

MixLab, a six-year-old New York startup that manages the delivery of pet prescriptions to consumers, raised a $10 million round led by Vanterra Ventures, with Lakehouse Ventures also chipping in. The company has raised a total of $40.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Robomart, a five-year-old Los Angeles startup that is developing a self-driving vehicle for the purposes of delivering a cross section of a store directly to consumers, raised $2 million in seed funding led by W Ventures, with Wasabi Ventures, SOSV/HAX, and Hustle Fund also pitching in. The company has raised a total of $3.4 million. TechCrunch has more here.

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Activist investor Elliott Investment Management has dissolved its stake in payments giant PayPal, according to a filing with the SEC flagged by Reuters. The bet didn't pan out, is the short story. Though PayPal soared during the pandemic and consumers turned to online shopping, its growth has slowed since and its stock has plummeted. More here.

SoftBank is reportedly in talks to buy the 25% stake in chip design company Arm that it doesn’t own. The seller? The Vision Fund, the $100 billion investment vehicle that SoftBank launched with great fanfare in 2017 (and whose subsequent trajectory has been well documented). The sale would be a win for Vision Fund investors, whose biggest backers are Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala. SoftBank is preparing to list Arm next month at a valuation of $60 billion to $70 billion. As notes Reuters -- which has the scoop -- they could sell their stake on the open market but would have to wait a year or two given the size of the stake. More here.

Per The Information, asset manager Yieldstreet is nearing a deal to buy Cadre, a real estate investment firm whose cofounder and CEO, Ryan Williams, earlier outlined a vision for Cadre at a StrictlyVC event as the "world’s first digital stock market for alternative assets." The nine-year-old, New York-based outfit funnels investors' money into apartment and office buildings. More here.

Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein tells CNBC he couldn’t imagine returning to his old firm, disputing a news report that said Blankfein offered to return in some capacity. “My conversation with him was, I offered to be helpful,” said Blankfein, who expressed support for successor David Solomon. “I never used the word ‘return’.”

David Limp, Amazon's devices chief, is planning to retire in the coming months in the latest departure of a longstanding top executive since Andy Jassy took over as CEO of the e-commerce giant two years ago. The WSJ has more here.

The founding partner of European venture firm DN Capital -- Nenad Marovac -- was included in the 2022 edition of the Forbes Midas List Europe and was shortlisted for another industry award. But "away from the glitzy awards shows and satisfied LPs, allegations from former employees paint a far darker picture of Marovac’s conduct in the workplace," says Sifted in a new report. The outlet says it spoke to 18 people who worked with DN Capital over a period ranging from 2003 to 2022 and that seven alleged workplace misconduct at the firm, including bullying, sexualized comments, and physical touching. More here. 

Former Vanguard Group CEO Bill McNabb has joined the venture capital firm Venrock as an exclusive advisor to guide the firm’s future investments in wealth management technology. Investment News has more here.

Away, the direct-to-consumer luggage brand that has raised more than $200 million in venture capital, quietly laid off 22 employees in May, including its chief commercial officer, according to Pitchbook. The staff cuts, which amounted to a roughly 8% reduction in Away's corporate workforce, were reported today for the first time even though they took place several months ago. Pitchbook has more here.

Cryptocurrency-focused media company CoinDesk is laying off 16% of its internal staff, according to the WSJ. The outlet reported last month that a syndicate of investors was in the final stages of sealing a deal for CoinDesk and that the transaction would have an enterprise value of about $125 million. Crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group, which acquired CoinDesk in 2016 for $500,000, is expected to retain a stake in the company's media, events, data and indexes business as part of the deal. More here.

An indicator of daily user numbers at Twitter rival Threads -- daily active users on Android mobile devices -- has fallen by almost 80% in just over three weeks, according to Similiarweb. The FT has more here.

According to CBRE, AI firms account for nearly 18% of the 4.5 million square feet of office space tenants looked to rent or renew in the second quarter of this year in San Francisco. The WSJ has more here.

It's not just the Chinese internet giants. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are also reportedly buying up thousands of the high-performance Nvidia chips crucial for building AI software, joining a global AI arms race. 

Please God, let this be the end. (More here and here.)

This rabbit really deserves its freedom. ⚡⚡

When trucks fly.

Predictive texts for the conflict averse.

Tesla has added two lower spec versions of its Model S and X electric vehicles in the U.S. and Canada, slashing the price by $10,000 as competition intensifies. The cheaper versions come with less range and slightly slower acceleration than the base models. Bloomberg has more here.

Owing to a dearth of inventory for ultrawealthy buyers, a duplex in Manhattan's Hudson Square that briefly listed just last year for $35 million is now listed for $50 million(!).

Affinity, the relationship intelligence platform for dealmakers, is hosting its second annual Campfire Conference in San Francisco’s historic Presidio on September 28. The event will feature speakers from 8VC, Pear VC, Sands Capital, SOSV, and more; check out the full agenda here.