📣 Headlines

• OpenAI agreed to a massive capacity deal, committing to buy $10B+ of AI compute from Cerebras to scale ChatGPT performance and availability.

• Anthropic’s momentum continues as Sequoia explores joining a proposed $25B mega-round while the company taps a former Microsoft India MD to lead its Bengaluru expansion.

• Satellite imagery analytics is heating up with fresh capital as Hydrosat raised $60M Series B and SkyFi raised $12.7M to turn earth observation data into actionable business insights.

• Dublin-based quantum startup Equal1 raised growth funding to bring silicon-based QPUs to market, with Equal1 raising $60m to deploy its quantum tech.

• Security remains a top budget line as cybersecurity funding hit a three-year high in 2025, driven by AI-enabled platforms and large rounds.

• Data licensing is becoming a direct cost of building AI products as Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon pay for enterprise access to Wikipedia for training and production use cases.

• Regulated and in-region cloud demand is rising as IBM launched a cloud platform tuned for digital sovereignty requirements to support auditable deployments.

• Defense is now a mainstream buyer for leading AI labs, with AI companies increasingly caught up in US military efforts reshaping partnerships and go-to-market strategies.

🔧 Company Engineering Blogs

Adapting the Facebook Reels RecSys AI Model Based on User Feedback (engineering​.fb​.com). Facebook Reels uses UTIS to align recommendations with true user interests via surveys, boosting niche content and engagement

How Agentforce Enabled Conversational Recommendations with AI-Driven Intent on Data 360 (engineering​.salesforce​.com). Personalization in Agentforce via AI-driven intent extraction from conversations and Data 360 real-time personalization

What AI is actually good for, according to developers (github​.blog). How developers shape AI coding tools to preserve control, flow, and expertise in editors, terminals, and reviews

AI Trends to Watch In 2026 (innovation​.ebayinc​.com). eBay leaders discuss 2026 AI trends: trust as currency, conscious commerce, developer context, and making shopping fun with AI-driven tools

The three biggest agentic commerce trends from NRF 2026 (stripe​.com). Agentic commerce trends at NRF 2026: retailer adoption, agent-ready catalogs, and first- and third-party AI shopping experiences powered by Stripe, Microsoft Copilot Checkout, and Google UCP

🧠 Culture, Values & Resilience

Speed Worshiping Culture (makeitbetter​.substack​.com). Endurance-focused founder critiques speed-driven startup culture and advocates for equitable funding and long-term, sustainable growth

21 Lessons from 14 Years at Google (oreilly​.com). Obsess over user problems, ship fast, maintain clarity, and build with empathy; lessons from Addy Osmani's Google years

How to know if that job will crush your soul (anildash​.com). Seven questions to evaluate if a job will align with values, culture, and practical compensation

K-Pop Startup Hunters (alsoblogposts​.com). K-Pop startup authenticity and founder diligence mirror a Netflix hit’s lessons on staying true to self

On Burnout (btao​.org). Burnout reflection: a personal account of leaving a startup, recognizing workaholism, and rebuilding balance and interests

🧑‍🚀 Founder Journeys & CEO

Founder Stories: Mike and Albert Lee of MyFitnessPal (davelu​.com). How two Korean American brothers from upstate New York bootstrapped MyFitnessPal into a top app, built a large user base, then sold to Under Armour

The CEO Job Changes After Product-Market Fit (patricksalyer​.substack​.com). Shifts in the CEO role after product-market fit: from doing the work to designing the machine for scale

Vercel: How One Founder Built a Nine Billion Dollar Cloud for Developers (wearefounders​.uk). Self-taught developer Guillermo Rauch builds Vercel into a $9B cloud for developers with Next.js elevation and open-source roots

Meet John, Matine, and Edip Yuksel, founders of Beltways (climatecap​.substack​.com). Founders John, Matine, and Edip Yuksel of Beltways discuss accelerators, climate impact, and road to deploying the world’s first walkways at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport

CTO to founder (ilearnt​.com). CTO to founder explores the mindset shift, hiring, risk, founder dynamics, and customer-driven focus for CTOs becoming founders

Starting Companies (makeitbetter​.substack​.com). Becca Egbert outlines starting a company using The Coach framework, embracing messy real paths over polished branding

On Being a Founder (daniel​.industries). Founder anxiety and resilience: leading a long‑lived company, mentorship, sleep, and strategic focus

Everyone has a boss (jonpauluritis​.com). Entrepreneurship evolves with the internet era; bosses shift from micro-managers to talent-retention, loneliness, and strategic risk

👥 Hiring & Engineering Orgs

How Coinbase Scaled Their Hiring to 150 Engineers Per Month (newsletter​.eng-leadership​.com). How Coinbase scaled hiring to 150 engineers per month through centralized, standardized processes and data-driven panels

The Most Important Teams in Tech (staysaasy​.com). Engineering and sales dominate SaaS, driving product decisions, execution, and company health

Beyond Senior: Consider the staff path! (hawksley​.org). Staff engineers at GitHub broaden scope across teams, guiding strategy, architecture, and execution with archetypes and impact

The B2B Product Leadership Delusion (elezea​.com). Explores B2B product leadership pitfalls, delusions, and治理 strategies, with focus on leadership, product orgs, and organizational design

No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams | Antoine Boulanger (williballenthin​.com). No management yet? Early-stage engineering teams face anti-patterns around governance, culture, and ownership—avoid over- or under- structuring

The G-word (betterthanrandom​.substack​.com). Pragmatic data governance breakdown—Definition, Implementation, and Accountability, with SaaS metrics, YAML config, and org alignment insights

Build buy-in for your 2026 strategy (leaddev​.com). Strategies for 2026: building buy-in, ownership, and transparent communication to align engineering teams

🔍 Sales, SEO & Comms

Catching stars (blog​.val​.town). Catching stars: automating inbound lead qualification from GitHub activity with OpenAI agents to identify potential hires or customers for seed-stage B2B SaaS startups

[Coulisses] Ma technique N°1 pour trouver des clients (boardmembers​.substack​.com). Techniques de prospection et de vente pour solopreneurs: cas clients, lives, et signalisations IA

Founders’ Guide to Comms (molodtsov​.me). Founders share a blueprint for building founder-led comms, pitching media, and sustaining daily updates using personal voices

Pourquoi poster plus ne te fera pas grandir (alexrafaitin​.substack​.com). Tease–Test–Multiplier–Repeat: building a Love Brand with a Viral Flywheel for consistent content traction

The new EU Pay Transparency Directive: a hidden opportunity for Job Boards (alexanderchukovski​.com). EU pay transparency boosts job boards through salary data for SEO, Google Jobs, and multi-language extraction in a hybrid LLM/ML pipeline

Unlocking Business Growth: The Vital Role of SEO (jdstraughan​.com). Strategic SEO growth for brands using technical optimization, intent-driven content, local SEO, video, and AI-assisted insights

📈 PMF, Strategy & Scaling

The Secret To Scaling a $10M+ Business Broken Into 3 Stages | 111 (nathanbarry​.com). Chandler Barry discusses scaling Self Publishing School from $1M to $10M+ with metrics, product-market fit, and people strategies

O Tintim não tem meta para 2026 (moacirmoda​.substack​.com). Entrepreneurship, SaaS growth, meta-setting, and risk of incentives; founder discusses avoiding fixed MRR targets and balancing acquisition versus retention

The Real Cost of Launching a SaaS MVP in 2026 (wearefounders​.uk). Bootstrapped MVPs average $2,800 to launch; AI tools cut coding time, but API costs rise; organic community growth beats paid ads

A Go-To-Market Strategy Framework for Product Managers in the AI Era (aakashg​.com). Actionable GTM framework for AI-era PMs covering ICP, value proposition, positioning, growth engines, pricing, launch plans, and global expansion

Vision defined (b​.h4x​.zip). Vision vs. dream: fog-clearing, market arenas, measurable experiments, and bounded missions for founders outlining actionable steps

Growth Is Now a Trust Problem (elenaverna​.com). Trust-based growth reshapes acquisition, retention, and product experience for AI-era SaaS, with user-led content and community at center

💸 VC, Funds & Power

Social Leverage Raises $85 Million Fund to Double Down on Seed-Stage Investing (businessofsandiego​.substack​.com). Social Leverage raises its fifth seed fund to back fintech, vertical AI, and other early-stage startups, led by Matt Ober

[GE] Getting back to first principles (aletteraday​.substack​.com). Kevin Gee outlines a founder-first, first-principles investment framework inspired by OpenView’s one-pager method

What We Look for In Applications (speedrun​.substack​.com). a16z speedrun investors discuss signals, validation, team dynamics, and how to improve applications using concise communication and AI tooling

When big tech plays like Man United: How ‘kill zones’ threaten Europe’s future (oii​.ox​.ac​.uk). Tech giants' acquisitions suppress startups and VC in Europe, echoing football transfers and threatening digital sovereignty

Should VCs Control Your Startup’s Lawyers? (siliconhillslawyer​.com). Startup lawyers should be independent from VCs to balance governance and negotiate for founders and shareholders

Partnering with Sandstone: An AI-Native Platform for In-House Legal Teams (sequoiacap​.com). Sandstone founder story and Sequoia backing: AI-native legal workflow platform built for in-house teams, led by Nick Fleisher and Jarryd Strydom, with McKinsey roots and early MVP development

two AI researchers are now funded by Solana (ghuntley​.com). Solana funds two AI researchers via BagsApp platform, detailing creator funding dynamics and potential income through the Ralph Wiggum meme token

Capital Builds Infrastructure. Ideas Build Possibility. (koinsights​.substack​.com). VC power shapes the future; ideas, narratives, and language as infrastructure for collective perception and investment

🏦 IPOs & Public Markets

What Does It Take to IPO? (onlycfo​.io). IPO readiness, timelines, and finance team prep for public markets, focusing on CFO/Controller roles, SOX, and S-1 requirements

Robinhood vs Coinbase：谁是下一个 10 倍股？ #155 (web3brand​.io). Robinhood vs Coinbase: 10x potential through 2025-26; tokenized stocks, prediction markets, and B2B infrastructure vie for dominance

2026 Predictions (nextbigteng​.substack​.com). Four predictions for 2026: IPO/M&A momentum, defense tech mega IPOs, continual learning in AI infra, and embodied AI wars surpassing LLM battles

🧰 Dev Tools & Cloud Ops

Notes from CTO School Tampa Bay’s fireside chat with Leon Kuperman, CTO of CAST AI (globalnerdy​.com). CTO Leon Kuperman discusses scaling CAST AI with two-pizza teams, DevEx focus, blameless postmortems, and AI-driven Kubernetes automation

Tools I Love: mise (mise-en-place) (blog​.eliperkins​.com). Tools I Love: mise-en-place for switching toolchains, git-pile workflows, and practical notes on release notes and codebase contributions

Make nice tools (paul-samuels​.com). Developer experience insights from a macOS SwiftUI tool evolving into Compose Desktop, with Docker, SSO, and autoupdate lessons

The gap between Docker Compose and production Kubernetes (eric​.mann​.blog). Explains translating Docker Compose concepts to Kubernetes for PHP developers using Laravel, focusing on disposability and 12-factor app patterns

🤖 AI Product & Engineering

Technology versus Company Culture (newbry​.bearblog​.dev). Explores real-time cultural audits, AI-driven process validation, standups, and Memex-style transparency for high-performing teams using AI, vector storage, and tools like Jira, Slack/Teams

Influencer Series: Where Enterprise AI Is Really Working and Why, with Salesforce AI Leader Manjeet Singh (alchemistaccelerator​.com). Enterprise AI ROI insights, vertical apps, toolchains, and defensible startups with Salesforce AI leader Manjeet Singh across two streams of enterprise AI adoption

Brex’s AI Hail Mary — With CTO James Reggio (latent​.space). Brex CTO James Reggio discusses AI-driven culture, multi-agent platform, Mastra/MCP stack, and 10-person AI team accelerating to 40k+ users

@adlrocha - Open Source is Dead. Long Live Open Execution (adlrocha​.substack​.com). Explores open-source sustainability amid AI, proposing Glass Box Protocol and code-as-capability using Wasm for metered execution

On the impact of AI on the software engineering industry (artm​.dev). AI coding tools driving productivity and disruption in software engineering, with leaders like Linus Torvalds, DHH, Kent Beck, Martin Fowler weighing in