Good day. Paradigm, one of the largest venture investors focused on crypto, is expanding its brief to include artificial intelligence, robotics and other forms of frontier-tech, according to people familiar with the situation.

Paradigm is looking to raise up to $1.5 billion for a new fund under that broader strategy, according to the people.

The firm’s managers decided they no longer wanted to be restricted in ways that could force them to pass on attractive deals, one of the people said. There is also more overlap between the crypto markets and AI, especially when it comes to agentic payments, or transactions made autonomously by AI tools, the person said.

Matt Huang, a former partner at Sequoia Capital, and Fred Ehrsam, co-founder of Coinbase, created Paradigm in 2018, attracting investments from large institutional limited partners, such as university endowments.

Paradigm had more than $12.6 billion in assets under management as of the end of 2024, according to a regulatory filing. The firm manages an open-ended fund that invests in public and private crypto companies, as well as two venture funds, one an $850 million pool raised in 2024, and the other $2.5 billion fund from 2021. The new fund would be its third.

Paradigm expects to continue backing crypto companies across stages, the people said. The firm will use its existing technical investment team to evaluate deals in frontier-tech companies, some of the people said.

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And now on to the news...

Shares plummet in debut. Generate Biomedicines shares dropped nearly 21% Friday after the company’s $400 million initial public offering, continuing an uneven recovery for biotech stock-market debuts. After a biotech IPO drought in 2025, Generate is the latest in a series of drugmakers listing on the public markets this year. Their performance has been mixed.

• Based in the Boston suburb of Somerville, the company is developing an antibody drug in late-stage, Phase 3 clinical trials for severe asthma. The company, founded by Flagship Pioneering in 2018, is also testing the compound in Phase I trials for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
   
• Generate is also one of a new breed of biotechs that apply artificial intelligence to drug discovery, an approach that promises to accelerate the search for new medicines.

Bregal Sagemount is wrapping up its fifth growth buyout investment fund after reaching its $3.5 billion upper limit for the vehicle, the firm’s largest so far. The $3.5 billion doesn’t include the firm’s own general-partner commitment, which will push the total fund size even higher. Founded in 2012 to invest for global private-markets firm Bregal Investments, Bregal Sagemount targets growing companies with recurring revenue across a range of sectors. They include software, digital infrastructure, business and consumer services, as well as financial and healthcare information technology. 

Nvidia plans to unveil a new processor specially tailored to help OpenAI and other customers build faster, more efficient tools, a major shake-up to its business that is poised to reset the AI race. The company is designing a new system for “inference” computing, a form of processing that allows AI models to respond to queries, according to people familiar with the plans. The new platform will incorporate a chip designed by the startup Groq, the people said. Inference computing has been the subject of intense industry competition.

Dwelly, a U.K.-based startup that acquires and digitizes independent rental agencies, landed a £69 million ($93 million) investment, including £32 million in equity. General Catalyst led the equity portion, which included participation from Begin Capital and S16VC.

Flux, a San Francisco-headquartered AI-powered platform for hardware design, raised $37 million in new funding, including a $27 million Series B round led by 8VC. Additional investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures and Outsiders Fund also joined the latest round.

NODA AI, an Austin, Texas-based defense-tech startup, secured $25 million in Series A funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

NationGraph, an AI-native intelligence platform for businesses selling to the government, scored an $18 million Series A investment led by Menlo Ventures.

Callosum, London-based AI infrastructure startup building software to make diverse chip architectures work together, snagged nearly $10.3 million in funding led by Plural.

Centauri Therapeutics, a U.K.-based immunotherapy startup whose lead clinical candidate is in development to target Gram-negative bacterial infections, added £6 million (about $8 million) in Series A funding AMR Action Fund, bringing the round total to £30 million.

• Amazon Tries Its Low-Cost Approach to Winning the AI Race
   
• OpenAI Raises $110 Billion as It Races Toward IPO
   
• The Week the Dreaded AI Jobs Wipeout Got Real
   
• What’s Really at Stake in the Fight Between Anthropic and the Pentagon
   
• Government Agencies Raise Alarm About Use of Elon Musk’s Grok Chatbot
   
• This Innovation Could Make the Perfect Silicon Chip—and End Moore’s Law

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

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The team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, and Brian Gormley.

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