Good day. Launching a startup has become the preferred path for more computer science graduates, new research shows.

Plenty of capital and venture interest, as well as automated coding advancements, have spurred many grads to go the founder route. At the same time, declining opportunities for landing a job as employers favor more experienced hires in fields like software engineering have led many to seek ways to be their own boss.

The share of 2025 computer-science graduates who were employed identifying as founders doubled to 6%, compared with 2.9% in the 2022 class, across 20 U.S. universities, according to a new report by venture firm SignalFire. The report analyzed LinkedIn profiles for more than 10,000 bachelor’s recipients in each year.

Stanford University, a longtime hub of entrepreneurship, had the highest percentage of all 2025 CS graduates as founders in the SignalFire study, at almost 17%. Next on the list were the California Institute of Technology and Harvard University, with each having slightly more than 8% of its 2025 computer science class becoming founders.

“We’ve been backing more dropouts and recent grads than ever this year,” said Jeremy Fiance, founder and managing partner of House Fund, a venture firm that backs startups launched by students, alumni and faculty of UC Berkeley.

“I’ve also felt that more than ever what I see happening is students will start startups and they don’t even necessarily know why they are doing it,” he said.

Read the full article. 

And now on to the news...

Satya Nadella’s critique. The chief executive of Microsoft is joining a growing effort to take on artificial-intelligence giants OpenAI and Anthropic, outlining in an interview his vision for the next wave of the AI boom, one involving cheaper models, more user control and political messaging that wins the public’s trust. Nadella offered a blistering critique of how the race for AI supremacy has taken shape, with a small group of companies capturing the value of the world-changing technology as they make dire prophecies about safety risks and job losses, insisting they need vast resources for limitless expansion.

Tech executives have touted this as the year in which inference—the process by which AI models use computing firepower to respond to queries—will eat up the entire AI industry. That is starting to bear fruit. Baseten, which specializes in providing software and computing capacity to companies tapping in to lower-cost AI models, is finalizing a $1.5 billion fundraising round. It will be a dual-tiered structure, with some investors putting in money at an $11 billion valuation and others at a $13 billion valuation, according to Baseten.

• Altimeter Capital, Conviction, Spark Capital, Sands Capital and Wellington Management are co-leading the Baseten round.

The memory armageddon has arrived. From smartphones to the Sony PS5 Pro (which rose in price to $900 from $750 in April) to PCs, buyers of consumer electronics are getting hit. The primary driver is the skyrocketing cost of memory and storage chips, especially those known as DRAM and NAND flash memory, which are essential for transferring data and storing information on devices. These chips are the same ones craved by artificial-intelligence companies, which use them to help train and run large language models, coding agents and other tools.

Reading the AI boom. Kevin Warsh’s first assignment as Federal Reserve chairman isn’t what to do about interest rates. It is figuring out what kind of moment he’s in. The economy he inherited can be read two ways, and they turn on the same development: the artificial-intelligence build-out.

Funds

Venture and growth investor Anti Fund closed a $100 million growth fund, bringing the firm’s assets under management to more than $180 million.

People

Parul Singh joined 645 Ventures as investment partner in the San Francisco office. She focuses on investments in the AI stack, including developer tools, infrastructure software and enterprise AI.

Private credit platform Percent appointed Prath Reddy as chief executive officer. He succeeds Nelson Chu, who will transition to executive chairman of the board.

Agentic AI security remediation platform Furl.ai appointed Joe Moles as chief technology officer. He most recently served as CTO at Red Canary.

Exits

Accenture is expanding into industrial cybersecurity with its agreement to acquire a majority stake in Dragos, and the entirety of runZero and NetRise, in a deal that has a combined value of about $4.18 billion.  

Biogen plans to expand its immunology pipeline with an agreement to purchase RayThera for up to $1 billion. The deal value consists of an upfront payment and payments contingent on achieving clinical and regulatory milestones.

Odyssey, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based AI lab focused on general-purpose world models, scored $310 million in Series B funding at a $1.45 billion valuation. Natural Capital led the round, which included participation from Amazon, AMD Ventures, GV, EQT and others.

Atom Computing, a Berkeley, Calif.-based developer of large-scale quantum computers, has raised a total of more than $300 million, including a $100 million Series C round from investors including Third Point Ventures and DCVC.

Dream, a Tel Aviv-headquartered startup building sovereign AI infrastructure for governments, secured a $260 million investment, bringing the company’s valuation up to $3 billion. Bicycle Capital and Group 11 co-led the round, which included additional support from Antler, Bain Capital Ventures and Tru Arrow Partners.

Twenty, an Arlington, Va.-based cyber warfare startup, raised $100 million in Series B funding at a $1 billion valuation. Accel led the investment, which included participation from Point72 Ventures and Caffeinated Capital.

Nura Bio, a South San Francisco, Calif.-based biopharmaceutical company currently conducting studies in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, completed a $73.8 million Series B round. The Column Group led the funding, which saw participation from Euclidean Capital, Samsara BioCapital and Sanofi Ventures.

Gradial, a Seattle-based startup building AI agents to automate enterprise marketing operations, nabbed $65 million in Series C funding at a $675 million post-money valuation. Insight Partners led the investment, which included participation from VMG Partners, Madrona and Pruven.

Conduct, a London-based AI operating system provider, picked up $60 million in Series A funding. Index Ventures and Iconiq co-led the round, which saw contributions from Creandum and others.

Verse, a San Francisco-based energy infrastructure platform for the AI economy, collected $54 million in Series B funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, which included support from GV and others.

COUR Pharma, a startup developing immune tolerance therapies for autoimmune diseases, closed a $50 million Series B round. Led by Lumira Ventures and Roche Venture Fund, the funding included participation from Pfizer Ventures, Angelini Ventures and T1D Fund.

Convey, a San Francisco-headquartered AI workforce platform, snagged $38 in Series A funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the investment, with Partner Joe Schmidt joining the company’s board.

Andera, an internal audit automation platform, raised $37 million in Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Pramaana Labs, a San Francisco-based startup building a verification layer for AI, was seeded with a $27 million investment led by Khosla Ventures.

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• Google Is Using Nvidia’s Playbook to Build a Rival AI Chip Business
   
• The Secret Revolution in Battery Technology: 3-D Printing
   
• States Are Betting That AI Can Solve the Prison Recidivism Crisis
   
• The Company That Created the Checkbook Is Buying a Payment Processor
   
• Robinhood’s Billionaire Founder on Fast Cars and His Boldest Bet Yet

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

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

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