The Dealflow by Founders Capital - Edition 19

Key News and Trends

Are AI researchers the new football stars? Meta is continuing its AI hiring spree, having recently poached top talent like Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai as it launches its new Superintelligence Labs - reportedly offering signing bonuses north of $100M. It also brought on Daniel Gross, while Ilya Sutskever declined Meta’s offer to instead lead Safe Superintelligence. Read more here.

Call it what you want - it’s not equity. OpenAI publicly disavowed Robinhood’s sale of “OpenAI tokens”, stating they do not represent equity and were launched without its involvement or approval. The tokens are part of Robinhood’s blockchain-based effort to give EU retail investors exposure to private companies, though OpenAI stressed that any equity transfer requires its consent. Read more here.

Stablecoins, startups, and serious backers. Peter Thiel, Palmer Luckey, and Joe Lonsdale are backing Erebor, a new online-only national bank based in Columbus, OH, designed to serve crypto-friendly, AI-focused, and defence-adjacent startups in the post–Silicon Valley Bank era. Erebor plans to offer stablecoin services and cater to founders underserved by traditional banking. Read more here.

Anthropic’s ARR is up. So is Cursor’s headcount. Anthropic has reportedly reached $4B in ARR, but just lost two key leaders of its Claude Code team, Boris Cherny and Cat Wu, to Cursor, a fast-growing AI coding startup that also happens to be one of Anthropic’s biggest customers. Read more here. 

Founder’s Take: Can You Buy Greatness?

Meta’s recent spree reads like a talent acquisition war chest: a 49% stake in Scale AI (arguably an acquihire of its best minds), a flood of OpenAI researchers, and now Daniel Gross. On paper, it’s a dream team. In practice? That’s less clear.

Sam Altman’s public criticism may sound self-interested, he's lost key talent, but it also raises the real question: can money alone build transformative products? 

Hiring elite engineers is one thing. Getting them to work together, take ownership, and build with urgency is another. Compensation might attract talent, but conviction, mission, and trust are what hold teams together when the times get tough.

Zuckerberg can buy talent. But can he buy cohesion? We'll find out. Hopefully this fares better than Meta’s last moonshot.

Top Venture Deals

Surge AI –  $1B  (N/A)

• Data labelling startup Surge AI is reportedly planning a massive $1B first-time funding round at a $15B+ valuation, according to Reuters. The four-year-old company generated over $1B in revenue last year, outpacing rival Scale AI ($870M). Read more here.

Cato Networks –  $359M Series G (Vitruvian Partners, ION Crossover Partners)

• Tel Aviv–based Cato Networks has raised a $359M Series G led by Vitruvian Partners and ION Crossover Partners, pushing its post-money valuation above $4.8B. The 10-year-old company offers a cloud-native platform that replaces legacy VPNs and firewalls, helping enterprises securely connect remote and on-site workers without traditional network infrastructure. Read more here.

Lovable  –  $150m  (Accel)

• Swedish AI startup Lovable is raising a $150M growth round led by Accel at a $2B valuation, just months after closing a $15M “pre-Series A.” Founded in 2023, the company builds full web apps from text prompts and recently hit $50M ARR in six months. Read more here.

Upcoming Public Offerings

Figma

• Design platform Figma, whose $20B acquisition by Adobe was blocked by regulators in 2023, has officially filed to go public on the NYSE. The company says it plans to “take big swings” on future acquisitions, offering long-awaited liquidity to early investors including Index Ventures, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, and Sequoia. Read more here.

McGraw Hill

• Educational publisher McGraw Hill has filed to go public on the NYSE under ticker MH, aiming to raise $1B. The company posted $2.1B in revenue with an $86M net loss for the year ending March 2025. Read more here.

See you in the next edition,
Sam Scott and the Founders Capital Team