$1.387B raised. New AI tools. Eighteen hiring picks.
Happy Friday! Before you close the laptop, here’s a useful pattern from this week: building AI takes more than a better model. Funding is reaching the computing, networking and data systems that help useful products work. Here’s what caught our attention:
- Funding: Six AI and tech rounds total $1.387B.
- Tools: New options from Meta, Google, Microsoft and Modal.
- Careers: Eighteen selected openings across engineering, marketing, finance, design and operations.
- Company moves: A mainframe acquisition, creative partnerships and stricter evaluation safeguards.
Pick one idea to explore, share an opening with someone, and leave yourself room to recharge. Have a wonderful weekend!
Raised
Modal
$750M Series D
AI infrastructure for running models, training systems and giving coding agents isolated workspaces. Accel led the round.
Oxide
$445M Series D
Cloud hardware installed in customers’ facilities. New capital supports manufacturing and its order backlog.
Salience Labs
$125M Series B
Optical networking chips for AI data centers. Funding supports manufacturing and a larger Silicon Valley presence.
Duvo
$32M Series A
AI agents that run approved business processes across company systems. The expansion starts with retailers and consumer-goods companies.
Tamr
$21M growth equity
Software that cleans and connects scattered business records so teams and AI systems can use consistent data.
Ubitium
$14M seed funding
Processors for robots and other autonomous machines. Commercial evaluation units are planned for 2027.
Launched
Meta
Muse Wonder
New models for extended agent tasks. Wonder is available through Meta’s API and Muse Code; Wonder Full requires a Muse Code subscription.
Meta
Muse Spark Open
Downloadable model weights for coding and agent tasks, with hosted access through partners. Check the license and hardware requirements before deployment.
Google
Gemini 4 Argon
Now available on Google Cloud for longer, multi-step work. Teams can test it against their own business tasks.
Microsoft
Microsoft-Decision-1
A model for routing, classification and scoring, available through Foundry and OpenRouter. Designed to return structured decisions rather than conversational answers.
Modal
Virtual machines
Virtual machines are generally available within Modal Sandboxes, giving developers another isolated environment for running software.
Hiring
Anthropic
Product Marketing Manager, Platform
San Francisco / New York
Anthropic
Staff Software Engineer, AI Reliability
San Francisco / New York / Seattle
OpenAI
Account Associate - SF
San Francisco
OpenAI
Strategic Finance, Compute
San Francisco
Modal
Business Operations Manager
New York
Modal
Member of Design Staff - Brand
New York
Modal
Revenue Operations
San Francisco
Modal
Field Marketing Manager
San Francisco
Plain
Product Marketing Lead
San Francisco office
Perplexity
Product Manager, AI Capabilities
San Francisco / New York
Shape reusable AI capabilities and collaboration.
Perplexity
Enterprise Customer Success Manager
San Francisco
Lead enterprise onboarding, adoption and retention.
Perplexity
Recruiting Coordinator
San Francisco, on-site
Coordinate interviews and improve candidate experience.
Perplexity
Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer, Integrations)
San Francisco
Build integrations connecting AI to customer workflows.
Cohere
Account Executive, SLED (West)
United States, remote
State, local and education sales in western markets.
Cohere
Product Manager, Integrations
Toronto, remote
Shape enterprise integrations and connected workflows.
Cohere
Software Engineer, Integrations
Europe, remote
Build and maintain integrations for North.
Plain
Senior Product Engineer
London, hybrid
Build product features. Three office days weekly.
Modal
Member of Technical Staff - Systems
New York / San Francisco, on-site
Build high-performance distributed systems.
Moved
Rocket Software
Geniez AI acquired
Rocket bought Geniez AI, bringing its team and mainframe expertise into work on AI-assisted enterprise operations.
Adobe + NVIDIA
Creative-tools partnership
Expanded collaboration targets Photoshop, Premiere, Substance 3D and Frame.io. The companies are optimizing creative workflows for NVIDIA hardware.
Anthropic
Evaluation safeguards
After unintended actions during testing and internal use, Anthropic is disabling live internet access across internal evaluations while checking safeguards.