Startups & Funding

In Minneapolis, the tech scene faces intense ICE operations under "Operation Metro Surge," with agents outnumbering local police 3-to-1 and targeting immigrant-heavy areas like Somali communities. Founders and investors, including eight who paused ventures, now focus on aid: delivering groceries, forming childcare rotations, and providing safe transport. Personal tales reveal the toll—Black and Latino professionals carrying passports "just in case" amid stops and surveillance. Despite corporate silence and political tensions, this $1B ecosystem endures through protests, vigils, and mutual support, proving innovation thrives on empathy during systemic challenges.

LMArena, founded in 2023 by UC Berkeley researchers, just raised $150 million in Series A funding at $1.7 billion valuation, led by Felicis and UC Investments, with backers like Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins. This triples its prior $100 million seed valuation in seven months, amid booming demand for AI evaluation tools. The platform uses crowdsourced prompts and user feedback to compare models side-by-side, tackling issues like data contamination and outdated benchmarks. Top rankings feature Google's Gemini 3 Pro, followed by Gemini 3 Flash and xAI's Grok 4.1. Developers like OpenAI test models here pre-launch, with AI Evaluations service hitting $30 million annualized run rate for verifiable insights.

The Dawn supercomputer at the University of Cambridge is set for a £36 million upgrade, evolving into Zenith with six times the computational power by spring. This investment, part of the AI Research Resource program, enables free access for over 350 projects, including NHS efforts to cut waiting lists through predictive modeling and personalized cancer vaccines developed alongside the Isambard supercomputer. In climate action, it simulates carbon capture and extreme weather patterns. Partnerships with Dell, AMD, and Stack HPC ensure efficiency, despite 1 MW energy use, positioning the UK as an AI leader for public good.

Ziv Levi, a 2026 Yale SOM alum, has secured $6 million for LeanCon, an AI construction startup revolutionizing pre-construction planning. Traditionally costing up to $2 million and taking months, LeanCon's platform delivers detailed projections in seven minutes at near-zero cost, boosting project evaluations by 100x annually with 90% accuracy and cutting schedules by 20%. Backed by Ibex Investors, Fusion VC, and construction experts like Phil Bernstein, the tool automates scope definition, cost estimation, logistics, and scheduling. Already deployed on $650 million in New York projects, LeanCon helps firms win more bids while addressing industry pain points like low throughput—only 8% of opportunities advance traditionally. Founders Levi and Sapir Tubul draw from hands-on engineering experience to create a secure, customized AI solution poised for national expansion.

Nvidia's $2 billion investment in CoreWeave targets over five gigawatts of AI factories by 2030, addressing surging demand for AI computing. This builds on their collaboration, with CoreWeave's cloud platform powered entirely by Nvidia GPUs for training and inference. Executives like Jensen Huang emphasize the historic infrastructure buildout, while Michael Intrator highlights Blackwell's cost-efficient architecture. CoreWeave earns from GPU rentals and managed workloads, backed by a $6.3 billion Nvidia order through 2032. Market shares rose 9% post-announcement, signaling investor confidence in AI's production-scale shift amid energy and supply challenges.