Madeline Renbarger

6 days ago | newcomer.co | Tom Dotan |Eric Newcomer |Madeline Renbarger

OpenAI steals Instacart’s CEO as Sam Altman’s negotiations with partner Microsoft are increasingly shaky. Secondary share sales have become the easiest way for VCs and LPs to land liquidity in this frigid exit market, but some can come at a steep loss compared to a startup’s 2021 valuation. Read on for exclusive data on the current prices for 60+ startups. We also have more details on OpenAI’s decision to call off its for-profit conversion, for now, in a win for Elon Musk.

1 week ago | newcomer.co | Madeline Renbarger

This week, we heard from 10+ immigrant startup founders and investors who have been making contingency plans after President Trump ramped up immigration enforcement. Sarah Tavel takes a step back at Benchmark, while fresh analysis shows Benchmark is among the highest-performing investors at Series A, alongside the megafunds a16z, Sequoia, and Accel. Elon Musk returns to an impatient Tesla board and Sam Altman’s iris-scanning World network hits the streets.

2 weeks ago | newcomer.co | Madeline Renbarger

After years of cool, sometimes hostile relations between the tech sector and the federal government, the once-fringe Silicon Valley cohort that got behind Trump now wields outsized power in Washington — and is leading the charge on the need to beat China at advanced weaponry and AI, and to reinvest in American industrial power.

2 weeks ago | newcomer.co | Tom Dotan |Madeline Renbarger

From Tom Dotan, our new senior correspondent, fresh off two years covering Microsoft for the Wall Street JournalAt Microsoft’s annual executive huddle last month, the company’s chief financial officer, Amy Hood, put up a slide that charted the number of users for its Copilot consumer AI tool over the past year. It was essentially a flat line, showing around 20 million weekly users.

3 weeks ago | newcomer.co | Madeline Renbarger

AI dealmaking remains steady while other sectors are suffering, per comments from 20 VCs we checked in with this week. Early stage investors like Precursor’s Charles Hudson have kept chasing the best startups, but retail and biotech companies face a harsher reality. Mark Zuckerberg takes the stand at Meta’s antitrust trial, and Parker Conrad raises even more funding for Rippling. Reminder, don’t forget to apply for Breaking the Bank if you’re a fintech founder, investor, or insider.