Welcome, busybees
A small Orlando startup just proved how much money is chasing the unglamorous plumbing underneath AI, not just the models themselves. Relativity Networks announced today that it raised a $22 million SAFE round, more than double what it was targeting, and landed a $40 million follow-on order from a hyperscaler after the customer tested its fiber technology linking two data centers.
The pitch: as AI campuses run out of power in one place, hyperscalers need to connect data centers across much greater distances than normal fiber allows, and Relativityâs hollow-core cable is built for exactly that stretch.
Meanwhile, AI chip startup Etched just posted one of the fastest valuation jumps anyoneâs seen this year: from $10.3 billion to $21 billion in under a month, after Jane Street became its first customer and liked what it saw enough to lead the new round itself.
Hereâs what happened in AI today:
⢠A fiber startup landed a $22M raise and a $40M hyperscaler contract, both announced today.
⢠AI chip startup Etched doubled its valuation to $21 billion in under a month.
⢠A short, separate update on where the Claude watermark backlash stands.
âŚand a whole lot more that you can read about below.
⢠A Fiber Startup Just Landed a $22M Raise and a $40M Contract on the Same Day
Relativity Networks announced today that it closed a $22 million SAFE round, more than double its target, from new investors including Rhapsody Venture Partners, Bell Ventures, and Faster Than Glass. In the same announcement, the company revealed a $40 million follow-on order from an unnamed hyperscaler that tested its ChronoCore hollow-core fiber technology linking two data centers. The pitch is built around what the company calls the âAI Geography Eraâ: as hyperscalers run out of power at any single site, they need to connect data centers across much greater distances, and every extra mile of distance adds latency that ordinary glass fiber canât avoid. Relativity says its technology cuts that penalty enough to make distributed AI campuses practical
⢠Etched Just Doubled Its Valuation in Under a Month
Jane Street-backed AI chip startup Etched raised $700 million at a $21 billion valuation, up from $10.3 billion just weeks earlier, after Jane Street tested Etchedâs inference hardware, bought it, and then led the new round itself. Etched builds chips specifically designed for inference, the process of actually running a trained model to generate answers, rather than training new ones, competing directly with Nvidiaâs dominance in that market. The company says it has secured more than $1 billion in customer contracts and has raised $1.9 billion in total since its founding by three Harvard dropouts.
⢠The Watermark, Briefly
A quick, separate note since a few of you have asked where things stand: the backlash to Claudeâs new text watermark, which weâve covered over the past week, hasnât produced any new developments as of today. Anthropicâs position remains the same as when it last explained the mechanism: a detected watermark proves Claude processed the text, not that Claude wrote the ideas in it, and the company still hasnât shipped a public detection tool. If anything changes, weâll cover it here.
Todayâs Job Board
Founding Product Engineer, Full Stack | b12 Labs
San Francisco Bay Area, California (Full-time)
Help make hard molecules for pharma and biotech at an early-stage startup.
Senior Software Engineer | Method Financial
Remote (Full-time)
Build the financial connectivity API that helps consumers manage their liabilities.
Product Manager | Clipboard
Hybrid (San Francisco, CA) / New York City / Remote (Full-time)
Shape the product for a platform that helps businesses cover every shift, reliably.
Strategy and Research Associate | Corgi Insurance
San Mateo, California (Full-time)
Support strategy and research for an AI-native financial infrastructure company built for insurance.
Senior Full-Stack Engineer, Physical AI | Encord
Remote (Full-time)
Build the data layer for physical AI at a fast-growing infrastructure startup.
Backend Engineer | GoGoGrandparent
United States (Full-time)
Build backend systems for the AI-assisted concierge service that helps seniors with rides, meals, and meds.
Founding Design Engineer | Moritz
New York, NY (Full-time)
Design the interface for an AI-native law firm handling legal work with same-day turnaround.
Software Engineering Intern | Ergo
San Francisco Bay Area, California (Internship)
Help build AI agents and a unified data layer for revenue teams.
Senior Engineering Manager, Platform Infrastructure | Athelas
Remote (Full-time)
Lead the infrastructure team behind Athelasâs AI-driven health systems technology.
Todayâs Money Moves đ¸
Etched Raises $700M at a $21 Billion Valuation
Etched raised $700 million led by Jane Street, with Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Tiger Global also participating, doubling its valuation to $21 billion in under a month after Jane Street became the startupâs first hardware customer.
Relativity Networks Raises $22M, Lands $40M Contract
Relativity Networks closed a $22 million SAFE round, more than double its target, from new investors including Rhapsody Venture Partners, Bell Ventures, and Faster Than Glass, and separately landed a $40 million follow-on order from a hyperscaler for its hollow-core fiber technology.
Prompt of the Day
The Two Layers Prompt
Use this when youâre trying to understand a fast-moving industry and want to separate the flashy headlines from the infrastructure actually being built underneath them.
Help me separate the headline layer from the infrastructure layer in this industry. The industry or trend: [name it]
Give me:
⢠The most-discussed, headline-grabbing developments right now.
⢠The quieter infrastructure, supply chain, or capacity investments happening underneath those headlines.
⢠Which layer is actually growing faster, based on real spending, not just attention.
⢠One infrastructure company or trend worth watching that most people arenât talking about yet.
Thatâs a wrap for today, busybees.
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See you tomorrow
Kumud