How Did AI Deals Top **$1B** Overnight? 📈🤖💸

TL;DR

• Multi-tier AI rounds push unicorn valuations higher
• Legaltech and comms AI attract late-stage capital
• Governments tilt toward light-touch AI regulation models
• Infra alliances deepen AI data center buildout

HEADLINES

Australian Government unveils light-touch National AI Plan ⚖️🔗

New York Times escalates lawsuit against Perplexity AI 📚🔗

Meta acquires AI-wearables startup Limitless ⌚🔗

NEXTDC & OpenAI sign MoU for Sydney AI campus 🏗️🔗

Huawei’s Ren Zhengfei predicts AI compute glut, industrial focus 🏭🔗

FROM THE BIG PLAYERS

Andreessen Horowitz invested $160M in Harvey AI ⚖️🔗

Redpoint Ventures invested $50M+ in Aaru 📊🔗

Portage Ventures invested $60M in Flex 💵🔗

RAISES

Yoodli raised $40M in a Series B led by WestBridge Capital 🗣️🔗

Recovr raised $1M in a seed round led by JWW Capital 🏋️🔗

Redapto raised $500K in a pre-seed round led by Y Combinator 🤝🔗

RAISING

Fluidstack is looking to raise $700M in a growth round for AI-first cloud data centers ☁️🔗

Aztec is running a token auction targeting $350M FDV for privacy-preserving AI-ready L2 infrastructure 🪙🔗

Tech Weekend SF Startups are pitching live to VCs for AI and deep-tech seed rounds 🚀🔗

NEW LAUNCHES

Edvoy launched AI-powered study abroad app 🎓🔗

AWS unveiled new Agentic AI services suite 🧩🔗

Google Cloud & Replit announced partnership to power AI coding platform 💻🔗

Meta & Limitless will integrate AI note-taking pendant into wearables 📎🔗

TRY THESE TOOLS

Google SynthID detects AI-generated images via invisible watermarks 🕵️🔗

Comet Browser offers AI-native web search and assistants 🌐🔗

Yoodli provides AI-based practice for communication coaching 🎤🔗

METRICS

Hong Kong Investment Corp. deployed <20% of HK$62B AI-leaning capital 📊🔗

HKIC allocated 71% of investments into hard tech 📈🔗

Tech Council Australia projects 200,000 AI jobs by 2030 🧮🔗

Australian AI Plan targets $115B annual GDP uplift from AI 💡🔗

S&P 500 eyes record as liquidity chases AI leaders 📉🔗

BENCHMARKS

Australian National AI Plan leans on existing laws over new AI act 📘🔗

Tech Council Australia forecasts trillions-scale global AI industry 🌏🔗

The Courier flags weak safeguards in high-risk AI deployments 📉🔗

GlobalTimes Experts cite China’s open-source AI agents as performance benchmark 🧪🔗

INFRA & COSTS

NEXTDC & OpenAI planning hyperscale Sydney AI campus 🏗️🔗

Huawei predicts coming surplus of AI compute capacity 🔌🔗

Microsoft 365 to hike prices in 2026 to fund AI, security 💸🔗

AWS re:Invent introduces infra for autonomous Agentic AI workflows 🖥️🔗

Cloudflare outage briefly disrupted Anthropic, Coinbase access 🌩️🔗

VALUATIONS

Harvey AI hits $8B valuation after latest round 🏷️🔗

Aaru reaches $1B headline valuation via multi-tier Series A 🦄🔗

Yoodli approaches $300M valuation after Series B 💬🔗

Flex reportedly valued around $500M post-Series B 🏦🔗

Fluidstack targets $7B valuation in ongoing raise 📡🔗

POLICY

Australian Government confirms self-regulatory National AI Plan ⚖️🔗

Opinion Analysts warn Australian plan weakens AI safeguards 🚨🔗

New York Times lawsuit pressures AI firms on copyright licensing 📜🔗

Apple & Google issue global alerts on state-backed hacking 🛡️🔗

SOVEREIGN

Hong Kong Investment Corp. reports HK$2.25B profit, hard-tech focus 🏛️🔗

HKIC backed 150+ projects, many in AI-adjacent sectors 📌🔗

Saudi PIF advancing multi-year national AI cloud buildout 🏙️🔗

Global Policymakers increasingly rely on AI productivity projections 📑🔗

SECTORS

Education deployed AI course-matching for study abroad 🎓🔗

Fitness & Wellness deployed AI retention for gyms, studios 🏋️🔗

Legal Services deployed AI-native research and drafting copilots ⚖️🔗

Corporate Training deployed AI simulations for communication coaching 🗣️🔗

Finance & Mid-Market deployed AI agents for cash-flow management 🏦🔗

COMMUNITY MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

Founders Village hosted AI & deep-tech startup pitch weekend 🌐🔗