Russell Contreras / Axios: How the Vatican is moving faster than most legacy institutions to shape AI rules and guardrails, with an AI framework, banning use of AI to write homilies, more — The Vatican is racing to build digital defenses for the artificial intelligence era — and quietly positioning itself as a global referee of what's real.
Chris Metinko / Axios: Orkes, which helps companies scale their AI and agentic systems, raised $60M, including a $40M Series B led by AVP, bringing its total funding to ~$90M — Orkes, which helps companies scale their AI and agentic systems, raised $60 million, CEO Jeu George tells Axios Pro exclusively.
Ryan Lawler / Axios: Petual, which automates internal audit work and generates auditor-ready workpapers, raised $20M across a pre-seed led by First Round and a seed led by a16z — - Other backers include Cowboy Ventures, Lachy Groom, the founders of Lyft and Opendoor, and other angels.
Natalie Breymeyer / Axios: Cloudsmith, which is building a cloud-native system to manage software artifacts, raised a $72M Series C, following a $23M Series B in 2025 — Cloudsmith, a platform that protects software components, raised a $72 million Series C, CEO Glenn Weinstein tells Axios exclusively.
Sam Sabin / Axios: Sources: OpenAI has been briefing US federal agencies, state governments, and Five Eyes allies on the capabilities of its GPT-5.4-Cyber model over the past week — OpenAI has been briefing federal agencies, state governments and Five Eyes allies on the capabilities of its new cyber product over the past week, Axios has learned.
Axios: White House says a meeting between Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Dario Amodei had been “productive and constructive”; source: Scott Bessent joined the meeting — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joined a meeting on Friday between White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles …
Axios: Sources: Dario Amodei is set to meet with WH Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on Friday, a breakthrough in Anthropic's effort to resolve its fight with the Pentagon — Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is scheduled to walk into the West Wing on Friday for a meeting with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles …
Natalie Breymeyer / Axios: London-based Gizmo, which uses AI to turn young students' notes into gamified study materials, raised a $22M Series A led by Shine Capital and reports 13M users — Gizmo, an AI educational platform, raised a $22 million Series A, CEO Petros Christodoulou tells Axios exclusively.
Sam Sabin / Axios: OpenAI says a GitHub workflow used to sign its macOS apps downloaded a malicious Axios library on March 31, but no user data or internal system was compromised — OpenAI said Friday that it found evidence that one of its internal tools downloaded a compromised update from a recently infected, legitimate open-source software library.
Dan Primack / Axios: Meta begins removing dozens of Facebook and Instagram ads that trial lawyers placed to reach eligible plaintiffs, after social media addiction trial losses — Meta on Thursday began removing advertisements from attorneys who were seeking clients that claim to have been harmed by social media while under the age of 18.
Sam Sabin / Axios: Source: OpenAI is finalizing a model with advanced cybersecurity capabilities that it plans to release only to a small set of companies, similar to Anthropic — OpenAI is finalizing a model with advanced cybersecurity capabilities that it plans to release only to a small set of companies …
Chris Metinko / Axios: Natter, an AI platform for large-scale video conversation insights, raised a $23M Series A led by Renegade Partners and says it grew revenue 5x in 2025 — Natter, which uses AI to gain insights from work conversations, raised a $23 million Series A led by Renegade Partners, co-founder and CEO Charlie Woodward tells Axios Pro.
Axios: Memo: Mark Zuckerberg launches Meta Small Business, a company-wide priority to support entrepreneurship and drive AI use, led by Dina Powell McCormick and more — - Zuckerberg asks product managers, designers, engineers and other employees to reach out if they want to work on the new effort.
Chris Metinko / Axios: Kansas-based NoTraffic, which uses AI-driven operating systems and sensor data to optimize intersection traffic flow, raised a $90M Series C led by PSG Equity — What to read next
Chris Metinko / Axios: Agentic cybersecurity startup Surf AI, which helps teams read signals from identity, cloud, and other tools, emerges from stealth with $57M in seed and Series A — What to read next
Sam Sabin / Axios: Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Adobe, and Match sign a voluntary pledge to share threat intelligence about how scammers abuse their services — Eight major technology companies — including Google, Amazon and OpenAI — have signed a new pledge promising to share threat intelligence …
Erin Brodwin / Axios: Sources: Qualified Health, which helps health care organizations assess and orchestrate AI tools, is raising a ~$100M Series A from NEA, SignalFire, and others — Qualified Health, a health care AI evaluation and implementation startup, is raising around $100 million in Series A funds …
Sam Sabin / Axios: Meta disables 150K+ accounts as the Royal Thai Police, the FBI, the US DOJ, and others disrupt criminal scam centers in Southeast Asia and arrest 21 individuals — Meta disabled more than 150,000 accounts tied to Southeast Asia-based cyber scam centers. — The global crackdown led to 21 arrests, the company said.
Chris Metinko / Axios: Paris-based Qevlar AI, an agentic AI developer for security operations centers, raised $30M led by Partech and Forgepoint Capital International — Qevlar AI, an agentic AI developer for security operations centers, raised $30 million led by Partech and Forgepoint Capital International …
Chris Metinko / Axios: Guild.ai, which helps companies develop, deploy, and observe AI agents, raised a $14M seed and $30M Series A, both led by GV, and is now valued at $300M — Guild.ai, a startup helping companies develop AI agents, has raised $44 million in a seed and Series A and is now valued at $300 million …
Chris Metinko / Axios: Reclaim Security, which uses AI-driven automation to remediate threat exposures, raised a $20M Series A led by Acrew Capital and a $6M seed — Reclaim Security, which uses AI-driven automation to remediate threat exposures, has raised $26 million in total funding, co-founder and CEO Barak Klinghofer tells Axios Pro.
Ina Fried / Axios: Perplexity signs a multiyear deal with CoreWeave to use dedicated clusters powered by Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips for AI inference; CRWV jumps 5%+ pre-market — Perplexity has signed a multi-year deal with CoreWeave to help power a new generation of services, the AI cloud computing company shared first with Axios.
Maria Curi / Axios: Source: the DOD appears to have accepted OpenAI's safety red lines, which were similar to Anthropic's, to deploy OpenAI's tech in classified settings — - Now, the department, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, appears to have accepted OpenAI's similar conditions.
Axios: Sources: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summons Dario Amodei to the Pentagon on Tuesday morning for what is likely to be a tense meeting over Claude usage — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to the Pentagon on Tuesday morning for what sources …
Alan Neuhauser / Axios: Sources: Emerald AI, which develops software to curb data center energy demand, is raising a $25M seed extension at a ~$250M post-money valuation — Emerald AI, which develops software to curb data-center energy demand, is raising $25 million in seed extension funding, two sources familiar with the offer tell Axios Pro.
Axios: Admin official: Pentagon may sever Anthropic relationship over AI safeguards; Anthropic says only mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons are off limits — The Pentagon is considering severing its relationship with Anthropic over the AI firm's insistence on maintaining some limitations …
Sara Fischer / Axios: Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, claiming it infringed on Disney's works to train its Seedance 2.0 video generation model without pay — The Walt Disney Company on Friday sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, alleging the Chinese tech giant has been infringing …
Dan Primack / Axios: PitchBook estimates that 25%+ of VC-backed unicorns have become “undercorns,” startups once valued at $1B or more by VCs but now valued below that threshold — New valuation data from PitchBook suggests that more than one-quarter of VC-backed “unicorns” have lost their horns …
Ina Fried / Axios: Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman unveil Luffu, a self-funded startup developing an AI-powered “family care system”, currently in private testing — Two years after exiting Google, the co-founders of Fitbit are launching their next act: an AI-powered service for monitoring the health of one's entire family.
Natalie Breymeyer / Axios: Denver-based Northslope, which builds customized AI applications for Palantir OS, raised a $22M Series A led by Friends & Family Capital and Goldcrest Capital — Northslope, a customized AI application developer, raised a $22 million Series A co-led by Friends & Family Capital and Goldcrest Capital …
Ashley Gold / Axios: OpenAI says nearly 1.3M weekly users are discussing “advanced topics in hard science” in January, with an average of 8.4M ChatGPT messages on those topics — AI is increasingly being used as a research collaborator for mathematicians and scientists, per a new report from OpenAI shared exclusively with Axios.
Alex Isenstadt / Axios: Source: Elon Musk donates $10M to boost pro-Trump Senate candidate Nate Morris, seeking to replace Mitch McConnell, in Musk's largest-ever Senate donation — Elon Musk has cut a massive $10 million check to bolster Nate Morris, an outsider, pro-Trump candidate running to succeed retiring …
Axios: David Sacks and top MAGA influencers are publicly opposing House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast's proposed AI OVERWATCH Act to regulate AI chip sales to China — But the accusations are flying fast. — “The AI Overwatch Act (H.R. 6875) may sound like a good idea, but when you examine it closely …
Julianna Bragg / Axios: California's AG sends a cease-and-desist letter to xAI, demanding the company halt the generation and distribution of non-consensual intimate images and CSAM — California's attorney general on Friday sent a cease and desist letter to xAI, demanding the company immediately halt the creation …
Dan Primack / Axios: a16z raises over $15B across five new funds, including $6.75B for its fifth growth fund and $3B for unspecified “other venture strategies” — Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, whose past investments included Airbnb and Coinbase, on Friday announced that it raised over $15 billion for a group of new funds.
Megan Morrone / Axios: OpenAI says 40M+ Americans turn to ChatGPT daily for health information, per an analysis of anonymized interactions, seeing it as an “ally” for health care — More than 40 million Americans turn to ChatGPT daily for health information, according to a report OpenAI has shared exclusively with Axios
Herb Scribner / Axios: A new Polymarket account bet $30K on Maduro's capture just hours before Trump's announcement, renewing questions on insider information in prediction markets — - These bets — many of which were on Maduro's capture, and are now on what happens next to the ousted leader …
Dan Primack / Axios: Sources: ~90% of Groq employees will join Nvidia and be paid cash for all vested shares; most shareholders will get per-share payouts tied to the $20B valuation — Shareholders in Groq, a hot AI chipmaking startup, will receive handsome payouts from the company's $20 billion deal with Nvidia …
Colin Campbell / Axios: Kargo, which uses cameras and sensors to inspect pallets in a warehouse and provide accurate inventory data, raised a $42M Series B led by Avenir — Kargo, a San Francisco-based warehouse inventory tech startup, closed a $42 million Series B led by Avenir, the company announced Monday.
Chris Metinko / Axios: DataLane, which is using AI to build an identity graph to map local businesses across the US, raised a $22.5M Series A led by Amplify Partners — DataLane, which is building an identity graph for every local business, raised a $22.5 million Series A led by Amplify Partners, co-founder and CEO David Patterson-Cole tells Axios Pro.
Ashley Gold / Axios: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signs the RAISE Act into law; the AI safety bill's text was modified earlier to more closely resemble California's SB 53 — Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed the RAISE Act into law Friday, making New York the latest state to have broad safety rules for the most advanced AI models.
Axios: FCC Chairman Brendan Carr tells a Senate committee the FCC “is not an independent agency”; the agency removed “independent agency” from its site as he testified — FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in his Wednesday Senate testimony that the agency he governs “is not an independent agency, formally speaking.”
Chris Metinko / Axios: Prime Security, which develops AI agents that help with security design during software development, raised a $20M Series A led by Scale Venture Partners — Prime Security, an agentic AI security platform for software development, raised a $20 million Series A led by Scale Venture Partners …
Chris Metinko / Axios: Outset, which develops AI agents that help Microsoft and other companies conduct customer research and surveys, raised a $30M Series B led by Radical Ventures — Outset, an agentic AI research and surveying platform, raised a $30 million Series B led by Radical Ventures, co-founder and CEO Aaron Cannon tells Axios Pro.
Ryan Lawler / Axios: Range, which uses AI to offer flat-fee financial planning services to mass affluent households, raised a $60M Series C led by Scale Venture Partners — Range, which uses AI to offer flat-fee financial planning services to mass affluent households, has raised $60 million in Series C funding, CEO Fahad Hassan tells Axios Pro.
Sam Sabin / Axios: Clover Security, whose AI agents plug into developer platforms like GitHub to predict and detect security flaws, raised $36M led by Notable Capital and Team8 — Clover Security has nabbed $36 million in funding from a slew of high-profile industry stalwarts, including Wiz co-founders Assaf Rappaport …
Chris Metinko / Axios: Bedrock Data, which has debuted ArgusAI to show enterprises what data their AI models access during training and to prevent data leakage, raised a $25M Series A — Data management platform Bedrock Data raised a $25 million Series A led by Greylock Partners, CEO and co-founder Bruno Kurtic tells Axios Pro.
Ryan Lawler / Axios: Peek, which sells software for attractions and tour operators, raised a $70M Series D, taking total funding to $150M+, and bought Acme Ticketing and Connect&Go — Peek, which sells software for attractions and tour operators, raised $70 million in Series D funding, CEO Ruzwana Bashir tells Axios exclusively.
Chris Metinko / Axios: Thoma Bravo acquires a majority stake in Java platform Azul, which received a $340M majority investment from Vitruvian Partners and Lead Edge Capital in 2020 — Thoma Bravo bought a majority stake in enterprise Java platform developer Azul for an undisclosed price, Azul CEO Scott Sellers tells Axios Pro.
Brock E.W. Turner / Axios: GE HealthCare acquires Intelerad, which sells cloud imaging software and digital workflow tools primarily to outpatient and ambulatory sites, for $2.3B — GE HealthCare agreed to acquire medical imaging software company Intelerad for $2.3 billion. … - GE HealthCare has focused on hospitals and health systems.