💰 VC Brief

🎯 Palo Alto eyes SentinelOne for $10B; Meta fails to poach OpenAI talent; VC, crypto, AI deals surge.

🔸 Palo Alto Networks $PANW is in advanced talks to acquire SentinelOne $S for $8–10B, targeting endpoint security expansion.

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🔸 Meta $META has offered up to $1.25B to recruit OpenAI talent and attempted to acquire Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence Inc.; both efforts were rebuffed.
🔸 Ethena Foundation raised $360M for StablecoinX, which will buy 8% of ENA tokens and seek a Nasdaq listing.

🔸 Fidji Simo (ex-Instacart CEO) will lead OpenAI’s Applications division, focusing on scaling consumer and enterprise AI products.
🔸 WeRide $WRD and Lenovo $WRD launched HPC 3.0, an Nvidia $NVDA Thor-powered platform for L4 autonomous vehicles, cutting hardware costs.

🔸 Global VC funding reached $91B in Q2 2025, with 53% allocated to AI; U.S. startup funding up 76% YoY.
🔸 Startup M&A exceeded $100B in H1 2025, driven by enterprise software, healthcare, and AI.

🔸 Polymarket is acquiring CFTC-licensed QCX for $112M, enabling a regulated U.S. relaunch in the event-prediction market.
🔸 The Ether Machine will go public via a Nasdaq SPAC merger, launching with $1.6B in Ethereum $ETHUSD reserves.