Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
US AI startups see funding surge while more VC funds struggle to raise, data shows | Reuters
U.S. startup funding surged 75.6% in the first half of 2025, thanks to the continued AI boom, putting it on track for its second-best year ever, even as venture capital firms struggled to raise money, a report from PitchBook on Tuesday showed.
National Call for Ideas — Builders + Backers
This national call is open to anyone in the U.S. with a novel idea—no business plan, no pitch deck, no startup experience required.
Research leaders urge tech industry to monitor AI’s ‘thoughts’ | TechCrunch
AI researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and a broad coalition of companies and nonprofit groups, are calling for deeper investigation into techniques for monitoring the so-called thoughts of AI reasoning models in a position paper published Tuesday.
Reflections on OpenAI
Nabeel Quereshi has an amazing post called Reflections on Palantir, where he ruminates on what made Palantir special. I wanted to do the same for OpenAI while it’s fresh in my mind. You won’t find any trade secrets here, more just reflections on this current iteration of one of the most fascinating organizations in history at an extremely interesting time.
The Rise of the Agent Manager by @ttunguz
Very productive AI software engineers manage 10-15 agents by specifying 10-15 tasks in detail, sending them to an AI, waiting until completion & then reviewing the work. Half of the work is thrown away, & restarted with an improved prompt.
Oregon tech giant Intel is struggling
Today, on the show, you’ll hear a conversation with a long-time tech reporter at The Oregonian who’s followed the fortunes and misfortunes of Intel for quite some time, and right now, the company’s misfortunes may be the worst in its history, and the new CEO is dishing out some harsh reality about where the company is and the enormous hill it needs to climb to get back on top. Mike Rogoway, who is the technology reporter and business reporter with The Oregonian, thanks so much for coming on and talking with us.
What I Took From the State of Dev 2025 Survey | CSS-Tricks
State of Devs 2025 survey results are out! While the survey isn’t directly related to the code part of what we do for work, I do love the focus Devographics took ever since its inception in 2020. And this year it brought us some rather interesting results through the attendance of 8,717 developers, lots of data, and even more useful insights that I think everyone can look up and learn from.
How I Use Claude Code to Ship Like a Team of Five
The shift from doing the work to directing it changes how we make software. Instead of planning implementation details, we’re designing product specifications and code outcomes. Clear communication and system thinking matter more than memorizing syntax or debugging tricks. Features that took a week to code ship in an afternoon of thoughtful delegation. This is a different way of building software entirely.
More Oregon startup news
