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- Gusto Acquires Guideline, $10B Meta/Google Deal & $115M for Cancer Therapies! 🚀
Gusto Acquires Guideline, $10B Meta/Google Deal & $115M for Cancer Therapies! 🚀
Seed Radar
August 29, 2025
Issue #30 • August 29, 2025
Hi Seedradar Squad! This week, Gusto, a leader in payroll and HR solutions, has entered into an agreement to acquire Guideline, a startup specializing in 401(k) plans, to simplify back-office operations. Simultaneously, Meta and Google signed a major strategic partnership to support Meta's AI and data center expansion. This is all happening as biotech company Wugen secures a significant funding round to advance off-the-shelf CAR-T cancer therapies.
Beyond these major headlines, innovation continues to surge. Framer raised a substantial Series D to accelerate its expansion and invest in new AI features, and Google's AI division debuted Gemini 2.5 Flash Image for advanced image editing and generation. Capital is also flowing into diverse ventures, from autonomous shipbuilders and agentic AI "teammates" to AI data center solutions.
🤝 HR Tech Giant Gusto Announces Agreement to Acquire Guideline
Gusto, a leading provider of payroll and HR solutions for small businesses, has entered into an agreement to acquire Guideline, a startup specializing in 401(k) plans for the same market.
The deal unites two long-term partners to create a comprehensive platform for payroll, benefits, and retirement, aiming to simplify back-office operations for small and medium-sized businesses across the country.
🧬 Wugen Raises $115M to Advance Off-the-Shelf CAR-T Cancer Therapies
St. Louis-based biotech company Wugen has secured $115 million in a new financing round led by Fidelity Management & Research Company.
The capital will be used to fund the pivotal U.S. trial for its lead product, WU-CART-007, an off-the-shelf CAR-T therapy for T-cell malignancies, putting the company on track to seek FDA approval in 2027.
💰 Snapshots: What Else Is Happening?
• Framer announced it has raised $100 million in a Series D funding round, bringing the company's valuation to $2 billion. The round was led by existing investors Meritech and Atomico, with participation from others including Accel, WiL, and HV Capital. The company plans to use the new capital to accelerate its expansion, deepen its investment in AI features, and scale its product and go-to-market teams. - Read More
• Attio has raised $52 million in a Series B round led by GV (Google Ventures) to scale its AI-native Customer Relationship Management platform. The platform is designed to unify data in real-time and automate complex go-to-market processes, aiming to disrupt legacy CRM systems by allowing teams to build workflows tailored to their exact needs. - Read More
• Meta has signed a six-year cloud computing agreement with Google worth over $10 billion, marking a major strategic partnership to support Meta's AI and data center expansion. The deal will see Meta utilize Google Cloud's servers, storage, and networking to supplement its own massive infrastructure investments, highlighting the immense computational demands of the AI arms race. - Read More
• Google's AI division debuted Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, a new model that introduces advanced capabilities for image editing and generation. The new tool features narrative storytelling, style transfer, and real-world reasoning, allowing for more complex and creative visual outputs directly from text prompts. - Read More
💰 Sharks of the Week!
️🔥 GV (Google Ventures)- Led a $50 million Series A for Blue Water Autonomy, an autonomous shipbuilder. - Read More
️🔥 Insight Partners- Led a $25 million Series A round for InstaLILY, a provider of agentic AI "teammates" for operationally intensive industries. - Read More
️🔥 Xora Innovation- Co-led an oversubscribed $34 million Series A round for OpenLight, a startup scaling photonic integrated circuits for AI data centers. - Read More
️🔥 Capstone Partners- Led a $20 million seed extension round for FriendliAI, an AI inference platform that optimizes the deployment of large language models. - Read More
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💼 Resource of the Week: Strategic Guide!
🚀 Felicis' "AI Has Killed the Traditional SaaS GTM Playbook"
An essential 2024/2025 strategic guide that dissects why the old GTM playbook fails for AI startups. It provides a new framework centered on building a defensible brand, mandatory product-led growth, leveraging media hype, dynamic pricing models, and building community as your primary sales engine.
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