Issue #139 • September 11, 2026

Hi Seedradar Squad! The playbook just split into two extremes: digging into bedrock and letting software run the machines. The Boring Company locked down $3B to drill high-speed bypasses under gridlocked cities, proving the real fix for physical congestion is deep underground. Meanwhile, the software moat took another direct hit. DeepSeek dropped V4.1 Flash, matching proprietary reasoning benchmarks while running quietly on everyday consumer hardware—putting direct, unrelenting pressure on bloated cloud pricing.

Look at the rest of the board and the signal is clear. With Positron banking $875M for memory-first silicon and Motive pulling $1.3B to wire up commercial fleets, passive chatbots are dead. We're in the era of direct agency and brute-force infrastructure. If a team isn't moving physical dirt or actively taking the steering wheel of an operating system, they're already running behind..

The Boring Company secured $3 billion in fresh capital led by UAE investors to push its tunneling machinery into overdrive.

Metropolitan gridlock costs cities billions in lost productivity every year. By drilling proprietary express transit tunnels directly beneath congested highway corridors, the company is building high-speed arterial bypasses right where surface expansion is physically impossible.

Read More

DeepSeek launched V4.1 Flash, its leanest inference-focused model built to challenge Silicon Valley pricing.

Open-weight momentum continues to put pressure on Western cloud margins. The release gives developers a low-latency model that matches proprietary reasoning scores while running on consumer-grade hardware.

Read More

• Cognition closed a $2 billion Series E funding round for its fully autonomous software engineers, sending its valuation flying to $48 billion. Read more

• Apple revealed the iPhone Duo, its inaugural folding flagship, at the fall hardware showcase alongside the iPhone 18 lineup. Read more

• Motive raised over $1.3 billion to expand its physical AI tracking platform across commercial vehicle fleets. Read more

• Meta deployed Muse, an agentic personal assistant integrated directly across its social and hardware ecosystem. Read more

• Positron AI banked $875 million in Series C financing to scale production of its memory-first inference silicon. Read more

At Seedradar Ventures, we back relentless founders at the earliest stage, investing in teams solving big problems with solutions that deliver a 10–20x greater impact.

Our syndicate offers investors access to a curated pipeline of early-stage startups, sourced through our network.

👉 Ready to learn more? Explore the Seedradar Ventures Syndicate on AngelList.