Poolside AI, the artificial intelligence model-building startup, has struck a non-exclusive licensing deal with Nvidia for $6 billion, plus a $1 billion investment in Poolside at a $12 billion pre-money valuation, according to a letter to investors obtained by Newcomer. As part of the deal 109 Poolside employees are getting offers to leave the startup to join Nvidia. The deal echoes the acquihires that other AI startups have struck in the last few years with tech giants — though this one has a major twist: Unlike Scale-Meta, Nvidia-Groq and Character AI-Google where the founders jumped ship, Poolside’s founders will be staying with the startup. “This is not an acquisition and it is not an acquihire,” the founders wrote in the note obtained by Newcomer.

In 1843, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote to a friend after seeing her first daguerreotype: “The very shadow of the person lying there fixed for ever! … I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest artist’s work ever produced.” Our lives and homes are filled with things that once inspired similar awe. I tried to collect those feelings, in quotes like the one above, from people for whom what is now ordinary was brand new. A friar who met the inventor of eyeglasses, a founding father on the new smallpox vaccine, a woman in Iowa on her family’s first indoor bathroom. To look at a modern apartment through their eyes:

"If we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained."

My latest story for Newcomer: The AI frenzy has a unique repercussion. A lot of dual valuation deals are happening, with one investor, often a big name, getting a lower price than everyone else in basically the same around

When Starcloud, a space data center startup, announced in March that it had raised $170 million at a $1.1 billion valuation led by Benchmark and EQT, you had to read deeply into the press release to learn that the deal was done in two tranches, with the first part led solely by Benchmark. What it didn’t say: that first piece came at a valuation of $250 million, according to two sources familiar with the deal. Just days later, the second tranche, which also included a host of smaller investors, closed at more than four times the price. The Starcloud deal is an example of what investors say is becoming a common practice: prestige firms getting a significantly better price than other investors in what is essentially the same round. Proponents of such deals say they’re simply reflecting the market reality that some investor dollars are greener than others and it’s only logical for firms to cash in on that — especially in early-stage deals where an investor’s brand name can make a huge difference. But critics say such structures can be problematic, not least for employees. Brendan Foody, CEO of the AI-training startup Mercor, stirred the pot on the issue on X last month, writing: “in the last 6 mo’s ive seen a half dozen rounds where sequoia invests in 2 tranches. everyone pretends they only did the higher valuation,” and calling the tactic “deceptive.” Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, in a reply, claimed the practice was rare. But Newcomer’s reporting suggests it’s increasingly common across the industry. @followthemani

Mark your calendars. September 29th, 2026. San Francisco. The inaugural Machine Earning AI Summit, hosted by @EricNewcomer and team. I'll be on stage talking about what happens when agents start doing the spending and what breaks when that happens at scale. Applications to attend are open.

I got to see 10 mins of this 🧀 doc at a preview last night, and it was so good! Strongly recommend you check it out, if you’re a fan of cheese, fun documentaries, or @EricNewcomer and fam (this should cover everyone) 👇

What happened this week in tech? - Bending Spoons agrees to acquire Airtable at a steep discount to its ZIRP-era valuation, but early-stage investors make out well. - Jeff Dean leaves Google DeepMind and Demis Hassabis steps back amid an overhaul of Google’s AI teams. - Fresh TVPI data from Carta shows how wide the gap is between a good and great outcome in venture. - Hardware companies from nuclear reactors to automated manufacturing raise billion-dollar rounds. - Two profiles on Sequoia dig into the inner workings of the firm under new stewards Alfred Lin and Pat Grady. - Earnings calls spook the markets on SpaceX but give Palantir a big boost. - Jasmine Sun travels to the Midwest to discover why Americans hate data centers so much. - Nikita Bier steps down as X’s head of product.