New Millionaires, Mini-Apps & GPT-5: The AI Next Wave

Happy Thursday everyone!

Welcome to AI Weekly Digest 📬 Your essential AI briefing, carefully curated by me, Rubén Colomer, AI Specialist and GP at Next Tier Ventures. Stay ahead of the curve with the latest AI breakthroughs, key funding news, innovative tools, thought-provoking reads, and the best AI job opportunities - it's all here!

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News 🗞️📰

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Says AI Will Create Millionaires: In an Entrepreneur interview, Jensen Huang predicts the AI revolution will spawn new wealth—comparing its impact to the internet—and urges founders to leverage Nvidia’s AI Studio and Omniverse platforms to build the next generation of cloud-native startups.
• Google Tests “Opal,” a New Vibe-Coding App for Rapid Mini-App Creation: Google Labs has released Opal in limited U.S. beta, enabling users to spin up fully functional web mini-apps via natural-language prompts, complete with UI scaffolding and data integrations, as part of its Labs experimentation.
• OpenAI Prepares to Launch GPT-5 as Early as August: Sources tell Reuters that OpenAI is set to unveil GPT-5 in August, a multi-component model designed for enhanced multimodal reasoning and modular capabilities, marking the next leap beyond GPT-4.
• Runway Unleashes Aleph, the AI That Bends Video to Your Will: Runway today launched Aleph, a groundbreaking AI video model that lets creators overhaul any footage in seconds—erase or insert objects, remix camera angles, tweak lighting, and restyle scenes all within the original clip. By understanding context frame by frame, Aleph promises to revolutionize VFX, social media content, and film post-production with near-instant, on-the-fly video editing.
• AI CEOs Are Replacing Workers With Robots and Algorithms: Futurism reports on multiple CEOs—across manufacturing, customer support, and logistics—who are automating roles with AI-powered systems, citing cost savings up to 40% and redeploying human staff to oversight and strategic tasks rather than frontline operations.
• From Video Games to AI: How Nvidia Became a $4 Trillion Company: WCMU Radio traces Nvidia’s evolution from GPU maker for gamers to AI infrastructure titan—detailing Jensen Huang’s pivot to data-center accelerators, strategic partnerships with hyperscalers, and a 60% CAGR that propelled its market cap past $4 trillion.
• CyberCatch Announces Agreement with Strategic AI Solutions Reseller Partner to U.S. Government Agencies to Drive Large Sales: CyberCatch partnered with AI Solutions Inc. as an authorized reseller to offer its continuous penetration-testing platform—powered by reinforcement-learning agents—to federal agencies, targeting multimillion-dollar GSA contracts for automated cybersecurity assessments.
• Riyadh Banks Jeel and Zypl.ai Sign MoU to Enhance Digital Banking With AI: Saudi digital lender Jeel and AI startup Zypl.ai signed a memorandum to integrate AI-driven credit-scoring, fraud detection, and personalized financial advisors into Jeel’s mobile app, aiming to boost loan approvals by 25% and reduce default rates.
• Cohere Strikes Alliance with BCE to Sell AI Tools: Cohere entered a strategic partnership with BCE (Bell Canada) to bundle its large-language and embedding models into BCE’s enterprise connectivity and cloud offerings, targeting Canadian mid-market firms with turnkey AI-as-a-Service packages.
• DOGE Develops AI Tool to Slash Federal Regulations: The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) rolled out RedTapeAI, an AI-driven platform that analyzes 200,000 federal rules to identify and recommend elimination of redundant regulations — aiming to cut regulatory burden in half. Fox
• OpenAI Chair Warns “Training Your Own AI Model Is a Sure-Fire Way to Destroy Capital”: OpenAI Chair Bret Taylor cautioned that the soaring compute costs for bespoke large models rapidly deplete venture funding, advocating for shared infrastructure and greater efficiency over building isolated in-house systems.
• Meta Appoints Shengjia Zhao as Chief Scientist of Its Super-Intelligence Lab: Meta has tapped former OpenAI researcher Shengjia Zhao — co-creator of GPT-4 — to lead its new Super-Intelligence Lab alongside Alexandr Wang, bolstering its AGI efforts with top-tier talent and an exascale research agenda.
• AI-Driven Referrals to Top Websites Jump 357% Year-Over-Year: TechCrunch reports that AI platforms generated 1.13 billion referral clicks to the web’s top 1,000 sites in June — a 357% increase from last year — led by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

Funding 💼💸

• AI data analyst startup Julius nabs $10 M seed round Founded by Rahul Sonwalkar in 2022 after his Y Combinator logistics pivot, San Francisco–based Julius AI closed a $10 million seed round led by Bessemer Venture Partners (with Horizon VC, 8VC, Y Combinator and AI Grant accelerator). The platform—used by over 2 million users—acts as an AI data scientist, ingesting, analyzing and visualizing large datasets and executing predictive models via natural-language prompts.
• Investing in Salient’s Series A to automate loan servicing Co-founders Ari Malik and Mukund Tibrewala launched Salient in 2023 to build AI agents that handle borrower interactions across voice, text, email and chat. Andreessen Horowitz led Salient’s Series A, participating via Alex Rampell, Seema Amble and Olivia Moore, as the platform automates payment collection, payoff processing and compliance monitoring for major U.S. lenders.
• Scale AI competitor Micro1 finalizes Series A at $500 M valuation Micro1—whose founders have not been publicly disclosed—provides AI-powered data-labeling recruitment and services. The San Francisco–based startup is closing a Series A that values it at $500 million, backed by 01A and LG Technology Ventures, after crossing $50 million in annualized revenue and projecting $100 million by September.
• Armada raises $131 M and launches megawatt-scale edge data centers Co-founders Dan Wright (CEO) and Pradeep Nair (CTO) led Vancouver’s Armada to secure $131 million from Pinegrove, Veriten, Glade Brook and Microsoft’s M12, alongside Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Shield Capital and others. The funding coincides with the launch of Leviathan—Armada’s megawatt-scale modular AI data center module for rapid edge deployment on stranded or renewable energy sites.
• Farmers Business Network raises $50 M to expand AI and digital upgrades Led by CEO Diego Lopez Casanello , Kansas City’s Farmers Business Network closed $50 million from GV (Google Ventures), Temasek, Arteqin, Colle Capital and T. Rowe Price. FBN will use the capital to broaden its AI-powered ag e-commerce platform, enhance financing tools and roll out “Norm,” its proprietary LLM for agronomy and risk management, now serving 117,000 farms across North America.
• Apera AI secures Series A financing to scale 4D Vision for robotics. Founded by Sina Afrooze , Vancouver’s Apera AI closed an oversubscribed Series A led by BDC Capital—with Lobby Capital, Flying Fish Ventures and J-Ventures—to accelerate its patented 4D Vision platform. The funding fuels team growth and product innovation in AI-driven robotic automation, adding human-like vision to bin picking, de-racking and complex assembly use cases in automotive and industrial manufacturing.
• Latent Labs launches web-based AI model to democratize protein design Co-founded by Simon Kohl , Dr.Raj Gupta and Shashank Mungle, London– and San Francisco–based Latent Labs raised $30 million from Radical Ventures, Sofinnova Partners, Jeff Dean and Aidan Gomez. Its LatentX web app leverages all-atom AI to design novel protein structures for therapeutics, enzymes and industrial catalysts through an intuitive browser interface.
• Maro secures $4.3 M seed to eliminate human risk in cybersecurity Founded in late 2024 by Jadon Cruz Montero (CEO), Gwen Betts (CXO) and Jen A. (CTO), New York–based Maro closed a $4.3 million seed round led by Downing Capital Group to launch its cognitive security platform that intervenes in real time to prevent social engineering, insider threats, human error and ungoverned AI usage by classifying intent and delivering context-aware, just-in-time interventions.
• IdentifAI raises €5 M Series A to tackle deepfakes with AI detection Cesena’s IdentifAI—founded in 2024 by cybersecurity experts Marco Ramilli, PhD and Marco Castaldo —secured €5 million in a Series A led by United Ventures (following a €2.2 million seed round) to expand its proprietary deepfake-detection platform internationally, continuously evolving its models to identify AI-generated or manipulated images, videos and voice recordings with high confidence.
• Data Guardians Network closes $5 M pre-seed to build ethical AI data platform Led by founder and CEO Johanna Cabildo , Data Guardians Network (D-GN) raised $5 million in a pre-seed round co-led by droppGroup, Saudi investor Hamoud Al-Rumayyan and Hub Culture to launch its decentralized contributor model—rewarding data providers via on-chain traceability and USDT payments—to deliver auditable, ethically sourced multimodal training datasets for enterprise AI and open-source frameworks.
• Rocksalt raises $3.5 M seed to help execs become influencers via AI marketing Co-founded in October 2023 by siblings Arjun Moorthy (CEO) and Anita Moorthy (CMO) alongside Ajoy Sojan (COO), San Francisco–based Rocksalt closed a $3.5 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from Defy.vc, angel investors Gokul Rajaram, Mike Volpe and Anu Bharadwaj to launch its agentic AI platform that surfaces high-value LinkedIn and Slack conversations and guides executives to engage authentically in 10 minutes a day—transforming in-house experts into trusted social-media influencers.

M&A 💰

• .NiCE to Acquire Cognigy for $955 M to Accelerate AI-First Customer Experience: NICE Ltd. (NASDAQ: NICE) has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Cognigy—a conversational and agentic AI leader co-founded and led by Philipp Heltewig—for approximately $955 million, including a $905 million upfront payment and a $50 million performance-based holdback, merging Cognigy.AI with NICE’s CXone Mpower platform to orchestrate AI agents at scale across front- and back-office customer experiences.
• Zeitview Expands Telecom Asset Intelligence Through Acquisition of Consilience Analytics: Zeitview, the visual-AI leader for critical infrastructure, has acquired Consilience Analytics—FieldSync’s digital-twin and asset-intelligence platform—to integrate advanced 3D rendering, geospatial analytics and cloud-native APIs into its end-to-end telecom inspection and maintenance solutions, strengthening its position as a full-stack provider for tower owners, operators and network contractors.
• Onix Brings AI Agents and Agentspace to Customer Service with Acquisition of UJET Services Unit: Onix has acquired the professional services unit of UJET—a Google-backed CCaaS provider—to embed UJET’s team and expertise in Google’s Customer Engagement AI Suite (CES) and Agentspace into Onix’s Wingspan agentic-AI platform, accelerating next-generation AI-driven customer engagement deployments across leading enterprise contact centers.
• Apple iSports Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire LBC Enterprises Pty Ltd: Apple iSports (OTC-QB: AAPI) has signed a deal to acquire LBC Enterprises Pty Ltd—an Australian online gaming, wagering and payment-systems company led by CEO Ian Parke—in a transaction expected to close in Q3 2025; Parke and fellow LBC executive James Tennant will join AAPI’s board as the companies combine LBC’s platform expertise with AAPI’s capital markets presence to expand B2B and B2C offerings.
• SALESmanago Accelerates Growth Strategy with Acquisition of Thulium: SALESmanago, the Krakow-headquartered customer-engagement platform with over €30 million ARR, has acquired Thulium—an AI-powered omnichannel eCommerce service solution led by CEO Ross Knap—in a deal supported by SilverTree Equity, Perwyn and Rafał Brzoska, unifying hyper-personalized marketing automation with omnichannel support to deliver end-to-end AI-driven customer journeys across Europe.

Interesting Reads 💡🤔

• 9 Open-Source Cursor Alternatives You Should Use in 2025: MarkTechPost highlights nine community-driven IDE and editor plugins—such as CoPilot Edge, Tabby, and Reledge—that match Cursor’s autocomplete and refactoring features, spotlighting projects with permissive licenses and active maintainers for enterprises seeking self-hosted coding assistance.
• AI Design Collaboration Tips: Geeky Gadgets outlines best practices for cross-functional teams using AI tools—recommendations include establishing shared style guides, leveraging real-time co-editing in Figma or Adobe Firefly, implementing prompt version control, and scheduling design-AI retrospectives to refine workflows.
• The Vibe Coding TAM: How Big Can This Market Really Get?: SaaStr’s guest post quantifies the “vibe coding” opportunity—estimating a $15 billion total addressable market across UI generation, workflow automation, and data-app builders—and advises startups to focus on high-value verticals and build defensible prompt-management layers.
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) for Enterprises: Secure Integration with AWS, Azure and Google Cloud—2025 Update: MarkTechPost reviews the latest MCP standard—now v1.2—which adds OAuth2 scopes for fine-grained data access, end-to-end encryption hooks, and certified connectors for major cloud providers to let enterprise LLMs ingest sensitive context securely.
• How Google AI Overviews Are Reshaping Industries: Zapier analyzes AI Overviews’ impact on sectors—showing 40% fewer clicks in e-commerce but 75% higher task completion in B2B tech support—and recommends businesses adapt by optimizing for “AI snippet” visibility and integrating their APIs for cited data feeds.
• Watch: How This AI Program Designs a High-End Home in Seconds: CNBC demonstrates an AI tool that, given architectural parameters, auto-generates floor plans, 3D renderings and material palettes in under a minute—showcasing potential to accelerate initial RFP responses in real estate and custom homebuilding.

Startups / Tools 🧰🛠️

• Findable: An AI-powered SEO visibility platform that optimizes content for ChatGPT, Google, and Perplexity—offering tools like content-gap analysis, query-search monitoring, EEAT checks, and real-time performance dashboards to boost your AI search ranking.
• CrystalSound: Real-time noise cancellation and voice-modulation for any call or stream—clean up background distractions and even change your voice on the fly, all within a lightweight desktop app.
• Viz.ai: Accelerate clinical decision-making by automatically analyzing medical scans, detecting critical conditions, and orchestrating care pathways in real-time.
• Factory: Ship software faster with autonomous “Droids” that convert support tickets and backlog items into pull requests, resolve incidents, and run QA checks—fully integrated into your existing dev stack.
• TechKareer One Dollar Resume Review: An AI-driven service that provides on-the-spot, role-specific feedback on your resume for only $1—complete with personalized project suggestions, hackathon recommendations, and an automated checklist aligned to your chosen position.
• Fliki: Turn blog posts, scripts, or any text into polished videos with lifelike AI voiceovers, animated avatars, and access to millions of stock assets—export in minutes without editing skills.
• Hypernatural: Automatically generate high-quality marketing videos from plain-text scripts—choose from cinematic templates, AI voice narration, and branded animations for social or web.
• Launch: The fastest way to validate startup ideas with real users—get on-demand feedback, prototype tests, and analytics from your target audience in under 24 hours.
• Power Apps: Modernize legacy workflows with drag-and-drop, AI-enabled forms and apps that natively connect to Microsoft 365, Dynamics, and external data sources.
• Trolly AI: Draft SEO-optimized articles in half the time—Trolly’s AI writer creates outlines, headings, and full drafts pre-loaded with keyword research and readability checks.
• WebWave: Launch a fully responsive, SEO-friendly website in under 3 minutes with AI-driven design suggestions, one-click publishing, and built-in hosting.
• Hyring AI Phone Screener: Automates first-round phone interviews with a conversational AI that asks job-specific questions, evaluates responses, detects inconsistencies, and delivers candidate scores—so you filter unqualified applicants without lifting a finger.
• Huhu AI Agent: An e-commerce AI agent that automates product-page optimization and visual content pipelines—generating virtual try-on images, swapping in AI models, auditing SEO/UX, and publishing updates directly to your store via a single chat interface.

Prompt Tutorial 📖📚

Driving Product Innovation & Roadmap
You are a pro product manager tasked with accelerating innovation for a [BUSINESS_TYPE].
• Conduct user and market research to uncover unmet needs and emerging trends.
• Build and prioritize a backlog using RICE or MoSCoW frameworks.
• Define MVP success criteria and A/B test plans.
• Recommend agile ceremonies and toolchain (Jira, Confluence, Figma).
• Deliver a 6‑ to 12‑month roadmap that balances quick wins and transformational bets.

Business Type: [Insert here]        

NTV Highlights 🪩🎉

• We are actively looking for AI startups At Next Tier Ventures, we are actively looking for the next generation of AI startup founders ready to scale and create meaningful impact. Our investments range between $500K and $2M, accompanied by strategic support to help founders achieve their vision. If you’re building cutting-edge B2B AI solutions let’s connect 👉 http://apply.nexttier.vc