Hey friends, welcome to What’s the Deal? Your weekly roundup of the latest and greatest stories in tech, venture capital, and the capital markets — with the latest deals front and center.

I’m Ella, the voice behind this glorious newsletter, and this week’s stories are definitely more shocking compared to last week… including a personal attack on OpenAi’s CEO. But on a lighter note, humanoid robots will now be sold on AliExpress, so that’s cool… 😅

Let’s get into it… 👇

Satellite Expansion - Amazon is acquiring Globalstar, a leading mobile satellite services operator, and they’re partnering with Apple to expand its satellite network

IPO Watch - Genspark AI has rapidly scaled to a $1.6B valuation and $200M ARR in under a year by building an all-in-one AI agent platform that turns simple prompts into fully usable business deliverables

AI Chips - SiFive raised a $400M round at a $3.65B valuation, with backing from Nvidia, to scale its open-source RISC-V chip designs for AI data centers and challenge traditional CPU giants

AI Finance - OpenAI acquired AI finance startup Hiro, an AI-powered financial planning tool for consumers, in an acquihire move, bringing its team in-house

Global Growth - Instacart acquired a Columbia-based grocery tech firm, Instaleap, as an initiative to expand globally by offering their tech to international grocers without building their own delivery network

OpenAI Attack - A 20-year-old man was arrested after throwing a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s San Francisco home, causing minor damage but no injuries, and later he was found threatening the OpenAI headquarters

Robots - Unitree, a robotics startup focused on building affordable humanoid and quadruped robots, is launching its ~$4K R1 humanoid robot globally via AliExpress sometime in April

Digital Clone - WeClone is an upcoming open-source AI project that turns your chat history into a personalized chatbot that talks, jokes, and responds almost exactly like you

Robotaxis - Uber has begun testing autonomous robotaxis with Lucid Motors and Nuro, letting employees ride in self-driving SUVs ahead of a planned public launch

Data Breach - Booking.Com confirmed a data breach where hackers accessed customer booking details and personal information, now being used in targeted phishing attacks

Funding Gap - Y Combinator partner Ankit Gupta warns that most AI funding is being concentrated in a few large companies, leaving smaller startups struggling to access capital

Market Flip - At a major AI conference, VCs signaled a sharp shift in sentiment toward Anthropic as the new industry favorite over OpenAI, highlighting how quickly leadership—and capital—can change in the AI race

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