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- 🦄Who Funded Your Favorite Unicorn? The Answer Might Surprise You
🦄Who Funded Your Favorite Unicorn? The Answer Might Surprise You
đź’° Is NVIDIA the Most Powerful AI Investor of All Time?
In This Edition:
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đź§ The Painful Truth About What Really Kills Startups
🚫 “No Competition” Sounded Smart—Until It Killed the Startup
Two years of hard work. Three passionate engineers. A life-changing idea that never took off. What went wrong?
This founder’s journey into building a diabetes app turned into a powerful masterclass in startup survival. From building too much, too soon… to forgetting the one thing every great product needs — real users.
The story is raw, the lessons are hard-earned, and every founder should read them before launching their next big idea.
🔥 10 mistakes, 10 lessons — one reality check every startup needs.
💼 Who’s Funding Founders Before Anyone Else Notices?
🌟 The Founders’ Favorite Angels You’ve Never Heard Of (Yet)

Some angels just invest. These ones get in the trenches.
From ex-Google AI researchers to Thiel Fellows and Brex operators — these 8 forward-deployed angels are rewriting what early-stage investing looks like. They help founders refine go-to-market strategies, tell their stories, and scale faster than most funds can keep up.
🚀 Meet the Angels:
Luba Y. — Founder of Paloma, ex-Airbnb/Yelp; helps with GTM & community.
Andrew Tan — Exited founder, Stanford AI researcher, runs a 1M+ AI newsletter.
Sarah Hashash — Stanford PhD, backs technical founders solving hard problems.
Edward Tian — GPTZero CEO, helps founders shape powerful launch stories.
Anthony Chen — Employee #1 at Flexport, loves “unsexy” businesses done smart.
Jonathan Chang — Brex Startup Ambassador, bets on founders obsessed with distribution.
Akshaya D. — Thiel Fellow, founded & exited Nova and Spellbound.
Nick Gianos — Ex-Atlassian & Facebook, focuses on data, infra, and enterprise tools.
đź’ˇ Real angels. Real builders.
🚀 If you’re hunting for angels who actually move the needle — not just write checks — this list is pure gold.
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🏆 Top 50 Unicorn Investors
🕵️ Who Funded Your Favorite Unicorn? The Answer Might Surprise You
Everyone talks about unicorn founders — but who actually funded their rise?
A deep-dive analysis across 1,500+ US-based unicorns and 11,000+ investors has uncovered the Top 50 Unicorn Investors of All Time — the firms that spotted billion-dollar potential before the rest of the world caught on.
From Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz to Y Combinator and SoftBank, these investors shaped the global startup landscape — and their patterns reveal what might fuel the next generation of unicorns.
đź’ˇ Curious which firms backed 100+ unicorns before they were famous?
🏢 Google Launches Gemini Enterprise for Business Clients
🕹️ Google’s Gemini Enterprise Lets You Build Agents for Anything
Google’s latest announcement isn’t just another product drop — it’s a glimpse into the future of work.
With Gemini Enterprise, teams can now chat directly with company data, documents, and apps — and even build custom AI agents trained on their own organizational knowledge. Imagine creating an agent that knows your business as well as you do.
💡 This isn’t AI in the cloud — it’s AI grounded in your context.
Today we introduced Gemini Enterprise, built with our most advanced Gemini models. It allows you to chat with your company’s documents, data and apps as well as build and deploy AI agents, all grounded in your information and context.
Have a look at how it helps you build an
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai)
5:26 PM • Oct 9, 2025
Used by Execs at Google and OpenAI
Join 400,000+ professionals who rely on The AI Report to work smarter with AI.
Delivered daily, it breaks down tools, prompts, and real use cases—so you can implement AI without wasting time.
If they’re reading it, why aren’t you?
🎯 Startups Buzz
đź’° Is NVIDIA the Most Powerful AI Investor of All Time?
Everyone knows NVIDIA powers the AI revolution — but few realize it’s also funding it.
With strategic stakes in OpenAI, Arm, Intel, Hugging Face, Databricks, Scale AI, Perplexity, and more, Jensen Huang has turned NVIDIA into the most powerful AI venture fund on the planet.
This isn’t just chip dominance — it’s empire building. One investment at a time, NVIDIA is shaping the future of every major AI player.
🔥 The deeper you look, the more it feels like Jensen’s world — and we’re all just living in it.
All roads lead to NVIDIA $NVDA.
It’s Jensen’s world, and we’re just living in it.
— Linas Beliūnas (@linasbeliunas)
2:45 PM • Oct 8, 2025
🚀 YC’s Hidden Formula for Startup Success
Y Combinator’s simple playbook: 100 users paying $100/month = $10K MRR. The magic lies in focus, not scale — start small, grow smart, and validate fast.
đź’ˇ 7 AI Startup Ideas You Can Launch with $0
Discover 7 proven AI business ideas that can hit $1M+ — complete with growth playbooks, launch tips, and scaling strategies to help you move fast and smart.
Explore the full list & growth tactics 👇️
🎯 WEB PICKS
🧠Microsoft’s Secret Weapon: Nadella Reminds OpenAI Who Built the Cloud First
As OpenAI scrambles to build new data centers, Microsoft quietly flexes its massive global infrastructure advantage.
💥 Reflection AI Raises $2B to Take on DeepSeek — The Next AI Superpower?
The new contender on the AI frontier aims to become America’s answer to DeepSeek — and it’s backed with serious cash.
⚙️ Intel Just Dropped Its Most Advanced Chip Yet — The 18A Revolution Begins
Intel’s latest processor, powered by 18A semiconductor tech, could redefine speed, efficiency, and the AI hardware race.
🎨 Figma + Google = AI Design Magic with Gemini Integration
Figma just got smarter — Google’s Gemini AI is now supercharging design workflows inside the platform.
📊 Datacurve Raises $15M to Challenge Scale AI’s Dominance
A bold move in the data labeling world — Datacurve wants to take a big slice of Scale AI’s lucrative market.
🔥 Sora Hit 1M Downloads Faster Than ChatGPT — A New Record in AI Apps
OpenAI’s video generation model is exploding in popularity, outpacing even ChatGPT’s historic growth.
🌏 ChatGPT Go Expands to 16 Asian Countries — AI for Everyone, Everywhere
OpenAI’s affordable plan goes global, bringing powerful AI tools to millions of new users across Asia.
🎥 YouTubers Get a Second Chance: New Appeal System for Banned Creators
YouTube is rolling out a redemption path for creators previously banned — a huge shift in its content moderation policy.
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