Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,
Berlin fintech Taktile placed a giant bronze lobster next to the Wall Street Bull, launching an applied AI research institute for financial services. Their first finding: AI models now beat human accuracy on complex banking tasks. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg posted a photo with Scale AI's Alexandr Wang to quash rumors about his $14bn hire being sidelined: they’re still building. Follow the Gradient and stay tuned.
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Your talk track for this week’s cocktail party
Yann LeCun's AMI raises $1.03bn for "world models"
Turing Award winner and former Meta AI chief Yann LeCun launched Paris-based AMI Labs and immediately closed a $1.03bn seed round at a $3.5bn valuation. Backers include Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Nvidia, and Samsung. The company is building AI that understands the physical world, not just text. LeCun argues that LLMs are "fundamentally limited."
Legora raises $550m as legaltech goes mainstream
Swedish legaltech Legora closed a $550m Series D at a $5.55bn valuation, tripling since its $150m Series C five months ago. Led by Accel, with Benchmark, Bessemer, and General Catalyst joining. The company now serves 800+ customers including White & Case and Cleary Gottlieb. With 400 employees globally, it plans 300+ US hires by end of 2026.
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Food for thought
What are the non-negotiables for peak performance?
Andrew Huberman broke down what founders get wrong about energy management. The core insight: the real constraint isn't time, it's cognitive energy. Protecting the few hours where you can truly think clearly is the most valuable thing a founder can do. Sleep optimization, recovery protocols, and knowing when to rest are systems design problems, not willpower problems.
