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everything you need to read this week by @stephthefounder (July 14)

Author

Steph Mui
July 14, 2025

The goal is to be the best weekly newsletter to be the most succinct + fun way to learn about all the best things you need to know across tech, startups, VC, etc, sent out every Monday. (and at the minimum, it will include the links I post about every week on instagram!). Feedback (and a better/more creative newsletter name than the boring one I have now) always welcome!

Hola!

I was in Maine this weekend but even with being more remote & much less screen time, I couldn’t get away from all the Windsurf ~drama~. The TLDR for people who aren’t nearly as chronically online:

  • Windsurf was supposed to be acquired by OpenAI for ~$3B (announced in May)

  • The deal fell apart, allegedly because of Microsoft (a huge $13B investor in OpenAI + 49% profit share)

  • Google stepped in, hiring Windsurf’s CEO/founder + execs for $2.4B

  • This is where the ~drama really escalates~

    • Founders/exec/founders were supposedly going to get paid, but

    • news circulates that employees (especially those who joined <12 months ago whose equity didn’t vest) wouldn’t get anything in the new deal

    • All the key execs were going to Google, while Windsurf itself would remain independent, have $100M on its balance sheet, and be employee-owned

  • [update as of 230pm even though i wrote this newsletter this morning at 8 💀 ] The remaining Windsurf is now being acquired by Cognition (maker of popular SWE agent Devin) and the full team including employees are benefiting - yay!

Some observations from all of this:

  • Misinformation runs so fast 💀 - even now, days after the original news broke, I actually have no idea whether the claim that employees are getting screwed over is true or not. Some news is saying that employees are getting dividends (equivalent to what they would get if it were a true acquisition). Other seemingly reputable news sources seem to be saying that employees (especially those who haven’t vested - common for employees with <12 months tenure) are “getting peanuts.”

  • This trend of “shell-qui-hires” (can’t take credit for this brilliant name) similar to the Scale AI acquisition-but-not-really-an-acquisition-but-kind-of-an-acquisition by Meta last month is… interesting. This is all to avoid regulatory interference (a la what happened to Figma a few years ago) but will it continue to be allowed? Unclear. And does this structure account for employees who’ve been on the team under the premise that their equity could be worth something some day? Unsure

  • What to take away from this? I’m glad it looks like employees are going to be taken care of given the new development of the Cognition acquisition (although unannounced how much $ that is??). Doing diligence on this kind of thing (especially as a prospective employee at a company) is really difficult, but nothing (re the company’s success or promise) matters if you aren’t working for a founding team (and to some extent, investors as board members) who are trustworthy/high integrity and who you believe will stand up for you in lieu of you not having direct info and control. If the news re employees getting screwed in this deal is real, this is a terrible precedent to set in the industry (early startup employees are so so important and we should be incentivizing more people to work for startups, not less 🥲 ) and I hope there is more transparency about this from all sides to come

💰 Companies that will make you a millionaire

Every week I highlight a few of my favorite startups that I personally think are really promising. They’ve typically received funding that week + are hiring, and occasionally I’ll include some special bonus ones.

This week’s companies:

  1. Moment: builds an AI-powered platform that helps financial teams automate everything from fixed-income trading to compliance and reporting, making it easier to execute trades in seconds and manage portfolios with less hassle. Raised a $36 million Series B led by Index (with support from big investors like Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed)

  2. Varda Space: create capsules to launch in space so that microgravity can create unique drug crystals (for pharma companies / materials companies) that can’t be made on earth. Have had 3 successful missions since 2023. Just raised $180N+ this week!

  3. Polimorphic: a company that uses AI to help local governments improve their services/processes/admin that just raised a $18.6 million Series A led by General Catalyst. Platform includes 24/7 multilingual chatbots and automates repetitive tasks, saving cities and counties thousands of work hours. Especially with outdated systems + staffing shortages in local governments, this is much needed

Some bonus companies that were also funded last week:

  • Harmonic AI (math-solving AI) 🧠 → $100M Series B (Job openings here)

  • Gradient Labs (fintech fraud tools) 🏦 → $13M Series A (Job openings here)

  • AirGarage (parking ops) 🅿️ → $23M Series B (Job openings here)

  • Ryft (data infra) 🧱 → $8M Seed (Job openings here)

  • Circle Games (mobile puzzles) 🎮 → $7.25M Seed (Job openings listed here)

  • ZeroEntropy (contextual AI infra) 🧬 → $4.2M Seed (Job openings here)

🤓 Best things to read instead of doomscrolling

The best things I’ve read every week, listed and summarized here:

  1. Microdosing Willpower by saraht0n1n — interesting reflections on a first-hand 30-day experiment with microdosing Ozempic as a way of increasing willpower. I’m intrigued by this because of the topic of Ozempic itself (and because selfishly I’ve had the thought of wanting to do this very same experiment for this very same reason!), and also think it’s an interesting example of a trend of people taking a bigger responsibility for their own health by treating themselves like human guinea pigs (@bryanjohnson_ & @thesamparr are two good examples!)

  2. The Death of Partying in the U.S.A.—and Why It Matters by Derek Thompson — ~the youths~ spend 70% less time at parties than they did in 2003 (!!). Especially alarming and interesting to think about in the context of headlines like “Zuckerberg’s Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI” 💀

  3. On Agency by Henrik Karlsson — I like how agency is defined in this - aka it’s primarily the abilities to identify what’s important (authentically, to you) and also have the sense to figure out the most effective path to actually reach X goal. (Sounds obvious, but considering most of us are or have peers that easily get swept up into status games over personal values or are stagnant because of indecision / fear / procrastination, it’s a good reminder 🙃)

  4. Patina and Intimacy by Simon Sarris — on how modern design has sterilized everything due to a priority of function over anything else (and how instead, we should be designing more for enchantment / intimacy / life !!). This stood out because as someone who’s fairly practical (and likes modern design 🤪), one of the bigger things my mind has changed on in the last few years is how important environment (the aesthetic!! and how it feels!!) is and how it impacts not just efficiency but also mood/quality of life.

📱 Everything you may have missed in tech/startup news

  1. Windsurf’s acquisition by OpenAI is off – Google poaches founders/execs & tech for $2.4B; heated debate whether employees will see payout unless equity vested 💸 : OpenAI’s $3 billion deal to buy AI coding startup Windsurf fell through, reportedly because of Microsoft. Immediately after, Google hired Windsurf’s CEO and key team members, paying $2.4 billion for a license to their tech instead of buying the company. Windsurf stays independent, with its interim CEO leading the rest of the team. Notable because it follows the trend of a) intense AI talent wars, and b) interesting acquisitions structured creatively to avoid FTC intervention, and also because of c) the current known around whether employees are getting a share (a controversial topic all over Twitter, if you’re chronically online like me).

  2. Elon is building an incestuous empire – SpaceX to invest $2B into xAI & Grok AI coming to Teslas 🤖: regardless of how you feel about Elon, I will say that how he has combined all of his companies into a giant ecosystem is extremely impressive. This week - SpaceX announced a $2B investment into xAI (formerly Twitter) & that Grok is being embedded into Teslas (despite Grok’s interesting personality change last week 💀 ). This is in line with other ~collaborations~ like Tesla acquiring Solar City, Tesla x The Boring Company collabs, so on and so forth.

  3. Bitcoin hits $118K & Nvidia becomes first $4T company 📈: notable ATHs being hit last week!!

🤪 Just because / for fun

aka random things that I found interesting enough to screenshot or take a picture of last week

  • this is one of my favorite things i’ve done this year: for background, when i was 16 i went to a summer camp in the woods of upstate NY where one of the traditions involved pulling an all-nighter to tend to a fire + write ourselves a letter that would be sent to us when we were 21. it was one of my favorite things i ever did (and when i got the letter when i was 21, i can’t even begin to describe the emotional journey i went on reading 40 pages 💀 gratitude, pride, happy tears, etc etc).

    i’ve been feeling overwhelmed lately (both positively and negatively given the ups and downs of running a startup, going through some major company changes, the huge influx of opportunities/responsibilities with the creator stuff - something i’m hugely grateful for btw, some family health issues, etc) & when i saw our tent had a little fire pit attached, i was reminded instantly of that original night and decided to do it again. so i stayed up almost all night (and would’ve had a great time lapse of it had my phone not died !!) + wrote my future self a 50 page letter 💘 in a composition book that i have to “send” to myself when i’m… 40? 💀 Is that really the next milestone birthday I have?? ugh

    anyway, highly recommend as it was therapeutic and fun all at once. i loved the experience of writing it and can’t wait to receive it again 🙃 

en thi

  • eric adams’ genius continues to strike again <3

  • my flight got delayed 4 hours (and then cancelled 💀 the first time I think that’s happened in all my years of travel, so i guess i can’t complain) and it sucked but i spent a lot of time playing around with new ai tools + vibecoding (particularly with Lovable, which spoiler alert, I’m doing a paid collab with launching this week 🥺 they’re a dream partner who I can only work with thanks to all of you so thank you so so much).

    i used it to build a fun “virtual bookshelf” with all the book recommendations that i’ve talked about on my page - will publish soon! i continue to be amazed what ai can do for a non-technical person like myself (and how much it improves over even a few weeks… we live in exciting times)

    (lol at my other windows - aka the FAA search to make bets on how much longer my flight would be delayed and behind that, a Survivor re-run 💀 Season 19 with Russell iykyk)

  • i went glamping in Maine near Acadia and it was wonderful (despite being foggy). i got bitten by only a dozen mosquitoes (my lucky type O blood means it’s usually more like 100) and screamed loudly only twice (because using your phone in the dark means all insects will come flying at your phone at once - don’t advise) but it was perfect

<3 until next week!