WHAT’S INSIDE

• Tech In The News: Tariffs, Trump 100 Days, ECB Cuts, China AI independence

• Companies to watch: IBM, Anthropic x Goodfire, Manus, Protect AI, Cheehoo

• Feature: Fintech Spring 2025

• Buzzy Tools: Latest Buzzy tech, AI and financial tools

• Deep Tech: The latest in deep tech, biotech, futurism and more

• Space Tech: Latest news in the space race and aerospace tech

• Crypto: Blockchain and crypto policy and startups or protocols to watch

TECH IN THE NEWS

Trump's 100 Days — After 100 days investors are reevaluating U.S. assets amid concerns over lasting damage of trade policies and de-dollarization.

Euro Zone Rates Dip? — ECB policymaker Olli Rehn suggests interest rates could drop below neutral due to lower euro zone inflation, influenced by U.S. tariffs.

AI Leadership Turmoil — The Trump admin has ousted over 200 AI experts hired under Biden, instead outsourcing to private firms. Critics say it hampers recruitment, and creates government tech role uncertainty.

China Declares AI Independence — Xi Jinping stresses AI self-sufficiency as a national goal, offering support for chips, software, and talent. Huawei is developing the Ascend 910D AI chip to rival Nvidia's H100, seeking testing partners.

China's Calm Amidst Trade Tensions — China is withholding new stimulus measures amidst the US trade war, projecting confidence while preparing to support impacted firms.

Inventec's Texan Venture — The Taiwanese electronics giant plans to invest $85M in new Texas facilities, aims to reduce tariff impacts, boost its U.S. market presence.

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COMPANIES TO WATCH

IBM — Plans a $150B investment in the U.S. over five years, focusing on quantum computer production and local manufacturing to aligns with U.S. policy, address trade concerns.

Anthropic — Invested $1M in Goodfire, a startup focused on helping AI developers understand their models. Anthropic's first external investment, part of a $50M strategy to enhance transparency in AI development.

Manus — The Chinese AI startup behind viral AI Agent tool Manus, raised $75M from Benchmark at $500M to expand into the U.S., Japan, and the Middle East, following a previous $10M round from Tencent.

AI Engineering Innovators — This stealthy AI startup, founded by ex-DeepMind and Airbus employees, raised $23M to enhance engineering design through synthetic methods and drive innovation in engineering sectors.

Palo Alto Networks — Acquired Protect AI for $500M+ to boost its cybersecurity offerings. The new Prisma AIRS platform enhances AI model protection, and updates to Prisma Access Browser and Cortex XSIAM improve threat detection and security management.

Cheehoo — An AI animation startup founded by Hollywood execs raised $10M from Greycroft. Simplifies animation production with tools for rapid prototyping and integration. It plans to expand into consumer products.

 SignalFires — Read the Top signals, Startups + Deals From Last Week

Fintech Spring: AI Drives New Funding

“AI-wrapped-around-a-ledger” is setting the rules of the game

In the 15 weeks of 2025, 19 U.S. fintech startups have closed rounds of $50M+, a faster clip than all of 2024 combined. The average round size jumped to $17.7M million—its highest since late-2021. The difference to 2021 Zirp fintech is that money isn’t chasing free-lunch neo-banks; it’s now following revenue-positive B2B rails, compliance tooling, and lending infra that show real margins. Example, Revolut just printed $1.4B in pretax profit on $4B Revenue (a 26% margin) + its 4th positive year.

Why it matters: Big checks signal that LPs believe the shake-out is done. Capital is now price-selective rather than risk-averse, rewarding founders who spent the last two years tightening burn and proving unit economics.

AI Wrapped Around a Ledger

Cathay Innovation’s Simon Wu calls it the 2025 design pattern:

own the transaction data > embed machine-learning into every risk decision > and sell the stack as vertical SaaS.

Think Rutter (merchant-data ledgers for lenders) or Sardine (AI-first fraud rails). When a startup controls its core ledger, it can:

• score loans in seconds instead of days,

• cut fraud losses by double digits, and

• spin adjacency products (insurance, payouts, wage advance) at near-zero MC.

That’s also why AI-ledger hybrids dominate the mega-round list.

Good news? Regulators are “friendlier.” Bad news? No one knows what the rules are.

The White House’s deregulatory push—slowing CFPB enforcement and postponing open-banking deadlines—was meant to unleash innovation, but the problem...it’s producing the opposite: uncertainty. Lenders and BNPL players are hitting pause on new states until rule-books settle, while synthetic-ID fraud crackdowns mean you’d better have SOC 2, model audits, and live KYC orchestration baked in.

Investible signal: This means compliance-automation startups have become a new picks-and-shovels play. Every delay in Washington lengthens their sales tail—and locks in their ARR.

Megamerger Reboots M&A Math

An antitrust report out of George Mason University downplayed sub-prime concentration fears, nudging odds of a Capital One × Discover deal approval above 70%. If the $35B tie-up closes, it will prove that scale + tech beats branch count in the card game and encourage regional banks to go shopping for fintech rails. 

Expect exit chatter to spike around profitable card start-ups (Upgrade, Petal) and KYB/KYC vendors—exactly the infrastructure incumbents need to keep pace.

Super-Apps Show Profit Path

As mentioned, the UK's mega Neobank, Revolut just printed a $1.4B 2024 profit while the Peter Thiel-backed German rival N26 is bundling mobile phone contracts to raise ARPU and stickiness. Not long ago, “super-app” was viewed as cash-burn suicide; now it’s the fastest route to diversified revenue once you already own the ledger.

Takeaway for U.S. challengers: breadth works after profitability, not before. Predicting who might be the US market winner is tricky. Maybe we are set for a more decentralized broad-based market. 

Challengers Vs Big Tech

One thing is promising, US startups are holding their own with the big names so far. A recent Consumer Reports study showed that Apple Pay and Google Wallet lag Cash App, PayPal, and Venmo in real-time fraud monitoring, thanks to a Reg E coverage gap. Fintechs are seizing the marketing high ground—turning “we refund instantly” into a brand-trust wedge. Expect a feature-race around instant dispute resolution, network-level risk scoring, and AI-powered transaction explainability.

Speaking of Paypal, it's also exploring crypto, and Coinbase just removed fees for buying its PYUSD stablecoin aiming to boost adoption and on-chain payments. This is another area in which the innovators are outperforming big tech. Elon Musk's X superapp could be another challenger to contend with once the regulation is solved. 

TL;DR

Money is back, but it’s disciplined. The winners of Fintech Spring 2025 are AI-native, ledger-owning, compliance-fluent builders who can flash both growth and profit. Everyone else is fighting for leftovers. For a more detailed summary in our deep dive along with investible signals to watch this quarter check out the full version here.

► Read the full TechBuzz Deep Research Report for granular data, scenario models, and 20 + company spotlights.

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BUZZY TOOLS

Buzzy Tech Tools To Watch & Use

Microsoft — Recall feature for Windows enables searchable past docs, sessions.

OpenAI — Enhances ChatGPT for shopping with product cards, images, prices.

DeepSeek-R2 — Next-gen AI model excels in multilingual reasoning and coding.

Square — Next-gen PoS app consolidates commerce functionalities for .

Alibaba — Qwen 3 hybrid models equal, beat leading models in 119 languages; 36T tokens.

Lovable 2.0 — Smarter chat agent, multi-workspaces enhance app dev, security.

BUZZY TECH

The Latest Deep Technology & Trends To Watch

Touchable 3D Holograms — Elastic diffuser natural hand gestures>virtual objects.

PoX Flash Memory —Memory at 400 picoseconds, revolutionizing AI hardware.

Drone Lightning System — World-first drones manage, reduce lightning damage.

Neuralink Brain Implant — AI interface aids ALS patient in regaining speech.

Hugging Face Robotic Arm — Affordable 3D-printed arm reinforcement learns.

LOKA Interoperability — Protocol for AI agent interactions, enhancing id.

Artificial Leaf — Converts CO₂ to fuels using sunlight, mimicking photosynthesis.

CRYPTO WATCH

Crypto Rebound — The crypto market hit $3 trillion, buoyed by Bitcoin's rise to $93,800 and US spot Bitcoin ETFs inflows, driven by post-holiday trading and Federal Reserve signals.

TRUMP — The memcoin surged nearly 60% to a $14B valuation after announcing a presidential dinner for the top 220 holders and a pre-dinner reception for the largest 25 holders.

Fed Shift — The Federal Reserve has withdrawn guidance for banks on crypto-asset and dollar token activities, revising its expectations on how these activities should be conducted, signaling a broader regulatory change in the banking sector.

Stablecoins in Banking — Stablecoins could disrupt traditional banking by unbundling services like money storage and transfer. However, they face profitability challenges and might need to rebundle services to stay competitive.

PayPal's Stablecoin Strategy — PayPal is promoting stablecoin adoption by providing a 3.7% interest on balances. This move seeks to bolster user engagement with its crypto services.

SPACE_RACE

Space Llama — Meta enhances ISS research w/ offline decision-making, data access.

FCC Spectrum — Enhances satellite net, revises SpaceX, Amazon spectrum share.

U.S. Space Strategy Report — Calls for cohesive strategy to counter China.

Hubble Space Telescope — Celebrates 35yrs w/ stunning Mars and nebula images.

MEMETICS

Oof.. Get the Popcorn out (these replies get heated)

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