Joyce Shen’s picks: musings and readings in AI/ML, April 20, 2026
📌 Musings and Readings
“Evidence-based action plan for integrating artificial intelligence in an academic medical centre-a multidisciplinary approach” (Link)
“White House and Anthropic hold 'productive' meeting amid fears over Mythos model” (Link)
“Google Rebuilds Ads For AI, Perplexity Signals A Premium, No-Ad Future” (Link)
“Beijing set to launch Satellite Town as China's aerospace industry grows” (Link)
“Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs” (Link)
“I'm a truck driver. I'm not worried about AI taking my job” (Link)
👏 Deals
FutureFit AI, a NYC–based company enabling individuals and enterprises to map career pathways, identify skill gaps, and navigate labor market transitions, has raised an undisclosed round of funding.
Qoro Quantum, a London-based quantum computing startup developing a hybrid orchestration platform that integrates classical and quantum hardware to enable distributed quantum-classical workloads, has raised pre-seed funding.
Round, a London-based company offering an AI-driven treasury and payments platform that centralizes cash management, and automates liquidity workflows, has raised $5m in seed funding.
Blocks, a Berlin, Germany-based AI startup developing a cloud platform that provides prebuilt infrastructure, backend services, and AI tooling, has raised $6m in pre-seed funding.
ShengShu, a Beijing, China-based generative AI startup developing multimodal foundation models for text- and image-driven video generation, has raised $293m in funding.
DeepCyte, a biotech company looking to predict and explain drug toxicity before clinical trials, has raised $1.5m in seed funding.
Sapient Perception, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based company developing AI-powered vision systems for drones that enable real-time situational awareness and autonomous decision-making in complex environments, has raised €2m in pre-seed funding.
ActionAI, a NYC–based enterprise software company providing a platform for building reliable and auditable AI workflows, has raised $10m in seed funding.
Helical, a London-based biotech software company building an AI-powered virtual lab that enables researchers to run in-silico experiments to accelerate drug discovery, has raised seed funding.
Traza, a NYC–based company building AI agents for procurement and supply chain workflows across existing systems, has raised $2m in pre-seed funding.
Gitar, a CA–based developer infrastructure company building AI agents to automate code review, validation, and continuous integration workflows, has raised $9m in funding.
Modern Relay, a Barcelona, Spain and CA-based enterprise AI infrastructure company developing a shared context layer, has raised $3m in funding.
SolvaPay, a Stockholm, Sweden-based fintech infrastructure company to enable AI agents and APIs to securely transact, authenticate, and monetize services programmatically, raised €2.4m in pre-seed funding.
Caruso, an Auckland, New Zealand-based company providing an AI-native platform for fund administration in private markets, has raised $6.5m in series A funding.
Balerion AI, a CA–based fintech company looking to automate mortgage lending workflows, has raised 6m in seed funding.
Nas.com, a NYC-based company building an AI-powered operating system for the solopreneurs and creators, has raised $27m in series A funding.