Joyce Shen’s picks: musings and readings in AI/ML, August 4, 2025

5-minute weekly must-read on data science and artificial intelligence news, funding, and research, curated by Joyce J. Shen.

Joyce Shen’s picks: musings and readings in AI/ML, August 4, 2025

📽️  Watch my latest interview with the Head of GTM of MemVerge where we discussed AI infrastructure and shifts in the enterprise. (Youtube)

📌 Musings and Readings

Introducing Opal: describe, create, and share your AI mini-apps (Google)

Apple might be building its own AI ‘answer engine’ (Link)

A.I. Researchers Are Negotiating $250 Million Pay Packages. Just Like N.B.A. Stars. (Link)

New bill aims to protect American call center jobs and consumers from AI (Link)

Uber Eats is adding AI to menus, food photos, and reviews (Link)

OpenAI to launch AI data center in Norway, its first in Europe (Link)

Cheyenne to host massive AI data center using more electricity than all Wyoming homes combined (Link)

Charting Climate Change With Whaling Logs (Link)

👏 Deals

Spear AI, a Washington, DC–based defense-focused startup for real-time acoustic and maritime data analysis, has raised new financing.

Root Evidence, a cybersecurity startup that helps enterprises prioritize and remediate vulnerabilities based on real-world exploitation evidence and financial risk impact, has raised 12.5m in seed financing.

DynaRisk, a London-based company developing a cyber risk management platform for insurers and businesses with threat intelligence, vulnerability scanning, and risk scoring tools, has raised $4.7m in financing.

JotPsych, a Washington, D.C.–based company for behavioral health professionals, has raised $5m in seed financing.

Keye, a NYC-based company developing solutions to accelerate private equity due diligence processes, has raised $5m in seed financing.

Julius AI, a CA-based company providing an AI-powered data analysis platform with natural language queries and automatic visualizations, has raised $10m in seed financing.

Tonic Security, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based cybersecurity startup that consolidates and contextualizes security data, has raised $7m in seed financing.

Caspian, a CA-based startup that helps businesses quickly recover import duty refunds by automating and streamlining the complex duty drawback process, has raised $5.4m in seed financing.

Tzafon, a CA-based AI R&D startup focused on scalable and autonomous systems and infrastructure, has raised $9.7m in pre-seed financing.

Reach Security, a CA-based cybersecurity startup that focuses on analyzing and optimizing existing security tools, has raised $10m in financing.

Runloop.ai, a CA-based company offering an AI infrastructure solution that speeds up the development and deployment of AI coding agents, has raised $7m in seed financing.

Command Zero, a TX-based company developing an AI-powered cyber investigation platform that accelerates threat detection and response by combining expert workflows, automation, and federated data access, has raised $10m in financing.

Merso, a CA-based company providing AI-driven lending, credit, and liquidity tools for Web3 games, has raised $3m in seed financing.

Nebulock, a MA-based company building an AI-powered solution that autonomously detects insider threats, lateral movement, and credential misuse in real time, has raised $8.5m in financing.

Metaforms, a CA-based company offering an AI-driven platform that automates the entire market research workflow, has raised $9m in Series A financing.

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