‘If you don’t have defaults, you’re not taking enough risks’: William Jalloul, CEO of Flowpay
THE SO WHAT
A fintech CEO talking about “defaults” as a risk bar is really about underwriting culture—if your models are so conservative you never miss, you’re probably under-serving your best customers. For operators, the question is whether your risk stack is tuned for survival or for calibrated growth in a higher-rate, data-rich environment.
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MORE FROM THE WIRE
Startups & VentureRumored Round of Funding Could Make OpenAI More Valuable Than Anthropic Again. Perhaps Briefly
Valuation whiplash between OpenAI and Anthropic is a reminder that capital is still pricing frontier model optionality more than current unit economics. For operators, the spread matters less than the fact that both can keep funding aggressive R&D—plan your dependency strategy assuming multiple well-capitalized frontier providers, not a single winner.
Startups & VentureSource: AI assistant Instinct seeks to raise $1B at a $10B valuation, up from $2.25B less than a month ago; Sequoia and Benchmark are in talks to lead the round
A jump from $2.25B to $10B in under a month for a personal AI assistant is less about current revenue and more about locking up a perceived distribution wedge before the platform giants do. If you’re building in the assistant/agent space, assume capital will fund land-grabs around identity, memory, and OS integration, not incremental features.
Startups & VentureInterlune raises $5M for initiatives that go beyond mining the moon
A $5M SAFE for lunar infrastructure is tiny in dollars but big as a signal that investors are willing to fund pre-revenue space logistics, not just launch and satellites. Deep-tech founders should read this as appetite for “picks and shovels” around off-world industry, provided there’s a credible path to government or anchor customers.
Startups & VentureOpenAI Weighing Funding Round at Over $1.2 Trillion Valuation
A $1.2T private valuation ahead of IPO would turn OpenAI into a macro asset class—its pricing, margins, and growth assumptions will ripple through every AI vendor and budget. Operators should expect more aggressive monetization from foundation model providers and sharpen their own ROI story if they’re building on top of this stack.