Fei-Fei, Finance, Fellowships
World Labs raises $1B for 3D AI, Ricursive's A&A duo hits $4B, food tech communities, AI agent use cases, and new accelerators!
TL;DR: Fei-Fei Li's World Labs raised $1B (including $200M from Autodesk) for 3D AI world models. Taalas raised $169M for custom AI inference chips. Plus startup roles across AI, marketplaces, and consumer brands, Allison Byers' new fundraising book for underrepresented founders, Resolution’s event at college campuses, and Anthropic data showing software engineering drives ~50% of AI agent tool calls.
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Fei-Fei Li, Co-Founder & CEO of World Labs (and the godmother of AI), an AI company building world models that generate and reason about immersive 3D environments, raised $1B in funding including a $200M strategic investment from Autodesk, with participation from AMD, Nvidia, Fidelity, and Emerson Collective.
Lejla Bajic, Co-Founder & COO of Taalas, a Toronto-based semiconductor startup building custom AI inference chips that hardwire specific models into silicon to run faster and more efficiently than conventional GPUs, raised $169M in funding led by Quiet Capital and Fidelity.
Katrin de Proyart, Co-Founder & CEO of Vizzia, a French AI-powered video surveillance startup helping local authorities detect crime and antisocial behaviour while remaining GDPR-compliant, raised €30M in Series B funding led by Base10 Partners.
Rotem Lurie, Co-Founder & CEO of Venice, an identity and access management platform consolidating privileged access across cloud and on-prem environments, raised $25M in Series A funding led by IVP.
Mary Antony (CEO) and Kelsey Gootnick (COO), Co-Founders of InScope, an AI-powered financial reporting platform for accounting teams, raised $14.5M in Series A funding led by Norwest.
Arushi Vashist, Co-Founder & CTO of Amari AI, an AI-powered platform automating customs paperwork and compliance workflows for brokers navigating evolving trade regulations, raised $4.5M in seed funding co-led by First Round Capital and Pear VC.
🏁 Samira from a16z Speedrun is hiring an Events & Community Marketing Lead to produce founder events and build the community engine behind their early-stage accelerator.
🚛 Laura from Garage (YC W24) is hiring across GTM (AE, Growth Ops, Client Ops), Engineering (SWE), Design, and Recruiting to scale its AI-powered marketplace for essential vehicles.
📞 Michelle from Twill is hiring a Founding BDR (fully remote, US) to help scale its referral-based recruiting platform.
👩🍳 Siddhi from yhangry (YC W22) is hiring one paid AI Intern to build and ship AI agents with Claude at her YC-backed chef marketplace (London).
🎥 Nali from Creative People is hiring a NYC-based Social Media Specialist ($40/hr, 15 hrs/week) for a 1-month hybrid project focused on short-form video and content design.
🌿 Zainabou from Sunu Body is hiring PR & Influencer Outreach and Email Marketing Interns to help grow a modern African self-care brand rooted in ancestral wellness.
🛍️ Hana from VIA is hiring student ambassadors to create TikTok content and help launch her secondhand fashion discovery platform (no experience required).
🥜 Arshdeep from Stesh Butter is hiring a Social Media & Marketing Intern (remote, flexible) to create short-form content and help grow her better-for-you pistachio butter brand.
🏛️ Cherie from Holly (gov workforce AI) is hiring a Senior Software Engineer in NYC or SF to build AI tools for government compensation and classification.
⚖️ Rebeccah from Kneupper & Covey is hiring a part-time AI Intern (10–20 hrs/week, remote) to build and scale AI systems for a consumer-focused law firm.
💼 Jillian from 221B Capital Partners is hiring two Summer 2026 interns for a woman-majority-owned global long/short hedge fund focused on technology, renewable energy, and industrials.
🌐 Sapien is hiring their first Community Lead to design and scale the community engine behind their AI platform for finance and operations leaders.
🕯️ Encore (YC F24) is hiring a Core Product Designer and a Software Engineering Intern in SF to help scale Candle, their relationship-focused app designed to help couples connect.
🎭 Imagine AI (YC F25) is hiring a Founding Account Executive in SF to own the full sales cycle and build the playbook for their B2B AI content platform.
🐶 Crew Dog is hiring Campus Partners at select universities to run custom apparel deals for student orgs and earn commission.
📈 GEO Machine is hiring Business Development Interns to help scale its AI SEO platform.
🚀 Neo is launching Neo Residency, a new ultra-selective program offering up to $750K uncapped funding (plus compute credits) for startups and $40K grants for high-agency student teams.
🔥 a16z Speedrun is launching Alpha, offering $20K equity-free + up to $250K investment for pre-idea technical founders ready to start building.
🥫 Kelly from XRC is offering a $20–50K non-dilutive Brand Builder Grant for CPG founders.
🇨🇭 UBS is launching Project Female Founder 2026, a year-long global accelerator for majority women-owned startups raising up to Seed/Series A, with investor-readiness training and access to UBS’s network.
💁♀️ Teli Labs matches and introduces young talent to founders at top early-stage startups & SMBs. Join here! Check out our job board with 10k live startup roles.
Fundraising for The Rest of Us. In 2020, of the 200 bestselling business books, 17 were written by women. The same number written by men named John. Allison Byers, who raised $11M across two companies, is changing that with her new book titled Fundraising for the Rest of Us, a relationship-first guide for founders who are not pre-networked.
Resolution is activating campuses nationwide. Resolution is an AI-powered community helping young women think through their relationships, careers, and wellness routines. The community is hosting “Breaking Into Venture Capital” at Duke (2/25) and “Investing in Consumer AI” with RRE Ventures at Harvard (3/3).
What actually matters at the seed stage? In a fireside chat with a16z speedrun, Jack Altman shared five lessons on PMF: hire “diamonds in the rough,” know that real pull shows up fast, protect your product North Star, work proactively not from your inbox, and remember no startup advice is universal.
Half the AI agent market is one category. Anthropic data shows software engineering drives ~50% of tool calls, while healthcare, legal, finance, and 16 other verticals each sit under 5%.
The female founders everyone wanted. Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini, the Google Brain duo behind Alpha Chip and early leaders at Anthropic, were so in demand they received “crazy” recruiting emails from Zuckerberg before launching Ricursive. Known internally as “A&A,” they helped design multiple generations of Google’s TPUs and moved through Google and Anthropic in lockstep before turning that track record into one of the fastest $4B valuations in AI.
Women shaping the future of food. Myca Collective convenes founders, operators, and technologists across food, climate, and agriculture for intimate NYC gatherings where hospitality leaders compare tech stacks, share what is actually working, and have candid conversations about where restaurant technology still falls short.
The next wave of women in VC. Girls Into VC introduced its Spring 2026 Fellows, diving into due diligence, venture fundamentals, guest speaker sessions, and investment simulations.
📈 Partner with Her Hustle & Teli Labs if you are an early-stage startup interested in hiring top talent.
🗞️ Explore our other newsletters: Builders Report, spotlighting standout young founders, and Teli Digest, a roundup of startup hiring, funding, and ecosystem insights.