Khosla called them "second tier." Menlo just wrote a check.

Happy Saturday, crowd. ☕

Before we start, a quick one. 🎯

Trump's brand-new AI czar used to run which of these?

• 🅰️ A venture capital firm

• 🅱️ The SEC

• 🅲️ An AI lab

Answer in story #2. (No googling. We'll know.)

📋 Today's 60-second summary

• 🥊 Khosla called Factory "second tier." Five days later, Menlo invested at a $5B valuation

• 🏛️ Former SEC chair Jay Clayton now runs Washington's new Super Intelligence Force

• 🎰 Deal or no deal: five startups raised money this week. You decide who gets your imaginary check

• 🎬 Hollywood is coming for founders: Altman, Zuckerberg and Musk all have films on the way

⏱️ Read time: 5 minutes

NVIDIA's Founder Says Farmers Should Absolutely Use AI

“If I were a farmer, I would absolutely use AI.” 

That’s Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. 

And he's pointing to one of AI’s biggest untapped opportunities: Farming. It’s an industry facing mounting pressure to produce more with less and it’s still massively under-automated. 

, nutrition automation, and real-time data to livestock production, helping ranchers boost productivity and get more from every animal. 

And it’s already proven in one of the world's toughest livestock environments: 

• 500+ units deployed 

• 370,000 head of livestock on the platform 

• Up to 55% higher daily weight gain 

Now expanding into the U.S. and Brazil, is targeting a 300M+ head cattle market. And the biggest barrier to adoption? Gone. Ranchers get the technology for free when they sign up for a three-year nutrition plan. 

can scale adoption faster, which means more data and more recurring revenue. 

Invest before this early-stage opportunity gets harder to access.

^{𝘐𝘯 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯, 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘶𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘬𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘥. 𝘋𝘐𝘛 𝘈𝘨𝘛𝘦𝘤𝘩 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘢 𝘍𝘰𝘳𝘮 𝘊 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘌𝘹𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘣𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦: https://bit.ly/4bzuWCi​  ​}

NEWS OF THE WEEK

⚡ TL;DR

• Menlo Ventures invested in AI coding startup Factory at a $5B valuation

• It comes five days after Vinod Khosla, whose firm backs Factory, publicly trashed the company

• Lesson: a public fight with your own investor doesn't have to sink your next round

If you've followed us lately, you know the story. Factory CEO Matan Grinberg fired adviser Chris Degnan, alleging he leaked confidential information to rival Cognition. Degnan, who joined Cognition as chief revenue officer the same day, denies it, and so does Cognition. Then Vinod Khosla, whose firm has invested in both companies, called Factory a struggling second-tier competitor on X and accused Grinberg of lying.

We covered the governance lesson last Sunday. Now here's the plot twist.

On Monday, Menlo Ventures announced it had invested in Factory. The check was part of Factory's latest round, announced last month at a $5 billion valuation. Menlo didn't share the amount, but a source told TechCrunch it was significant, and that Menlo would have invested more if there had been room on the cap table.

🔢 Why Menlo's check matters:

• Matt Murphy, the Menlo partner who led it, also led Menlo's pre-product investment in Anthropic

• Menlo is not an investor in Cognition, so there's no conflict

• Factory's backers already include Sequoia, Blackstone, NEA, Insight Partners, Nvidia and J.P. Morgan

• Factory and Cognition together raised about $2.2B in a single month

On X, people loved it. One popular reply summed it up: nothing says "struggling also-ran" like a new investor publishing the bull case. Sequoia's Shaun Maguire, another Factory backer, cheered Menlo on.

Here's the thing. Khosla's comments could have frozen Factory's fundraising. When one of your own investors attacks you in public, other investors usually back away. Instead, a top-tier firm with no conflict stepped in and wrote a public endorsement.

🎯 What to do with this:

• Founders: your best defense against a public attack is a strong cap table. Investors with no conflicts can speak for you when an insider won't.

• Investors: the reputational cost of backing two competitors just got very real. Expect founders to ask about conflicts before they take your money.

🗳️ POLL: Who won this week's VC soap opera?

• 🏭 Factory: it got the last word and a new investor

• 🤖 Cognition: it got the star sales exec

• 🤷 Nobody: everyone looks worse

⚡ TL;DR

• Trump named Jay Clayton, his director of national intelligence and a former SEC chair, as AI czar

• Clayton leads the new Super Intelligence Force, and has 120 days to assess AI risks and opportunities

• A former securities regulator in this role matters for the Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs

🧠 Quiz answer: It was 🅱️. Jay Clayton ran the SEC from 2017 to 2020, and was later the US attorney for the Southern District of New York. He became director of national intelligence earlier this year.

On October 4, President Trump announced the Super Intelligence Force, a new task force with Clayton in charge. The name isn't an accident: Trump recently signed an executive order directing federal agencies to use "super intelligence" instead of "artificial intelligence" in official communications.

👥 Who's on the team:

• Jay Clayton: chair, director of national intelligence, former SEC chair

• Andrew Ferguson: vice chair, chair of the FTC

• Emil Michael: vice chair, under secretary of war for research and engineering

• Scott Kupor: vice chair, director of the Office of Personnel Management

• They report directly to Trump and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles

The force will coordinate the government's work with AI companies, critical infrastructure providers, consumers, public interest groups and religious organizations. It follows a White House meeting in late September where top AI executives signed a non-binding safety pledge.

Clayton has called AI both an opportunity and a threat. But he has also said one of the biggest risks is not being first, so don't expect a slowdown agenda.

And the rebrand is already spreading. Elon Musk said SpaceX plans to rename its AI unit SpaceXSI.

Here's why private market investors should care. The two biggest IPOs on the horizon are AI labs. Anthropic's leaked filing spends about 80 of 261 pages on risk factors, and OpenAI has pushed its listing to 2027 over safety concerns. The man coordinating AI policy now spent years deciding what companies must disclose to investors.

🎯 What to do with this:

• Founders building AI products: expect more federal attention on safety disclosures. Start documenting how your product handles risk now.

• Investors: watch what this task force recommends in its first 120 days. It could shape how AI companies describe their risks when they go public.

Five companies raised money this week. You're the investor. Read the one-liners, then vote DEAL or NO DEAL by hitting reply. We'll share the results next week.

🏠 1. Valon: $150M Series D at a $2.3B valuation

• AI agents that automate mortgage servicing, one of the most paperwork-heavy jobs in finance

• Backed by Ribbit Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, with about $347M raised in total

• 🤔 The case: boring industry, huge costs, real customers

🤖 2. RobCo: Europe's newest robotics unicorn at $1B

• German robotics company that just crossed a $1 billion valuation

• 🤔 The case: Europe is pouring money into automation and defense-adjacent hardware

💶 3. Spiko: $90M Series B at an $800M valuation

• Paris and London startup offering tokenized cash, with about $2.7B in assets under management

• $120M raised in total

• 🤔 The case: tokenization is moving from crypto experiment to real money management

⚡ 4. Clockwork.io: $31M

• Software that stops AI data centers from wasting GPU hours when hardware fails

• 🤔 The case: every wasted GPU hour is money, and AI labs are burning billions

🧱 5. Reclinker: £10M

• Cambridge startup turning demolition waste into new cement

• 🤔 The case: cement is one of the world's biggest sources of emissions, and building codes are getting stricter

🗳️ POLL: If you could back only one, which would it be?

• 🏠 Valon

• 🤖 RobCo

• 💶 Spiko

• ⚡ Clockwork.io

• 🧱 Reclinker

🎯 The pattern: four of these five sell to big, unglamorous industries: mortgages, factories, cash management and construction. The money this week went to AI doing real work, not more chatbots.

⚡ TL;DR

• A wave of films and documentaries about tech founders is hitting screens in the coming weeks

• Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are all getting the Hollywood treatment

• None of them seem thrilled

Founders spent the last decade becoming celebrities. Now Hollywood is writing the reviews.

🍿 Coming soon:

• The Altman biopic: directed by Luca Guadagnino, starring Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman. Altman says he saw the trailer and thinks it looks terrible.

• "The Social Reckoning": Aaron Sorkin's sequel to The Social Network, with Jeremy Strong as Mark Zuckerberg

• "Musk": a four-hour documentary by Alex Gibney. Musk has called it a hit piece, and his fight with Gibney on X is part of the film.

• "The Altruists": a Netflix series about the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried

• A documentary about Elizabeth Holmes from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim

Here's the twist. These films land in the same year that tech billionaires added a record $845 billion to their fortunes through September, according to Bloomberg. The richer founders get, the bigger the audience for stories about how they got there.

🎯 What to do with this:

• Founders: your reputation is now a business asset, and it can be written by someone else. Tell your own story early and often.

• Investors: "key person risk" isn't only about a founder leaving. It's also about public perception of the founder.

🎭 CAST THE BIOPIC: Who should play Elon Musk in a scripted movie? Hit reply with your pick. The best answer gets featured next week.

🗳️ POLL: Which one are you watching first?

• 🤖 The Altman biopic

• 👍 The Social Reckoning

• 🚀 The Musk documentary

⚡ Quick Hits

• 🛡️ European defense tech investment hit a record $7.4B in 2026, nearly triple last year

• 🏦 Iron Path Capital closed an oversubscribed $450M Fund II

• 🤝 Get Access, backed by Sound Ventures, launched a members-only platform connecting growth-stage startups with investors

• 🚗 Lucid's third-quarter deliveries fell 6.7% as the EV maker cut production

• 🏗️ Nokia's CEO says data centers would be built twice as fast without supply constraints

❓ Quick answers

Why did Menlo Ventures invest in Factory?

Menlo Ventures, led by partner Matt Murphy, invested in AI coding startup Factory as part of its latest round at a $5 billion valuation. The investment came days after Vinod Khosla, whose firm backs both Factory and rival Cognition, publicly called Factory a struggling second-tier competitor.

Who is Trump's AI czar?

Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence and a former chair of the SEC, was named AI czar on October 4, 2026. He leads the new Super Intelligence Force.

What is the Super Intelligence Force?

A White House task force that coordinates federal work with AI companies, infrastructure providers, consumers and other groups. Its vice chairs are FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, Emil Michael and Scott Kupor, and it reports to President Trump and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.

Which tech founders are getting movies?

Sam Altman (a Luca Guadagnino biopic starring Andrew Garfield), Mark Zuckerberg (Aaron Sorkin's "The Social Reckoning"), Elon Musk (Alex Gibney's documentary "Musk"), Sam Bankman-Fried (Netflix's "The Altruists") and Elizabeth Holmes.

💬 What This Week Tells Us

Power is shifting this week, and you can see it in four places:

• 🥊 From insiders to outsiders: Menlo, with no conflict, carried more weight than Khosla, with two

• 🏛️ From tech to government: Washington now has a formal team for AI, led by a former securities regulator

• 🎰 From chatbots to real work: the money went to AI that services mortgages and saves GPU hours

• 🎬 From founders to storytellers: Hollywood now controls the narrative on tech's biggest names

📣 Your turn

Reply with three things, and we'll feature the best answers next week:

1. DEAL or NO DEAL on each of the five startups

2. Your pick to play Elon Musk

3. Team Factory or Team Cognition?

📨 Know a founder about to add an adviser or take a VC check? Forward them story #1.

See who's investing on our Investor List, and track valuations on the Private Company Index.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Hunt accordingly. ☕

Jose, Alberto & the Founderscrowd Team

Sources: TechCrunch and Citybiz on Menlo and Factory; TechCrunch and CNBC on the Super Intelligence Force; AlleyWatch, Tech Funding News and Techmeme on the deals; CNN on the founder films.

Disclaimer: Founderscrowd is a media company. This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. "Deal or no deal" is a reader game, not an investment recommendation. Private market investments are speculative, illiquid, and may result in the loss of your entire investment.