GoKawiil
Tech News
Sequoia announced in a memo posted to X that it is shutting down its scout program, which let selected founders and operators invest on the firm's behalf, and closing its London office. The firm described the changes as part of a push toward more focus rather than a critique of the scouts model itself.
Apple has released the first release candidates for macOS Sequoia 15.8.3 (build 24H314) and macOS Tahoe 26.7.3 (build 25G416), alongside the first developer beta of macOS 27.3. The RC release notes cite only security fixes without specifying vulnerabilities, continuing a pattern seen last week when 15.8.2 and 26.7.2 patched over 150 security issues.
Trajectory, an 18-person startup founded by three Stanford alumni, has raised $45 million in a Series A round at a $300 million valuation, led by Sequoia with participation from Nvidia, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Bain Capital Ventures. The platform lets businesses connect open source AI models to their applications, collecting feedback that is used to retrain and improve those models for specialized tasks over time. Legal tech company Harvey and financial analysis firm Rogo are already using the platform to post-train open source models for their respective industries.
A developer published 'dontallow', a small Swift utility that automatically clicks 'Don't Allow' on macOS's recurring 'find devices on local networks' prompt. The tool runs with no CPU usage while idle and persists across reboots, requiring a single Swift file and no external dependencies. According to the creator, the prompt resurfaces repeatedly because Chromium-based browsers like Chrome, Brave, Edge and Arc relaunch from randomized temp paths each time, causing macOS to treat them as new apps needing a fresh permission decision.
Bloomberg estimates the value of stakes held by several Anthropic investors based on the company's latest private valuation of $965 billion, ahead of a public listing expected this year that could value the AI firm at up to $2 trillion. Early investor Eric Schmidt's roughly 1% stake is estimated at nearly $10 billion, while Iconiq's $6 billion investment is now valued at $17 billion, Menlo Ventures' stake at $14 billion, and Spark Capital's $75 million Series C investment has grown to about $7 billion.
Apple has rolled out a rebranded visual identity for Apple Music, incorporating its Liquid Glass design language. The company also released a short video showing the creative process, which involved design agency TBWA/Media Arts Lab, producer Fred again.., and a physical setup using a mineral oil tank with a transducer to create ripple effects against branded panels.
Blacksmith, which builds continuous integration tools for testing software including AI-generated code, raised a $66 million Series C led by Sequoia Capital at a $1 billion valuation, the company announced Wednesday. CEO Aditya Jayaprakash said annual recurring revenue has grown 17-fold and the platform has run over 90 million CI jobs, with customers including Mercury and Granola.
Apple has released the third developer and public release candidates for macOS Sequoia 15.8.2 (build 24H230) and macOS Tahoe 26.7.2 (build 25G330), alongside the first RC for macOS 27.2 Golden Gate. Apple's release notes describe the updates only as containing "important security fixes" recommended for all users.
Apple has released second Release Candidate builds for macOS Sequoia 15.8.2 (build 24H225) and macOS Tahoe 26.7.2 (build 25G325), just a week after the first RCs appeared. Release notes for both still cite only unspecified 'important security fixes' with no further detail provided.
Canonical will include Sequoia PGP, a Rust-based OpenPGP implementation, by default in Ubuntu 26.10, according to It's FOSS. The Ubuntu release notes describe making Sequoia the default toolchain as a future goal, but GnuPG remains the default for now. Sequoia was created in 2017 by former GnuPG developers and implements the newer RFC 9580 standard, unlike GnuPG which follows RFC 4880 and LibrePGP extensions.
AI infrastructure startup TypeSafe announced an $870 million funding round valuing the company at $7.5 billion. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Sequoia Capital, existing backer DCVC, and several angel investors, and Martin Casado is joining the board. The company says a third of Fortune 500 firms already use its Jev platform and that it has saved customers millions in production costs.
Mecka AI has raised $60 million in a Series B funding round led by Sequoia, with investors including Nvidia and Microsoft’s M12. The company, founded in 2024, collects human motion data through sensors and smartphones to train robots, aiming to replicate the success of data-labeling firms for AI models. This funding highlights growing investor interest in data-driven approaches to robotics development.