Neil Weintraut

California just created bureaucratic hell for VCs in the name of diversity tracking, and it's going to hit way more funds than people realize. Started March 1, 2026, venture capital firms with a "California nexus" must register with the state and file annual demographic reports on every portfolio company they fund. Sounds reasonable, right? Track diversity data, promote transparency, make the world a better place... Except the definition of "California nexus" is so absurdly broad that it basically applies to majority of the VC funds on the planet. Here's the actual test from the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation: You're a "Covered Entity" if you meet ANY of these criteria: (A) The venture capital company is headquartered in California. (B) The venture capital company has a significant presence or operational office in California. (C) The venture capital company makes venture capital investments in businesses that are located in, or have significant operations in, California. (D) The venture capital company solicits or receives investments from a person who is a resident of California. Read criterion D again. "Solicits or receives investments from a person who is a resident of California." Not "primarily raises from California." Not "has material California LP exposure." A single LP who happens to live in California triggers the entire compliance regime. So congratulations to every European fund, every Asian fund, every East Coast fund that has ever taken money from someone who owns a house in San Francisco or LA. You're now subject to California state regulation. Oh, and criterion C? "Makes venture capital investments in businesses that are located in, or have significant operations in, California." So if you've ever funded a single company in the Bay Area - which is basically every VC fund that exists - you're covered. California just created a global VC registry under the guise of diversity reporting. Here's what you have to do if you're covered: Register with the DFPI and survey every founding team member of every portfolio company you funded in 2025 about their gender identity, race, ethnicity, LGBTQ+ status, disability status, veteran status, and California residency. - Aggregate and anonymize the data - File an annual report by April 1, 2026 - Keep records for five years - Have your reports posted publicly on the DFPI website - Face penalties if you don't comply And here's the kicker: the surveys are "voluntary" for founders. They can legally decline to answer every question. So you're building an entire compliance infrastructure around data that founders can refuse to provide. What exactly are you measuring if half the founders just check "decline to state for all"? This is so weird. Link to DFPI: https://lnkd.in/eUjqYX3q

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Generative AI’s greatest potential lies in the physical world, where the ability to simulate, design, and iterate faster can reshape trillion-dollar sectors. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that N47 is leading Luminary Cloud’s $72M Series B. The Luminary team is pioneering the Physics AI Model Factory, underpinned by a GPU-native physics simulation platform. This technology is designed from the ground up to unleash the performance of modern GPUs and generate the high-value datasets that power next-generation AI. Now, engineers can run hundreds of design iterations overnight instead of waiting days. AI models trained on physics-grounded data can suggest new aerodynamic designs or optimize energy systems in ways previously impossible, and companies across industries can accelerate their innovation cycles while reducing cost. With co-founders Juan Alonso and Pete Schlampp, Luminary has the technical depth and operational experience to define the new era of Physics AI. We’re proud to partner with them as they create the future of simulation and redefine what’s possible in the built world. Learn more about Luminary Cloud’s vision here: https://lnkd.in/gbjeWrvy 

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This was a big, big week for #AmTech: Redwood Materials raised $350 million in Series E funding at a $6 billion valuation from Eclipse and NVIDIA. Redwood is building a domestic battery supply chain to deploy low-cost storage and recycle lithium-ion batteries to recover their critical minerals. Founder: JB Straubel.    OpenEvidence raised $200 million in Series C funding at a $6 billion valuation from GV (Google Ventures), Coatue Management, Conviction Capital, and Thrive Capital. OpenEvidence is an AI-powered medical search engine that helps doctors and other healthcare professionals quickly find reliable, up-to-date information. Instead of searching through countless medical journals, doctors can ask OpenEvidence a question in plain English and get a clear, evidence-based answer with direct links to the source material. Founders: Dr. Daniel Nadler and Zachary Ziegler.     Seneca raised $60 million in financing from Caffeinated Capital, Convective Capital, First Round Capital, Transition VC, AVP | Advance Venture Partners, NextView Ventures, Bullpen Capital, StepStone Group, DCVC, Offline Ventures, Roar Capital, and Slow Ventures. Seneca is an autonomous wildfire defense technology company that uses AI-powered drones to fight fires. The goal is to achieve faster response times to stop small fires from becoming large "megafires," protecting American communities and the environment. Founder: Stuart Landesberg. #VC #HealthTech #DeepTech #Energy #Wildfire #Drones

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Sustained ~252–291 GiB/s of HBM memory throughput on H100s under decode load — essentially hitting the hardware roofline. This matters because HBM throughput, not FLOPs, is the real bottleneck in LLM inference. By keeping memory nearly fully saturated, I’ve unlocked far higher efficiency and throughput than standard engines. The result: 0.9–1.36M tokens/sec with ~0.1 ms first-token latency  #AI #LLM #GPURouter #H100 #Inference #CostEfficiency #Innovation #DeepLearning #AIInfrastructure #HighPerformanceComputing NVIDIA AMD OpenAI Google Shilpa Kolhatkar Keith Strier a16z speedrun

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