Yuliya Chernova / Wall Street Journal:
A look at Neo, a VC firm that made early bets on startups including Kalshi and Cursor, pushing the value of its first two funds far above industry averages  —  The venture firm, led by CEO Ali Partovi, illustrates the growing gulf between a few top performers and the industry median

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Poke, an AI agent that lets users automate tasks via text message, raised $10M, on top of a $15M seed last year, at a $300M post-money valuation  —  Is Poke an OpenClaw for the rest of us?  That's the idea coming from a new startup offering an AI agent that you can access via iMessage, SMS, Telegram, and, in some markets, WhatsApp.

Samreen Ahmad / Tech in Asia:
Nava, which develops cloud infrastructure for AI workloads by combining data centers, GPUs, and software tools, raised a $22M Series A led by Greenoaks Capital  —  Nava, a cloud infrastructure startup formerly known as Kluisz, has raised US$22 million in a series A round led by Greenoaks Capital.

Laura Hazard Owen / Nieman Lab:
An analysis of the 200 most-recent tweets on X by 18 big publishers indicates links seem to hurt engagement, after debate arose over X's value for sharing news  —  Engagement for tweets from @nytimes (53 million followers) is dwarfed by engagement for tweets from @GlobeEyeNews (866,000 followers).

Reuters:
John Deere agreed to pay $99M into a fund to settle a 2022 right-to-repair class action lawsuit, and make digital repair tools available to farmers for 10 years  —  U.S. agriculture equipment maker Deere (DE.N) on Monday agreed to pay $99 million into a settlement fund for farms and farmers …