Nicolas Stehle

New York City-based Betaworks has closed its third fund at $66M to invest in early-stage AI startups. Betaworks, a staple of the NYC tech ecosystem since 2008, will focus its new fund on investing in pre-seed and seed-stage AI companies. The firm has been investing in AI since 2016 and has backed companies like Hugging Face. Fund III is larger than the firm's previous funds ($46M Fund II in 2020 and $48M Fund I in 2016) and saw many of its previous limited partners return to invest, a strong signal in a challenging fundraising environment for VCs. The fund will seek to make at least 25 pre-seed to seed investments, as well as 50 investments into startups as part of the Betaworks Camps program. Congratulations to the Betaworks team. TechCrunch: https://lnkd.in/d--hfMpa #VentureCapital #AI #EarlyStage #SeedFunding #NYCTech #Fundraising

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🚨 Zcash’s Core Dev Team Just Walked Out 🚶‍➡️ 🚶‍♀️‍➡️ 🚶‍♂️‍➡️ The team behind Zcash’s Electric Coin Company (ECC) has resigned following a clash with the Bootstrap Board over the future direction of the protocol. This is more than a personnel change; it’s a moment that highlights the growing pains of decentralized governance in crypto. 🧠 What just happened here 👥 The developer team and the Bootstrap Board disagreed on governance, priorities, and who gets to shape the roadmap. 📢 The result was an exit, not because of tech failure; because governance broke down. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen debates over control, vision, and protocol authority. But it is a stark reminder that decentralized networks only function when governance structures are resilient, transparent, and aligned with key stakeholders. 🔍 Why this matters beyond Zcash 📌 Crypto isn’t a purely technical challenge Technical excellence alone doesn’t keep a project together, governance does. 📌 When governance fails, even strong tech teams leave. Talent drains are rarely about code; they’re about direction and agency. 📌 Holders, builders, and users lose confidence when the roadmap becomes a battlefield 💡 A broader lesson for Web3 leaders 1️⃣ Governance is product Decentralized systems must treat governance with as much care as UX, security, and scalability. 2️⃣ Alignment beats architecture A brilliant chain with internal discord won’t beat a mediocre chain with aligned governance. 3️⃣ Clarity preserves confidence Users and capital flow toward predictable, stable ecosystems; they flee opaque conflict. 💬 Can decentralized governance ever match the speed and clarity of centralized decision-making? Or is conflict just part of the evolution of Web3? #Zcash #Governance #CryptoLeadership #DecentralizedSystems #Web3 #Blockchain #ProtocolDesign #DigitalAssets #Innovation #TechTalent #CryptoEcosystem #BuildInPublic

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Resale is one of the fastest-growing sectors in commerce, but scaling it is complex. Product intake, authentication, pricing, and listing are still largely manual, slowing growth and limiting margins for retailers entering the resale space. HAMMOQ Inc. solves this by automating resale operations. Their AI-powered platform handles product listing, content generation, pricing optimization, and marketplace management, enabling retailers and recommerce platforms to scale sustainably and profitably. At Silicon Road Ventures, we invested in Hammoq because they’re powering the operational backbone of the circular economy, making sustainability not just a value, but a viable business model. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gyeuJgu9 Discover the exceptional founders who are forging the future of commerce: https://lnkd.in/gyikTJ3c #PortfolioCompany #CircularEconomy #AI #RetailTech #Automation #Recommerce

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Many business owners find themselves spending more time and money managing their Magento platform than actually growing their business. Are you one of them? The skyrocketing costs, endless maintenance, and slow development cycles is a real headache.   At TTC, we help businesses transition from Magento to modern, cost-effective solutions like Medusa. With Medusa’s open-source, API-first architecture, you’ll enjoy:   ✅ Lower development & maintenance costs ✅ Faster customizations tailored to your business ✅ A scalable system that grows with you ✅ Full ownership of your ecommerce stack   Stop letting Magento drain your energy as well as resources. Scale your business today!   👉 Let’s talk about how we can help you cut costs and unlock growth. Book a 30 minutes Strategy Call now. https://lnkd.in/gatMia86     #Magento #MagentoAlternatives #HeadlessCommerce #OpenSourceEcommerce #MedusaJS #OnlineBusiness #BusinessGrowth

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Messari features Soda Labs and the #gcEVM in “The Privacy Layer” ecosystem report! Soda Labs contributes big time to the growing DeCC (Decentralized Confidential Computing) ecosystem and unlocks Web3 full potential.

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Stardew Valley meets Enterprise RAG? 🚜 🤖 One of the hardest challenges in moving Generative AI from prototype to production is authorization. How do you ensure the LLM only retrieves data the specific user is allowed to see? Our friends Sohan Maheshwar at AuthZed and Rohit Ghumare at motia just dropped a fantastic reference architecture solving exactly this. Using a Stardew Valley "harvest logbook" as the use case, they demonstrate how to build a complete, multi-tenant RAG pipeline. The Stack: ⚡ Orchestration: motia (Event-driven workflows) 🧠 Memory: Pinecone (Vector search & storage) 🔒 Security: #SpiceDB (Fine-grained authorization) This is a masterclass in building secure, context-aware AI applications. Check out the full tutorial below. 👇 #GenerativeAI #RAG #VectorDatabase #Pinecone #Authorization #Engineering #KnowledgeableAI

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