👋 I’m Justin. I run The SF Grind, The LA Grind, and scout for Headline. I live in LA but spend a lot of time in San Francisco meeting founders, hosting gatherings, and enjoying the wonderful city.
Happy Monday! We have our next coffee meetup today, in only a few more hours, as part of Deep Tech Week. I’ll see many of you soon! For those of you interested in attending Ambition, the 150-person startup summit I’m hosting in Los Angeles on September 24th, there are only a few more days left to get early bird tickets. We’re announcing a few more speakers soon as well, so stay tuned.
Let’s get to it.
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🌁 Upcoming Event We’re Hosting 🌁
🗓️ June 22: The SF Grind: Deep Tech Week Coffee Meetup. Union Square. 9 - 11 am.
🗓️ July 1: The SF Grind: Startup Community Trivia Night. Pacific Heights - 6:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ July 9: The SF Grind: SF Startup Community Coffee Meetup. Financial District. 9 - 11 am.
🗓️ July 15: The SF Grind: Founder, Investor, & Operator Mixer. Mission District. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.
👋 This Week in SF 👋
🗓️ June 22: The Global State of Deep Tech. Mid-Market. 12:30 - 5 pm.
🗓️ June 22: Raisi x Carta Pitch Night @ Carta Global HQ. Financial District. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ June 23: Civic tech meetup @ Config 2026. Union Square. 3 - 5 pm.
🗓️ June 23: design founders @ figma config. Financial District. 3 - 5 pm.
🗓️ June 23: Deep Tech Undergound by Alta, Stifel & Sequoia. Union Square. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ June 23: Mixture of Experts. Mission District. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ June 23: AI Champions Dinner. SF. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ June 23: Framer Gallery. SoMa. 7 - 10 pm.
🗓️ June 24: Design Meetup x Cursor x Entrepreneurs First demo night. Financial District. 5:30 - 7:30 pm.
🗓️ June 24: Ramen & Robots. Mission District. 5:30 - 9 pm.
🗓️ June 24: Built in America. SF. 6 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ June 24: Welcome to the Stratosphere (feat. Cheat Codes). SF. 7 - 11 pm.
🗓️ June 25: @Playground — Tech’s Next Frontier: Building the Foundation for an AI World. Mid-Market. 5 - 8 pm.
🗓️ June 25: The Founder Tailgate. SF. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ June 25: Founders Fashion Show. Financial District. 6 - 9 pm.
🗓️ June 25: How to choose an AI model with Gamma and Notion. Embarcadero. 6 - 8 pm.
🗓️ June 26: Builder After Hours with MongoDB, Mastra, and Tavily. Financial District. 5 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ June 27: Claude Code for Beginners. Mid-Market. 4:15 - 8 pm.
👀 Events Coming Soon 👀
🗓️ June 30: Women tech Meetup: Building Without Permission. Union Square. 5:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ June 30: Extraordinary Founders Dinner (hosted by Andrew Yeung). Potrero Hill. 6:30 - 8:30 pm.
🗓️ July 1: AI Engineer After Dark. SoMa. 7:30 - 10 pm.
🗓️ July 2: AI Engineer Trivia Night. Dogpatch. 4:30 - 8:30 pm.
Reply to this email to submit an event for consideration in the next edition.
Top 5 SF Startup Jobs
VP of Business Development @ Fidelity Private Shares
Fluid Simulation Engineer @ DeepSim, Inc
Founding Designer @ Slashy
Founding Design Engineer @ Readily
Agent Product Manager @ Conduit
👋 Hiring? Reply to this email to feature your job in this newsletter.
Other Opportunities
Know a founder or investor in SF who is raising capital or searching for a co-founder? Reply to this email with more details that I could share with the 3,500+ subscribers of this newsletter.
Atom Computing, a creator of a quantum computer, raised a $100M Series C led by Third Point Ventures.
Andera, a developer of an AI-native internal audit and corporate compliance testing platform, raised a $37M Series A led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
XDOF, a developer of data engineering pipelines and annotation systems for physical artificial intelligence, raised a $70M round backed by Thrive Capital, Spark Capital and more.
Baseten, a developer of artificial intelligence model deployment and serverless compute infrastructure, is reportedly closing a $1.5B round backed by Altimeter Capital, Conviction.
Architect Labs, a provider of an AI system to design custom chips and full-stack silicon solutions, raised a $24M Seed round led by Kindred Ventures.
Verse, a provider of an energy infrastructure platform for the AI economy, raised a $54M Series B led by Bessemer Venture Partners.
Pramaana Labs, a developer of a formal verification compiler platform for mission-critical artificial intelligence, raised a $27M Seed round led by Khosla Ventures.
Odyssey, a developer of general world simulation models and physical artificial intelligence platforms, raised a $310M Series B led by Natural Capital.
Convey, a provider of an enterprise AI platform that enables non-technical operators to build and manage digital teammates that execute business operations autonomously, raised a $38M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz.
KLIPY, a provider of an API platform for expressive media, raised a $3.8M round backed by Google’s AI Futures Fund, I2BF, Silvercircle VC, and more.
Clario, a provider of a platform that optimizes ROT (redundant, obsolete, and insignificant files) problems in enterprise data, raised a $6M Seed round led by Preface Ventures.
Vali Health, a startup building responsible AI infrastructure for the home care industry, raised a $6M round backed by Bonfire Ventures, Supernode, and more.
Flagright, a provider of an AI operating system for financial crime compliance, raised a $12.5M Series A led by Infinity Ventures.
Bland, a developer of an a voice AI platform providing production-grade AI agents, raised a $50M Series C led by Dell Technologies Capital.
Ent, a intent-aware workspace security company, raised a $100M Seed round led by Decibel.
Magnitude, a provider of an autonomous governance and defense system for managing third- and Nth-party risk, raised a $10M Seed round led by Ballistic Ventures.
Arcade, an action layer for production AI agents, raised a $60M Series A led by SYN Ventures.
AttoTude Inc., a company leveraging interconnect technology for AI infrastructure, raised a $52M Series C led by The Westly Group.
Cellares, an Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO) which specializes in cell therapies, raised an additional $50M in Series D from Prime Radiant Partners’ Prime Radiant Fund SLP SICAV-RAIF.
Radical Numerics, an AI research lab building general biological intelligence, raised a $50M Seed round led by Emergence Capital.
Genspark.ai, an agentic AI company building workspace solutions, raised a $100M Series B backed by Sozo Ventures, Korea Mirae Asset and more.
ChatSee.ai, a company providing intelligence layer services for autonomous AI systems, raised a $6.5M round led by True Ventures.
Featured Location
Long Weekend. A stylish North Beach cocktail bar with a Havana-inspired vibe, known for creative rum cocktails, tropical drinks, and a lively atmosphere.
Fun Events
June 26: World's largest design picnic | Config 2026 Wind-down Picnic with Design Buddies & friends!
See you next week,
Justin