Built By Berkeley

Deal of the Week

Only two new deals to report this week. Who wants to announce anything while everyone is eating turkey?! My deal of the week is Verisoul. One of the enduring thoughts I have with AI comes down to two things:

1. Cyberattacks are going to explode.
   More attack vectors, easier execution. I spoke about this previously here. Verisoul helps protect businesses from fake accounts and fake agents. Expect a lot more funding to flow into this space.

2. AI makes it easy to craft the “perfect” email, CV, presentation, etc.
   So how do you actually verify talent from a CV or an email anymore? I think it increasingly comes down to networks and referrals. AI will be a massive enabler and leveler, but the value of networks will compound even faster.

How do I invest in that idea?!

Inteligence Keeps on Getting Cheaper

Another thought that continues to resonate with me is that intelligence keeps getting cheaper. The simplest way to think about this is token cost: the cost of compute to achieve the same outcome, continues to fall rapidly. You can see this across API pricing for models, but the example below shows it clearly: Anthropic’s latest frontier model, Opus 4.5, scores slightly better on the same SWE (Software Engineer) benchmark as its Sonnet 4.5 model, yet operates at just 40% of the cost.

The impact of this doesn’t feel widely discussed yet. To me, it seems that as the models converge, they’re already “good enough” to drive massive productivity gains (the end of busy work!) and the cost to serve will only keep dropping.

Great work from Ribbit Capital diving into the token economy.

Cool Chart of the Week

If you want to know how 1931 felt (a 40-50% drop), I would recommend reading 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History. It is also amazing how in many ways it feels like the present day.

Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:

• 2 Berkeley-founded companies funded

• $10.3M of capital raised from the 24th Nov to 30th Nov

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Closed Rounds

🛡️ Verisoul. $7.3M Early Stage VC 🇺🇸 Fake-account & bot-fraud defense. 💰 500 Global, BITKRAFT Ventures

🐻 Raine Scott, Founder & CPO. BS. Article

🦾 Neuracore. $3.0M Seed 🇬🇧 Cloud-based robot-learning platform. 💰 Clément Delangue Earlybird Venture Capital

🐻 Stephen James, Founder & CEO. Post-Doc Robotic Learning. Article

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