Latest issueSunday 8 November 2026 · Issue 7 · 2 min read
Sequoia ends its scout cheques; €13.5m for Stockholm's Green Voltis; Meta's agent builds apps for free
The main story
TechCrunch · yesterday
Sequoia ends the scout cheques it invented
Takeaway: 17 years ago
Quiet Sunday — the rounds and the Meta item below are the whole news. The bigger signal: Sequoia is shutting the scout program it pioneered 17 years ago and closing its London office, per its memo posted to X this week, reported by TechCrunch on 7 November. Sequoia frames it as a need for focus, not a case against scouts. a16z has already thinned its own scout network, giving the survivors more budget, per its partner Gabriel Vasquez.
For you it cuts both ways: fewer scout cheques competing in the pre-seed rounds you sit in, but one less route for founders to build an investing track record before starting a fund. Tell founders you back not to plan a round around a big-firm scout cheque — angels writing their own money, like yours, are the dependable earliest capital now.
New rounds
Bioliberty — Edinburgh and Boston stroke-rehab robotics with AI-generated clinical notes; €2.95 million Series A extension, backers incl. TGH Ventures and Ballad Ventures; reported by EU-Startups.
Green Voltis — Stockholm AI agent trading battery-storage power across 10 markets; Series A, €13.5 million, led solely by Lochpine Capital; reported by Arctic Startup.
For your portfolio
Meta AI Research · 2 days ago
Meta's assistant now builds apps and remembers
Takeaway: 2.4x reduction in forgetting
On 6 November Meta rolled out specialised models behind its Muse assistant and Meta AI chatbot, trained on its Muse Wonder series: Active Memory, which Meta's own research post reports as a 2.4x reduction in forgetting critical information, and Active Focus, a 67% improvement on everyday tasks that hit unexpected problems. The same day it shipped Spaces: describe an app and Muse builds it, then keeps it updating itself from Gmail, Calendar or Notion in the background.
This is the free platform eating thin consumer wrappers — the shopping hub, planner or tracker a startup charges for, a user's assistant now builds and remembers for free. Meta's research post scores the new models 47% on its Personal Superintelligence Index, against 38% for the previous ones. Ask any consumer founder you back: what does our app do that a Muse space can't, and where does our data or workflow depth actually sit? If the honest answer is 'a nicer UI', that team is behind.