Below, we break down some of tech’s biggest stories, with analyst perspective on the moves that matter the most.
Here’s what we’re watching this week:
- AI app governance startups
- Stripe’s crypto mafia
- Asia’s Silicon Valley
Also, Nasdaq Data Link now carries CB Insights.
One of the world’s leading public market exchanges can now access our private company datasets: firmographics, financials, investors, founders, and partners, dating back to 2010. If you’re already in Data Link, our data is in the feed you use today – nothing to onboard or build.
Institutional investors need a better view into private companies more than ever. We’re looking forward to working together with the Nasdaq team and to what comes next.
Learn more here or email nasdaq@cbinsights.com.
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1. The vibe coding boom created a governance mess, and startups are lining up to clean it up.
Everyone became a vibe coder overnight. Now there’s a whole market of startups helping companies manage all their vibe coded apps, from governance to deployment to compliance.
Acquirers are already circling tools for governing what AI builds. In the last year, SentinelOne bought Prompt Security for up to $300M, OpenAI picked up Promptfoo, and Asana acquired Stack AI.
Here are three companies we think will take off next:
- Superblocks (2026 AI 100 winner): AI-native enterprise platform that builds AI-built apps with governance, compliance, and secure data connectors baked in.
- Lyzr: Series B platform for building and running AI agents at scale, with security and compliance controls for the enterprises deploying them.
- Daytona: Runs AI-generated code in isolated environments, keeping it separated from production systems.
“AI made building fast, but building is 10% of the problem. The other 90% — shipping, securing, integrating, governing, deploying, and maintaining all of those apps at enterprise scale — is where we see every other tool falling apart.”
Puneeth Ghodgeri,
VP of Marketing, Superblocks
Read our full interview with Superblocks here.
2. Stripe launched a crypto founder factory…by accident.
Stripe launched a crypto team in 2021. Now that team is raising its own rounds.
Last year, Head of Crypto & AI Partnerships Louis Amira and Head of Crypto Engineering David Noël-Romas launched Circuit & Chisel. The company just passed a million accounts in June.
But the one we’re really excited about is Latitude, founded in 2025 by Cyril Mathew, an early member of Stripe’s crypto team. The company just raised a $35M Series A this week for its global payments platform. Latitude’s edge is strong bank relationships in multiple countries, which lets it convert stablecoins to local currency everywhere, a difficult moat for competitors to replicate.
Check out all 192 companies founded by Stripe alumni here.
3. Here’s how Asia beats Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley provides an all-in-one platform for tech, but Asia takes a different approach, with whole countries specializing in different roles.
After analyzing CB Insights data across the region, a clear pattern emerged. Instead of concentrating everything in one place, Asia splits work by country:
- China excels in building, with 97% of regional venture funding in frontier markets like humanoid robots and 94% in large language models.
- Japan and South Korea handle exits, executing more than half of M&A in the region.
- Hong Kong connects the system to global capital, with an 84% foreign investor share and leading the region in startup momentum.
For anyone building or investing across Asia, understanding where each country excels presents the fastest way to move from idea to exit.
Read the full report here.
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