Icehouse Ventures smashes target, closes $122m Growth Fund II

Plus: The necessity of a Callaghan reset, NZ's largest solar farm underway and the DeepSeek fallout continues.

Happy Thursday!

If you’re in Auckland, I hope your short week has treated you well and if you’re anywhere else, hope you’re excited for one next week. Kicking off this morning we have some great news from our friends at Icehouse Ventures which broke yesterday, with their largest ever fund smashing its target. I expect to write many headlines in future about the companies that fund supports. Elsewhere in the newsey, we peek around the world and see how the shockwaves of DeepSeek are still spreading and discover the shocking gender disparity in Chat GPT users.

Here’s the Daily Shot of news you don’t want to miss:

• Icehouse Ventures closes $122m Growth Fund II, eclipsing target

• Harmony, Clarus to build NZ’s biggest solar farm

• Scrapping Callaghan Innovation is a necessary reset but what comes next?

• Is your business getting enough attention?

• White House evaluates effect of China AI app DeepSeek on national security

• Why DeepSeek Could Change What Silicon Valley Believes About A.I

• Tesla earnings day and all eyes are on Elon

• ChatGPT’s mobile users are 85% male, report says

As always, thank you to everyone who has upgraded to a paid subscription or simply recommended Caffeine to friends and whānau. We couldn’t do any of this without you.

Finn and the CAFFEINE team

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