The AlleyWatch Startup Daily Funding Report: 7/14/2026 – AlleyWatch

• Hundreds of prominent economists and tech leaders from organizations including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic signed a letter warning that AI could lead to "large-scale job displacement." • The signatories are urging immediate action to ensure that AI advancements complement human labor and provide broad societal benefits rather than causing economic instability.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has proposed a conceptual plan for the U.S. government to take a 5% equity stake in major AI developers, including OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic. • The proposal, discussed with President Donald Trump and secretaries Howard Lutnick and Bessent, suggests a shared vehicle modeled after the Alaska Permanent Fund to distribute wealth to citizens.

• Cybersecurity stocks experienced a rally following comments from IBM CEO Arvind Krishna regarding shifts in corporate spending. • Speaking with CNBC's Sara Eisen, Krishna revealed that several major deals were paused toward the end of the quarter as businesses re-evaluate their budgets.

• Richard Sutton has co-founded Oak Lab to develop new algorithms that move beyond the current limitations of static Large Language Model (LLM) training. • This launch serves as a direct counter-thesis to the "scaling" approach championed by figures like Demis Hassabis, who believe frontier scaling remains on track.

• Made-in-China.com showcased its industrial-grade 3D modeling and SourcingAI tools at the Manufacturing Expo 2026 to support Thailand's digital transformation. • The initiative aligns with the "Thailand 4.0" strategy, aiming to help local manufacturers overcome rising operational costs and intensify global competition.

• The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) warns that the current global race to build AI infrastructure could trigger a severe market disruption. • The BIS suggests that the AI investment surge is mirroring previous technological booms that were fueled by excessive debt and eventually ended in financial busts.

• Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is exploring a new funding round shortly after completing its first external fundraising effort of $7 billion. • The company intends to use the additional capital to expand its AI infrastructure, develop proprietary chips, and further increase its overall valuation.

• Singapore's manufacturing sector experienced a 12.2% year-on-year growth in the second quarter of 2026, accelerating from 8.0% in Q1. • This surge was primarily driven by strong AI-related demand for semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

• Morningstar has identified four Asia equity funds from Wellington Management, Allianz GI, Barings, and iShares as top picks for investors seeking AI exposure. • One highlighted strategy focuses on Korean equities, utilizing a bottom-up analysis and a "growth-at-a-reasonable-price" investment style.

• Researchers analyzed 380 trillion AI tokens from OpenRouter's proprietary dataset, covering requests to over 400 AI models including GPT, Claude, and Deepseek from January 2024 through April 2026. • The study reveals that AI adoption is driving stock price increases not only for tech firms but also for consumer-facing sectors and capital-intensive industries.

• Check Point Research released its Annual AI Security Report 2026, highlighting a shift where AI has evolved from a "force multiplier" to a tool capable of building deployment-ready malware. • The report details a specific instance where a developer used an AI environment to create VoidLink, an 88,000-line command-and-control offensive framework, in less than one week.