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👋 Welcome, Jobseekers

AI money is going feral: a former Databricks leader just grabbed $475 million dollars for biology-level chips while Unconventional AI, Fal, Oboe, Rivian, and Amazon India line up the next hiring wave. Meanwhile Meta and friends cut headcount and women demand flexibility as a non negotiable, so we will show you where to apply, what to avoid, and which tools quietly stack the odds in your favor.

• 🧑‍✈️ Career CoPilot: Ex Databricks leader raises $475M SEED round to build biology-level AI chips

• 📡 Company Radar: Where To Aim Your Applications This Week - Oboe, Fal, [Un]conventional, Rivian, Amazon India

• 📉 Layoff Report: Meta’s Zuckerberg plans deep cuts for Metaverse efforts

• 📈 Trends & Data: Women want flexibility, but job postings aren’t keeping up

• 🔧 Jobseeker Tools: Resmate, Oboe

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Where To Aim Your Applications This Week

"We want to reach billions of people who want to learn about new topics, and it is a very big opportunity... We need to execute faster and reach a larger audience at scale to achieve this vision."

-CoFounder Oboe, Nir Zicherman 

Here are the companies lighting up the news that are actually worth targeting for applications in the next 3 to 6 months.

• Unconventional AI – Neuromorphic AI hardware startup with a record breaking $475 million dollar seed at a $4.5 billion dollar valuation. Expect heavy hiring in systems, chips and ML infra as they spin up teams from scratch.

• Fal – Multimodal AI infra platform that just raised 140 million dollars Series D, tripling valuation to 4.5 billion dollars. Great target for backend, infra, ML platform, and dev tools roles.

• Oboe – AI course generation app from the Anchor founders, now with a fresh 16 million dollar Series A from a16z. Strong fit for product, UX, and AI engineers who care about learning tools.

• Amazon India and AWS – Another 35 billion dollar commitment to India, taking planned spend to 75 billion dollars by 2030, signals long runway for hiring across retail, logistics tech and cloud. Look for roles tied to India expansion and AWS infra.

• Meesho – 606 million dollar IPO that popped about 46 percent on day one. Marketplace scale plus fresh public market validation usually means more headcount in product, growth, data and platform engineering.

• Rivian – Spent nearly two years on an in house AI assistant ahead of its Autonomy and AI Day. This is a clear signal they are investing in software, AI, and UX talent around the vehicle experience.

Filter your applications this week toward companies like these that just raised, went public, or announced multi year expansion, since that is where hiring plans usually firm up first.

Meta’s Zuckerberg plans deep cuts for Metaverse efforts

Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to cut back on spending for the metaverse, the virtual world project he once called the future of the company and the reason for renaming Facebook Inc, as reported by Bloomberg.

• SE Ranking has laid off 15% of its employees 

• Layoffs At Tenstorrent As Startup Pivots Towards Developer Sales 

• Intel layoffs: More Santa Clara jobs on the chopping block 

• Amazon’s King of Meat Developer Glowmade Faces Layoffs Following Disastrous Game Launch 

• Mobileye lays off 200 employees; Company's shares down more than 40% this year 

• Payoneer cuts 6% of workforce as profitability pressures mount 

• Meta’s Zuckerberg Plans Deep Cuts for Metaverse Efforts 

• Adtech company Teads is laying off staff 10 months after closing its merger with Outbrain 

• Cellebrite completes $170M Corellium purchase, announces layoffs amid restructuring 

• Bill Gates-backed Modern Hydrogen lays off most of its employees after decade-long pursuit of clean energy 

• Eidos-Montreal Lets Go More Staff With More Layoffs Planned 

• Japanese consumer electronics company to cut over 70 jobs 

• Outright Games lays off 27 staff 

Ex Databricks leader raises $475M SEED round to build biology level AI chips

A two month old startup just raised a $475 million dollar seed round at a 4.5 billion dollar valuation to build AI chips that are “as efficient as biology.” The company is called Unconventional AI, led by Naveen Rao, former head of AI at Databricks and founder of MosaicML and Nervana Systems. The round is co led by a16z and Lightspeed, with Jeff Bezos and Databricks also in the mix. (TechCrunch)

For a jobseeker, this is not just a spicy funding headline. It is a lighthouse for where the next decade of tech work is heading.

What this actually signals

• AI infra is the real gold rush. When investors put nearly half a billion into a seed round, they are betting that the bottleneck in AI is no longer clever prompting. It is energy, chips, and systems.

• Deep tech is back in fashion. Rao has already sold two AI infra companies for more than 400 million dollars and 1.3 billion dollars. (TechCrunch) VCs are clearly willing to fund long, hard hardware and systems work again.

• There will be a hiring halo. Even if you never work at Unconventional AI, this kind of round pulls capital, talent, and copycats into the same space. Think Groq, Cerebras, CoreWeave, Tenstorrent, d Matrix and others working on AI compute and infra. (Data Center Dynamics)

So what for your job search

You do not need to be a chip designer to ride this wave. But you should align yourself with the problems this money is trying to solve.

Good targets for the next 6 to 24 months

• AI infrastructure and GPU cloud companies

• Model hosting and serving platforms

• Tooling that makes AI cheaper, faster, or more efficient

• Data center, energy, and MLOps teams inside big tech

Ways to position yourself

• If you are an engineer, highlight work with performance, distributed systems, CUDA, GPU usage, or large scale data pipelines. Even “I made this thing 3x faster and cut cloud spend” maps directly to the cost pressure behind this round.

• If you are product, design, or data, lean into stories about building tools for engineers, optimizing workflows, or making complex systems usable by humans. These companies need world class internal tooling and developer experience, not just silicon wizards.

The meta takeaway: AI is not just about chatbots and features on top of GPT. The serious money is piling into the plumbing. If your next move gets you closer to that plumbing, you are probably moving in the right direction.

Women want flexibility, but job postings aren’t keeping up

Overview

Women are saying “flexibility or I’m out,” while many employers pull back on remote and flexible options according to Indeed Hiring Labs. For tech jobseekers, treat benefits like a second paycheck and negotiate accordingly.

The Details

• 67% of US workers rank employer health insurance as a top benefit; vacation days are top 3 in 7 of 8 countries, even where 20–25 days are mandated.

• US women choose remote work 11 percentage points more often than men, plus flexible hours (+7 ppt), parental leave (+5 ppt), and childcare (+3 ppt).

• Flexible schedule mentions in US postings rose from 7.1% (early 2020) to 14.4% (Nov 2023), then slipped to 13.7% by Oct 2025.

• Remote postings topped 15% in Canada, Germany, the UK, and Ireland but have flattened or fallen since 2024. The US has stayed below 10% since 2022.

• 40% of US workers would give up at least 5% of salary to keep working from home.

Why It Matters

Flexible work is not a “nice to have” for women. It is what lets many stay and grow in the workforce, especially in caregiving years. When postings dial back flexibility while women increase demand, employers create a quiet filter that screens out female talent before interviews even start.

Implications by role / level

• ICs (especially women in tech): You may trade title or cash for flexibility, but you’re not alone. 40% of workers would do the same.

• Senior ICs / Managers: Use this data to justify remote or flexible arrangements at team level.

• Execs / Hiring managers: Inflexible roles plus a male-skewed pipeline is not a coincidence. Flexibility is a diversity tool, not a perk.

🪷 Shed & Surge: A Somatic Reset for Your 2026 Rebirth

Last week we hosted Marian Bacol, founder of somarae, in a webinar geared toward resetting your nervous system after a layoff. It was such a needed reset and everyone who attended brought a positive vibe, ready for some grounding.

Next week she is hosting another Somatic Reset on Thursday, December 18 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM PST geared toward kicking off 2026 with the right energy.

​You will leave feeling:

• ​calmer

• ​clearer

• ​lighter

• ​more spacious

• ​more courageous

• ​more connected to your body

• ​more ready to step into your next chapter

If that sounds like something you need, you can register for Marian’s free somatic reset below!

📅 Register here: https://luma.com/a80iyzma

Oboe

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Resmate

Accelerate your job search

Job seekers use Resmate to organize and optimize their applications with their AI toolkit.

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