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OPSH soldiers rescues abducted Plateau monarch

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The traditional ruler of Pinau village in Wase Local Council, His Royal Highness, Dauda Mohammed Suleiman, and his driver, who was kidnapped on Monday at his palace in Pinau community, have been rescued by soldiers attached to Operation Safe Haven (OPSH) in the village.

The Acting Deputy Director of 3 Division, Rukuba Barracks Jos, Major Ishaku Takwa, said the victims had been rescued.

A resident, Hassan Pinau, said gunmen abducted the monarch and his driver on their way to Wase town, and Chairman of Action Democratic Congress in the Wase LGA, Hon. Abdullahi Gadole confirmed the kidnap of the monarch to newsmen on Tuesday.

Ubale explained that soon after the incident was reported to soldiers in the village, they swung into action and trailed the kidnappers into the bush, rescued the victims, and recovered two guns and three motorcycles.

A member of neighborhood watch in the area, Nazifi Abubakar, said: “I was with the soldiers during the rescue operation. Soldiers and other members of the neighborhood watch, who trailed the kidnappers, have brought the traditional ruler back to the village.

“Everyone is happy in the village now. There was a gun battle between the soldiers and the bandits before the victims were rescued. The soldiers have tried. We pray Allah to give them the strength to continue with the good job they are doing.”

According to residents no life was lost during the ordeal and only few were injured.

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New leaders, new fund: Sequoia has raised $7B to expand its AI bets

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Few venture firms have bet more aggressively on AI than Sequoia Capital, and it isn’t slowing down.

The Silicon Valley stalwart has raised roughly $7 billion for a new fund, according to Bloomberg. Sequoia declined TechCrunch’s request for comment. The money will go toward what the firm calls its “expansion strategy” — essentially its late-stage investing arm, focused on the U.S. and Europe — and it’s nearly double Sequoia’s last comparable fund, a $3.4 billion vehicle raised in 2022.

That growth in fund size reflects something bigger: late-stage investing has taken on an entirely new meaning in the AI era. Companies can now scale at a speed and cost that would have been unimaginable a decade ago, and the firms backing them have to keep pace.

The money signals where Sequoia sees the future: deeply embedded in AI, from the giants building the underlying technology to the startups putting it to work. The firm has backed two of the most prominent players in the AI race — OpenAI originally and, more recently, Anthropic — both of which are reportedly eyeing public listings in 2026. The development that could mean a significant payday for the firm.

Sequoia isn’t only swinging for the foundational AI heavyweights, however. It has also placed bets on other buzzy startups, including Physical Intelligence, the Bay Area robotics startup, and Factory, which builds AI agents for enterprise engineering teams.

The fundraise is also the first major capital raise under Sequoia’s new leadership, with Alfred Lin and Pat Grady now serving as co-stewards of the 54-year-old firm.

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Factory hits $1.5B valuation to build AI coding for enterprises

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More than three years after the emergence of generative AI, AI-assisted coding remains by far the most popular and lucrative use case for the technology.

Although multiple companies — including Anthropic, maker of Claude Code, as well as Cursor and Cognition — are already vying for dominance, investors believe there is room for at least one more player.

On Wednesday, Factory, a startup developing AI agents for enterprise engineering teams, announced it had raised $150 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, and Blackstone. Keith Rabois, a managing director at Khosla Ventures, joined the startup’s board.

Factory founder Matan Grinberg told the Wall Street Journal that the company’s key differentiator is its ability to switch between different foundation models, such as Anthropic’s Claude or Chinese AI startup DeepSeek. However, startups like Cursor also don’t rely on a single model to generate code.

Factory’s customers include engineering teams at Morgan Stanley, Ernst & Young, and Palo Alto Networks.

The startup was founded in 2023 after Grinberg, then a PhD student at UC Berkeley, cold-emailed Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire. The two bonded over mutual academic interest. (Maguire’s PhD from Caltech is in the same area of physics Grinberg was studying.)

Maguire convinced Grinberg to drop out and launch Factory, with Sequoia backing the startup at the seed stage.

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