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Plateau Footballer Paul Julius Goewam Dies in Cyprus Car Crash

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Paul Julius Goewam, a promising 20-year-old footballer from Plateau State, tragically died in a car accident in Cyprus on Tuesday, August 20, 2024.

The crash occurred around 6:30 a.m. on the Paralimni-Protaras road near Pernera, when Julius’s vehicle collided head-on with another car. Julius, who recently joined the Cypriot football club Enosis Neon Paralimni just three weeks ago after playing for the Egyptian team El Gaish, was a talented striker with a bright future ahead of him.

The football community has been left in shock by the untimely loss of such a young and gifted player. In a statement, Enosis Neon Paralimni FC expressed their deep sorrow, honoring Julius’s resilience and determination to succeed despite the challenges he faced. “His memory will live on in our hearts, and his absence will be deeply felt. We stand with his family and loved ones during this difficult time. May he rest in peace,” the club said.

The 74-year-old driver of the other vehicle involved in the crash is currently being treated in the hospital but is not in critical condition. Cypriot authorities are investigating the incident, with the Famagusta Traffic Department urging any witnesses to come forward with information.

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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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