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Plateau Governorship Election Tribunal Orders INEC To Produce Voter Register, BVAS

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Nentawe Mutfwang

The Election Petition Tribunal, currently in session in Jos, has issued an order to the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, to produce the voter register and Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) used in selected polling units during the March 18 governorship election in the state.

The tribunal’s chairman, R Irele-ifeneh, delivered the order yesterday as the hearing of the petition filed by Dr. Nentawe Yilwatda, the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the March 18 election, commenced.

Dr. Yilwatda is contesting the victory of Governor Caleb Mutfwang of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) at the tribunal.

The order was prompted by INEC’s failure to produce all certified true copies of documents as required by the subpoena issued to the INEC chairman and Plateau Resident Electoral Commissioner by the tribunal.

Representing the INEC chairman, Salisu Aliyu, a senior system analyst from INEC’s ICT department, and Festus Aisien, an assistant director at the INEC voter registry department, informed the court that their appearance was in response to the subpoena issued to the INEC chairman for the submission of certified true copies of accredited data extracted from the INEC backend server and form EC8A from the INEC Result Portal (IREV).

However, the chairman’s representatives only presented the certified true copies of accredited data from BVAS and a portion of the required list of voters from the voter register in hard copy format, while the remaining list of voters was provided in soft copy.

Aliyu and Festus explained that they were unable to bring the BVAS machines and the remaining voter register to the court due to the bulky nature of the items.

However, the petitioner’s counsel, Kayode Olatoke (SAN), objected to their submissions, insisting that all items listed in the subpoena must be presented.

After considering the counsel’s argument, the court ordered INEC to produce all the documents and items as specified in the subpoena within one week.

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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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