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$ETH $UNI
V God, Lin Zhichen will deliver the Keynote at ETHTaipei 2026; free tickets now open for registration

ETHTaipei 2026, Taiwan’s annual Ethereum developer conference, has announced its two-day Keynote lineup: Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin will open the first day’s “Cryptonative Day,” and the second day’s “Institution Day” keynote will be delivered by Lin Zhichen, General Manager of Taiwan Mobile. The conference will be held from September 13 to 14 at POPOP Taipei (Taipei Nangang Bottle Cap Factory), with free tickets opening for limited-time registration starting immediately. Vitalik opens Cryptonative Day, focusing on protocols and core technology The first day’s Cryptonative Day targets Ethereum developers and the technical community, with Vitalik Buterin serving as keynote speaker. The agenda covers topics such as protocols and core development, Layer 2 scaling, zero-knowledge proofs and privacy, wallets and account abstraction, DeFi, consumer and social applications, cybersecurity, and development tools. This also continues the tradition of V God coming to Taiwan multiple times in recent years to engage deeply with Taiwan’s developer community. Lin Zhichen leads Institution Day, focusing on institutions and real-world finance The next day’s Institution Day keynote will be delivered by Lin Zhichen, General Manager of Taiwan Mobile, focusing on topics of interest to banks and financial institutions, including institutional-grade wallets and custody, digital assets and smart contract security, stablecoin risk management, real-world assets (RWA) and the tokenization of U.S. stocks, “Machine Finance” driven by AI Agents, and how financial institutions choose underlying public blockchains. This day is precisely ETHTaipei’s first-ever addition of a “Financial Institutions Day” this year, aiming to connect Ethereum’s core technologies with Taiwan’s industries in a practical way. The organizing team, Martinet, said: “Cryptographic technology and the real world are meeting, and making all of this real is the research and engineering behind it.” The lineup of international speakers and sponsors expands, with Taiwan Mobile joining as a Gold sponsor In addition to the two keynote speakers, the speakers for ETHTaipei 2026 include teams such as Polymarket, Uniswap, the Ethereum Foundation, ChainSafe, LINE NEXT, CertiK, Quantstamp, Morpho, and imToken Labs, covering protocol research, DeFi, privacy, cybersecurity, and consumer-focused applications. Sponsors: Gold sponsors include BSOS, the Digital Asset Development Research Center (DADRC), Sigmarket, and Taiwan Mobile; Silver sponsors include Taishin Shin Kong Financial Holding, Quantstamp, and KlickKlack. Since ETHTaipei’s first edition in 2023, it has already accumulated more than 3,000 attendees, 169 speakers, and 129 talks. A complete schedule of session times and more speakers will be announced on the official website in stages, and free tickets are available for limited-time registration starting immediately. This article, “V God, Lin Zhichen to deliver Keynote at ETHTaipei 2026; free tickets now open,” first appeared on .

$TRX $AAPLB $NVDAB
Memory Doomsday Survival Guide: Do You Really Need to Buy a New Laptop Before Prices Rise?

The recent tech market has been shrouded in gloom. If you’ve been planning to replace your notebook computer lately, you may have noticed a harsh reality: prices for older models that you expected to drop over time have basically stood still. Meanwhile, newly released models are priced steeply—more expensive than ever. Behind all of this is a chain reaction triggered by ongoing memory shortages and rising chip costs. On The Vergecast, hosts David and veteran reviewer Antonio dive deep into the current “memory doomsday” situation. In this “new normal,” where hardware costs remain high and the era of low prices may never return, should consumers really rush to replace their laptops? And how should you spend your money wisely?

Against the backdrop of the memory crisis, is 16GB the standard for Windows?
When choosing a computer, memory capacity is often the key factor that influences both price and smoothness. Antonio points out that in the world of Windows laptops, 16GB of RAM is the minimum threshold to ensure a good user experience. As the operating system and all kinds of applications put increasing load on the system, 16GB provides ample performance so your computer won’t become sluggish due to insufficient memory over the next few years. If your budget is only around $500, prioritizing a laptop with 16GB RAM is far more cost-effective than chasing a better screen or speakers.

Is 8GB of RAM enough for everyday work on Apple?
Experts believe Apple demonstrates different technical advantages, thanks to its own custom-designed single-chip Arm architecture. With a MacBook equipped with 8GB of memory, light multitasking and office work can be handled comfortably. However, Antonio also reminds readers that future upgrade space and overall usable lifespan for 8GB are ultimately limited. If you expect to use it long-term, you still need to weigh the trade-off against peak performance speed.

Recommended practical high-value laptop models around NT$30,000
With soaring prices, consumers with a budget of $1,000 (around more than NT$30,000) can still find options that balance experience and performance:

MacBook Air (including Neo): Excellent craftsmanship, outstanding trackpad and camera experience, plus strong battery life—arguably the best choice for the general public.

ASUS ZenBook A14: Equipped with a Snapdragon X processor, priced roughly between $700 and $800. It combines portability and reliable productivity.

Acer Aspire 14 AI: Featuring a high-performance Intel Lunar Lake processor. While its media specs are more ordinary, it delivers powerful chip performance and includes Thunderbolt 4 connectivity—making it an especially good deal.

Official certified refurbished units:
If your budget is tight, buying “refurbished” machines sold by Apple, Lenovo, or reputable third-party retailers is a safe and cost-effective pricing strategy.

Popular gaming laptop list under NT$60,000

ASUS: The TUF line emphasizes high value for money; the ROG Strix G series offers higher-tier performance tuning.

Lenovo: The Legion line has great build quality—Legion 5i (around $1,000) is a well-regarded steady choice. The LOQ series caters to buyers with even lower budgets.

MSI: If you need a big-screen “desktop replacement,” MSI’s Crosshair 18-inch models ($1,500–$2,000) provide an excellent large-screen gaming experience.

What you need to know before buying a gaming laptop: the GPU is the core value
If you need a laptop that can run professional gaming smoothly, a typical lightweight laptop is not the first choice. Dedicated gaming laptops are the only real answer. In the gaming laptop market, intensified memory shortages increase the overall cost of purchase. Antonio emphasizes: “When you buy a gaming laptop, what you’re really buying is the graphics card.”

Upgrading the GPU: NVIDIA RTX 4070 is the top recommendation
NVIDIA RTX 40: At present, experts recommend the NVIDIA RTX 4070, which supports DLSS and multi-frame generation (Frame Generation) technology. It can significantly improve future compatibility and extend the machine’s usable lifespan. If your total budget is within $2,000, models with the RTX 4070 mobile chip are the best balance of performance and price.

NVIDIA RTX 30: If your budget is tight, NVIDIA is still recommended. The RTX 30 series is older, but if you can find steeply discounted clearance deals, it’s a good compromise for those with limited budgets.

Quality downgrade mindset:
Experts remind players that unless you buy a top-tier flagship model, when facing games with very high performance demands, you should first mentally prepare for your settings to drop to mid-range levels or 1080p resolution—in exchange for smoother frame rates. Also, gaming laptops generally have weaker battery life, so plugging in will be the norm.

Do you need to buy a laptop right away?
Given the “new normal” of high costs and high prices, those big price drops common in the past may be hard to see again. If your current laptop can’t meet your work or entertainment needs anymore, you can replace it based on the above prerequisites—such as “Windows-certified 16GB,” “game console-certified RTX 40 series,” or considering an “official refurbished model.”

Experts say that if your current laptop runs smoothly, there’s no need to blindly rush into buying a new one just out of panic. Be clear about your personal needs and invest precisely in the right hardware specifications, and you can get through this “memory doomsday.”

This article
Memory Doomsday Survival Guide: Do You Really Need to Buy a New Laptop Before Prices Rise?

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$LINK
Grok Bot now can directly help you shop! Integrates Stripe Link—AI can buy from “any online merchant”

Grok Bot, launched under #xAI , announced that it can now directly purchase products for users on the internet. Users only need to connect Stripe’s Link payment service, and they can hand the shopping task to Grok Bot. After finding the item, the Bot completes the transaction. This means Grok Bot’s capabilities are no longer limited to searching, comparing, or recommending products, but are now moving into true agentic commerce. The feature is currently rolling out first to users in the United States, and Grok Bot says the mobile version will be released soon as well. Each payment still requires manual approval. What the Bot receives is a “single-use card,” giving the AI direct permission to make the credit card payment. Naturally, the biggest concerns are security and authorization. Grok Bot’s mechanism is not to hand over users’ main credit card details to the AI. According to the official explanation, before Grok Bot is ready to make a purchase, it must first request payment from the user, and the user must approve every individual expense. After approval, Grok Bot obtains a secure single-use card—a virtual card valid for just that payment—to complete the transaction.

Stripe: Now the Bot can shop from “any online merchant.” Stripe has also confirmed this partnership. Stripe says users can now “give Grok Bot a card” through its Link service, allowing the Bot to complete purchases online. Stripe is even more direct: “Bots can now buy from any business on the internet.” This means the model does not require merchants to develop a checkout interface specifically for Grok Bot. This is the biggest difference from some past agent commerce models. Instead of asking the entire e-commerce world to rebuild an “AI-only payment system,” it tries to let AI agents enter the existing payments network directly.

This article “Grok Bot now can directly help you shop! Integrates Stripe Link—AI can buy from ‘any online merchant’” first appeared in .

$ETH
The Native Account Abstraction (AA) Fight in Ethereum: 8130 Split into Three EIPs

How should Ethereum’s “native account abstraction” be implemented? Developers’ community debate this issue has been going on for a while. Now, a compromise approach has emerged that brings the two sides closer together. According to a discussion thread on the Ethereum Magicians forum, the original core proposal, EIP-8130, is being restructured and split into three new “composable” EIPs—8398, 8399, and 8400.

What is Native AA? Why 8130 and the Frame camp are in conflict
The goal of account abstraction (AA) is to make “smart contract accounts” first-class citizens on Ethereum—so they can customize verification logic, support social recovery, pay gas on behalf of users, enable batched transactions, and more. Today’s mainstream approach is to go through ERC-4337 with off-chain bundlers, while “native AA” aims to support this directly at the protocol layer.

The dispute is over how to do the support. One side, represented by EIP-8130, is the “keystore” route: manage signature verification using a whitelist of trusted verifiers. The advantages are that verification cost is predictable and bounded (especially friendly for Layer 2), and the account standard is built in with policy and session keys—emphasizing simplicity and reducing fragmentation. The other side is Frame Transactions (EIP-8141): it allows “unstructured verification” using arbitrary EVM code at any point in the transaction execution, enabling new ideas like “an account without ETH can obtain funds midway through execution.” The tradeoff is maximum flexibility and room for innovation without requiring a hard fork, but it also carries higher fragmentation risk, and some advanced modes require a private mempool.

Ethlabs’ Derek Chiang, in a prior article〈8130 vs Frame Transactions〉, pointed out the tradeoff between “simple and controllable” and “extremely flexible.”

The compromise solution: split into three composable EIPs (8398, 8399, 8400)
A “composable native account abstraction” proposal submitted by developer Pedro UID on August 27 breaks the functionality into three core EIPs stacked on top of each other (corresponding to GitHub PR #12248 opened the same day):
- EIP-8398 “Portable Account Keystore” defines the participants (actors), verifiers, account configuration, and account setup and cross-chain portability.
- EIP-8399 builds on 8398 by introducing a native AA transaction type 0x79, and adds batching, transaction sponsorship, and ordered nonces.
- EIP-8400 requires the first two, and further adds policy, account locking, and “nonce-free transactions” that use the same transaction envelope.

The original EIP-8130 remains unchanged; it has been restructured as the precursor to these three complementary specifications.

Meaning: modularization lets each chain adopt as needed, but it’s still in the proposal stage
Splitting a large proposal into three composable modules provides the biggest benefit: flexibility. Different chains or teams can adopt only the layers they need, without being forced into an all-or-nothing choice.

One interpretation within the community is that the Frame-style approach, which emphasizes flexibility, has largely won out, while the keystore ideas from the L2 side have also been incorporated—in other words, neither side can be said to have completely lost. However, it’s worth reminding readers that everything is still at the EIP proposal and community discussion stage and has not yet become Ethereum’s final solution. How the core developers converge these three specifications into an official upgrade roadmap remains to be seen.

This article “The Native Account Abstraction (AA) Fight in Ethereum: 8130 Split into Three EIPs” first appeared on .

$SPCXB
OpenAI Cuts Off Cursor Model Access Over a Long-Running Grudge, and Claude Benefits

OpenAI and Musk’s long-standing feud has now spread to the AI editor that developers use every day. According to an OpenAI official statement released on August 29, OpenAI announced the termination of its partnership with AI coding tool Cursor, and Cursor’s direct access to OpenAI models will end on November 12. The fuse was Cursor being acquired by SpaceX.

Fuse: SpaceX Acquires Cursor for $60 Billion; OpenAI Says It Can’t Trust It to Keep Its Promise

SpaceX announced this year in June that it would acquire Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, in a $60 billion all-stock transaction, and the deal has been completed this month. OpenAI’s stated reason is straightforward: it cannot be sure that SpaceX will use OpenAI technology within the scope of its service terms. OpenAI also pointed to “experience based on Musk-affiliated companies’ past contract violations”—it said that after Musk acquired Twitter (now incorporated into SpaceX), the company had violated the terms of its agreements with OpenAI.

The practical impact is limited, but the symbolism is strong: Altman × Musk’s Grudge Escalates Again

In terms of real impact, the scope of this cutoff is not large. According to Cursor’s CEO, OpenAI models account for only about 5% of Cursor users’ traffic, and most users are already using other models. But the symbolic significance is far greater than the numbers: this is yet another public escalation in the long-running personal feud between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Musk. From their collaboration since OpenAI’s founding, to Musk leaving to create xAI, and then to multiple lawsuits and proxy battles—the showdown has now extended to “whose models can appear in the most popular AI coding tool.”

Anthropic Steps In: Announces More Compute and Support for Claude in Cursor

As OpenAI exits, leaving a gap behind, someone moves in quickly. After OpenAI’s announcement, Anthropic immediately said it would increase compute and support the use of Claude models in Cursor. For Cursor’s developers, the short-term challenge is the transition to using other models after November 12. But looking at the industry landscape, when OpenAI voluntarily exits a popular entry point for non-technical reasons, it effectively hands that demand to a competitor—Claude is one of the most direct beneficiaries. OpenAI also emphasized that it will do its best to help affected developers get through the transition.

This article, “OpenAI Cuts Off Cursor Model Access Over a Grudge, and Claude Finds an Opening,” first appeared on .

Win now with a seven-thousand-dollar gain? Lotes Green Energy (1529) opens for subscription—what should you pay attention to when applying for stock lottery tickets?

Lotes Green Energy (1529) will open public subscription from 9/2 to 9/4. Based on its offering price of NT$14 and the latest price of NT$17.6, the potential profit if you win is NT$7.130, with a return rate of about 25%. What is a stock lottery subscription? And how do you participate? What does Lotes Green Energy (1529) do?
Lotes Green Energy (1529) was founded in 1978 and began as a traditional electrical power distribution equipment manufacturer before transforming into a green energy technology company. Its main businesses include heavy electrical equipment (transformers, switchgear, distribution panels), investment in and operation/maintenance of solar power plants, as well as EPC contracting for public projects. Its core growth is driven by Taiwan Power Company’s “Resilient Grid Plan” and green energy policy opportunities.

Lotes Green Energy’s revenue is mainly powered by heavy electrical equipment. Its profit cornerstone comes from solar power electricity sales, with gross margins as high as 30%–40%. Its full-year 2025 EPS is projected at NT$1.01. For the first half of 2026, operating profits are stable, with EPS reaching NT$0.51; as debt is repaid, its debt ratio has decreased to a steady level of 40%–42%.

What is a stock lottery?
The official name of the stock lottery is “public subscription.” It is a mechanism where companies issue new shares to the public to raise capital. When a company goes public and lists for the first time (IPO) or conducts a cash capital increase after listing, regulations require setting aside a certain proportion of shares for public subscription.
Investors must submit an application through their securities broker’s trading platform, and on the designated debit date ensure that there is sufficient funds for the subscription shares in the settlement account, along with the related fees. If the total number of subscribers in the market exceeds the number of share lots that can be allocated, the Taiwan Stock Exchange will use computer random drawings to ensure the allocation process is fair and transparent.

What risks come with stock lottery subscriptions?
For most investors, the main motivation for participating in the draw lies in the potential price spread between the “offering price” and the “market price.” To attract market subscriptions, lead underwriters typically offer a discount space versus the offering price.
However, participating in the subscription comes with the cost of having your funds frozen. On the debit date after the subscription deadline, the full amount will be debited in advance and frozen for several trading days, and will only be unlocked on the refund date for shares not allocated to you.

In terms of actual operations, investors also need to consider implied transaction costs. Each subscription requires paying a handling fee of NT$20 and a NT$50 fee for mailing the notice if you win. If you don’t get allocated shares, the subscription funds plus the NT$50 postage fee will be returned—meaning the NT$20 is a sunk cost.

How do you participate in a stock lottery?
Lotes Green Energy (1529) will open public subscription from 9/2 to 9/4. Based on its offering price of NT$14 and the latest price of NT$17.6, the potential profit per share you may get is NT$7.130, with a return rate of about 25%. Please note that the subscription unit for this draw is “two lots” in a single batch.

Lotes Green Energy (1529) was listed in 2000. This time is a cash capital increase, so the price gap compared with the issue terms is relatively stable. Although 3,400 shares will be released this time, since the allocation unit is “two lots,” the estimated winning rate is only slightly above 1%.

The lottery application is simple. Before 2:00 PM on 9/2 to 9/4, open your securities app, tap Stock Lottery, and deposit the NT$28,070 fee. Results will be announced on 9/8.

This article: Win now with a seven-thousand-dollar gain? Lotes Green Energy (1529) opens for subscription—what should you pay attention to when applying for stock lottery tickets?
First appeared at: .

$BTC $SOL
Why Did Bitcoin Retreat From $80,000? Warsh’s Hawkish Pressure, but ETFs Remain Net Inflows

Bitcoin has recently been stuck around $80,000—briefly falling below that level—leaving many wondering: if ETF capital is still flowing in, why has the coin’s price weakened? Based on observations from CoinDesk, Decrypt, and CNBC, this pullback is mainly driven by “hawkish signals from Jackson Hole” and “technical stalls,” not a collapse in demand. The main cause: Warsh took a hawkish stance on inflation, and expectations for a September rate hike have been intensifying.

The biggest catalyst came from the Jackson Hole conference. After being sworn in as the new Fed chair on August 28, Warsh delivered his first major themed address, expressing concern about the inflation outlook and saying, “There’s still work to do.” The market subsequently pushed up expectations for a September “rate hike” to roughly one-third—this is a hike, not a cut. If monetary policy could turn tighter, funds are likely to pull back first from risk assets like Bitcoin to seek safety. This is also a common pattern of taking profits and standing by ahead of major macro events.

Technicals are also stuck at the $82,500 resistance level, and geopolitics is adding headwinds. Technically, Bitcoin has repeatedly tested the pressure zone near $82,500 without breaking through. After slipping back below $80,000, short-term momentum weakened, and leveraged long positions were also liquidated amid the volatility. At the same time, tensions involving Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, along with the U.S. Navy blockade of Iran’s oil exports that pushed oil prices higher and reignited inflation concerns, have weighed on overall risk appetite—so even gold saw a multi-day decline. This is classic “risk-off.”

Key clarification: This is not ETF sell pressure; demand is still there. What’s worth separating clearly is that this drop wasn’t driven by selling pressure from spot Bitcoin ETFs. In fact, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have recently recorded net inflows for eight straight trading days, totaling about $2.8 billion—its longest inflow streak since April. August also became the strongest month for inflows this year. In other words, institutional buy-side demand hasn’t disappeared. This looks more like a technical pullback before major events, rather than a deterioration in fundamentals.

As for what comes next, the key is how the market digests Warsh’s speech: if it’s interpreted as more dovish, Bitcoin could reclaim above $80,000; if it’s interpreted as more hawkish, a move down toward the $73,000 area can’t be ruled out.

This article: Why Did Bitcoin Retreat From $80,000? Warsh’s Hawkish Pressure, but ETFs Remain Net Inflows
First appeared on .

$SOL
Solana’s “double burning” proposal passes, SOL rises 44% in a month—its best since nearly two years

Solana’s first official governance vote has passed a reform that will directly affect the SOL supply. According to a report by Decrypt on August 28, the Solana community approved the “double burn” proposal, which will accelerate the rate at which SOL’s issuance is reduced. The news boosted SOL, which rose more than 8% over the past 24 hours. SIMD-0550 clears: the annual deflation rate doubles from 15% to 30. This vote was Solana’s first formal governance vote launched on August 22. It put three proposals up for consideration at once. Among the most watched, the “double burn” proposal SIMD-0550 reached the quorum and was approved: it doubles SOL’s annual deflation rate from 15% to 30%, allowing the inflation rate to reach its terminal floor of 1.5% faster. Under the previous pace, it was estimated to arrive in 2032; after the acceleration, it will come in 2029 instead. In other words, over the next six years, about 18.9 million fewer SOL will be issued. Solana’s current inflation rate is about 3.8%. By contrast, a separate “burning” proposal that sharply increases the daily burn amount from around $47,000 got fewer votes. SOL climbs 44% in a month, its best month since 2024 The expectation of governance reform, combined with broader market sentiment, helped SOL surge. On-chain data shows SOL rose more than 8% in the past 24 hours, and has gained about 44% since August began. The price has broken above $105, marking the best single-month performance since 2024. For SOL holders, reduced issuance means slower dilution of new supply—interpreted by the market as a bullish structural adjustment. However, whether deflation can truly translate into long-term price support still depends on whether real network usage and demand can keep up. This article appears in: Solana’s “double burn” proposal passes, SOL rises 44% in a month—its best since nearly two years.

$NVDAB $GOOGLB
Marvell’s earnings and guidance beat expectations, yet its stock drops more than 7%? Google’s $100 billion order won’t ramp until 2029

Marvell Technology delivered better-than-expected earnings and guidance, and raised its revenue outlook for fiscal 2027 and 2028 for two consecutive quarters. Although the company did not meaningfully increase its long-term targets, Google’s $100 billion order will not bear fruit until 2029, leaving some investors disappointed who had expected faster growth. The stock fell as much as 7% during Thursday’s trading session.

Marvell’s earnings and guidance both beat! Raises long-term outlook for two straight quarters
The U.S. data-center chipmaker Marvell Technology reported its fiscal 2027 second-quarter results: revenue of $2.739 billion, a record high, up 37% year over year. According to the company, data centers are its main profit engine. Revenue from that segment grew 46% year over year and accounted for 79% of total revenue, higher than 74.4% in fiscal 2026.

Why couldn’t Google’s $100 billion order lift the stock?
Reuters reported that CEO Matt Murphy said that the company’s custom revenue target for fiscal 2028 already includes part of the revenue from that deal. A substantial ramp will not occur until fiscal 2029. He also said that revenue from custom chips will more than double next year. The prior target of “more than $10 billion” for fiscal 2029 still has room to be revised upward, but he declined to provide a new target.

Driven by AI this year, Marvell (MRVL) stock has already risen nearly 189%, and it was added to the S&P 500 in June, drawing passive funds and additional buying.

Bob O’Donnell, chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research, said expectations for customized AI chips have been pushed very high in the market, and he believes expectations are generally running ahead of reality.

AI shifts from training to inference—custom chips are in demand
The motivation for big tech companies to design their own chips is that, compared with processors from Nvidia that are expensive and face tight supply, their own solutions are cheaper to build and run. This trend has made Marvell’s custom silicon intellectual property (IP) and ASIC business one of the winners amid the data-center buildout wave.

Another tailwind is a change in workload structure. As AI application focus moves from model training toward inference, custom chips often deliver better performance-per-task and energy efficiency than general-purpose processors, driving demand upward as well.

This article—“Marvell’s earnings beat expectations, yet its stock drops more than 7%? Google’s $100 billion order won’t ramp until 2029”—first appeared on .

Silicon Valley private schools don’t just host fundraising galas—they even build their own venture capital funds! Early investment in Snap returned over 2,000x

In the United States, school fundraising commonly includes parent donations, charity sales, auctions, charity runs, and various campus events. But in parts of Silicon Valley, some top private schools are taking it one step further: they’re bringing parents’ and alumni’s venture capital expertise directly into the school itself. According to a report by Fortune, Crystal Springs Uplands School, Saint Francis High School, and Menlo School have all established venture-capital funds in different forms. The most astonishing case involves Saint Francis: it invested just $15,000 in Snap, before the company was public, and ultimately generated returns of more than 2,000x for the school (about $34 million). What these schools truly have may not be only more donations, but rather Silicon Valley’s hardest-to-get resources—networks, expertise, and investment opportunities.

Crystal Springs established a growth fund; venture-capital parents bring investment opportunities into the school. Crystal Springs Uplands School’s middle school is in Belmont, while its high school is in Hillsborough—well-known private schools on the San Francisco Peninsula. The school currently has about 569 students, and for the 2026–2027 academic year, annual tuition is $68,600.

In the eyes of many friends around me, this school has long been considered one of the top private schools on the Silicon Valley Peninsula. But what really caught my attention wasn’t its acceptance rate—it was how the school has recently leveraged its parent community.

Crystal Springs set up its own Crystal Growth Fund, or Crystal growth fund. This money isn’t invested using tuition paid by students, nor is it redirected from the school’s regular operating funds. Instead, parents and alumni donate separately, and parents and alumni familiar with investment markets help identify opportunities to invest in private companies.

People involved include executives and investors from well-known Silicon Valley venture firms such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Notable Capital, and Sequoia Capital. Some parents working at venture capital firms can even allow the school to participate using a small portion of the investment allocation they originally secured.

As of the 2023 fiscal year, Crystal Springs’ publicly available information indicates it had not invested in private markets; but by June 2025, among the school’s investment portfolio of about $61.1 million, roughly $1.75 million had already been invested in private equity.

$1.75 million may not seem huge relative to the overall fund. But in my view, what truly matters isn’t the number—it’s that the school has already obtained a “ticket” to the private investment market. And this ticket is often not something you can buy just by having money.

Saint Francis invested in Snap—returns up to 2,000x.

One of the most classic examples of this model appeared more than a decade earlier in nearby Mountain View. Saint Francis High School established its own growth fund in the 1990s. It was initially funded with about $250,000 from two parents working in venture capital, and investment opportunities were then identified with help from parents and alumni familiar with technology startups.

In 2012, one of Lightspeed Venture Partners’ founding partners, Barry Eggers, noticed that his child and classmates were using a then-new app in large quantities: Snapchat. Lightspeed later became one of Snapchat’s early investors, and Eggers also enabled Saint Francis’s growth fund to invest $15,000.

Five years later, Snap went public. In its official materials, Saint Francis currently states that the $15,000 investment ultimately generated returns of more than 2,000x for the school (estimated at about $34 million, assuming the entire amount was sold at the IPO price).

That money was later used to increase student tuition assistance, build a new innovation center, and provide bonuses for faculty and staff. According to Fortune, Saint Francis currently invests in about 10 companies per year, with each investment typically ranging from $25,000 to $50,000. Eggers estimates that cumulative investment returns created since the fund was established are approaching $50 million.

Snap is, of course, an extremely rare success story—and you can’t assume that investing in any new startup will yield 2,000x returns.

But what this really changed is that the school began to realize: what parents can donate to the school isn’t only money.

Menlo also set up a venture-capital school fund; Nueva can’t be directly equated.

Menlo School, located in Atherton, also created a similar setup. Based on the latest publicly available information, Menlo’s venture-capital school fund holds about 36 venture funds and early-stage company investments, totaling under $1 million. By comparison, as of June 2025, Menlo’s overall endowment is about $118.4 million, so the venture-capital allocation still represents only a small portion.

However, among Menlo’s investment oversight team are people from investment firms such as Bessemer Venture Partners, Scale Venture Partners, and Sobrato Capital.

This is actually more notable than how much money was invested.

One phenomenon I’ve seen living in Silicon Valley is that many private school parents here are, in themselves, quite unusual. One parent might work at an artificial intelligence company; another might be a senior executive at a tech firm. Some have founded companies, while others spend their days evaluating which startups are worth investing in.

So even if it’s the same kind of parent meeting, in other places they might talk about…