Danny Boyle’s zombie sequel 28 Years Later was shot using several iPhone 15 Pro Max smartphones, . This makes it the biggest movie ever made using iPhones, as the budget was around $75 million.

There are some major caveats worth going over. First of all, the sourcing on the story is anonymous, as the film’s staff was required to sign an NDA. Also, the entire film wasn’t shot using last year’s high-end Apple smartphone. Engadget has confirmed that Boyle and his team used a bunch of different cameras, with the iPhone 15 Pro Max being just one tool.

Finally, it’s not like the director just plopped the smartphone on a tripod and called it a day. Each iPhone looks to have been adapted to integrate with full-frame DSLR lenses. Speaking of, those professional-grade lenses cost a small fortune. The phones were also nestled in protective cages.

Even if the phones weren’t exclusively used to make this movie, it’s still something of a full-circle moment for Boyle and his team. The original 28 Days Later was shot primarily on a that cost $4,000 at the time. This camcorder recorded footage to MiniDV tapes.

28 Years Later is the third entry in the franchise and is due to hit theaters in June 2025. The film stars Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes and Cillian Murphy. This will be the first of three new films . Plot details are non-existent, but all three upcoming movies are being written by Alex Garland. He co-wrote the first one and has since gone on to direct genre fare like Ex Machina, and, most recently, Civil War. He also made a truly underrated .

As for the intersection of smartphones and Hollywood, several films have been shot with iPhones. These include Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane.

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here.

This week brought reassuring signs that dealmaking is still happening on both sides of the table. New unicorns are being minted, and more capital is flowing into AI, but deals are also coming from some unexpected directions.

Most interesting startup stories from the week

AI news was plentiful this week, but also varied, from large and small M&As to new launches.

AI portfolio: Typeface, a generative AI unicorn, purchased two companies to expand its enterprise offering: New York City-based Treat, which uses AI to create personalized photo products, and Narrato, an Australian AI-powered content creation and management platform.

AI again: Global HR company Workday bought AI-powered contract management platform Evisort, adding to its AI-related acquisitions. The companies didn’t disclose the price tag, but Evisort had raised $155.6 million in capital and debt.

FinOps FTW: IBM acquired Kubecost, a Kubernetes cost optimization startup, as its name suggests. This is another sign of the ongoing rise of FinOps, which may also be boosted by the need to lessen the cost and impact of GenAI.

Only you: Recently launched SocialAI is a social network with a big twist — it is filled with bots, and that’s on purpose. Founder Michael Sayman told TechCrunch that his goal was for users to be able to bounce ideas off a diverse community of AIs.

Most interesting fundraises this week

This week was also busy on the dealmaking front, and some of the capital went to sectors and places you might not necessarily expect.

Flying solo: Quick commerce app Flink raised $150 million, including $115 million in equity. The near-unicorn was once an acquisition target of competitors but is now seeking to forge its own path, with a focus on Germany and the Netherlands.

On alert: New York-based startup Intezer raised $33 million to make sure security teams aren’t overwhelmed by alerts. Using AI, the startup helps them with not only triaging, but also with investigation, which it does much faster than a human would, CEO Itai Tevet said.

Getting permits: NYC-based GreenLite raised a $28.5 million Series A round to facilitate construction permitting. Its co-founders don’t come from the construction sector but previously worked at Gopuff, which got its own taste of dealing with permits when it tried to launch a ghost kitchen network across the U.S. 

Tailwinds: Armenian B2B SaaS startup EasyDMARC raised a $20 million Series A round of funding to simplify email security and authentication. The company facilitates the adoption of a technical standard that Google and Yahoo will soon make mandatory for bulk email senders.

Most interesting VC and fund news this week

Accelerating: Salesforce Ventures announced at Dreamforce that its San Francisco-based AI fund would once again double in size and reach $1 billion, a significant acceleration compared to the $5 billion total deployed in its first 15 years.

Decacorn fund: Insights Partners is nearing a whopping $10 billion fundraise for its 13th fund, according to the Financial Times, which also noted the recent sales of two Insight portfolio companies, Own and Recorded Future.

Builders: Proptech venture firm Era Ventures raised $88 million for its first fund, which will be deployed in startups from seed to Series B. Its portfolio includes Honey Homes, a subscription service for handymen that has raised $21.35 million in venture funding to date.

Last but not least

In a recent episode of the Equity podcast, J.P. Morgan’s Head of Startup Banking Ashraf Hebela discussed his recent Startup Insights report and what it might take to create a unicorn in 2024. He also touched on the hot topic of “Founder Mode.”

8BitDo is now selling a set of keycaps featuring the same Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) inspired design as those used on the Retro Mechanical Keyboard it debuted last July. While the keyboard is now available in four styles including Commodore 64 and Famicom designs, only the NES style keycaps are currently available on their own.

The $49.99 8BitDo Retro Keycaps set includes 165 PBT keys with legends printed using dye-sublimation for added durability. The expanded set allows the keys to be used on larger keyboards with a dedicated number pad. 8BitDo’s $99.99 mechanical keyboards are only available in a shorter tenkeyless layout.

The set features alternate designs for some keys like a spacebar with an added health meter in two different lengths, and both the American ANSI and international ISO versions of others, like an Enter key with an inverted L design, and a smaller Shift key. 8BitDo says the set supports 65, 75, 80, 95, and 100-percent layouts, as well as ergonomic split keyboards, but compatibility is limited to MX-style switches.

Chinese manufacturer Beelink has earned a reputation for producing quality mini PCs across a range of price points. The Beelink U59 is a definite standout for those looking for a budget option – in our four and a half star review we said it offered a “good feature set that might appeal to many different customers.”

Beelink also offers higher-end products like the GTi Ultra, which features Intel‘s 12th to 14th Gen Core CPUs, with support for Beelink’s exclusive eGPU solution for users requiring extra graphics power. Beelink has been developing its SER series for some time. Its most recent release was the SER8 model powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS Hawk Point processor, 32GB of DDR5 memory, and 1TB of storage. Priced around $650, the SER8 delivered strong performance in a compact design.