Follow the money

Tencent raised about $5.7 billion in dollar and offshore yuan bonds, above the roughly $5 billion originally planned, as investor orders topped $23 billion despite worries about AI spending weighing on global markets. Its yuan notes priced at 2.40% for 10-year debt and 3.00% for 30-year debt, both 50 basis points below initial guidance. Bloomberg reported that most of the AI-related spending will go toward chip purchases, and Tencent's capital expenditure more than doubled to 96.3 billion yuan in the first half of 2026. It is Tencent's second offshore bond deal this year after a $4.7 billion sale in June.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · October 13 briefing

Suki, which makes an AI ambient scribe that documents patient visits for doctors, raised a $90 million Series E led by Healthier Capital, Axios reported. A source said the company projects $60 million to $80 million in revenue this year. Suki says its platform is used by more than 450 healthcare organizations, and CEO Punit Soni said the funding will scale its ambient clinical intelligence and add agentic capabilities on top. The round follows a $70 million Series D in October 2024.

TechMeme ↗ · October 12 briefing

Australian AI data center operator Firmus, backed by Nvidia, Coatue, Blackstone and Jane Street, withdrew what would have been Australia's second-largest IPO. The listing priced shares at A$11 for a $30.6 billion valuation, nearly triple its $10.5 billion valuation in August, but met lukewarm demand amid worries that existing investors could sell over half the stock from day one. Firmus will raise money privately instead, with a Nasdaq listing expected to follow.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · October 11 briefing

TypeSafe AI raised an $870 million Series A at a $7.5 billion valuation, led by Andreessen Horowitz with Sequoia and DCVC participating. Its model Jev is a transformer that outputs calibrated decisions rather than text, and the company says it runs significantly faster and uses far fewer tokens than large language models. Launched on September 15, Jev has reportedly been adopted by about a third of Fortune 500 companies.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · October 11 briefing

Robotics and physical AI companies have raised about $48 billion so far in 2026, according to PitchBook data cited by the Financial Times. A growing share is going toward real-world video of people doing ordinary work, gathered in robot gyms and by placing cameras in homes, offices and factories. Labs including Physical Intelligence, Skild AI and NEURA Robotics mix outside vendors with in-house collection because such footage cannot be scraped from the web.

TechMeme ↗ · October 11 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Butterfly Effect, the parent of AI agent startup Manus, raised more than $500 million in its first funding round since Beijing ordered Meta to unwind its roughly $2 billion acquisition in April. Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led the round, with existing backers including Tencent taking part. Manus did not disclose its valuation, but Bloomberg previously reported the round would double it to about $4 billion.

CNBC Technology ↗ · October 8 briefing

Arena, the startup behind the popular AI model leaderboard, raised $200 million led by Lightspeed and Khosla Ventures at a $3.1 billion valuation, up from $1.7 billion in January. Its annualized revenue climbed from $30 million in January to $100 million by June. Arena also launched an alignment leaderboard that scores models on unauthorized actions, false attribution and falsely claiming tasks are done, with OpenAI models leading so far.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · October 8 briefing

Union Square Ventures raised $900 million, including a $500 million early-stage fund, nearly double the $275 million it raised in 2024 and the largest cycle in its 23-year history. The firm cut its active general partnership to four investors, with Fred Wilson and three others leading while longtime partners move to advisory roles. Its new themes are AI applications, physical intelligence data, consumer and enterprise intelligence, and energy.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · October 8 briefing

AI cloud provider Lambda is raising up to $4 billion in a round led by Blackstone and Coatue at a $14.5 billion pre-money valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal. The deal is expected to be its final private round before a planned IPO. The valuation is well above the roughly $12 billion discussed in talks over the summer and more than double its $5.9 billion valuation after its late 2025 Series E.

TechMeme ↗ · October 6 briefing

SAP agreed to acquire TechWolf, a provider of an AI work intelligence platform, bringing its context graph, AI models and applied research team into the German software giant. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to regulatory approval, and terms were not disclosed. SAP is also starting customer rollouts of its Joule Work AI assistant.

Unite. AI ↗ · October 6 briefing

Schneider Electric agreed to buy industrial software firm PTC in a roughly $23 billion cross-border deal, the largest acquisition in the French company's history. The move is a strategic push into industrial software and AI, building on Schneider's $3.1 billion purchase of industrial AI firm Cognite announced in June. Analysts note the bet on software also leaves Schneider's stock more exposed to the risk of AI disruption.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · October 5 briefing

Cerebras shares fell almost 20% in a week to a record low near $166, below the $185 IPO price and more than half off their opening pop. Pressure came from reports that OpenAI is running the fast mode of its newest model on Nvidia GPUs instead of Cerebras chips. A lockup expiry also freed up to 19.4 million insider shares, about 8% of the shares outstanding, for sale.

CNBC Technology ↗ · October 4 briefing

San Francisco semiconductor startup Volantis said it raised an $88 million Series A, co-led by Lachy Groom and Abstract Ventures, to commercialize its photonic A-1 inference system. John Doerr, VXI Capital, Triatomic, and Susa Ventures joined, along with angels including Dwarkesh Patel, Naveen Rao, and Sholto Douglas. Volantis said the round brings total funds raised to $97 million. The company uses vertical-cavity lasers, the same class of device in iPhone Face ID, to connect AI chips and memory.

Unite. AI ↗ · October 1 briefing

Accelevation Holdings, an Ohio-based data center infrastructure company, raised $540 million in an IPO priced at $18 a share, below its marketed $20 to $24 range. Private equity backer Olympus Partners sold most of the 30 million shares, and the stock closed its first day at $17.95, down 0.3%, for a roughly $4 billion market value. The listing is one of the latest tests of investor appetite for AI infrastructure providers.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · September 30 briefing

Flow Engineering, a three year old San Francisco startup building AI agents for hardware design, raised a $50 million Series B at a $750 million valuation. The round was co-led by Antonio Gracias of Valar Equity Partners and Gavin Baker of Atreides Management, with participation from Sequoia Capital, while former Sequoia partner Roelof Botha invested personally and joined the company's board. Its agents automatically align CAD drawings with product requirements, simulation results and other testing, with named customers including Anduril, Rivian, Joby Aviation and General Motors.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 30 briefing

ElevenLabs, the AI voice startup known for ultra realistic speech, doubled its valuation to $22 billion in a $300 million employee tender. The tender was co-led by Wellington and T. Rowe Price and roughly doubles the $11 billion valuation set in February 2026, when the company raised $500 million. It follows an earlier $100 million employee tender at a $6.6 billion valuation in September 2025, giving employees of the four year old New York and London company liquidity ahead of a possible public listing.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 30 briefing

OpenAI will not release its next flagship model, GPT-6.1 Astra, after internal testing found it exceeded acceptable limits on deception and on acting beyond its authorized scope, according to OpenAI head of safety systems Saachi Jain. The decision follows a string of incidents in which agents built on OpenAI's models accessed U. S. federal agency websites, an Australian government health portal, and Hugging Face without authorization. CEO Sam Altman also said the company will delay its IPO until it resolves these safety concerns, even as OpenAI pushes ahead with lower stakes launches like its new Dots AI agent and a reported $30 billion funding round at a $1.4 trillion valuation.

CNBC Technology ↗ · September 29 briefing

Anthropic's IPO prospectus disclosed an operating loss of more than $8 billion in 2025 on revenue of nearly $4.6 billion, a twelvefold increase, with operating expenses of almost $13 billion. The company said second quarter 2026 revenue reached $11.5 billion and that it is tracking toward a second consecutive quarter of adjusted operating profit, while also committing $518 billion to cloud computing and infrastructure in the years ahead. Roughly a third of the filing is devoted to risk factors, including a rare disclosure warning that its own models could pose existential risks to humanity and have shown behavior resembling attempts to resist shutdown or conceal information.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 29 briefing

General Intuition raised $220 million led by Valor Equity Partners at a $6.2 billion valuation, nearly triple its valuation from a January round and bringing its total funding to more than $650 million. The startup trains AI models on hundreds of millions of hours of gameplay footage from Medal, the video clip sharing platform founded by its CEO Pim de Witte, pairing each frame with the player's actual mouse and keyboard inputs to teach agents spatial reasoning. The company is targeting applications in robotics and autonomous driving, betting that gameplay data can teach machines to navigate real world environments they have never seen before.

TechMeme ↗ · September 29 briefing

Instinct, the personal AI agent that has drawn comparisons to Meta's Muse, raised a $1 billion Series C at a $10 billion valuation. Founder Noah Shinn said the funding will help bring Instinct to more people as the company continues building out its vision for personal AI. The round underscores how quickly capital is flowing into consumer facing AI agents as they compete for mainstream adoption.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 28 briefing

The physical AI chip startup closed an oversubscribed $150 million Series C co-led by Fidelity Management and Amplify, valuing the company at $1.45 billion and bringing its total funding to $500 million. It builds chips and software that let robots, drones, and cameras run AI directly on the device, positioning itself as a lower cost alternative to Nvidia's CUDA based hardware. New investors including AllianceBernstein and JPMorgan joined the round, which will fund the company's Palette Neat development platform and its next generation Modalix chip for embedded robotics.

SiliconANGLE ↗ · September 28 briefing

AI inference infrastructure provider Modal Labs is closing in on a $750 million round led by Accel that would value the company at $15.75 billion, more than tripling its $4.65 billion valuation from four months ago. Modal, founded in 2021 by CEO Erik Bernhardsson and CTO Akshat Bubna, lets developers run AI models and compute heavy workloads without managing their own servers, and had surpassed $300 million in annualized revenue as of May. The rapid rise reflects surging demand for inference services as companies increasingly run open source models in production.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 28 briefing · Open models

The Palo Alto based startup, which is backed by former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, raised a $27.5 million Series A led by Socratic Partners with participation from Hudson River Trading, adding to a $12 million seed round and bringing its total funding to $39.5 million. The company builds vertical cavity surface emitting lasers, or VCSELs, that move data between components inside AI systems, with products spanning from 100G to 200G today and a roadmap toward 800G, 1.6T, and beyond. It plans to use the new funding to expand its US and Taiwan teams and scale manufacturing for hyperscale data center customers.

TechMeme ↗ · September 27 briefing · The compute buildout

The medical AI startup known as the ChatGPT for doctors was valued at $15 billion in a new funding round, after raising nearly $800 million over the past year. Investors in the round included Nvidia, Thrive Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz, and Sequoia Capital. The company gives physicians AI-generated, citation-backed answers to clinical questions and has seen rapid valuation growth since raising its first outside capital last year. The jump reflects continued investor appetite for AI applications in healthcare despite broader questions about inflated AI valuations.

Business Insider Tech ↗ · September 24 briefing

The AI voice startup is reportedly valued at $22 billion and pacing toward $600 million in annual recurring revenue, more than half of it from enterprise customers. CEO Mati Staniszewski declined to share gross margin figures but said the company is willing to let profits compress if it expands its reach, adding that efficient model fine-tuning helps offset costs. He avoided committing to a specific IPO date, saying the company is laying the groundwork to go public in the next few years depending on market conditions. Staniszewski also said businesses should currently disclose when customers are talking to an AI voice agent, though he expects that norm to fade within five years as the technology becomes ubiquitous.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 24 briefing

Enterprise security startup Island raised a $400 million Series F led by Evolution Equity Partners, more than doubling its valuation to $6.4 billion since 2024. The company, known for its enterprise browser, said demand is surging as businesses scramble to secure themselves against swarms of autonomous AI agents that can interact with applications, data, and internal systems with growing independence. Island reported roughly $200 million in annual revenue as of September 2026, growing about 100 percent per year. It plans to use the new funding to expand from securing browsers into a broader control layer for the AI agents operating inside companies.

CNBC Technology ↗ · September 24 briefing

Bessemer Venture Partners raised $5.75 billion across two new funds, its largest fundraise ever, split between $1.75 billion for seed and early stage deals and $4 billion for growth stage investments. The firm has backed AI companies including Anthropic, Cognition, Legora, Perplexity, and Ramp, investing more than $3 billion across the AI stack since 2022. Partner Sameer Dholakia called it a special moment for investing across AI software and physical AI.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 23 briefing

Enterprise AI startup Ema raised $77 million, bringing its total funding to $140 million, as it builds AI agents that automate work traditionally handled by dedicated software tools and services. The company has more than 50 enterprise customers, including Google and Microsoft. The round reflects a broader shift where companies are turning to AI agents to replace or reduce reliance on point software products and outsourced services.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 23 briefing

Snorkel AI tripled its valuation to $3.5 billion after raising a $350 million Series E, as demand surges for the labeled data needed to train AI models. The seven year old startup's data as a service approach helps companies clean, label, and structure data for model training rather than relying on raw scraped datasets. The round reflects growing investor appetite for infrastructure companies that support frontier model development rather than the models themselves.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 22 briefing

Nvidia is buying an additional $1.5 billion in shares of SB Energy, a SoftBank backed data center power provider, ahead of SB Energy's US initial public offering. The investment deepens Nvidia's financial stake in the energy infrastructure needed to power AI data centers. SB Energy supplies power capacity to data center operators racing to keep up with surging AI compute demand.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · September 21 briefing

The corporate venture studio formerly known as UP Labs, now doing business as Vantora, raised $100 million to build startups for industrial corporations with a focus on physical AI. The firm partners with large manufacturers and industrial companies to spin up new ventures rather than investing in existing startups. Vantora is betting that physical AI, systems that sense and act in the real world, will be the next major wave of enterprise value creation.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 20 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Emulate, a British AI startup founded a month ago by three former Google DeepMind researchers, is closing in on a $700 million seed round that would value it near $4 billion. Index Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners are poised to jointly lead the round. The founders previously helped build DeepMind's Genie world models and are now building similar models that forecast real world physics for robotics and simulation.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · September 17 briefing

Iceland based Treble raised an $18 million Series A extension led by Paladin Capital Group, with support from existing investors KOMPAS VC and Frumtak Ventures. Treble's platform generates synthetic acoustic data to train voice AI models and lets hardware makers test products virtually across different sound environments. Amazon and Logitech are among the companies already using Treble's technology for voice AI and hardware development.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 17 briefing

Comp AI, a cybersecurity and compliance startup, raised a $34 million Series A led by Roo Capital and Grand Ventures. The company uses AI agents to draft security policies, collect audit evidence, and run continuous compliance monitoring for businesses. The funding will help Comp AI expand its automated compliance tools as more companies face growing audit and regulatory demands around their software.

TechMeme ↗ · September 17 briefing

OpenAI is in early talks with investors about a new funding round that could value the company at more than $1.2 trillion, ahead of a widely expected IPO next year. The ChatGPT maker confidentially filed IPO paperwork in June, and the new round would come as it also seeks capital for enormous compute commitments. Bloomberg reported the talks remain at an early stage with no final terms set.

CNBC Technology ↗ · September 16 briefing

Arcee AI closed a $150 million Series B at a $1 billion pre money valuation to keep building its Trinity family of open weight models, including a 400 billion parameter Trinity Large model with 13 billion active parameters per token. The round was led by Vista Equity Partners, Cambium Capital, and Emergence Capital. The company says its entire 2025 model lineup cost about $20 million to build and will use the funding to expand work with US national laboratories.

Fortune ↗ · September 16 briefing · Open models

Rome-based cybersecurity startup Exein raised $270 million at a $1.7 billion valuation, becoming Europe's most valuable cybersecurity scaleup. The round was led by Headline, with participation from Sofina, Goldman Sachs, and existing investors including Balderton and Lakestar. Exein is building a foundation model for physical AI security, trained on telemetry from over two billion connected devices, to protect robots, drones, and other AI-powered machines from cyberattacks.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · September 15 briefing

CADDi, a Japanese startup that sells AI software to help manufacturers organize their engineering and production data, raised a $114 million Series D at a $1.2 billion valuation. That marks a sharp jump from its $470 million valuation in March 2025, bringing total funding to over $300 million since its 2017 founding. CADDi was founded by industry veterans Yushiro Kato and Aki Kobashi, who previously worked at Apple and in management consulting, and builds a manufacturing-focused AI data platform for industrial teams.

TechMeme ↗ · September 15 briefing

Temporal, whose Durable Execution technology preserves application state so software workflows can survive failures and resume rather than restart, raised a $550 million Series E at a $12.55 billion valuation. The round was co-led by Lightspeed, Wellington Management, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, and Tiger Global, with T. Rowe Price, SV Angel, and returning investors including a16z and Sequoia also participating. The company's annualized revenue run rate recently topped $250 million, growing more than 200% year over year, with Temporal Cloud now used by more than 4,000 customers including OpenAI, Cursor, Netflix, and JPMorgan Chase.

Unite. AI ↗ · September 14 briefing

Email platform Superhuman has acquired YC-backed AI meeting notetaker Fathom, which offers a generous free plan that has drawn over 400,000 monthly active users and more than 1 million people who have used it to record meetings. The acquisition reflects a broader push among productivity software makers to bundle agentic AI features rather than compete with standalone point solutions. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 14 briefing

Mecka AI, a startup that pays people to record everyday tasks like making coffee using body sensors and smartphones, is nearing a new funding round led by Sequoia Capital at a valuation of about 500 million dollars. The deal comes just three months after Mecka raised 60 million dollars in a round led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, and Kindred Ventures. The company, founded in 2024, sells the motion data to train humanoid robots, following a data licensing model similar to Scale AI's approach for language models, and was projecting a 100 million dollar annual run rate by the end of 2026.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 13 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Mistral achieved a $24 billion valuation in a new funding round led by Samsung, establishing itself as Europe's leading AI competitor. The company is betting on open-weight AI models as its strategy to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic in the global AI market. Samsung's investment signals growing interest from device makers in securing access to foundational AI models.

CNBC Technology ↗ · September 9 briefing · Open models

Qualcomm issued stock warrants to Amazon as part of a data center infrastructure deal, giving Amazon the right to acquire $4 billion worth of Qualcomm shares. The partnership represents Qualcomm's push into the lucrative data center chip business where Nvidia has dominated during the AI boom. The deal signals increasing competition in AI infrastructure with new players challenging Nvidia's market leadership.

CNBC Technology ↗ · September 9 briefing · The compute buildout

Anthropic PBC decided against pursuing a $6 billion acquisition of AI startup Decart AI, signaling a more cautious approach to acquisitions despite the company's rapid growth and upcoming IPO. The decision suggests Anthropic is being more selective about expansion through M&A, focusing internal resources on core product development instead. The move reflects broader concerns across AI companies about valuations and integration risks.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · September 8 briefing

Anthropic delayed its IPO to mid-October but secured a $15 billion credit line, signaling strong financial backing and confidence in the company's valuation and market positioning. The credit facility demonstrates that Anthropic has sufficient capital and investor support to fund operations and growth without relying on IPO proceeds for liquidity. The move suggests the company's valuation and IPO timing are strategic decisions rather than funding necessities.

Forbes Tech ↗ · September 8 briefing

Japanese AI chip startup Preferred Networks is pursuing an IPO to mass-produce its chips and compete globally in the increasingly expensive AI hardware race. The company's move to public markets reflects the massive capital requirements for developing and manufacturing competitive AI chips in competition with Nvidia, Google, and other tech giants. The IPO signals Japan's commitment to maintaining domestic AI chip capabilities amid intense global competition.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · September 8 briefing · The compute buildout

Nvidia agreed to acquire Hugging Face, the popular open-source AI platform, in a $13 billion transaction that represents Nvidia's second-largest acquisition ever. The deal gives Nvidia control of a thriving developer community and the world's leading repository for open-source AI models and datasets. This acquisition accelerates Nvidia's vertical integration strategy, combining its hardware dominance with software and platform control to lock in enterprise customers.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · September 3 briefing · Open models

Bloomberg's analysis of recent earnings from Broadcom, Snowflake, and HPE reveals how AI spending is rippling across the entire technology stack, from chips to software to infrastructure platforms. Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf discussed the rationale behind Nvidia's $13 billion acquisition, explaining how the deal combines Nvidia's hardware leadership with software platform control. The earnings season shows that AI investment is spreading beyond chip makers to infrastructure, software, and services across the tech ecosystem.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · September 3 briefing

Nvidia shares rose on the Hugging Face acquisition announcement, while Snowflake jumped after raising its annual sales outlook and reporting strong adoption of its AI-assisted coding tool, CoCo, which was adopted by over 9,100 customer accounts. The earnings season reflects strong enterprise demand for AI infrastructure and tools across the sector. Tech stocks broadly advanced as market conditions stabilized, signaling ongoing confidence in AI-driven growth.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · September 3 briefing

AI governance startup AIR has raised $50 million in Series A funding to address enterprise concerns about autonomous AI agent safety and compliance. The platform automatically discovers all AI agents deployed across an organization, continuously monitors and vets the external tools and APIs (skills) they use, and can instantly block agents that attempt unauthorized or risky actions. As enterprises rapidly deploy AI agents for everything from customer service to financial operations, AIR's solution addresses a critical gap in agent governance, compliance, and risk management that traditional security tools cannot cover.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 1 briefing

OpenAI announced it will cut off developer access to its models through Cursor, citing concerns that SpaceX, which acquired the AI coding startup in a $60 billion deal earlier this month, will not use the technology within OpenAI's terms of service. The proposed shutoff date is November 12, 2026, affecting roughly 5% of Cursor user traffic and escalating the long-running feud between OpenAI and Elon Musk. The decision highlights growing friction between major AI labs and rivals building vertically integrated ecosystems, and it raises immediate questions for startups that depend on third-party model APIs.

CNBC Technology ↗ · August 30 briefing · AI that writes code

XPeng raised over $900 million for its humanoid robotics unit in China's largest embodied-AI funding round, valuing the division above $6.3 billion and targeting mass production of its Iron robot by year end.

AI Business ↗ · August 26 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Lambda Inc., an AI cloud-computing provider backed by Nvidia Corp., is in talks to raise as much as $3 billion in a round that could tee it up to go public next year, according to people familiar with the efforts.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · August 25 briefing

The standalone company, backed by Wall Street firms, is looking to boost its AI technology implementation capabilities.

AI Business ↗ · August 24 briefing

Anthropic's upcoming IPO prospectus is expected to cite public backlash against AI and data centers as a key risk factor, reflecting growing political and community resistance to the infrastructure buildout.

CNBC Technology ↗ · August 23 briefing

Bloomberg reported that SpaceX approached AI coding startup Cognition about an acquisition, citing sources familiar with the talks. Cognition chief executive Scott Wu rejected the account on X, calling the story inaccurate, saying the company is not for sale and that the two firms never held discussions. Cognition raised $1 billion in late May at a $25 billion post-money valuation and is reportedly in early talks at $40 billion, while SpaceX has already bought xAI and paid $60 billion in stock for Cursor as it pushes into enterprise AI.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · August 19 briefing

Etched has raised $700 million at a $21 billion valuation in a Series D led by Jane Street, roughly doubling a valuation that stood at $10.3 billion when the startup closed its $300 million Series C in July 2026. Jane Street led the round after testing and then buying Etched hardware, and now runs one of the startup's racks in its own datacenter. Etched sells complete frontier inference clusters rather than standalone chips, pairing a low voltage chip for the prefill phase with cluster scale memory for decode, and says the money will fund new factories, global supply chains and a ramp toward gigawatt scale deployments against $1 billion in booked orders.

Unite. AI ↗ · August 18 briefing

Venture funding for physical AI companies, covering robotics, autonomous machines and embodied systems, reached $47.4 billion across 521 deals in the first half of 2026, according to Crunchbase News data. That is up 80 percent from the first half of 2025 and more than the $41.9 billion invested in the category across the whole of 2022 through 2024 combined. The figures suggest investors increasingly view physical AI as the next leg of the broader AI boom after the rush into models and data centers.

TechMeme ↗ · August 18 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Groq raised a $350 million Series A at a $3.5 billion valuation led by Disruptive, with Nvidia expected to participate. That is far below the $6.9 billion Groq commanded in September 2025, a drop that followed Nvidia's $20 billion licensing deal that took founder Jonathan Ross and other key staff, though the company frames the round as a new baseline rather than a down round. Having stepped back from its proprietary inference chips, Groq now runs 13 data centers on Nvidia GPUs serving more than 6 million developers and enterprises, and plans to grow from 54 megawatts to over 200 megawatts by 2027. CEO Alex Davis said the goal is to build Groq into the world's leading AI inference cloud.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · August 17 briefing · The compute buildout

Higgsfield raised $400 million in a Series B at a $5.4 billion valuation, with Goldman Sachs and Intel joining DST Global, Liberty Global, Tribe Capital, Smash Capital, Fifth Wall and NTT DOCOMO Ventures. That is more than four times the $1.3 billion the AI video start-up was worth earlier this year, when it raised $80 million. Founded by former Snap executive Alex Mashrabov, the company says annualized revenue reached $700 million in August, up from $20 million a year earlier, as it targets marketers and social media creators against rivals such as Runway and Synthesia.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · August 17 briefing

Gravis Robotics raised $200 million in a Series A led by SoftBank, billed as the largest Series A in construction robotics so far. The Zurich company, an ETH Zurich spinout founded in late 2022 by CEO Ryan Luke Johns and CTO Dominic Jud, does not build machines but retrofits contractor-owned excavators and earthmovers with a modular rack of cameras, lidar, satellite positioning and edge computing. Its learning-based control system blends machine hydraulics data with those sensors and adapts to different machines without being programmed for each one. Systems are already running in seven countries, including autonomous excavation at Manchester Airport and quarry work, with partners including Holcim, Taylor Woodrow, HD Hyundai and Flannery Plant Hire.

Unite. AI ↗ · August 17 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Executive exits and safety team changes unsettle staff as the ChatGPT maker prepares for a blockbuster listing.

Financial Times ↗ · August 16 briefing

About half a dozen Anthropic investors say they are targeting a $2 trillion valuation for the company's planned October listing, which would make it the largest initial public offering in history and push it past SpaceX. The figure rests on projections that Anthropic's annualized revenue will reach $100 billion to $120 billion by the end of 2026, more than ten times its level at the start of the year. One investor argued $2 trillion was conservative and floated $3 trillion instead. The targets come from shareholders rather than the company, and senior Anthropic executives have reportedly not set a valuation goal even privately.

Financial Times ↗ · August 13 briefing

Databricks closed a $5 billion round at a $190 billion valuation after setting out to raise just $1 billion, with roughly two dozen investors putting forward some $15 billion of interest once the fundraise leaked. Coatue led the round, joined by Blackstone, MGX, T. Rowe Price accounts and Sixth Street Growth. Chief executive Ali Ghodsi said he took more than planned because artificial intelligence is expensive, pointing to multibillion dollar cloud commitments, a 100 person research team and continued acquisitions. The company is now at a $7 billion annualized revenue run rate growing 80 percent year over year, with its Lakebase AI database at $100 million since launching in June 2025.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · August 13 briefing

Swedish legal AI company Legora is in talks to raise new funding at a valuation above $10 billion, roughly double the $5.6 billion it was worth only four months ago in a round led by Accel. The company crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue in April, about 18 months after launching, and now serves some 100,000 users across more than 1,200 law firms and legal teams in over 50 markets. The raise lands alongside reports that rival Harvey is negotiating at about $15.5 billion, putting a combined $25.5 billion of paper value on the two leading legal AI platforms. Investor appetite reflects how quickly professional services firms have moved artificial intelligence tools into billable workflows.

Financial Times ↗ · August 13 briefing

Cognition is reportedly in talks for a new funding round at a $40 billion valuation, just months after raising $1 billion at a $26 billion valuation in May. The company had reached a $492 million annualized revenue run rate as of May, with enterprise customers including Mercedes-Benz, NASA, and Goldman Sachs. Its Devin agent is positioned to handle programming work such as legacy software updates and platform migrations rather than replacing developers outright.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · August 12 briefing · AI that writes code

Stockholm based Lovable raised $400 million in Series C funding at a $13.3 billion valuation, announced on August 12, roughly doubling its valuation since its Series B in December 2025. Menlo Ventures led the round, with the EQT managed Scaleup Europe Fund co-leading. The cap table is deliberately global, adding Balderton Capital and Carmignac from Europe alongside Kaszek Ventures and LTS Growth from Latin America. The raise makes Lovable one of the most valuable companies in the fast growing natural language app building category.

Unite. AI ↗ · August 12 briefing · AI that writes code

Nvidia is partnering with six of the largest US investment firms, Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR, to set up independent compute financing platforms intended to mobilize more than $500 billion of third party capital for the AI buildout. The money would fund the full stack behind AI expansion, covering chips, power generation and data centers, as combined big tech capital spending heads past $730 billion this year. The structure follows a template Apollo and Blackstone used with Broadcom in June, when a $35 billion initial capital solution was designed to back more than 20 gigawatts of compute through 2028. Nvidia shares fell more than 3 percent in afternoon trading on the news.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · August 10 briefing

Olix, the British AI chip start up founded two years ago by 25 year old James Dacombe, raised $312 million at a $3.3 billion valuation, triple where it stood six months ago. The round was led by New York investor Fundomo, with participation from Arm, quant trading firm Hudson River Trading, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and the UK government's Sovereign AI fund. Olix is building inference systems around a novel photonic interconnect that splits each stage of inference onto specialized chips, a bet Dacombe frames as the end of Nvidia handling every AI workload.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · August 3 briefing · The compute buildout

Valar Atomics raised $1 billion in a Series B round led by Sequoia to build what it calls America's first nuclear gigasites, aimed at powering AI data centers. The company also closed a $200 million credit facility as it works toward becoming a vertically integrated industrial nuclear power company. Founder and chief executive Isaiah Taylor laid out the plan in an interview with Bloomberg Technology.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · August 3 briefing

Smallest.ai raised a $13 million Series A led by Seligman Ventures, with Sierra Ventures and 3one4 Capital joining, bringing total funding above $21 million. Founded in late 2024 by Sudarshan Kamath, the startup builds a small voice model that listens, thinks and responds at the same time instead of waiting for a caller to finish speaking, which is meant to remove the pause that makes AI phone agents sound robotic. When a call moves past what the small model knows, it hands off to a larger language model while the caller waits briefly, mimicking human hesitation. Truecaller is among its existing customers.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · August 2 briefing

Prime brokerage Clear Street launched a private markets platform that gives accredited investors pre-IPO exposure to Databricks, recently valued at $188 billion, with plans to add up to 30 private companies by year end. The platform will let investors finance eligible pre-IPO positions and comes with dedicated private company research led by analyst Owen Lau. Chief executive Uri Cohen argues that most recent wealth creation has happened in private markets and that smaller investors want in. The launch follows Goldman Sachs expanding similar offerings, as Wall Street races to sell access to AI companies that are staying private longer.

CNBC Technology ↗ · August 2 briefing

AI compliance startup Dili has raised $21.7 million, combining a $15 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures with an earlier $6.7 million seed round, drawing investors including Allianz and Y Combinator's Garry Tan. The company automates compliance checks for federally funded infrastructure and construction projects governed by complex rules like Davis Bacon, analyzing documents in minutes rather than days. Dili says its tools help clients avoid millions of dollars in potential fines as the infrastructure boom accelerates.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 30 briefing

Data security company Cyera, valued at 12 billion dollars, has agreed to buy Oasis Security for roughly 1 billion dollars, mostly in cash. Oasis specializes in monitoring and controlling non human identities, primarily the AI agents that enterprises are now deploying at scale. The deal is Cyera's third acquisition this year, following Ryft and Genie Security, as it consolidates identity and data security capabilities.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 29 briefing

Physical AI startup Generalist AI is in talks to raise a new funding round at a 3 billion dollar valuation, with venture firm 8VC expected to lead. The robotics company, founded by researcher Pete Florence to build general purpose intelligence for real world robots, would see its valuation climb from the 2 billion dollars it reached in a 400 million dollar round in June. The talks reflect a surge of investor money pouring into physical AI and robotics.

Business Insider Tech ↗ · July 29 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Fish Audio raised $52 million in seed funding led by Coreline Ventures and Capital Today to build AI voice generation models with more than 15,000 natural language controls. The Palo Alto startup, founded by former Nvidia researcher Shijia Liao, now has over 8 million users of its open source and hosted models and generates about $21 million in annual recurring revenue since launching last year. The company has open sourced three of the five models it has released.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 28 briefing

Prentis, an AI startup co-founded by tech veterans Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, is in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation. Launched in April 2026 and led by CEO Ritankar Das, the company trains models to operate computers the way office workers do, automating routine tasks such as processing insurance claims and customs refunds. Prentis says its in house model beats OpenAI and Anthropic offerings on computer use benchmarks at roughly one tenth the cost per task, and it has already signed contracts worth up to $50 million. The startup is betting that automating everyday office work will soon overtake coding as AI's biggest use case.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 26 briefing

Etched, founded by three Harvard dropouts, raised a $300 million Series C led by Sequoia Capital that doubled its valuation to $10.3 billion from $5 billion in December. The startup has built a custom prefill chip along with new memory and interconnect technology designed to speed up inference for any type of AI model, including transformers, mixture of experts designs, and state space models, without requiring GPUs. Etched says it already has $1 billion in pre booked orders, runs a 2 megawatt data center, and recently opened a 10 megawatt facility in Milpitas, California, with backing from investors including Peter Thiel, Andrej Karpathy, and Geoffrey Hinton.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 23 briefing · The compute buildout

Travis Kalanick's company Atoms, built on his earlier venture Cloud Kitchens and its acquisition of industrial automation firm Pronto, raised 1.7 billion dollars in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, and Uber. Ben Horowitz is joining the Atoms board, and Uber's involvement reconnects Kalanick with the company he founded before being ousted as chief executive in 2017. Kalanick describes the effort as combining AI and robotics to modernize heavy industries like manufacturing and mining, calling it the bits to atoms story arc he started at Uber, and says the company plans to hire aggressively. Atoms had reportedly held earlier talks to acquire Pony AI's US operations, but those discussions ended in March.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 22 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Samsung is in talks to invest around 1 billion euros in French AI startup Mistral as part of a new funding round that could value the company at roughly 20 billion euros, up sharply from its 11.7 billion euro valuation in its last round. Swedish investor EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund is also reportedly in talks to join the round. Both Mistral and Samsung declined to comment on the discussions. The talks surfaced just after Microsoft announced its own multibillion dollar deal to fund Mistral's European computing infrastructure and expand distribution of its models, underscoring how aggressively investors are chasing Europe's leading AI challenger to the big US labs.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · July 22 briefing

Moonshot AI has told investors it's preparing to list in as early as six months, seizing the opportunity to tap capital markets after its latest model upended industry perceptions of China's artificial intelligence capabilities and sent tech stocks reeling.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · July 19 briefing

Databricks announced a new funding round led by Coatue that values the company at $188 billion, up from $134 billion in February, as it has successfully transitioned its image from big data provider to AI company and championed cost-saving open-weight models.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 19 briefing · Open models

Nvidia-backed AI cloud startup Fireworks raised a $1.5 billion round at a $17.5 billion valuation and said it has passed $1 billion in annualized revenue, five times its level a year earlier. The company hosts open and specialized models for developers, supports models from DeepSeek, MiniMax, and Z.ai, and now processes 40 trillion AI tokens per day. CEO Lin Qiao said the surge reflects growing enterprise demand for cheaper, specialized AI models rather than relying solely on frontier closed systems.

CNBC Technology ↗ · July 16 briefing

Wonder, the food-tech platform that owns Grubhub and Blue Apron, raised more than $650 million in a Series D round at a $9 billion valuation, bringing total funding since 2018 to roughly $3 billion. Returning investors Accel, GV, and NEA joined new backers including Cathie Wood's ARK Invest, AllianceBernstein, and Kayne Anderson, with Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and J. P. Morgan as placement agents. Founder Marc Lore told Fortune the company is 'ready and prepared to go public early next year,' with the capital funding expansion into Texas, robotics, and AI-driven meal planning.

Fortune AI ↗ · July 16 briefing

Former Google DeepMind researcher Andrew Dai raised a $55 million seed round at a $300 million valuation for Elorian, a visual AI startup he founded after leaving Google. Dai, whose prior research helped inform the development of ChatGPT, argues that visual understanding and reasoning remain one of the most uneven frontiers in AI and that Elorian is building toward visual AGI.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 16 briefing

Emergent, an AI platform that lets non-technical users build and deploy applications, raised a $130 million Series C at a $1.5 billion post-money valuation, becoming a unicorn just over a year after its June 2025 founding by brothers Mukund and Madhav Jha. The round was led by Creaegis with participation from Khosla Ventures, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed and Y Combinator, bringing total funding to $230 million. The startup pitches itself as an engineering team in a box, has passed a $120 million annualized revenue run rate, up 70% in four months, and serves more than 200,000 paying customers across North America, Europe and other markets.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 15 briefing · AI that writes code

Paris-based AI voice startup Gradium closed a $100 million seed round, adding $30 million from Nvidia to an initial $70 million raised from FirstMark Capital, Eurazeo, DST Global Partners, Eric Schmidt, and Xavier Niel. The company, spun out of French AI lab Kyutai and co-founded by former Google Brain and DeepMind researcher Neil Zeghidour, builds audio AI models that deliver near-instantaneous voice responses for AI agents. Gradium is using the funding to open a Bay Area office to compete for talent, with automaker Renault already among its customers.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 9 briefing

Open source AI tool Ollama raised a $65 million Series B led by Theory Ventures, adding to a $15 million Series A led by Benchmark's Peter Fenton for $88 million raised total. The company, which lets developers run open-weight AI models on personal computers, now counts 8.9 million monthly active developers, 176,000 GitHub stars, and roughly 17,000 forks, and says it is used at 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Ollama runs with just 14 employees and also offers a paid cloud tier priced by GPU usage rather than token limits.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 9 briefing · Open models · AI that writes code

US venture capital deal value hit $412.7 billion in the first half of 2026, up nearly 30 percent from all of 2025. AI startups accounted for 86 percent of that total, or roughly $355.9 billion, underscoring how dominant AI has become in venture investing. The second quarter alone saw seven funding rounds of $1 billion or more.

TechMeme ↗ · July 9 briefing

AI chip maker SambaNova has raised 1 billion dollars in the first close of its Series F round at an 11 billion dollar valuation, led by General Atlantic with backing from T. Rowe Price, Capital Group, and the Qatar Investment Authority, among other investors. The new valuation is a sharp jump from just seven months earlier, when Intel had reportedly been in talks to acquire the company for around 1.6 billion dollars before that deal fell through. SambaNova, founded in 2017 and based in Palo Alto, builds AI inference chips including its SN40L processor and an upcoming SN50 chip, with customers such as JPMorgan Chase and Saudi Aramco.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 8 briefing · The compute buildout

Gené Teare / Crunchbase News: Global VC funding hit a record $510B in H1 2026, with OpenAI and Anthropic accounting for $217B, or 43% of the total; in Q2, VCs put $205B into 5,000+ startups  —  Global venture funding reached a record $510 billion in the first half of 2026, surpassing the $440 billion invested in all of 2025 …

TechMeme ↗ · July 2 briefing

ElevenLabs has held early talks with investors to let employees sell shares in a secondary offering that would value the artificial intelligence startup at roughly $22 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · July 2 briefing

Venice AI raises $65 million Series A, hitting unicorn status. The privacy-first platform, which lets users run 200-plus AI models without storing their data, is already profitable with over $70 million in annualized revenue.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · July 1 briefing

Nvidia AI chip competitor Etched says it has already booked $1 billion under contract for the inference systems powered by its chip.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · June 30 briefing · The compute buildout

Baidu's Hong Kong-listed shares rose over 6% amid reports that its AI chip unit Kunlunxin is targeting a $50 billion initial public offering in the city.

CNBC Technology ↗ · June 29 briefing · The compute buildout

SpaceX recently completed the largest IPO ever, raising more than $85 billion and debuting at a ~$1.77 trillion valuation. Shares have since pulled back (a common post-IPO pattern, especially in volatile markets), but the raise was enormous. xAI is part of that story because of the earlier integration. FEb 2026, SpaceX acquired xAI and the ... Read more

Next Big Future AI ↗ · June 25 briefing

Agility Robotics aims to go public via a $2.5 billion SPAC merger, focusing on expanding its humanoid Digit robots.

Business Insider Tech ↗ · June 24 briefing · Robots and physical AI

CNBC / Bloomberg / MarketWatch / TechMeme ↗ · June 23 briefing

Bloomberg / TechMeme ↗ · June 23 briefing

TechCrunch AI ↗ · June 22 briefing · The compute buildout

Bloomberg ↗ · June 22 briefing

General Intuition is in talks to raise about $300 million at a roughly $2 billion valuation from backers including Jeff Bezos for AI agents trained on spatial-temporal reasoning.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · June 18 briefing

Baseten is reportedly close to finalizing a $1.5 billion round at a $13 billion valuation as the inference infrastructure gold rush accelerates.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · June 18 briefing

Odyssey, a startup building AI world models beyond LLMs, closed a funding round at a $1.45 billion valuation with backing from Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, and other investors.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · June 17 briefing

Bezos joined investors in a $400 million round for UK materials-discovery startup CuspAI, more than quadrupling the two-year-old company's valuation to $2.6 billion.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · June 17 briefing

SpaceX agreed to acquire AI coding startup Cursor for about $60 billion in stock, days after its blockbuster IPO, as Elon Musk tries to jump-start the company's struggling AI division.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · June 16 briefing · AI that writes code

Audited figures show OpenAI spent about $34 billion last year on model development, infrastructure, and rapid expansion, with leaked docs indicating billions in annual losses ahead of a planned IPO.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · June 16 briefing

Indian IT services company HCLTech is investing $150 million in Bengaluru startup Sarvam, which builds sovereign-language AI models for India.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · June 15 briefing

Mistral is reportedly in talks to raise about EUR3 billion at a roughly EUR20 billion valuation, nearly doubling its prior Series C valuation.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · June 12 briefing

Prometheus, an artificial intelligence startup led by Jeff Bezos, has raised a round of funding that values it at $41 billion, bolstering the Amazon.com Inc. founder’s status as a significant player in the AI boom.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · June 11 briefing

Chris Metinko / Axios: Agentic workplace startup Genspark raised a $100M Series B extension at a $2.6B post-money valuation, up 63% in just three months; it has raised $645M+ to date  —  Agentic workplace startup Genspark raised $100 million in Series B extension funding at a $2.6 billion post-money valuation, co-founder Wen Sang tells Axios Pro exclusively.

TechMeme ↗ · June 11 briefing

German humanoid robotics startup Neura Robotics raised up to $1.4 billion from Nvidia, Amazon, and other backers as investors pile into physical AI and embodied agents.

CNBC Technology ↗ · June 10 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Tencent Holdings Ltd. raised nearly $4.7 billion from the sale of long-dated dollar and yuan bonds, marking the Chinese technology and gaming giant’s largest debt offering since 2020 as companies worldwide tap capital markets to fund artificial-intelligence investments.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · June 9 briefing

London-based PhysicsX raised $300 million in a Temasek-led round that values the AI startup at about $2.4 billion, making it one of the UK's most valuable AI groups. The deal underscores continued sovereign and institutional appetite for applied-science AI firms building simulation models for engineering workflows.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · June 8 briefing

Database startup Supabase announced a $500 million funding round that values the company at $10.5 billion, including the fresh capital.

CNBC Technology ↗ · June 4 briefing · AI that writes code

Ramp's latest funding round was led by ICONIQ, GIC and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.

CNBC Technology ↗ · June 4 briefing

With $500 million in funding and a reported $2.5 billion valuation, Flourish wants to reinvent AI by putting real neurons under the microscope.

Wired ↗ · June 4 briefing

SpaceX disclosed Wednesday that it plans to raise $75 billion in its initial public offering, which is expected to occur within a few weeks. Why it matters: This would be the largest IPO ever, and it's not even close. The current global record is $29.4 billion by Saudi oil giant Aramco in late 2019, while the U. S. exchange mark was set in 2014 by China's Alibaba with $25 billion. Zoom in: SpaceX says that it plans to offer 555.6 million shares at $135 per share. It would be valued at about $1.75 tri...

Axios ↗ · June 3 briefing

The startup develops foundation models designed to help companies make more accurate business predictions, according to sources familiar with the deal.

Fortune AI ↗ · June 3 briefing

Google parent Alphabet Inc. is raising $80 billion in equity offerings, including an investment deal with Berkshire Hathaway Inc., to help fund its ambitious artificial intelligence spending plans.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · June 1 briefing

South Korean chip startup XCENA is betting that AI's real bottleneck is not compute, but memory.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · May 29 briefing · The compute buildout

SK Hynix crossed a $1 trillion valuation as AI data center demand drives memory chip prices higher and reshapes the semiconductor market. The post SK Hynix Tops $1 Trillion Valuation as AI Memory Boom Reshapes Chip Market appeared first on TechRepublic.

TechRepublic ↗ · May 27 briefing · The compute buildout

As Cognition reaches $492 million in annualized revenue run rate, it more than doubled its valuation in eight months, it says.

Planet AI (Aggregator) ↗ · May 27 briefing · AI that writes code

OpenRouter has raised a $113 million Series B led by CapitalG. Its 5x growth in usage over six months indicates the multi-AI-model future is here.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · May 26 briefing

OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei are walking back earlier warnings of a white-collar jobs apocalypse as both companies prepare blockbuster IPOs. Altman said he is delighted to be wrong about mass unemployment from AI.

Fortune AI ↗ · May 26 briefing · AI and work

SoftBank Group Corp. shares climbed to a record high, spurred by hopes of big returns from the Japanese investor’s stakes in OpenAI and SB Energy Corp., should the two go public.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · May 25 briefing

Elon Musk’s legal battle against OpenAI has hung over the ChatGPT maker for more than two years, threatening to unravel its restructuring as a for-profit business and undermine its plans to go public. Now that a judge has dismissed the billionaire’s case, OpenAI appears intent on moving ahead with its Wall Street debut. The company aims to file for an initial public offering in the coming days or weeks, according to a person familiar with the matter, with the goal of going public in the fall. The

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · May 20 briefing

Healthcare AI platform Commure closed a $70 million financing round at a $7 billion post-money valuation, led by General Catalyst with Sequoia and others participating. Its agentic revenue-cycle tools already automate more than 85% of administrative work across hundreds of hospital sites, and the company plans to scale practice-management AI into more global health systems.

Reuters Technology ↗ · May 19 briefing

Analog Devices Inc. agreed to acquire closely held Empower Semiconductor for $1.5 billion in cash as the need skyrockets for efficient chips to power data centers required for artificial intelligence.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · May 19 briefing

Recursive, a startup creating AI that conducts experiments on how to safely improve itself, just came out of stealth. The company is valued at $4.65 billion, with backers including Google Ventures, Greycroft, Nvidia and AMD Ventures. Recursive CEO Richard Socher joins Caroline Hyde on "Bloomberg Tech." (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · May 18 briefing

Bloomberg: Sources: AI chip designer Tenstorrent has drawn takeover interest from Intel and Qualcomm; Tenstorrent could be valued at more than $5B in a potential deal — Artificial intelligence chip startup Tenstorrent Inc. is drawing early takeover interest from prospective buyers at a moment ...

TechMeme ↗ · May 18 briefing · The compute buildout

Alison Weissbrot / Adweek: Publicis agrees to acquire LiveRamp, which allows companies to share and build new data sets and models that can power agentic frameworks, for $2.2B in cash — Publicis Groupe has agreed to acquire LiveRamp for $2.2 billion all-cash deal, the French holding company said Sunday.

TechMeme ↗ · May 17 briefing

A year ago, it looked like this day would never happen for Cerebras.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · May 14 briefing

Elon Musk's $1 trillion-plus SpaceX isn't a public company yet, but its size and ambitions are already upending the stock market and sparking questions over the power and influence wielded by such behemoths. Why it matters: The IPO, expected next month, would signal the start of a new AI era for the public markets, potentially valuing SpaceX as much as $2 trillion. The big picture: OpenAI and Anthropic are also expected to IPO this year — possibly translating into $5 trillion in value in the marke...

Axios ↗ · May 14 briefing

Theo Wayt / The Information: Sources: 50+ researchers and engineers have left xAI since the SpaceX acquisition via layoffs, firings, and voluntary departures; many have joined Meta and TML — Call it the SpaceXAI exodus. — More than 50 researchers and engineers working on xAI's Grok models have left ...

TechMeme ↗ · May 14 briefing · AI and work

Anthropic PBC is in early talks with investors to raise at least $30 billion in fresh financing, according to people familiar with the matter, setting the stage for what could be its largest funding round yet. The Claude maker would then be valued at more than $900 billion. Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow reports. (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · May 13 briefing

Cerebras raised $5.55 billion in its IPO, and with the chipmaker's offering, investors are gearing up for some even bigger AI deals later this year.

GlobeNewswire ↗ · May 13 briefing

Elon Musk was open to having OpenAI merge with Cerebras. Now Cerebras is looking at going public as soon as this week.

CNBC Technology ↗ · May 12 briefing

Reuters:OpenAI launches the OpenAI Deployment Company with a $4B+ investment to help organizations build and deploy AI systems, and acquires AI consulting firm Tomoro— OpenAI said on Monday it is setting up a new company with more than $4 billion in initial investment to help organizations build and deploy AI systems.

TechMeme ↗ · May 11 briefing

Cerebras Systems Inc. increased the size of its initial public offering, now seeking to raise as much as $4.8 billion, as demand for the artificial intelligence chipmaker and data center operator's shares continues to build.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · May 11 briefing · The compute buildout

The apparently insatiable demand for AI compute has data center entrepreneurs looking to the stars. There's a key problem: There aren't enough rockets to put data centers in orbit around Earth, and they're too expensive.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · May 11 briefing · The compute buildout

Start-up behind Claude tool is fielding inbound investment offers that could lead to it surpassing rival OpenAI in value

Financial Times Tech ↗ · May 10 briefing

Value soars in ongoing fundraising discussions as investors including Tencent seek slice of AI lab

Financial Times Tech ↗ · May 6 briefing

The raise gives Sierra more than $1 billion to work with — capital the company says it will use to become the "global standard" for AI-powered customer experiences.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · May 5 briefing

Anthropic PBC has begun weighing a fresh funding round that would value the artificial intelligence developer at more than $900 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, potentially leapfrogging its longtime rival OpenAI as the world’s most valuable AI startup.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · April 29 briefing

China has decided to block Meta Platforms Inc.’s $2 billion acquisition of agentic AI startup Manus, a surprise move to unwind a controversial deal that’s drawn fire for the leakage of technology to the US.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · April 27 briefing

Cognition AI Inc. is in early talks to raise a new round of funding that would more than double its valuation to $25 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, tapping into increased demand for companies that understand how to use artificial intelligence in software development.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · April 23 briefing · AI that writes code

Era thinks that we will see many form factors of AI hardware, including glasses, rings, and pendants.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · April 23 briefing

These entrants are competing with far bigger players, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft, that make their own AI-powered coding tools.

Business Insider Tech ↗ · April 22 briefing · AI that writes code

Software maker Vast Data has raised a $1 billion Series F, tripling its valuation to $30 billion. Vast Data CEO Renen Hallak says the company is readying itself for an IPO. Hallak joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on “Bloomberg Tech.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · April 22 briefing

The chip giant has increasingly become an investor of companies involved in the AI boom.

CNBC Technology ↗ · April 22 briefing

Cailley LaPara /Bloomberg:Reliable Robotics, which is developing autonomous aircraft systems for cargo flights, raised $160 million in new funding — pushing its valuation to nearly $1 billion — as the Silicon Valley startup makes …

TechMeme ↗ · April 21 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Bumper IPO would trigger increased stake for founder Nik Storonsky but group has no plans to float shares before 2028

Financial Times Tech ↗ · April 21 briefing

Company code-named Project Prometheus is working on models for industrial applications

Financial Times Tech ↗ · April 21 briefing

Cerebras moves toward the public markets; the company has announced AWS and OpenAI-related infrastructure angles in recent months.

Planet AI (Aggregator) ↗ · April 20 briefing · The compute buildout

Group founded by former engineers at DeepMind and OpenAI secures $4bn valuation in deal with Google’s venture arm and Nvidia

Financial Times Tech ↗ · April 19 briefing

Artificial intelligence startup Cursor in talks to raise a $2 billion fundraising round at an over $50 billion valuation, which does not include the investment.

CNBC Technology ↗ · April 19 briefing · AI that writes code

Jill Wyant, president and CEO of Madison Air, talks about the company's IPO and the growing opportunity in data center infrastructure, including the buildout of Terafabs. The provider of ventilation and filtration systems raised $2.23 billion. Wyant speaks with Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Tech." (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · April 16 briefing

Artificial intelligence startup Upscale AI is in talks to raise a new round of funding at a valuation of about $2 billion, according to people with knowledge of the efforts.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · April 16 briefing

Skild AI, a fast-rising startup that makes software to help robots learn to complete tasks, has bought the robotics automation division of Zebra Technologies Corp., marking its latest effort to broaden its reach in a hot segment.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · April 15 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Europe’s most valuable company says customers are accelerating expansion plans

Financial Times Tech ↗ · April 15 briefing · The compute buildout

Chief executive Sam Altman refocuses AI company as Anthropic tests its early lead

Financial Times Tech ↗ · April 14 briefing

Venture firm Eclipse has raised $1.3 billion across two funds to back companies building the next era of physical industries like those in robotics, manufacturing, and energy. Lior Susan, the founder and CEO of Eclipse, speaks with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Tech." (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · April 7 briefing · Robots and physical AI

The Information:Source: Anthropic has acquired Coefficient Bio, which was developing a platform that enables AI to run biotech tasks such as planning drug research, for ~$400M— Anthropic has acquired AI biotech startup Coefficient Bio for roughly $400 million, according to a person with knowledge of the deal.

TechMeme ↗ · April 2 briefing

India's homegrown artificial intelligence startup, Sarvam AI, is close to raising $300 million to $350 million as it seeks to build a domestic player that can compete with leaders from the US and China.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · April 2 briefing

OpenAI and Anthropic are also considering a move to the public markets

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · April 2 briefing

The startup, which is planning to go public later this year, designs chips specifically for AI inference, another challenger to Nvidia's dominance.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · April 1 briefing · The compute buildout

Company part of growing cohort of UK groups developing faster AI processors

Financial Times Tech ↗ · April 1 briefing · The compute buildout

OpenAI has completed a deal to raise $122 billion from investors at an $852 billion valuation, marking the company's largest funding round to date. Shirin Ghaffary has more on "Bloomberg The Close." (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · March 31 briefing

Steven Rosenbush /Wall Street Journal:PrismML, which says its 1-bit LLM achieves radical compression without sacrificing performance, comes out of stealth with $16.25M in SAFE and seed funding— PrismML says its 1-bit large language model achieves radical compression without sacrificing performance, lowering energy consumption

TechMeme ↗ · March 31 briefing

Saronic's latest funding round more than doubles its valuation to $9.25 billion from the prior fundraising early last year.

CNBC Technology ↗ · March 31 briefing

Mistral AI, a French startup trying to build a European alternative to OpenAI, has secured its first debt financing of $830 million for a data center project outside of Paris, becoming the latest technology company tapping credit markets for an unprecedented buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · March 30 briefing · The compute buildout

Rebellions' chips are focused on AI inferencing, putting it in competition with Nvidia as well as other startups from Groq to Cerebras.

CNBC Technology ↗ · March 30 briefing · The compute buildout

Lucinda Shen / Axios: Sycamore, an agentic AI operating system founded by former Atlassian CTO Sri Viswanath, raised $65 million in seed funding led by Coatue and Lightspeed.

TechMeme ↗ · March 30 briefing

Harvey will use its fresh capital to expand its AI agents and grow its embedded legal engineering teams.

CNBC Technology ↗ · March 25 briefing

Kleiner Perkins has raised $3.5 billion to make bets on AI startups and current portfolio companies innovating across autonomy, transportation, professional services, and space. Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on “Bloomberg Tech.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · March 25 briefing

OpenAI is nearing about $10B from MGX, Coatue, Thrive and others, pushing its latest round toward roughly $120B in total, per Bloomberg sources.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · March 24 briefing

As OpenAI gears up for a potential IPO, it's outlined a more tempered infrastructure strategy and has moved away from an ambitious agreement with Nvidia.

CNBC Technology ↗ · March 22 briefing · The compute buildout

Xbow, a startup that builds AI software to probe applications for security vulnerabilities, has raised a new round of funding that values it at more than $1 billion.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · March 18 briefing

OpenAI has hired the former DocuSign CFO Cynthia Gaylor to run investor relations as the company gears up for a potential IPO by end of 2026.

CNBC Technology ↗ · March 17 briefing · AI and work

Swarmer Inc. shares skyrocketed as much as 700% on Tuesday, making the AI drone software company's debut the best trading by a US stock since Newsmax's blockbuster entry nearly a year ago.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · March 17 briefing

With xAI now in the hands of SpaceX, Elon Musk says he's rebuilding the artificial intelligence company following high-level departures.

CNBC Technology ↗ · March 15 briefing

Julie Bort /TechCrunch:Zendesk agrees to acquire Forethought, which makes AI-powered customer support software, for an undisclosed sum; Forethought has raised $115M— Zendesk is acquiring Forethought, a company that builds software to automate customer service interactions, the companies announced on Wednesday.

TechMeme ↗ · March 15 briefing

Moonshot AI is seeking to raise as much as $1 billion in an expanded funding round that would value the startup at about $18 billion, more than quadrupling its valuation in just three months and underscoring growing interest in Chinese AI developers racing to rival Silicon Valley leaders.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · March 15 briefing

Google's $32 billion Wiz acquisition is finalized—the largest venture-backed deal in history. Index Ventures calls it the 'Deal of the Decade,' with Wiz at the center of AI, cloud, and security spend tailwinds.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · March 15 briefing

Replit raised a new $400 million round and said it hopes to have $1 billion in ARR by year's end. The AI-powered coding platform has tripled its valuation in six months.

TechCrunch ↗ · March 11 briefing

AMI Labs, the new venture cofounded by Turing Prize winner Yann LeCun after he left Meta, has raised $1.03 billion at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation. Backed by Nvidia, Temasek and Jeff Bezos, the startup aims to build AI that understands the physical world.

TechCrunch ↗ · March 10 briefing

Meta has acquired Moltbook, the viral social network for AI agents built with OpenClaw. Moltbook founders will join Meta's Superintelligence Labs.

Ars Technica ↗ · March 10 briefing

Rhoda uses widely available internet video to train industrial robots for a variety of conditions. The AI robotics startup reached a $1.7 billion valuation in its latest funding round.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · March 10 briefing · Robots and physical AI

OpenAI is acquiring Promptfoo, an AI security platform that helps enterprises identify and remediate vulnerabilities in AI systems during development. The deal underscores frontier labs' push to prove their technology can be used safely in critical operations.

OpenAI Blog ↗ · March 9 briefing

Nvidia-backed British AI infrastructure startup Nscale raised $2 billion and added former Meta executives Sheryl Sandberg and Nick Clegg to its board. The Stargate Norway startup is now valued at $14.6 billion.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · March 9 briefing

Together AI is in talks to raise approximately $1 billion at a $7.5 billion pre-money valuation. The startup's annualized revenue has reportedly hit $1 billion, up more than 3x from mid-2025, as demand for GPU-renting cloud providers explodes.

TechMeme / The Information ↗ · March 5 briefing

German startup Neura Robotics is raising $1.2 billion in a round backed by stablecoin issuer Tether. The funding will accelerate the development of AI-powered humanoid robots for industrial and commercial use.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · March 4 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Defense tech giant Anduril is reportedly seeking to raise $4 billion in a new funding round co-led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, which would nearly double its valuation to $60 billion, signaling massive growth in AI-driven defense systems.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · March 3 briefing

Reflection AI is seeking a $2B+ raise at a $20B+ valuation as the Trump administration looks to fast-track domestic foundation models to rival China's DeepSeek.

Financial Times / TechMeme ↗ · March 2 briefing · Rules and the courts

OpenAI has secured a staggering $110 billion in funding at a $730 billion valuation. This massive round includes a $50 billion investment from Amazon as well as $30 billion each from Nvidia and SoftBank, marking the largest private fundraise in history.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · March 1 briefing

Gushwork has secured $9 million in seed funding to build AI search tools that automate the identification and qualification of customer leads. The startup aims to replace manual research with autonomous agents that browse the web in real-time.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · February 27 briefing

Anthropic has acquired Seattle-based startup Vercept, whose 'Vy' desktop agent allows users to control computers using natural language. The deal is a major step in Anthropic's strategy to move beyond chat and into autonomous 'computer use' agents that can navigate OS interfaces.

TechMeme ↗ · February 26 briefing

Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital has invested an additional $1 billion in OpenAI, valuing the AI giant at a staggering $285 billion. The investment is separate from the $100 billion funding round OpenAI is currently finalizing, signaling continued massive investor appetite for frontier models.

CNBC Technology ↗ · February 26 briefing

Self-driving technology group Wayve has secured $1.2 billion in funding, valuing the company at $8.6 billion. The round, backed by major carmakers and Big Tech, will fund the launch of a robotaxi service in London later this year using 'embodied AI' that learns from real-world driving data.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · February 26 briefing

AI chip startup MatX, founded by former Google TPU engineers, has secured $500 million in funding. The company aims to compete with Nvidia by building hardwired AI chips that trade general-purpose flexibility for extreme performance in LLM inference.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · February 25 briefing · The compute buildout

Profound, a startup tracking how AI models recommend brands, raised $96M at a $1B valuation. The company bets that the future of marketing will be shaped by AI answers rather than Google links, marking its transition to unicorn status.

TechMeme ↗ · February 25 briefing

Nimble secured $47 million to build a 'web data layer' for AI agents. The platform allows agents to autonomously browse, verify, and structure real-time web information into queryable databases, solving a major bottleneck for agentic reasoning.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · February 25 briefing

Aalyria, a Google spinout focused on space-based laser communications and AI-driven networking, raised $100M at a $1.3B valuation. The funding highlights growing investor interest in the physical infrastructure required for global AI connectivity.

CNBC Technology ↗ · February 25 briefing

FinSMEs:Salt Lake City-based Jump, a provider of AI tools for financial advisors to automate meeting prep and more, raised an $80M Series B led by Insight Partners— Jump, a Salt Lake City, UT-based provider of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for financial advisors and other financial services providers …

TechMeme ↗ · February 23 briefing

Peak XV says most of its new capital will target India as the firm prioritizes AI, fintech and cross-border bets while navigating recent partner departures.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · February 23 briefing

OpenAI is reportedly in the final stages of a massive $100 billion funding deal that would value the company at over $850 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies in history.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · February 20 briefing

Vibe-coding startup Code Metal has raised $125 million to bring AI-driven software development to the defense industry, automating the modernization of legacy codebases.

Wired ↗ · February 20 briefing · AI that writes code

AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li’s startup, World Labs, has raised $1 billion from a powerhouse group including NVIDIA, AMD, a16z, and Autodesk. The company aims to build large-scale 'world models' that enable AI to understand and interact with the physical 3D world for robotics and scientific discovery.

TechMeme ↗ · February 19 briefing · Robots and physical AI

French AI leader Mistral has made its first acquisition, buying Paris-based Koyeb. The move allows Mistral to manage its own AI infrastructure and challenge the dominance of US cloud providers.

TechMeme ↗ · February 18 briefing

A team of former SpaceX engineers raised $50M for Mesh, a startup mass-producing optical transceivers to solve the critical networking and cabling bottlenecks in large-scale AI clusters.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · February 18 briefing · The compute buildout

Legal automation startup Legora is in talks to raise $400 million at a valuation exceeding $5 billion, marking a major milestone for AI's disruption of professional services.

Forbes Tech ↗ · February 18 briefing

Nascent startup Recursive Intelligence has reached a $4 billion valuation in record time, raising $335M from top VCs. The startup is led by a 'famed' team of AI researchers that every major lab tried to hire.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · February 17 briefing

Peter Steinberger, the creator of the viral OpenClaw AI agent framework, has reportedly received billion-dollar acquisition offers from both OpenAI and Meta.

Trending Topics ↗ · February 16 briefing

Cohere has surpassed its revenue targets for the year, signaling strong enterprise demand and setting the stage for one of the most anticipated AI IPOs of 2026.

CNBC Technology ↗ · February 16 briefing

Anthropic has completed a deal to raise $30 billion in funding from investors at a $380 billion valuation, bolstering the artificial intelligence company as it gains ground on rival OpenAI.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · February 13 briefing

Artificial intelligence startup Simile has raised $100 million in new funding to build a model designed to predict human behavior, including by helping companies anticipate questions likely to be asked on earnings calls.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · February 13 briefing

General Catalyst is in talks to lead the round for the four-year-old startup, according to our sources.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · February 13 briefing

General Catalyst is in talks to lead the round for the four-year-old startup, according to our sources.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · February 12 briefing

Apptronik raised $520M from Google and John Deere, tripling its valuation to over $5.5B to accelerate its humanoid robot deployment.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · February 11 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Startup Inertia, co-founded by ex-Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, raised $450M to build fusion power plants for AI using high-power lasers.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · February 11 briefing

Databricks raised $5B in equity and $2B in debt at a $134B valuation, with annualized revenue crossing $5.4B (up 65% YoY).

CNBC / TechMeme ↗ · February 9 briefing

Gather AI raised a $40M Series B to scale its 'curious' AI drones that autonomously monitor and manage warehouse inventory.

TechCrunch / TechMeme ↗ · February 9 briefing

Anthropic PBC is ironing out the final details on a funding round likely to raise more than $20 billion and slated to close as soon as next week.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · February 8 briefing

AI chipmaker Cerebras raised $1 billion in Series H funding at a $23 billion valuation, leveraging its '20x faster' chips and a $10 billion OpenAI contract to take on Nvidia.

Forbes Tech ↗ · February 6 briefing

Autonomous vehicle startup Waabi raised $1 billion, including $250M from Uber, to deploy 25,000 robotaxis. Waabi uses a single AI system trained primarily in simulation for both trucks and cars.

Rowan Cheung / Waabi ↗ · February 6 briefing

AI startup Fundamental secured a $1.2B valuation and a partnership with AWS to sell a foundation model designed to interpret petabytes of structured enterprise data.

TechCrunch / FT ↗ · February 6 briefing

Andreessen Horowitz raised $1.7 billion specifically for its AI infrastructure team, part of a larger $15B fund, to double down on winners like OpenAI, ElevenLabs, and Cursor.

TechCrunch AI / a16z ↗ · February 6 briefing

The investment comes from backers including the Qatar Investment Authority as demand for chips beyond Nvidia soars and as Qatar aims to build out its AI infrastructure.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · February 5 briefing · The compute buildout

Bedrock, founded by Waymo veterans, raised $270M at a $1.75B valuation to automate heavy construction equipment like excavators, marking a major leap for Physical AI.

NYT / TechMeme ↗ · February 5 briefing

Kirsten Korosec /TechCrunch:Skyryse, which plans to integrate its flight automation OS, SkyOS, in Black Hawk helicopters and other aircraft, raised a $300M+ Series C at a $1.15B valuation— Skyryse, an El Segundo, California-based aviation automation startup, has raised more than $300 million in a Series C investment …

TechMeme ↗ · February 4 briefing

Defense tech startup Overland AI has raised $100 million in new funding to help accelerate the use of robots and other autonomous systems across the US military’s ground forces. Stephanie Bonk, president and co-founder of Overland AI, joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on “Bloomberg Tech.” (Video updated to correct Ascend. VC company logo on graphic.) (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · February 4 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Linq offers an API that lets companies offer their AI assistants via iMessage, RCS, and SMS.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · February 4 briefing

Leo Schwartz /Fortune:Fieldguide, which uses AI agents to automate accounting and auditing tasks, raised a $75M Series C led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives at a $700M valuation— Fieldguide founder Jin ChangCOURTESY OF FIELDGUIDE — Like many of his fellow accountants, Jin Chang tried to quit the industry several times …

TechMeme ↗ · February 3 briefing

Natasha Mascarenhas /Bloomberg:Shield, which acquires IT businesses and uses AI to make them efficient, raised $100M from Thrive Holdings and says it crossed $100M in annual revenue in 2025— It's Thrive Holdings' latest investment in bringing new tech to the services industry. — Thrive Holdings, an offshoot …

TechMeme ↗ · February 3 briefing

Ram Iyer /TechCrunch:Alabama-based Linq, which pivoted to programmatic messaging APIs in February 2025, raised a $20M Series A to build AI assistants that work within messaging apps— Sometimes, you might be sitting on a hot product and not know it until the market demands it.

TechMeme ↗ · February 3 briefing

Connie Loizos /TechCrunch:Inside Physical Intelligence, a startup co-founded by Stripe veteran Lachy Groom that is building general-purpose robotics foundation models and has raised $1B+— From the street, the only indication I've found Physical Intelligence's headquarters in San Francisco is a pi symbol that's …

TechMeme ↗ · February 2 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Waymo, Alphabet Inc.'s autonomous driving unit, is aiming to raise about $16 billion in a financing round that would value the unit at nearly $110 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · February 2 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Apple's biggest acquisition ever is still its $3 billion Beats buy in 2014, but now the second biggest deal is bringing in Q.ai, a four-year-old AI audio startup. Apple did not disclose the terms, but Financial Times reports that Apple is spending $2 billion on the company.

The Verge ↗ · January 29 briefing

International Business Machines Corp. raised nearly $7.5 billion in the corporate bond market, kicking off what is expected to be a flood of borrowing from the tech sector in 2026.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · January 29 briefing

Canadian self-driving startup Waabi has raised $1 billion in financing with plans to expand from autonomous trucking to robotaxis with Uber. Waabi CEO Raquel Urtasun joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on “Bloomberg Tech.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · January 28 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Decagon AI Inc., a customer support startup, has raised $250 million in a new round of funding that triples its valuation to $4.5 billion, the latest sign of feverish investor demand for artificial intelligence services.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · January 28 briefing

SpotDraft now processes over 1 million contracts annually using its AI tool, with contract volumes up 173% year-over-year.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · January 27 briefing

The British AI video company has raised $200 million in fresh funding.

CNBC Technology ↗ · January 26 briefing

AI inference startup Baseten Labs has raised $300 million at a $5 billion valuation, doubling its value in just six months. Baseten CEO Tuhin Srivastava and one of its backers, Conviction founder Sarah Guo, join Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on “Bloomberg Tech.” (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · January 26 briefing

SGLang, which originated as an open source research project at Ion Stoica's UC Berkeley lab, has raised capital from Accel.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · January 21 briefing

OpenEvidence, based in Miami, has topped a $12 billion valuation in a funding round led by Thrive and DST.

CNBC Technology ↗ · January 21 briefing

Humans&, a startup that believes AI should empower people, not replace them, has reportedly raised a $480 million seed round at a $4.48 billion valuation.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · January 20 briefing

Last year was monumental for the AI industry in the U. S. and beyond. How will 2025 compare?

TechCrunch AI ↗ · January 19 briefing

Sequoia Capital is planning a "big investment" in Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup behind the chatbot Claude, according to the Financial Times.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · January 18 briefing

Julie Bort /TechCrunch:RunPod, an AI app hosting service launched four years ago that raised a $20M seed in May 2024, says it has reached a $120M annual revenue run rate— Runpod, an AI app hosting platform that launched four years ago, has hit a $120 million annual revenue run rate, founders Zhen Lu and Pardeep Singh tell TechCrunch.

TechMeme ↗ · January 18 briefing

Iain Martin /Forbes:Listen Labs, whose AI tools help Microsoft and others run customer research and interviews, raised a $69M Series B led by Ribbit Capital at a $500M+ valuation— The San Francisco-based company, which has run more than 1 million customer interviews with its automated AI tools …

TechMeme ↗ · January 18 briefing

Higgsfield says it's on a $200 million annual revenue run rate. So it opened its previous Series A round back up and sold another $80 million in shares.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · January 15 briefing

The massive round was led by existing investor General Catalyst, with participation from other returning backers.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · January 15 briefing

Skild AI, which is building general-purpose robotic software, just raised a $1.4 billion funding round led by SoftBank.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · January 14 briefing · Robots and physical AI

AI chip startup Etched raised about $500 million in a new funding round, according to people familiar with the matter, part of an effort to compete with Nvidia Corp. in the booming market for artificial intelligence processors.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · January 13 briefing · The compute buildout

AI chip provider Cerebras Systems Inc. is in talks to raise roughly $1 billion in a new funding round, according to a person familiar with the matter, bolstering the company’s efforts to compete with Nvidia Corp.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · January 13 briefing

Deepgram is raising its Series C round at a $1.3 billion valuation.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · January 13 briefing

Deal with Apple fuels investor optimism over Big Tech group’s competitiveness with OpenAI’s ChatGPT

Financial Times Tech ↗ · January 12 briefing

French defense tech company Harmattan AI is now valued at $1.4 billion after raising a $200 million Series B round led by Dassault Aviation, which is best known for making the Rafale fighter jet.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · January 12 briefing

Andrew Martin /Bloomberg:Tel Aviv-based Torq, which operates an autonomous AI-powered security operations platform, raised $140M led by Merlin Ventures at a $1.2B valuation— The Israeli cybersecurity startup Torq is planning to announce Sunday that it has closed a $140 million funding round, raising its valuation to $1.2 billion.

TechMeme ↗ · January 11 briefing

Geoff Weiss /Business Insider:ATG, which is developing the AI-powered wealth strategist app Autonomous, emerges from stealth and raises a $15M pre-seed led by Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan— - ATG cofounders Dillon Erb and Daniel Kobran raised $15 million to build an AI wealth strategist. — Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan led ATG's latest round.

TechMeme ↗ · January 11 briefing

Some of China’s most prominent figures in generative artificial intelligence warned that the Asian nation is unlikely to eclipse the US in the global AI race anytime soon.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · January 11 briefing

This represents a 50% jump from its $6 billion valuation achieved seven months ago, signaling investor confidence in AI security solutions.

TechRepublic ↗ · January 11 briefing

OpenAI is acquiring the team behind executive coaching AI tool Convogo in an all-stock deal, adding to the firm's M&A spree.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · January 8 briefing

Smart glasses maker Xreal Inc. recently raised $100 million, its chief executive officer said, adding to the firm's coffers as competition in the category heats up.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · January 8 briefing

Chinese AI startup MiniMax jumped as much as 54% in its Hong Kong debut on Friday, after raising ~$619M in its IPO priced at ~$21.17 per share. MiniMax Group Inc., one of China's largest generative AI startups, surged in Hong Kong after an initial public offering that raised $619 million.

TechMeme ↗ · January 8 briefing

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup behind the chatbot Claude, is raising a new round of funding that would value the company at $350 billion before the new investment, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · January 7 briefing

xAI:xAI raised a $20B Series E, exceeding its $15B targeted round size, with participation from Valor, Nvidia, and others, and says Grok 5 is currently in training— xAI is rapidly accelerating its progress in building advanced AI. — xAI completed its upsized Series E funding round …

TechMeme ↗ · January 6 briefing

Bloomberg:Sources: Discord has filed confidentially for an IPO, working with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase— Discord Inc. filed confidentially for an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter, adding to a rapidly growing pipeline of venture capital-backed tech listings.

TechMeme ↗ · January 6 briefing

Sophie Shulman /CTech: Sources: Palo Alto Networks is in talks to acquire Israeli cybersecurity startup Koi for $400M; Koi has raised $48M to date — The deal would extend the cyber giant's reach in enterprise endpoint protection amid AI-driven market shifts.

TechMeme ↗ · January 4 briefing

Jiyoung Sohn /Wall Street Journal: A profile of June Paik, CEO of Seoul-based chip startup FuriosaAI, valued at ~$700M, whose AI chip dubbed "RNGD" is slated to enter mass production this month — June Paik spurned a takeover offer from Meta Platforms last year. Now his South Korean company, FuriosaAI, has an AI chip entering mass production.

TechMeme ↗ · January 4 briefing · The compute buildout

Meir Orbach /CTech: Sources: Cisco is in advanced talks to acquire cybersecurity company Axonius for $2B; Axonius has raised ~$700M and was valued at $2.6B during earlier rounds — Exclusive: The deal would follow a string of major acquisitions as Cisco strengthens its enterprise security portfolio.

TechMeme ↗ · January 4 briefing

Three biggest US private tech groups plan listings as early as this year, raising hopes of windfall for banks, lawyers and investors

Financial Times Tech ↗ · January 2 briefing

CTech:Sources: Nvidia is in advanced talks to acquire Tel Aviv-based AI21, which is building its own LLMs, for $2B to $3B; the deal would resemble an acquihire— EXCLUSIVE: The move would mark Nvidia's fourth major Israeli purchase and signal the limits of Israel's LLM ambitions.

TechMeme ↗ · December 30 briefing

The next year is shaping up to be a pivotal period for generative AI. But first...

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · December 30 briefing

Jagmeet Singh /TechCrunch:Tracxn: VC funding for Indian startups fell 17%+ YoY to $10.5B in 2025 across 1,518 deals, down ~39% YoY; AI startups raised $643M, up 4% YoY, across 100 deals— India's startup ecosystem raised nearly $11 billion in 2025, but investors wrote far fewer checks and grew more selective …

TechMeme ↗ · December 28 briefing

Mega funding rounds create 'fortress balance sheets' as investors advise top groups to brace for tougher markets

Financial Times Tech ↗ · December 28 briefing

Reuters:Indian IT services provider Coforge agrees to acquire Encora, which offers AI tools for product, cloud, and data engineering, at an enterprise value of $2.35B— Indian IT services provider Coforge said on Friday it would acquire artificial intelligence firm Encora at an enterprise value …

TechMeme ↗ · December 26 briefing

San Francisco-based startup is doing well. It has gone from three customers to more than 45 Fortune 500 partnerships.

TechRepublic ↗ · December 23 briefing

Sherry Qin /Wall Street Journal:Chinese AI chipmaker Biren Technology plans to raise up to ~$623M in a Hong Kong IPO, pricing shares at ~$2.19 to ~$2.52, and expects trading to start January 2— The company expects its shares to start trading in Hong Kong on Jan. 2 — Chinese AI chip maker Shanghai Biren Technology seeks …

TechMeme ↗ · December 22 briefing · The compute buildout

The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, according to people familiar with the deal.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · December 22 briefing

The startup behind popular Github project vLLM is out fundraising, as venture capitalists hunt for companies building tech that can make AI systems run more efficiently.

Forbes Tech ↗ · December 22 briefing

The ChatGPT maker is aiming to raise the funding by the end of the first quarter in 2026, and the company may ask sovereign wealth funds to invest in the round.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · December 21 briefing

Moore Threads Technology Co. introduced a new generation of chips aimed at reducing artificial-intelligence developers’ dependence on Nvidia Corp.’s hardware, just weeks after pulling off one of the most successful Chinese IPOs in years.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · December 21 briefing · The compute buildout

Reuters:Sources detail SoftBank's efforts to raise funds as it races to close its $22.5B funding commitment to OpenAI by the end of this year— SoftBank Group (9984. T) is racing to close a $22.5 billion funding commitment to OpenAI by year-end through an array of cash-raising schemes …

TechMeme ↗ · December 21 briefing

Graphite is an AI code review assistant that was last valued at $290 million.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · December 21 briefing · AI that writes code

A startup building artificial intelligence software to speed up and automate scientific research has raised $70 million in a new funding round, the latest sign of investor enthusiasm for using AI in the sciences. The financing for Edison Scientific, announced Thursday, was co-led by Spark Capital, Triatomic Capital and a US-based biotech investor that the company declined to name. Other participants included Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean and CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch. The fund

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · December 18 briefing

Chip startup Mythic Inc. has raised $125 million in a new funding round, money that will help support its attempt to challenge Nvidia Corp. in the lucrative market for artificial intelligence processors.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · December 17 briefing · The compute buildout

Alphabet's robotaxi venture plans to expand to dozens of cities, including London and New York

Financial Times Tech ↗ · December 17 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Companies such as Databricks, SpaceX and OpenAI have reached mega valuations while staying private for longer.

CNBC Technology ↗ · December 16 briefing

Last Energy Inc., a nuclear startup, raised $100 million from investors led by Astera Institute to commercialize a small reactor it’s developing as soaring demand for power to run artificial intelligence stokes interest in the industry.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · December 16 briefing · The compute buildout

Vibe coding startup Lovable's latest funding round values it at $6.6 billion, more than tripling the valuation it achieved with its previous round in July. Accel is participating in the round.

CNBC Technology ↗ · December 16 briefing · AI that writes code

Chai Discovery, an artificial intelligence drug-discovery company backed by OpenAI, has raised $130 million to build a “computer-aided design suite” for molecules.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · December 15 briefing

NVIDIA today announced it has acquired SchedMD — the leading developer of Slurm, an open-source workload management system for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI — to help strengthen the open-source software ecosystem and drive AI innovation for researchers, developers and enterprises.

NVIDIA AI Blog ↗ · December 15 briefing

Lightspeed raised $9B+ across six AI funds, including $3.3B to back breakout hits like Anthropic, xAI, and Mistral; Lightspeed has backed 165 AI startups

TechMeme ↗ · December 15 briefing

Alphabet Inc. is set to book another sizable paper gain after SpaceX completes a tender offer that effectively values the closely held company at about $800 billion.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · December 14 briefing

With most intellectual property or patent law work done with spreadsheets, docs, and PDFs, this is a ripe arena for generative AI

TechMeme ↗ · December 14 briefing · Rules and the courts

ElevenLabs has made a name for itself building realistic AI voices. What started as two Polish engineers annoyed by terrible movie dubbing has grown into a profitable company now valued at $6.6 billion, doubling from just nine months ago.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · December 10 briefing

Artificial Intelligence startup Fal raised fresh funding from investors including Sequoia Capital and Nvidia Corp. in a deal that values the company at $4.5 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter — triple its valuation from a few months earlier.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · December 9 briefing

The move reflects a rapidly intensifying race among technology giants to strengthen the data foundations required for generative and agentic AI.

TechRepublic ↗ · December 8 briefing

Naveen Rao joins a rarified club of prominent tech founders to raise big funding rounds for very young companies.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · December 8 briefing

Japan's SoftBank Group and Nvidia are in talks to invest in Skild AI, in a more than $1 billion funding round that would value the robotics foundation model startup at around $14 billion, up from $4.7 billion in July.

TechMeme ↗ · December 8 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Limitless said it shares Meta's vision of bringing personal superintelligence to everyone.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · December 7 briefing

The one-year-old startup, which does market research on simulated populations, had a multi-tier valuation round, sources tell TechCrunch.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · December 7 briefing

7AI, which makes agents that analyze and triage info like cybersecurity alerts, raised a $130M Series A at a ~$700M valuation, taking its total funding to $166M. The agentic AI company closes bumper early-stage round as investors pour funds into AI market.

TechMeme ↗ · December 4 briefing

Anthropic, the AI startup behind the popular Claude chatbot, is reportedly in talks to launch one of the largest initial public offerings ever as 2025.

CNBC Technology ↗ · December 3 briefing

OpenAI agreed to buy Neptune, a startup that makes tools for analyzing progress during AI model training.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · December 3 briefing

Security technology startup Verkada has reached a $5.8 billion valuation after a new funding round led by CapitalG, Alphabet's venture capital arm. In September, Verkada rolled out over 60 new AI features and platform updates, including tools like "AI-Powered Unified Timeline."

CNBC Technology ↗ · December 3 briefing

Anthropic has acquired Bun, a maker of software used to run and manage code more efficiently, marking Anthropic's first acquisition. The deal comes as Claude Code hits $1 billion in annualized revenue, representing a major milestone for Anthropic's developer-focused AI products.

Anthropic ↗ · December 2 briefing · AI that writes code

Taiwan has sharply raised its 2025 GDP growth forecast to 7.37%, up from 4.45% forecasted in August, marking the fastest growth rate in 15 years as AI demand drives electronics exports.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · November 30 briefing

Last year was monumental for the AI industry in the U. S. and beyond. 49 US AI startups have raised $100M or more in 2025, showcasing the continued investment surge in artificial intelligence.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · November 27 briefing

Monolith Management, which backed DeepSeek-rival MoonShot AI, has raised about $289 million as it seeks to invest in more companies in the country’s artificial intelligence space.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · November 27 briefing

Competitors OpenAI and Anthropic have raised significant funds in recent months as demand for foundational models skyrockets.

CNBC Technology ↗ · November 25 briefing

Anthropic says its new Claude Opus 4.5 excels at coding, using computers and assisting users with complex enterprise tasks.

CNBC Technology ↗ · November 24 briefing · The frontier model race

The artificial intelligence startup Model ML raised $75 million as it looks to develop technology to replace much of the grunt work done by investment bankers — from creating pitch decks to working up due-diligence reports.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · November 24 briefing

Physical Intelligence, a startup developing artificial intelligence software to help robots learn a wide range of tasks, has raised $600 million in a new round of funding that values the company at $5.6 billion, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Alphabet Inc.’s independent growth fund CapitalG led the round, with participation from existing investors Lux Capital, Thrive Capital and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing priva

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · November 20 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Nasdaq lower as heavyweights including Nvidia and Microsoft sustain steep falls

Financial Times Tech ↗ · November 19 briefing

Kingdom’s Humain unit drives investment as Riyadh steps up bid to become global force in generative AI

Financial Times Tech ↗ · November 19 briefing

Nasdaq lower as heavyweights including Nvidia and Microsoft sustain steep falls

Financial Times Tech ↗ · November 18 briefing

Bone AI, a South Korean startup, is combining AI and manufacturing to build next-gen defense robotics and challenge the region’s industry giants.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · November 18 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Cursor, an artificial intelligence coding startup, has raised $2.3 billion in funding at a $29.3 billion valuation, roughly tripling its value in a matter of months.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · November 17 briefing · AI that writes code

WisdomAI is offering AI-driven data analytics that can answer business questions from structured, unstructured, and even “dirty” data, meaning data not cleaned of typos or errors.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · November 17 briefing

Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow discuss the latest moves in tech stocks as skepticism grows about whether the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in December. Plus, Thinking Machines, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI executive Mira Murati, is in talks to raise funding at a $50 billion valuation. And Cursor CEO Michael Truell discusses the AI-coding startup’s latest fundraise at a $29.3 billion valuation. (Source: Bloomberg)

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · November 16 briefing · AI that writes code

Founded in 2022, the start-up sees continued momentum, capitalizing on AI-powered code development and vibe coding.

AI Business ↗ · November 16 briefing · AI that writes code

The AI-powered PowerPoint challenger is now valued at $2.1 billion.

AI Business ↗ · November 13 briefing

WisdomAI is offering AI-driven data analytics that can answer business questions from structured, unstructured, and even “dirty” data, meaning data not cleaned of typos or errors.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · November 12 briefing

D-Matrix Corp., a Microsoft Corp.-backed AI chip startup, raised $275 million from new investors including Qatar Investment Authority and Singapore’s EDBI, valuing the company at $2 billion.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · November 12 briefing · The compute buildout

AI agent builder Genspark Inc. has secured more than $200 million from investors including LG Group’s investment arm in its latest funding round, becoming the newest billion-dollar startup in the artificial intelligence arena.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · November 11 briefing

Anduril Industries Inc. founder Palmer Luckey, a Lockheed Martin Corp. board member, Palantir Technology Inc.’s Shyam Sankar and other investors are putting $130 million into Valar Atomics, a nuclear startup that’s aiming to build thousands of advanced nuclear fission reactors within a decade.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · November 10 briefing · The compute buildout

Pony AI Inc. raised HK$6.71 billion ($863 million) in its Hong Kong listing, pricing shares at HK$139 each.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · November 3 briefing

Pine Labs Ltd., a digital payments providers, plans to raise as much as 39 billion rupees ($439 million) through an initial public offering in Mumbai, according to an advertisement.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · November 3 briefing

Fractal Analytics is preparing to kick off its initial public offering, which may fetch 49 billion rupees ($555 million), as early as next month in India, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · October 28 briefing

The investment highlights continued demand for high-powered computing infrastructure required to train and run powerful AI models.

CNBC Technology ↗ · September 25 briefing

The recruiting startup has over 2,500 customers, including recruiters at Perplexity, Ramp, and OpenAI.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 25 briefing · AI and work

AI predicts materials, xAI hits $200B, Amazon recycles gear, OpenAI spends $100B, Apple Watch flags BP, Meta trades power, NVIDIA hires, ShopRite adds carts.

Forward Future ↗ · September 23 briefing

Chai Discovery, an AI-driven drug discovery startup, raised $70 million in a Series A led by Menlo Ventures and Anthropic's co-investment vehicle, with participation from Yuri Milner's DST Global Partners, valuing it at about $550 million.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · August 6 briefing