AI Tools Are Creating Younger Founders and Faster Expectations
Teenage entrepreneurs can now build and raise money earlier, but investors are giving them less time to learn in private.
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Index Ventures Raises $2 Billion Across Seed, Venture and Growth Funds
The firm's available capital reaches $3.5 billion after major returns from Wiz and Figma strengthened its position with investors.
Research Links Venture Pressure and Weak Governance to Startup Fraud
Two studies suggest misconduct remains uncommon, but becomes more likely when overheated markets reward growth without adequate oversight.
Fish Audio Raises $52 Million for Expressive AI Voice Models
The Palo Alto startup is expanding tools for creators and enterprises while facing the harder task of preventing unauthorized voice cloning.
Etched Raises $300 Million at a $10.3 Billion Valuation
The AI chip startup plans to scale production and customer deployments as it builds specialized hardware for high-volume inference.
Glow Emerges From Stealth With $180 Million for Endpoint Security
The Palo Alto and Tel Aviv company reached a $1.2 billion valuation with a prevention-focused approach to securing devices used for AI work.
Fireworks AI Raises $1.505 Billion at a $17.5 Billion Valuation
The model infrastructure company says annual recurring revenue has passed $1 billion as customers deploy more specialized AI systems.
Aina Raises $5.5 Million for AI-Native Interface Hardware
The startup founded by former Ultrahuman hardware executive Apoorv Shankar is developing physical controls intended to direct AI agents.
Chai Discovery Raises $400 Million for AI-Designed Medicines
The molecular design startup reached a $3.8 billion valuation while expanding partnerships with major drugmakers.
Flex Raises $70 Million to Expand AI-Native Financial Services
The business finance platform reached a reported valuation near $1.2 billion and launched a global product using stablecoin payment rails.
Ollama Raises $65 Million to Expand Its Open-Model Developer Platform
The company behind a widely used local AI tool is adding resources for enterprise adoption while keeping its open-source distribution engine.
Super.com Raises $65 Million at a $1.2 Billion Valuation
The savings platform is expanding a membership that combines travel deals, cash back and financial tools for cost-conscious consumers.
Assort Health Raises $120 Million at a $1.2 Billion Valuation
The healthcare startup is expanding AI agents from phone scheduling into a broader operating system for the patient journey.
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Caplight Raises $16 Million for Private-Market Data and Trading Tools
BlackRock and Fin Capital are backing infrastructure that helps investors price, analyze and transact in shares of private companies.
Seltz Raises $12.5 Million to Rebuild Web Search for AI Agents
The startup is creating its own crawler, index and retrieval models for software that asks longer questions and consumes structured results.
Mirendil Raises $200 Million to Build Self-Improving AI for Scientists
Two former Anthropic and Google researchers launched the company at a $1 billion valuation with backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins and Nvidia.
Riviera Partners Acquires Lateral Labs
The executive-search firm is adding an AI-focused recruiting team with startup customers.
Coval Raises $28 Million to Stress-Test Voice and Chat Agents
The former Waymo engineer behind the startup is applying simulation and observability techniques to customer-facing AI systems.
Baseten Raises $1.5 Billion at a $13 Billion Valuation
The AI infrastructure company is using its fourth financing in 18 months to expand model inference services for enterprise customers.
AppsFlyer Secures More Than $1 Billion From Digital Advertising Partners
The marketing measurement company brought Google, Meta, Moloco and Unity into a strategic financing that values the business at $2.7 billion.
Groq Raises $650 Million to Expand Its AI Inference Cloud
The chip company is rebuilding and scaling its cloud business after a major licensing and talent agreement with Nvidia.
Clair Health Raises $11.6 Million for a Hormone-Tracking Wearable
The Stanford-founded startup plans to ship a wellness wristband that infers hormone patterns without blood draws while it pursues clinical validation.
Convey Raises $38 Million to Give Enterprises AI Teammates
The startup wants agents to own recurring business outcomes across existing applications instead of stopping after a single generated response.
Genspark Extends Series B to $485 Million at a $2.6 Billion Valuation
The agentic workspace company added $100 million and appointed a chief revenue officer as it pursues larger business customers.
DeepL Acquires Mixhalo and Opens Silicon Valley Office
The translation company is combining voice AI with ultra-low-latency audio for events and meetings.
Atom Computing Raises $100 Million to Advance Neutral-Atom Quantum Systems
The Berkeley company will accelerate work on fault-tolerant machines while pursuing additional federal support for U.S. quantum infrastructure.
Ent Emerges With $100 Million to Prevent Risky Actions Before They Happen
The security startup is building an intent-aware workspace designed to evaluate what people and AI agents are trying to do before a system allows it.
SpaceX Completes Record $75 Billion Public Offering
The rocket and satellite company entered Nasdaq trading at a valuation above $1.7 trillion.
Prometheus Raises $12 Billion to Pursue AI for Physical Engineering
The secretive company led by Jeff Bezos and Vik Bajaj is valued at $41 billion before revealing much about its technology or customers.
Pi Raises $25 Million for Agentic Product Security
The San Francisco and Tel Aviv company wants security agents to find and help fix software risks throughout the development lifecycle.
Campground Raises More Than $2.2 Million for Social Impact Operations
The Oakland company is building software to manage applications, participants, payments and reporting for programs serving communities.
OpenAI Files Confidentially for a U.S. Initial Public Offering
The ChatGPT maker joined Anthropic in a high-stakes race to bring frontier AI companies to public markets.
Sekai Raises $26 Million as Users Generate Millions of Mini Apps
The prompt-to-app startup says its community creates games, quizzes and interactive experiments at a rate of about one every half-second.
NewLimit Raises $435 Million to Advance Cellular Reprogramming Medicines
The longevity biotechnology company plans to move its first liver program toward human testing while expanding its discovery platform.
Anthropic Confidentially Files for U.S. IPO
The Claude developer moved ahead of OpenAI as frontier AI companies prepare for public scrutiny.
Human Archive Raises $8.2 Million to Collect Training Data for Physical AI
The startup is building a network that records first-person human activity, bringing privacy, consent and worker pay into the robotics data race.
Hark Raises More Than $700 Million for Personalized AI Models and Hardware
Brett Adcock's new lab reached a $6 billion post-money valuation before releasing its first products to the public.
Exa Raises $250 Million to Build Search Infrastructure for AI Agents
The San Francisco startup reached a $2.2 billion valuation by selling web search and content retrieval directly to software developers.
Mercury Raises $200 Million at a $5.2 Billion Valuation
The business-banking technology company is growing alongside a new wave of AI startups while pursuing approval for a national bank.
Socket Raises $60 Million to Secure Open-Source Software in the AI Era
The software supply-chain company reached a $1 billion valuation as faster code generation increases the number of outside packages entering applications.
Commure Raises $70 Million at a $7 Billion Valuation
The Mountain View healthcare technology company is expanding AI systems for revenue, clinical documentation and practice operations.
Status AI Raises $17 Million for an Interactive Social Network
The consumer startup wants to replace passive scrolling with role-playing, fictional characters and user-created story worlds.
Recursive Superintelligence Emerges With $650 Million
Richard Socher's new laboratory is pursuing AI systems that can improve their own research process, backed at a reported $4.65 billion valuation.
Cerebras Shares Soar in $5.55 Billion Nasdaq Debut
The AI chipmaker nearly doubled its offering price as investors sought another route into compute infrastructure.
Outmarket AI Raises $17 Million to Automate Insurance Brokerage Work
The vertical software company is connecting agency data with AI workflows for policy checks, proposals and other document-heavy tasks.
Exaforce Raises $125 Million for Real-Time AI Security Operations
The Bay Area cybersecurity startup is building agents that investigate attacks with a live knowledge graph rather than simply sorting alerts after they arrive.
Fazeshift Raises $17 Million for Autonomous Accounts Receivable
The finance software startup is expanding AI agents that handle invoicing, reconciliation, collections and other repetitive cash workflows.
Astranis Adds $300 Million in Equity and New Credit to Scale High-Orbit Spacecraft
The satellite manufacturer is combining a Series E round with a credit facility as it expands production for commercial and government missions.
RadixArk Launches With $100 Million Seed Round to Expand SGLang
The Palo Alto startup is commercializing infrastructure around a widely used open-source engine for running and serving advanced AI models.
Sierra Raises $950 Million as Enterprise AI Competition Intensifies
The customer-experience software company is valued above $15 billion as it races to make AI agents a standard interface for large brands.
Meta Acquires Assured Robot Intelligence
The startup's team will join Meta's effort to develop AI systems for humanoid robots.
Netomi Raises $110 Million as Accenture and Adobe Back Agentic Customer Service
The San Francisco company is positioning its AI platform for regulated, high-volume service environments where errors can be costly.
Hightouch Raises $150 Million for an Agentic Marketing Platform
The San Francisco company more than doubled its valuation to $2.75 billion as it expanded from moving customer data to helping agents run campaigns.
Parallel Raises $100 Million to Build Web Infrastructure for AI Agents
The company reached a $2 billion valuation as it expands tools that help automated systems search, retrieve and organize online information.
Scout AI Raises $100 Million to Develop Autonomous Systems for Defense
The startup is training a foundation model called Fury to control unmanned vehicles across changing military environments.
Omni Raises $120 Million as AI Reshapes Business Analytics
The San Francisco company reached a $1.5 billion valuation by combining chat, spreadsheets and code with a governed layer for company data.
Era Computer Raises $11 Million to Build a Software Layer for AI Gadgets
The startup wants hardware makers to connect glasses, jewelry and home devices to models and multimodal services without building the entire stack.
Crewline AI Raises $7.1 Million to Automate Construction Equipment
The startup is beginning with autonomous road rollers that can be retrofitted onto machines already operating at construction sites.
NeoCognition Launches With $40 Million for Agents That Learn on the Job
The new research lab wants software agents to build specialized expertise from experience instead of remaining fixed after training.
Expo Raises $45 Million and Launches an Agent for Production Mobile Apps
The React Native platform is expanding from developer infrastructure into AI-assisted work that helps enterprise teams move from an idea to a shipped application.
Ulysses Raises $38 Million to Scale Autonomous Ocean Fleets
The marine robotics company is pairing underwater vehicles with surface vessels and launch systems for commercial and defense missions.
Gitar Emerges From Stealth With $9 Million to Check AI-Generated Code
The startup is using AI agents for reviews, security checks and continuous-integration failures as software teams struggle with a growing volume of generated code.
Hilbert Raises $28 Million to Turn Growth Data Into Automated Decisions
The a16z-backed startup wants consumer businesses to move from dashboards and recommendations to actions tied to measurable financial results.
HYFIX Raises $15 Million for a U.S.-Made Control Chip for Autonomous Machines
The Santa Clara startup is combining navigation, communications and computing functions in silicon intended for drones and robots.
Phonely Raises $16 Million as Customers Back Its Business Voice AI
The phone-automation startup says contact-center operators invested alongside venture firms after deploying its agents in live customer service work.
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Caterpillar Acquires Monarch Tractor's Remaining Assets
The exit ends the Bay Area startup's effort to build autonomous electric tractors as a standalone manufacturer.
Spiral Therapeutics Raises $27 Million and Adds an Inner Ear Partnership
The clinical-stage company will advance its lead hearing program while working with Advanced Bionics on therapies delivered alongside cochlear implants.
Modern Relay Raises $3 Million for a Shared Context Layer for AI Agents
The Barcelona and San Francisco company is building a governed graph that lets employees, software and agents work from the same organizational knowledge.
Primepoint Labs Discloses $10 Million Seed Round for Construction AI
The San Mateo startup is teaching software to connect drawings, specifications and other building documents before missing details become costly field problems.
Noon Launches With $44 Million to Close the Gap Between Design and Code
The startup connects a visual design canvas directly to a product's codebase so teams can work from the same components and constraints.
OpenAI Closes $122 Billion Round at an $852 Billion Valuation
The financing gives the San Francisco AI company an extraordinary capital base, while placing equal pressure on revenue growth, infrastructure execution and product focus.
ALSO Raises $200 Million and Adds DoorDash as an Autonomous Vehicle Partner
The Rivian spinoff reached a valuation above $1 billion while expanding from small electric vehicles into autonomous delivery systems.
EPIC Microsystems Raises $21 Million to Tackle AI Data Center Power Loss
The San Jose chip startup is betting that a shorter, vertical path for electricity can remove a growing bottleneck inside high-performance AI systems.
Littlebird Raises $11 Million for a Context-Aware Desktop Assistant
The startup is building an AI memory that reads on-screen text, prepares meeting notes and retrieves information from a user's daily work.
Sunday Raises $165 Million to Put Its Memo Robot Into Homes
The Mountain View robotics company reached a $1.15 billion valuation with a plan to begin real household deployments in the fall.
Replit Raises $400 Million as Valuation Triples to $9 Billion
The San Francisco software creation platform is expanding the idea that people can move from a natural-language prompt to a working, deployed application.
Manufact Raises $6.3 Million to Build Infrastructure for MCP Developers
The startup formerly known as mcp-use is turning an open-source toolkit into a managed platform for deploying the connectors used by AI applications.
AgentMail Raises $6 Million to Give AI Agents Their Own Inboxes
The San Francisco startup is treating email as basic infrastructure for autonomous software that needs identity, context and two-way communication.
AmberSemi Raises $30 Million for More Efficient AI Power Delivery
The Dublin, California semiconductor company plans to commercialize a component that moves power vertically toward high-performance processors.
Nexthop AI Raises $500 Million for Data Center Networking
The Santa Clara company reached a $4.2 billion valuation as large AI systems create demand for faster, more flexible connections between processors.
Kai Emerges With $125 Million for Security Across IT and Industrial Systems
The San Jose startup is developing agentic cybersecurity software meant to connect defenses across corporate networks and operational technology.
Denki Raises $4.1 Million to Bring AI Agents Into Financial Audits
The Y Combinator company is targeting evidence collection and compliance work that still depends heavily on spreadsheets, tickets and manual review.
Ayar Labs Raises $500 Million to Scale Optical Links for AI Chips
The semiconductor startup is moving its co-packaged optics technology toward volume production as data centers demand faster, more efficient connections.
14.ai Raises $3 Million for an AI-Native Customer Service Agency
The startup is selling an operated support function rather than software alone, putting automation performance directly on its own team.
S2.dev Raises $3.85 Million for Serverless Streaming Data Infrastructure
The Y Combinator startup is making its streaming platform generally available as AI developers look for simpler ways to process live data.
Anthropic Acquires Computer-Use Startup Vercept
The Seattle company's team and desktop-agent technology will support Claude's ability to operate software.
Kana Launches With $15 Million for Configurable Marketing Agents
The repeat founders behind Rapt and Krux are building AI tools that fit into existing marketing systems and keep people in the approval loop.
World Labs Raises $1 Billion to Build Spatial Intelligence Models
Fei-Fei Li's company is financing AI systems that generate and reason about three-dimensional environments for creative and industrial uses.
Render Adds $100 Million for a Cloud Platform Built Around AI Applications
The Series C extension values the developer platform at $1.5 billion as more teams need persistent infrastructure for applications and agents.
The Biological Computing Co. Raises $25 Million to Develop Neuron-Based Computers
The Mission Bay startup is building laboratory systems that use living neurons for AI workloads, an ambitious alternative to conventional silicon.
Newo Raises $25 Million to Put AI Receptionists Into Small Businesses
The voice platform is expanding through software and telecom partners that can distribute automated front-desk service at scale.
OpenAI Launches Frontier to Manage Enterprise AI Agents
The new platform connects agents to company data and tools while adding identity, permissions, evaluation and governance across different agent providers.
Fundamental Emerges With $255 Million for Enterprise Data Models
The company is applying foundation-model techniques to tables and relational data, an area where text-focused AI systems often struggle.
Sapiom Raises $15.75 Million for Machine-Native Financial Infrastructure
The startup is building authorization and payment tools that let AI agents purchase APIs, data and computing services under defined controls.
Lunar Energy Adds $232 Million to Scale Home Batteries and Virtual Power Plants
The Mountain View company plans to expand domestic manufacturing and coordinate more residential batteries as electricity demand strains the grid.
Bedrock Robotics Raises $270 Million for Autonomous Construction
The company founded by former Waymo leaders is moving its self-driving system from supervised job sites toward operator-less heavy equipment.
Waymo Raises $16 Billion at a $126 Billion Valuation
Alphabet's robotaxi company is financing a major expansion as autonomous ride-hailing moves from limited deployments toward a broader transportation network.
SpaceX Acquires xAI in Record-Setting Combination
The all-stock transaction brings rockets, satellites, social media and artificial intelligence under one company.
